Deceptive Disarm

[arnej]

So my fencer is trying to do a Disarm (B401). There are two steps - the basic attack, and a Quick Contest.

My question is, if I use Deceptive Attack, lowering my attack skill to make it harder to defend against, do those penalties also apply to the Quick Contest?

[kirbwarrior]

No, they are two different situations. In fact, Deceptive Attack is a way to do something that is already done in contests, so it would defeat the point.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

No, they are two different situations. In fact, Deceptive Attack is a way to do something that is already done in contests, so it would defeat the point.

Yes, RAW doesn't have a way to do this.

You can't just subtract two from the attacker and subtract one from the defender, because that would be a win for the defender.

Perhaps a feint followed by the disarm, with the defender having a penalty to the QC equal to that which the feint would give to the defense?

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Yes, RAW doesn't have a way to do this.

You can't just subtract two from the attacker and subtract one from the defender, because that would be a win for the defender.

Perhaps a feint followed by the disarm, with the defender having a penalty to the QC equal to that which the feint would give to the defense?

Oh, what I meant is that what Deceptive Attack does is emulate something that Quick Contests already do and better. If you have high skill, your opponent is worse off. But when attacking, you need DA to get that effect.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by DangerousThing

Perhaps a feint followed by the disarm, with the defender having a penalty to the QC equal to that which the feint would give to the defense?

You mean instead of, or in addition to?

In addition would seem to favor Feints over Deceptive Attacks. If resisting a QC counts as a defence for purposes of Feints then why not DA?

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Plane

You mean instead of, or in addition to?

In addition would seem to favor Feints over Deceptive Attacks. If resisting a QC counts as a defence for purposes of Feints then why not DA?

Because you use a DA to force a penalty on an opponent's defence. This doesn't work as well for a disarm. A disarm requires a successful hit on the weapon, plus a QC.

I suppose that the defenders penalty from the DA could be used as a penalty to the defender for the QC instead of their normal defence.

[Plane]

I wouldn't mind if it just counted as both, disarms happening more often would be cool.

Of course, in GURPS Technical Grappling, instead of the Quick Contest you can use "Break Free" attacks to reduce the Grip CP of someone's purchase on their handles, so I guess that would be similar to giving a 'damage bonus' too, which could be unbalanced.

[kirbwarrior]

Originally Posted by Plane

I wouldn't mind if it just counted as both, disarms happening more often would be cool.

I'm not sure if more successful disarms should come up since it can easily end a fight. Having even 3 more skill already makes disarms pretty common once you get through. But one small thought is that if you fail to disarm, you did still manage to connect with the weapon and they did fail to defend properly, so the weapon could become unready, making it so some upside comes from succeeding.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I'm not sure if more successful disarms should come up since it can easily end a fight. Having even 3 more skill already makes disarms pretty common once you get through. But one small thought is that if you fail to disarm, you did still manage to connect with the weapon and they did fail to defend properly, so the weapon could become unready, making it so some upside comes from succeeding.

I like that. I'll bring using it in my games from now on.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by kirbwarrior

I'm not sure if more successful disarms should come up since it can easily end a fight. Having even 3 more skill already makes disarms pretty common once you get through. But one small thought is that if you fail to disarm, you did still manage to connect with the weapon and they did fail to defend properly, so the weapon could become unready, making it so some upside comes from succeeding.

True. TG12 requires the ST requirements for 2H or 1/2 ST for 1H weapons to keep a weapon Ready, TG13 "Instant Disarm" mentions the unreadying if the defender ties or wins by 2 or less, but doesn't mention if that includes Control Points in some way...

Rather than a hard rule it makes me wonder if somehow Break Free / Instant Disarm rules could be coalesced into a single idea somehow. The defender losing the contest (dropping the weapon) obviously reduces grip to -1 CP (no matter what it was in the first place) so maybe a tie reduces the grip to 0 CP (just barely hanging on), and the MoS a defender wins the contest by could basically determine how many Control Points they retain on a weapon?

That would make disarms better: the defender would always be losing CP unless he had a HUGE margin of victory. However, the defender IS better in the traditional disarm now: he can spend his control points on a weapon to count as a penalty against the attacker's roll in the quick contest.

The idea you would actually lose CP (loosen your grip on a weapon) as a means of retaining it strikes me as strange, so having the defender's MoV establish his new CP would help put them back into circulation if he wins the contest.

In fact: you may as well just automatically say they spend all their grip CP each time! This seems to be how it works in the 2nd paragraph of instant disarm, which seems to merge the grapple-based "Gimme That" rules with the hit-based "Instant Disarm" rules in a sense where fighters get a penalty to their QC rolls equal to grip CP of the foe. I don't see why we couldn't also give that benefit to the defender in the preceding (1st) paragrpah context.

This would help solve one problem with the traditional B401 "Knocking A Weapon Away" rules: while either party could sub ST for DX, there was no synergy at all for high-ST high-DX people putting them above those high in just one, when clearly there should be.

Control Points (which scale with high ST) from Grip ST on a weapon helps to reward those high-ST guys when they make DX-based Retain Weapon rolls.

The main difference seems to be that "Gimme That" requires establishing a grapple on 3 possible targets (the hand holding the weapon, the arm of that hand, or the weapon itself) while Instant Disarm is quicker (single attack, no setup grapple) but still requires 2 rolls.