Feinting and Disarming

[rgrove0172]

Ive yet to play them yet but by reading through these two combat options it would appear they become very powerful devices for experienced PC against your typical Mook. Even unskilled attempts would seem to have a high percentage chance of succeeding with the various advantages of level bonuses and such. Im expecting honestly to have my PCs knocking the weapons out of thier opponants hands and erasing thier parry and dodge bonuses regularly.

Do you GMs find this happening in your games? And if not, is there a disadvantage Im not considering?

 

[Trodax]

Disarming is restricted by the fact that it causes an attack of opportunity against you if you don't have the Improved Disarm feat, and there is also a chance that you will be disarmed yourself if you fail. With the ID feat, you're better off, though. I'd say that what is mostly limiting is time; disarming your opponents will consume actions, actions that might be better off spent trying to actually hurt them (if that is what you want to do, of course; disarm is certainly perfect you don't want to kill the guy).

Feinting is restricted by the way actions work (it's a Standard action to feint without Improved Feint, and a Move action if you have IF). This means that without IF, you have to feint in one turn and then attack in the next, which is honestly very rarely going to be a good idea. If you have IF, you're better off as you can then feint and attack in the same turn. You're still restricted because doing this means you can't use the Full Attack action (the only way to get more than one attack per turn), which is going to hurt high-level warriors. It's the same as with disarm; it can be a bad idea to waste actions on trixy stuff when you might as well get straight to the hurting.
However, feinting (with IF) can be a very good idea if you also have the sneak attack ability (Thieves and Pirates do).

The thing with both these special actions is what you touched upon in your post; it gets quite easy to do it if you are much higher level than your opponent. But at that point, why bother? There is really no point in spending time at disarming the temple guard that stands in your way when you might as well just hack him into small pieces with your battleaxe.

 

[rgrove0172]

Thanks Trodax, thats just what I was looking for. I kind of had it in my mind that you could use one of these options in place of one of your multiple attacks, but your right of course - as an action they are distinct and apart. Thanks for responding.

 

[Sutek]

One other thing that makes Feint so awsome at higer levels is the ability to Sneak Attack. Pretty brutal damage that almost always ends up dealing Massive Damage (another of your favorites - lol).

There has been endless debate over whether the Feint/Sneak choice was more deadly than, say, just bashing it out with a Bardice or Battle Axe, but it comes down to timing and feats in the case of the former, and all that necessary in the latter case is strength and, well, a Bardiche or Battle Axe.

 

[Trodax]

I kind of had it in my mind that you could use one of these options in place of one of your multiple attacks, but your right of course - as an action they are distinct and apart. Thanks for responding.

Actually, disarm can be used as one of multiple attacks just as you thought (see footnote #8 in the table on page 155). So a character with three attacks (+11/+6/+1, for example) could choose to disarm someone with one of his attacks and then attack with the two remaining.

Feinting, however, is a standard action.

 

[argo]

I was going to comment but Trodax beat me to it so I'll just say "I agree" :lol:

 

[rgrove0172]

I suppose then that an actual FEINT is more a fighter spending several seconds convincing his opponant of his intention to attack a particular target, use a particular style or expose a particular weakness - only to take advantage should the opponant actually take the bait .... rather than just a quick hip to one side, partial swing to one side etc.

If the round is 6 seconds long then a fient has to me more than just an instantaneous movement.

 

[Sutek]

Nothing in D20 combat is instantaneous. Neither is every roll of the dice a single event, strike, act, etc. The attack roll encompases what the character is doing for his round, which lasts roughly 6 seconds. In other words, think of it as representing the character mostly Feinting during that duration of the combat, all bundled up into that solitary roll of a twenty sided die.

As metaphorical as this turns out to be, it becomes easier to simply accept the divisions of the rounds into action types as extensions of the metaphor rather than "I walk" and then "I strike". That break-down is further to simplify the many things that are occuring and to put some order to the chaos.

To a further degree, the die roll also represents all of the acts that count; that make a difference. You may swing your sword a half-dozen times in that span ot time, but connect only marginally 1 time, that colminate in actual damage to your foe. At higher levels, those half-dozen or so strikes turn ito more effective blows and in better frequency.