“Any successful Maneuver when fighting with a knife, against a spear,thrown or missile weapon counts as the disarm effect.”
I’ve read this a couple of times and I’m confused. When your PC is fighting with a knife and performs a successful Maneuver against an opponent with a spear, thrown, or missile weapon, you get an automatic disarm, even if you don’t meet the 3 margin of successes requirement? Is this right?
That seems odd to me, how can someone fighting with a knife disarm someone with a spear, thrown, or missile weapon? And what counts as a “thrown weapon”? Does that include a staff, since it can be thrown?
A knife to the hand or wrist disarms pretty quickly.
In SCA Fencing, it’s in fact the #1 thing I saw cause a hold… a weapon dropped due to a hand, wrist, or lower forearm hit. (dropped weapon is a mandatory hold unless it’s lanyarded to the wielder.)
Having taken a few hits to the wrist, it is hard to hold a weapon when you take that hit. (It’s also why I have a leather plate in the hilt of my Hanwei…)
Keep in mind: that is with rebated weapons… steel across/through the hand can cause failure far easier!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the outcome is based off Maneuver, not Defend, which led to my reading of it as getting inside. Turing aside arrows with a knife stretches my sense of verisimilitude.
Says who? Regardless, I think this kind of tactic is outside the Mouse Guard mechanics.
Accuracy isn’t too fine a point. You were spot on re: Maneuver (not Defend). I wasn’t thinkin’ about it, obviously. I agree with your interpretation: get in there and make longer and ranged weapons ineffective.
No, it’s good to know because we had a discussion about whether our Guardmice should go down into the criminal/docks area of Port Sumac with staves or knives. Two of us chose staves and one chose a knife. Knives are pretty sweet, I’d say. (The assassins who tried to kill our characters as a result of a failed Ob 8 Circles test (we wuz askin’ too many questions…) had knives so now we have those, too.)
My main problem was that I wasn’t sure how to describe the disarm from the knife against a spear or ranged weapon, but getting in under their guard or striking someone at the wrist is a nice narrative.
You were spot on re: Maneuver (not Defend). I wasn’t thinkin’ about it, obviously. I agree with your interpretation: get in there and make longer and ranged weapons ineffective.