From discussion on the discord, it was concluded that disarms are kind of unfun to play around in their current state. This is the rough idea I and several others came up with.
The current status quo:
Right now, in addition to a small amount of stamina damage, three things can happen when a disarm is attempted:
- Nothing at all
- Weapon gets knocked out of the target's hand
- Target gets knocked down
The chance of 2 or 3 happening is determined by the target's current stamina, but even at 100% stamina, there is a greater-than-1% chance of the target dropping their weapon. This can lead to cases of players getting screwed over by bad luck, as they can lose their weapon on the first shove even at max stamina. This feels bad to play against as it means that you can potentially immediately lose a fight by no fault of your own because you had bad luck. In addition, the fact that the most common outcome is "nothing happens" means that disarm-based combat is extremely luck-dependent as well, as if you fail to disarm there is nothing stopping the target from retaliating immediately.
The suggested changes:
This is what we came up on the discord. This idea is rather rough so feedback is wanted. The broad ideas are as follows:
- Add more effects to in-between "absolutely nothing" and "drop their weapon"
Now when a disarm fails to knock an item out of the target's hand, it will have a chance to mess with them in other ways, such as swapping their current hand, changing their current intent, or changing where they are targeting. These effects will come with a unique visual/audio cue to let the target know something just happened.
- Reduce the chance of the target losing their weapon or getting knocked down, with complete immunity with at least 200 stamina
With their being more potential effects on disarm, the most debilitating effects can be made much less common. If the target has at least 200 stamina, the chance of dropping their weapon or being knocked down will be 0%. Every point of lost stamina below 200 will raise the chance by 0.5%, up to a cap of 50% at 100 stamina or less. If it successfully rolls a weapon drop, it will roll an additional chance to knock down, with the same values.
As I said already, this is a rough idea and feedback is wanted to refine it. Please reply with any balancing concerns or new ideas.
Goonhub
