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Originally Posted by Icelander
Full disclosure, I also use the 'Beat acts as Defensive Feint as well' and 'success by 5+ Unreadies the weapon, success by 10+ disarms it'*.
Playtesting reveals no problems so far. After all, this takes up an attack that could have seriously wounded or killed the opponent and the best you can gain is that the enemy's main weapon is taken out of play for one turn. Given that most serious combatants have either a shield or a back-up weapon, this is not the be all and end all of fight-enders.
Against an opponent with similar levels of skill, but slightly inferior ST, it's a nice option, but rarely used by my players. I'll have to inquire about it more closely.
It could be terribly effective when used by giants or ogres, but given that I have other house rules that make blade-to-blade contact with much heavier weapons a bad idea, the PCs tend to Dodge against massively strong foes.
*Two-handed weapons receive a +2 to make and resist Beats in my house rules, as well.
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Huh. That's very interesting. Given your pickiness and the fact you've playtested it quite a bit, it looks likely that this is sufficiently vetted for my purposes. I'll probably give this a look then.
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Originally Posted by Icelander
Well, if you ever do that against a competent foe, he'll Telegraphic kick you in the nuts or Fast-Draw a knife and Telegraphic stab the hell out of you with it.
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A very fair point.
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Originally Posted by Bruno
I'm a little uncomfortable with the "beats are resisted by ST-based rolls, not DX-based rolls" idea - it's tempting, but with all the effort to exorcise ST-based skill rolls from 4e I'm a little leery of unintended consequences. It seems like a safe idea, though, since Beats are ST-based skill rolls in the first place.
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Well, full disclosure here, I'm not necessarily looking at this house rule to be a sweeping, generalized change. Specifically, I'm looking at swashbuckling/samurai games where you don't see ST 30 ogres stomping around. I can see why Peter was cautious when writing Beats, and I'm not necessarily suggesting a total change to GURPS, I'm just looking for something that, in a human-on-human martial arts game, will make beats attractive to more than just barbarian characters.