4e encounters sundering help.

[Shinizak]

Hey guys, my DM is running an adventure in which we fight dragons, I want to know what the sunder rules have to say about natural weapons so that I can literally knock it's teeth out. However I'm looking at the rule book PDF and can't find any rules on it. may I have some help?

[Lateral]

4e doesn't have sundering, only bull rushing and grappling.

[Shinizak]

What? why?

[Lateral]

They didn't implement any rules for it. Disarming is sort of done by a few powers that disarm enemies, but objects can't be broken in combat.

[Shinizak]

So you can disarm enemies? what powers do it?

[Urpriest]

So you can disarm enemies? what powers do it?

I think they're mostly Fighter powers. There's some sort of version of ToB's Exorcism of Steel for instance. Disarming powers are fairly rare, though.

[Blackfang108]

What? why?

Because in 3.x, sundering was a fools game. you broke your loot, more often than not.

[kieza]

Any opponent falls into one or two categories:

1) Monster that doesn't use weapons or armor. You can't sunder its stuff, and if you specialized in sundering, you're dead weight.

2) Intelligent being using equipment. There are two cases here:
--It relies on its magical equipment. Congratulations, you can sunder it. You also just cost yourself cool loot, and the rest of the party will hate you if they wanted to take it.
--It doesn't need magical equipment. It can have backup weapons, since mundane equipment is cheap. You're dead weight again.

There's no situation in which sundering is a good option, except possibly when fighting something like a hydra, but people assume that since the option is there, they should try it. There aren't rules for it in 4e, because one of the dev team's goals when writing 4e was to remove "trap" options like that.

There are, however, a number of powers, many for martial characters, which are described as disarming an opponent, breaking equipment, or mangling a limb. There are even more which you can choose to describe as doing the same.

[DragonBaneDM]

I'm sure if you want to forgo doing damage or healing an ally on your turn to spend you standard action attempting to disable one of the many attacks a dragon has, your DM will be more than happy to homebrew something for you.

That said, if your character is good at his job, he could most certainly do something more useful on his turn.

[Shinizak]

I'm sure if you want to forgo doing damage or healing an ally on your turn to spend you standard action attempting to disable one of the many attacks a dragon has, your DM will be more than happy to homebrew something for you.

That said, if your character is good at his job, he could most certainly do something more useful on his turn.

He can't we're playing in one of WoTC's "official" games, so he has to go by the book. The DM is cool, but he still needs a job at the end of the day also.

[Christopher K.]

You could always request to make an athletics check and explain to your DM what you're trying to do.

[Urpriest]

2) Intelligent being using equipment. There are two cases here:
--It relies on its magical equipment. Congratulations, you can sunder it. You also just cost yourself cool loot, and the rest of the party will hate you if they wanted to take it.
--It doesn't need magical equipment. It can have backup weapons, since mundane equipment is cheap. You're dead weight again.



I'm not sure how true this is though. Poorly optimized melee (the majority of NPC foes in most games) rely heavily on magic items to hit and deal damage. Going by the treasure tables, even factoring in the triple treasure NPCs get, any NPC is going to have magic weapons far below the level the PCs have, so an NPC who isn't a boss won't be carrying actual upgrades or "cool loot", especially since the NPC's gear will likely be split among the various magic items suggested by the NPC tables. At best you're losing yourself the money you would get selling the thing, or the XP your artificer could get by eating it. Against ordinary mooks that will generally still be worth it.

It's still not really worth an action, since there are much better ways of disabling humanoid enemies. The loot-destroying isn't really much of a problem though.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Sundering doesn't really strike me as something that makes all that much sense. After all, it only happens a handful of times in most fantasy. It doesn't seem like something that should become a staple, unless you're specifically trying for a Vash-style "disarm, not kill" approach.

[TheOOB]

Why break the sword when you can break the person who holds it?

[Shinizak]

Why break the sword when you can break the person who holds it?

Because that person is a dragon.

[Kurald Galain]

Any opponent falls into one or two categories:
Except in 4E there's also the third category of an intelligent being using equipment that simply disappears at the end of combat because it's irrelevant. For example, if you're paragon tier, any city guards you're fighting can be assumed to have magical weapons. However, since your party already has better magical weapons, those aren't relevant.

That said, 4E has several equipment-destroying powers (most of them for either tieflings or warlocks), they tend to give a save-ends penalty to attack rolls.

[FelixG]

I like the idea of those disarm powers myself! be funny to watch a fighter dive at a dragon and yank its teeth out for his action.

[mobdrazhar]

I like the idea of those disarm powers myself! be funny to watch a fighter dive at a dragon and yank its teeth out for his action.

That's where you take a Brawler build fighter and watch him try to arm lock the dragon and wrestle it to the ground

[Mando Knight]

Why break the sword when you can break the person who holds it?

The problem is, breaking a sword is really hard, especially if it's a magic sword. Breaking a spear or axe or something with a wooden haft is easier, but still a bit difficult.

[Blackfang108]

The problem is, breaking a sword is really hard, especially if it's a magic sword. Breaking a spear or axe or something with a wooden haft is easier, but still a bit difficult.

Exactly. the person holding it is a LOT less durable. (to a point.)

[Hzurr]

They got rid of the sunder rules in 4E, because sundering was a pain in the neck in 3.x, and hurt the game more than it helped.

- If an enemy used sundering on you, you're basically ineffective for the rest of the fight, and get pissed at the DM.
- If you use sundering on enemies, the DM gets pissed, and starts using monsters without weapons, or gives NPCs ridiculous numbers of backup weapons.
- If both DMs and PCs use sundering, so much money and effort is spent on back-up weapons and anti-sundering techniques, that it just gets annoying and frustrating for everyone involved.


4E is also simple enough to improvise, that I'd say it'd be a simple deal to let a PC say "I want to try and break the monsters teeth" or whatever, let the PC do an attack vs. Fort (with a penalty), and if the attack succeeds, use the damage table in the DMG as appropriate, and give the monster a penalty to hit for the next couple of rounds. Done.

[Sipex]

There's a cleric power called Iron to Glass which reduces damage a monster does for the rest of the battle. It's fairly close to what you were looking for.