1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

It rakes a maneuver to draw and ready a weapon on your person. It takes a maneuver to change locations within a range band. If it takes a maneuver to draw a weapon in combat from your holster it sure as hell takes more than 1 to pick something up off the ground. It says dropped, but it doesn't say conveniently within arms reach. You're having to move to where the weapon dropped, doesn't matter if it went "flying", unless it landed in your holster it's not where you're presently in a fist fight so by default it's at a different location even with the range band.

If you were in a fist fight and there was a door ten feet away and you wanted to move to it and open it, that's 2 maneuvers RAW. I see no difference.

3 , since you have to disengage, one to move and another to open the door.

You could technically bill that, but that's maybe a wee bit too harsh. Still the point being if you disarm an opponent it's more than a single maneuver to pick up the weapon they've dropped.

23 minutes ago, syrath said:

3 , since you have to disengage, one to move and another to open the door.

It's only 2. The disengage is also the move, since to disengage you have to go somewhere. Per RAW.

Have a look at the options for move on the core book there are 3 options for move

Engage / disengage

OR

Move to another location in short range

OR

move from short to medium range

Note that these or mutually exclusive so no you dont actually move anywhere when you disengage

31 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

It's only 2. The disengage is also the move, since to disengage you have to go somewhere. Per RAW.

Not really. The rules do say you disengage with a maneuver and that needs to be done before moving to another location. So it is technically three to disengage, move to another location, and then interact would be a third, again, maybe a wee bit too harsh, but it is RAW. Also, again, the point being a PC isn't going to burn results to disarm an opponent and then just pick the dropped weapon up with a single maneuver. There's a reason, and it's to keep this sort of option from being abused precisely like the OP is concerned with.

You're assuming that the first and second are mutually exclusive. Engaged is not a range band, it is classified as being in short range. So you can move to one spot in short range and engage someone, or move to a different spot in short range and not engage that person. Reversing the move means going from engaged to where you started from -- someplace else. The movement mechanic does not work differently in reverse (leaving the engagement) as it does forward (getting engaged). That only applies to weddings.

Common sense dictates that you cannot disengage and yet not move someplace else. I'm no longer "engaged" yet my feet are still in the same place is just plain silly, and is also not in the spirit of the rules. Look beyond the exact words and to what the writer meant.

I'm not assuming anything, I'm reading the rules.

Quote

Engage or Disengage from an opponent. If a target is already within short range of a character, the character can perform a maneuver to engage that target. If the character is engaged with an opponent or adversary, he must perform a maneuver to disengage with that opponent before moving to any other location. This only changes his range relative to his opponent from "engaged" to "short" and represents the effort of backing away and avoiding his opponent's attacks...

And that same text states that you're "backing away". You cannot back away and at the same time not go anywhere. That falls into the category of cognitive dissonance. Moving and yet not moving.

I'm not talking semantics, I am talking RAW. It's 3 maneuvers, RAW.

Moving from a friendly...or an incapacitated enemy... from engaged to short range is one maneuver. But if the combat is still active disengage takes one maneuver (just out of arms reach) moving to the door would be a second maneuver. RAW opening a door is another maneuver....but who's to say they can't use an action (of simple difficulty, unless it is locked, then it would be a true action complete with a roll) to open it, burning 2 strain as they moved twice already? But then... the door would only be open... they still haven't moved THRU it.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

It rakes a maneuver to draw and ready a weapon on your person. It takes a maneuver to change locations within a range band. If it takes a maneuver to draw a weapon in combat from your holster it sure as hell takes more than 1 to pick something up off the ground. It says dropped, but it doesn't say conveniently within arms reach. You're having to move to where the weapon dropped, doesn't matter if it went "flying", unless it landed in your holster it's not where you're presently in a fist fight so by default it's at a different location even with the range band.

If you were in a fist fight and there was a door ten feet away and you wanted to move to it and open it, that's 2 maneuvers RAW. I see no difference.

Imho you are still engaged with a weapon after a regular disarm. Sun Djem is different as it kicks the weapon as well away. From a cinematic perspective it is the same to draw a weapon from your holster as it is to dive after a weapon and shoot while still rolling at the baddies. Now quick DRAW applies only to one of those two (except when you use a magnetic tether), so the holster is still good and the holster still prevents someone else from just kicking the weapon away or stealing it from you easily.
Now when using Sun Djem, that weapon is indeed 3 meters away, we are clearly in the two maneuvers area.

3 hours ago, 2P51 said:

If it takes a maneuver to draw a weapon in combat from your holster it sure as hell takes more than 1 to pick something up off the ground.

No, it explicitly takes a maneuver to do that. It's covered under Interact With The Environment.

"Often, a single maneuver is enough to interact with the environment around a character. This is a broad category of possible interactions, such as [...] grabbing a blaster off of the ground."

And the Advantage Table says the weapon is dropped. It doesn't say it's sent flying or anything like that. If you're close enough to be engaged with your opponent, you're close enough to the weapon to pick it up, since it dropped from the opponent's grasp.

22 hours ago, DaverWattra said:

It seems like some of the mechanisms in the rules that allow for disarming may be a little too powerful in melee combat.

A single triumph or three advantage (or just two advantage if you're a Jedi with the Sum Djem talent) allows you to force an opponent to drop a weapon. If you've saved a maneuver, you can then pick up the weapon and voila, the battle is over.

Seems like this is a place where GM discretion needs to come in. Against Nemeses, the default should probably be "No, you may not disarm this opponent, even if you have the advantage to spend on it," except in cases where that would help rather than hinder the story.

I'm not going back and forth with anyone else anymore in this thread. A dropped weapon is somewhere else/other location, range regardless, than the target you're engaged with so to move to the location you'd have to disengage and then burn a maneuver to pick it up, so it's at least two maneuvers. The rules provide what you need to suppress abuse of the option by your PCs.

20 hours ago, Richardbuxton said:

Keep in mind that Sum Djem not only disarms the opponent but also moves the weapon to anywhere within "Short" range of the target. Considering that talent is a bottom tier expensive talent I think it's the intended way to replicate that particular movie trope.

whatever a normal Disarm does it should not be better than Sum Djem, it probably shouldn't even be close. I think the Devs would say that normal Disarm puts the weapon at your feet and requires a Manoeuvre to pick up.

Sum Djem would require a Disengage, Engage then pick up (I may allow a coordination check to Engage with and pick up in a single action)

The key word here is "anywhere." The Sun Djem user can specify where the disarmed weapon goes! And it costs only 2 Advantage to activate. It's the double benefit of specific placement and lesser Advantage cost that makes it a powerful talent.

By comparison, your normal "disarm" for 3 Advantage only forces your target to "drop" their weapon. It's GM fiat at that point where the weapon ends up, and is going to be informed by the terrain, present conditions, and the narrative description of the combat check in question.

I definitely agree with the action to engage & pick up. Success on such an action would definitely gain you some strategic advantage in the next round. You come up with the weapon in hand, giving your enemy pause. Upgrade to his next combat check, perhaps.

Failure would probably mean that you did pick it up, but you are now scuffling over the weapon. No strategic advantage, other than the fact that you currently hold his weapon.

Good. But this means the problem from the OP arises again with Sum Djem. Because a Sum Djem user can make the disarmed weapon end up anywhere within short range--they can say "It lands at my feet." Then it is just one further maneuver to pick it up.

6 hours ago, 2P51 said:

It rakes a maneuver to draw and ready a weapon on your person. It takes a maneuver to change locations within a range band. If it takes a maneuver to draw a weapon in combat from your holster it sure as hell takes more than 1 to pick something up off the ground. It says dropped, but it doesn't say conveniently within arms reach. You're having to move to where the weapon dropped, doesn't matter if it went "flying", unless it landed in your holster it's not where you're presently in a fist fight so by default it's at a different location even with the range band.

If you were in a fist fight and there was a door ten feet away and you wanted to move to it and open it, that's 2 maneuvers RAW. I see no difference.

I would normally agree, but the existence of Sum Djem creates a problem for that scenario.

IF standard disarm moves the weapon to Short, which means the only benefit of Sum Djem is a reduction in Advantage from 3 to 2. That's not much benefit for a 20-25xp Talent, in fact that's a complete rip off.

If, on the other hand, standard disarm leaves the weapon still as part of the current engagement then Sum Djem suddenly gets a whole lot better. I definitely go with that ruling, standard disarm will force the target to spend a Manoeuvre to pick it back up, Sum Djem forces them to to spend 3.

Another good reason to drop for 3 advantages only to engage is that is the closes possible start, which allows for classic moves like kicking the weapon afterward away or catching it might air before it drops with a maneuver and leaves room to spend more advantages to just increase the range to short, just for a significant more amount of advantages than Sum Djem.

42 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

IF standard disarm moves the weapon to Short, which means the only benefit of Sum Djem is a reduction in Advantage from 3 to 2. That's not much benefit for a 20-25xp Talent, in fact that's a complete rip off.

The difference between 3 advantage and 2 is a pretty big difference, though, in terms of the likelihood of hitting with that much advantage. E.g. critical rating 2 weapons are a *lot* better than critical rating 3 weapons. A 20xp talent that reduced your critical rating by 1 would be a **** good talent, and disarming is as good as scoring a critical in a lot of situations.

4 minutes ago, DaverWattra said:

The difference between 3 advantage and 2 is a pretty big difference, though, in terms of the likelihood of hitting with that much advantage. E.g. critical rating 2 weapons are a *lot* better than critical rating 3 weapons. A 20xp talent that reduced your critical rating by 1 would be a **** good talent, and disarming is as good as scoring a critical in a lot of situations.

Yeah 2 is better than 3, but there comes a time where that reduction in Crit Rating means you add +20 to the roll instead of +10, 3 Advantage gets rather easy to roll. But even still the Triumph cost didn't change, Sum Djem would not have improved the effect of your Triumph at all.

Right, but a reduction in the advantage cost of disarming can mean (for example) that you get to both disarm and crit in the same attack instead of just disarming. And your point about the triumphs is correct, but the same point is equally true in the case of crit rating: lowering the crit rating of a weapon doesn't improve the effect of triumphs either.

A reduction in 3 to 2 advantage is huge in the series of rolls I made earlier in the thread which was YYYG vs RRPB ended with 2 rolls out of 10 having enough for 2 advantage it was only 1 roll that had 3. The positive dice are stacked towards producing success compared with advantage, whereas negative dice are stacked towards more threat and lower failure (when compared to the positive dice) which means that on a parity (for example 3 yellow vs 3 red or equal green vs purple) situation the most likely result is success with threat. It was something I figured out when everyone called Scathing Tirade overpowered, even 5 yellow and 1 green vs 2 purple didnt get much more than 3 advantage on each roll, and 2 was far from being likely, although it does come up often, more than 50% , you occasionally get monster rolls of 4 , 5 or 6 but when you do you have a much higher chance of failing the roll. Boost die are your friend if you want advantage.

I don't see Sum Djem being an issue, since it's a specific talent that requires a decent investment of XP to acquire, and only shows up in a couple of specialization trees. So it's not like just anyone can grab the talent.

As for disarms, I've been handling it as just a single maneuver on the part of a character to scoop up the dropped weapon, effectively treating the dropped weapon as being engaged with it's prior holder. Then again, there's not been a plethora of villains in my games that had weapons so fearsome that doing for a disarm was the go-to option, since in may cases 3 Advantage is enough to score a critical injury.

1 hour ago, syrath said:

A reduction in 3 to 2 advantage is huge in the series of rolls I made earlier in the thread which was YYYG vs RRPB ended with 2 rolls out of 10 having enough for 2 advantage it was only 1 roll that had 3. The positive dice are stacked towards producing success compared with advantage, whereas negative dice are stacked towards more threat and lower failure (when compared to the positive dice) which means that on a parity (for example 3 yellow vs 3 red or equal green vs purple) situation the most likely result is success with threat. It was something I figured out when everyone called Scathing Tirade overpowered, even 5 yellow and 1 green vs 2 purple didnt get much more than 3 advantage on each roll, and 2 was far from being likely, although it does come up often, more than 50% , you occasionally get monster rolls of 4 , 5 or 6 but when you do you have a much higher chance of failing the roll. Boost die are your friend if you want advantage.

Except in Melee an opponent with Adversary 4 is rare, very rare, which is required to turn DD into CCD. But yes, success with threat is the way the dice stack.

6 minutes ago, Richardbuxton said:

Except in Melee an opponent with Adversary 4 is rare, very rare, which is required to turn DD into CCD. But yes, success with threat is the way the dice stack.

Turning DD to CCD only takes Adversary 3. Just to be nitpicky.

14 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:

Turning DD to CCD only takes Adversary 3. Just to be nitpicky.

Dam maths.