I had my player ask for an interesting action in last night's session and I had trouble adjucating it on the fly:
He wanted to attempt a Disarm on the Big Bad and, if successful, try to get the weapon away from him to capitalize on the first maneuver. He would be using a weapon to Disarm, so no auto-pickup.
I first looked at it "by the rules":
- Disarm success = weapon dropped in enemy's square
- Picking up at object is a Move action but you need to be in the square where the item is
- You cannot end your movement in the same square as an opponent
Based on this, it seemed impossible, which would be silly. So I thought to bring things back to more generic mechanics of combat, namely Combat Maneuvers. While he didn't want to push/move the enemy, he wanted to do something normally forbidden and that, it seemed, the opponent should have a say in, even if it was not his turn. Maneuvers seemed fitting, so I suggested to do just that, with the usual maneuver trappings (AOO, applying bonus/penalties of a regular melee attack, etc…)
How would you adjudicate picking up an item in the opponent's square during combat? Are maneuvers a good fallback rule or would they lead to unforeseen consequences? Any better ways to deal with this?
Best Answer
On the d20SRD, next to the "pick up an item," there is a FAQ linked that covers this. You can pick something up within your reach (which seems to qualify in this case) and it provokes an AoO. Notice that reaching into a threatened square doesn't provoke, just reaching while someone threatens you. So you don't have to be in their square, just be able to reach into it.
For purposes of evading the AoO, that's a different story. There's no way RAW ("Improved Pickup!") but it is certainly reasonable to allow an Acrobatics "move through opponent's square" check to do so. Of course you could always bull rush or otherwise move the opponent so they don't threaten you and then pick it up, or mage hand it, or a variety of other options - allowing innovation here is fine (attack it to move it, Sleight of Hand, etc.). Just make sure that enemies can also disarm and snarf the PCs' weapons as easily as they can...