Beats Suck(?)

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Icelander's fix and the other fixes suggested here ("Beats act as both defensive feints and standard feints against the weapon they affect" and "It can possibly make that weapon unready"), though. I suspect one or the other is sufficient.

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.