New rules for combat: disarm and opponent abilities estimation

The character who wants to disarm cannot attack during the current round. He must make a combat manoeuvre (80-100% activity) with:

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)

Failure leads to opening his defence and he suffers a -25 to DB against the following attack of the character he tried to disarm.

Example with equally skilled characters:

Character 1: OB = 100, disarm = 100.

Character 2: OB = 100, disarm = 100.

Character 1 wants to disarm character 2: he must make a combat manoeuvre with a bonus of (100 + 100/4 – 100 = 25). He needs a 111 to succeed so he must make at least 86 on his d100 roll. That means he only has about 14% chance to disarm an equally skilled character, which seems quite all right.

Now if he is a bit more experienced in disarm skill (let's say 125 instead of 100), his chances are about 40% (125 + 100/4 - 100 = 50, so he needs at least 61).

Now if character 2 is only half as good as character 1 (OB = 50, disarm = 50), character 1 needs (100 + 100/4 - 50 = 75) a result of 36 (65% chance of disarming character 2).

If character 2 wants to disarm character 1 he needs (50 + 50 / 4 – 100 = -38) a 149+ to succeed.

Let's have a look at another uneven situation:

Character 1 (sword master): OB = 170, disarm = 150

Character 2 (student): OB = 80, disarm = 70

On one hand the master can easily disarm the student (150 + 170 / 4 - 80 = 113), except with a negative roll (-2 or less results in a failure).

On the other hand, the student will need a very lucky roll to disarm his master (70 + 80 / 4 - 170 = -80). He needs a pure roll of 191 (less than 1% chance).

Final example: the previous master against a well trained fighter:

Character 1 (sword master): OB = 170, disarm = 150

Character 2 (good fighter): OB = 145, disarm = 125

The master needs (150 + 170 / 4 - 145 = 48) a 63+, so less than 40% chance. The fighter will need a (125 + 145 / 4 - 170 = -9). He needs a pure roll of 120 (about 4% chance).

We also use situationnal awareness-combat and martial/weapon styles lore skills for the characters to prevent disarm attempts or to analyze skills of the opponent.

Situationnal awareness combat (no % activity required) manoeuvres (if declared before the disarm attempt) allow to see it coming and add a 20 penalty to the attacker (the one trying to disarm).

Martial/weapon style lore (10% activity required) skills allow to analyze fighting skill of the foe (pure OB and DB, without item or magical bonuses):

Spectacular failure: under estimation of 100% and foe has +20 OB this round.

Absolute failure: under estimation of 75%

Failure: over/under estimation of 50%

Special event: over estimation of 100% and you are afraid of the foe (must make a fear RR check to continue the fight)

Partial success: over/under estimation of 30%

Unusual success: exact scores estimation and +10 OB and DB vs this foe for the duration of combat.

Near success: over/under estimation of 25%

Success: over/under estimation of 20%

Absolute success: over/under estimation of 10%

Note: under or over estimation is subject to GM’s discretion and the result of the skill check should be unknown to the player!

Example: foe has 100 OB, 50 DB.

ð Absolute failure leads to an estimation of 175 OB, 88 DB, or 25 OB, 12 DB.

ð Near success leads to an estimation of 125 OB, 63 DB, or 75 OB, 37 DB.

ð Special event leads to an estimation of 200 OB, 100 DB!