abyssalbrews

Disarming Sword

Added 2023-09-21 15:00:04 +0000 UTC

Greetings adventurers!

Duelists are always crowding up the streets with their challenges for honor and valor. It’s such a bore as they’re all typically the same. Oh someone wronged you betrothed, or you cousin sold some bad cabbage. Whatever the case may be, I usually pay them little mind until one day I saw one with a rather interesting sword. I’m not sure what the argument was, perhaps he had left the kettle on too long, regardless the duel was a fascinating watch as he disarmed his opponent with one flick of the sword. His talent was remarkable. It was a shame that the other gentlemen killed him with an ill placed pitch fork, but I figured he wouldn’t miss the sword.

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Design notes from Matthew:

I’ve always been big on swords. I know, it probably makes me a little basic but I just can’t help wanting to design a cool sword that does something interesting. Fernando and I have been admittedly playing a lot of BG3 and at times I enjoy a bit of the push and pull that the items give in that game. We had a lovely patron suggest a duelists sword that gave something for an open off-hand and I knew it would be the perfect time to implement that.

For the 5E version, disarm just isn’t really a thing in the core game. There is an optional rule for it, but I find that not a lot of DMs utilize it. I decided that rather than trying to shoehorn in the optional rule, I would just write my own variety of it that presented itself as an opposed challenge much the way grappling is presented. The idea being that it is a test of skill between one another, this will make it easier to disarm less bladeworthy opponents and more difficult against those that are quite adepts with their steel.

In Pathfinder 2E, thankfully disarming is just a straight up thing that is in the game and the mechanic functions well. I needed to find another way to put a power into this, so I had it mirror the 5E version and trigger on a reaction rather than requiring an action to do it. This means an additional option is opened for your turn while still allowing disarms to happen. Finally I wanted to give this item its own identity so I gave it an additional item bonus on critical fails to entice players to wait for the right moment to try it.

This month is just absolutely flying by me for some reason, but at least we’re keeping up just fine. Next week we’ll be releasing another pair of creature and item that we’re very excited about. We thought we had created the last Drudgework Construct, but we were absolutely wrong in the best way. I hope you’ll be as inspired by this one as we were.

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