Topic: Clarification on feint and disarm skills.

[Joshua24601]

I'm reading through the MAC book and the Disarm and Feint skills are confusing me.. the the feint skill seems particularly weak.

From the example (MAC pg 83) it looks like your skill bonus in feint/disarm isn't actually used in the skill roll, but instead is just the maximum OB you can devote to the attempt.  Is this correct?

If so, it seems to me that the feint skill is really weak, you have to sacrifice a healthy hunk of your OB (since your competing against your opponent's ENTIRE OB) with hopes of reducing their DB (which is most cases is less then their OB) and recovering only half the OB you gave up.

The math isn't adding up.  It looks like a fighter, attempting to feint another fighter, who's his equal, must give up most of his OB, and hope for a lucky feint roll (85+) in order to knock off enough DB to make it worth losing half the invested OB.... That is of course... assuming the opponent has a high enough DB to make it worth while...
This after the fighter has invested plenty of DP's into the feint skill.


Disarm makes a bit more sense, since it isn't necessarily a build up to a immediate attack like feint is.

[Ecthelion]

I've actually had the same impression that the skills are quite weak. In my group both skills were never used...
Perhaps disarm is useful when playing a vastly superior combatant that does not want to kill his opponent and instead wants to disarm him - not that I'd invest DPs for such a rare occasion.

[Joshua24601]

If they are in fact this weak, it's a shame.. because combat 'flare' skills like feint, disarm, swashbuckling.. and so on... can make an interesting (especially higher level) fighter.

[Arioch]

I've actually had the same impression that the skills are quite weak. In my group both skills were never used...
Perhaps disarm is useful when playing a vastly superior combatant that does not want to kill his opponent and instead wants to disarm him - not that I'd invest DPs for such a rare occasion.

We never used Feint, too: as it is the manuever doesn't really makes sense.
OTOH I think that Disarm is much more useful and many fighters and monks in our group developed it. Normally it's very difficult to disarm a skilled opponent with it, but if you manage to stun him his usable OB drop to 50% and disarming him becomes much easier. The skill is useful even if you want to kill your foe, IMHO: a disarmed fighter is usually easier to kill than a armed one!

[Ecthelion]

And interesting variant. Perhaps Disarm does make sense after all  . And if the opponent is stunned & unable to parry his usable OB even drops to 0%, making disarming quite easy.

[mocking bird]

The problem with disarm is that it is an RR using disarm ranks vs. weapon ranks making it practically useless when using everyman or occupational weapon talents not to mention it is a lot more expensive DP wise to develop.

These topics were brought up a while ago regarding giving a fighter or non-magic user some perc for not casting spells as +.5 OB/rank imo just doesn't cut it.

Ah but re-reading the MAC it is roll + skill - OB and not an RR roll.  Making it much easier  against wounded or stunned opponents.  Will have to take this into account.  Might have to look at the MAC again as it does have some lovely little variants/changes like that tucked away in it.

[Dax]

...
The math isn't adding up.  It looks like a fighter, attempting to feint another fighter, who's his equal, must give up most of his OB, and hope for a lucky feint roll (85+) in order to knock off enough DB to make it worth losing half the invested OB.... That is of course... assuming the opponent has a high enough DB to make it worth while...
This after the fighter has invested plenty of DP's into the feint skill.
...

This is excatly the reason I have my problem with feinting.
The warrior sacrifices OB to let the DB of the opponent drop ...
Of course to make sense the skill have to give more than the sacrifice with a good result.

Wow, stun and disarm: I never thought of this (gives me a realistic feeling).

[mathhatt]

My version of disarm skill:
http://mathhatt.free.fr/jdr/rm/aides/disarm.htm

With this house rule, a character proficient in disarm skill has less than 15% chance of disarming an equally skilled opponent. If he is very proficient in disarm, about 40% chance. A sword master would need exceptionnal failure to not being able to disarm a student, and a student would need an exceptionnally high roll to disarm his master (less than 1% chance).
The math is fairly easy to compute :

roll maneuver with bonus =
disarm skill bonus
+ OB bonus of the attack used to disarm / 4 (with an upper limit = the disarm bonus)
- OB of the opponent (do not subtract any parry from the OB)