Thursday, January 14, 2016

Melee Academy: Why I Don't See a Lot of Disarming

This is part of a multi-blog look at disarming.

For more on this specific topic, check out the links on Doug's page:

Melee Academy: Disarms in four systems

For more Melee Academy posts, please take a look at the Melee Academy page at Gaming Ballistic.


I don't see a lot of disarming attempts in my GURPS games. Armed attempts, rarely. Unarmed attempts, almost never.

For disarming to really be useful, you need a number of cases to all be true at the same time:

- your opponent's weapon is the most dangerous (or only dangerous) weapon they possess.

- your opponent's weapon must be more vulnerable than your opponent; that is, it must be easier to disarm the opponent than to just cripple, incapacitate, or kill the opponent.

- you must have some reason not to directly attack your opponent for damage.

- you must feel you can overcome the opponent's defenses against the weapon and overmatch his ST or DX based weapon skill with yours in a Quick Contest. Which means you're net/net more skilled than your opponent, or stronger, or both, by a margin that exceeds the better of his scores.

Break the sword?

Even if all of those are true, it's generally a little easier to attack the weapon to destroy it than to disarm with skill and grace or with brute force. You also need one of these cases to be true to make disarm worth more than attacking the weapon to destroy it:

- you either can't damage the weapon at all (it's invulnerable to your attacks, but is still possible to remove from the enemy)

OR

- you don't want to damage the weapon (it's valuable loot, you need to pick it up and use it, you hope to give it back to the foe if it's also someone you don't want to harm.)

(Low Tech Companion 2 (p. 22) stats out a lot of lower-tech weapon DR, HP, and HT. I wrote that, so thank me when you snap someone's nunchaku chain.)

Those are tough cases to satisfy in a game.

Generally, you are better off:

- Attacking the limb (base -2, which is easier than hitting most weapons) or hand (base -4, not much harder than striking the weapon.) You only need to inflict injury greater than HP/2 for a limb, HP/3 for an extremity.

- Crippling a supporting limb. If you can cut a leg or foot out from someone and cause them to fall (automatic, if you cripple it), they will be in a poor position to use a weapon.

- Knockdown and Stunning comes with the bonus that they drop their held weapons. Locations such as the Skull, Face, and Groin are good locations for causing such effects.

- Accumulating some damage on the target. Shock can apply up to a -4 to the defender's retaliatory attacks, and eventually any target will run out of HP. You can make an attack less viable via Shock penalties and get you closer to ending the risk of counterattack at all as the foe eventually drops.

Not only that, but most of the above also significantly reduces the chances of the opponent to successfully continue to fight. And they work against natural weapons, too, in most cases - you can't disarm a dragon's claw but you can potentially hack it off at the wrist/ankle.

The tactics above reflect my own real-world armed martial arts experience - Filipino Martial Arts makes a big deal of defanging the snake. You want to get rid of a knife? Slice the knife hand or arm. Get rid of a stick? Break the stick hand or arm. Want to avoid the issue at all? Follow your limb strike with a finishing blow. Unlike the movies, you can't just sweep aside someone's blade and stand together watching it fly away. The high-percentage moves are damaging strikes, and GURPS reflects that, and so does my experience. Want to keep the guy with the axe from chopping you? Incapacitate him. And if you can't do that, remove his limb. Can't do that, break his weapon. Can't do that? Then disarm is starting to look good. The easy way to disarm a foe is to pull his weapon from his cold, dead hands.

You can make this all easier in play, but it's hard to get buy in from players - they're generally the most enthusiastic users of weapons, and in a fantasy game they depend on them more than the monsters. No one wants it to be too easy to disarm.

In a cinematic game, of course, it should be easier. Take a look at genre switches like Unarmed Etiquette (Martial Arts, p. 132) and Gun Control Law (Martial Arts, p. 132), if you just want to privilege unarmed or let folks kick guns out of other people's hands.

In my last game session, a fighter facing a were-creature seemingly immune to his attacks used disarm against the were's axe. It worked on the third try - he failed twice, once after successfully triggering a Quick Contest of Skills (the werebear used ST-based weapon skill, which was considerable) and once because he either missed or the were defended (I forget.) The third time worked because he rolled a 3 on the initial attempt to make contact with the weapon, so I just ruled it worked automatically. Even then, that's only because if I treated his ST-based weapon skill Quick Contest roll as a 3 he had a serious chance vs. the were's ST-based skill. The were was rolling versus something in the high 20s vs. the PC's 20 (Axe/Mace @ DX+6, ST 16, -2 for a non-fencing weapon.) I might not have extended the same courtesy if the PC's net skill was too low, anymore than I'd allow a 3 from tiny foe to automatically disarm a PC.

He didn't attack the axe because they believe it is special in some way, and he wanted to hit the were with it (spoilers: he did, and if it's special it's not that kind of special - it was harmless, too.) Had his weapon been able to tell on the werebear, he'd have been hacking the body, slicing the neck, or trying to shatter its skull. Disarming? A low-percentage tactic that paid off with a low-percentage roll (A 3 on 3d6 is 1-in-216).

28 comments:

  1. You ended in the middle of a sentence here:

    "- Accumulating some damage on the target. Shock can apply up to a -4 to"


    Anyway, I am in brad agreement - disarming is common in entertainment because it serves the needs of entertainment. It is not generally an optimal combat move.

    However, there are a handful of historical weapons focused on disarming. I think most of them are about dealing with stroppy aristos, but I am curious if they have any role in DF.

    I recall that DnD 3.5 made a disarm-focused whip user a viable support character.

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    1. Those kind of weapons don't come up in my games. Characters generally fight monsters, who often lack weapons. If they have weapons, they also generally have solid skill and a lot of ST, so disarming is difficult.

      Disarming monsters might have a place, though, but disarming is too niche for PCs. Even a supporting Ally isn't really going to accomplish much as a disarming specialist even if you could make a good and effective one.

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    2. It occurs to me weighted chain weapons are usually versatile enough to grapple, trip and strangle as well as disarm. Maybe not a great fit for PCs in a DF game, but they are possibly interesting for monsters.

      Some of the PCs weapons and items (power items, staves) are worth stealing, sometimes yanking the squishy wizard out of the back line is highly advantageous (this is disarming the party of a weapon rather than the PC, but is analogous), and shutting up the bard (who's weapon is voice) is just very satisfying. Not optimal tactics in general, but the monsters don't need to optimize, they need to be interesting.

      A common variant in various DF-ish[1] traditions is some sort of spider or frog variant with a sticky short ranged tether of some sort. These can be used to disarm in addition to their traditional use. Some variants:
      1. The Rust Frog, obviously created by an mad wizard[2], who grabs your weapon with it's tongue and corrodes/eats it.
      2. Fairy Jackdaw Spiders, like shiny things and can turn invisible. They grab your stuff with a harpoon web, turn invisible, and fly away. Swarms of them can surround larger stuff or creatures and carry them off. Maybe they're fans of the bard.
      3. Madrax's Otherworldly Tether: A missile spell where you designate two targets. A gooey snot tendril flies out and whatever the ends hit are tethered together and pulled together with great strength, then hardens. Madrax[3] was fond of targeting someone's primary weapon and tethering it to their backup weapon.

      [1] Dfish is best served battered, with vinegar and as side of chips.
      [2] Mad wizards are another common accompaniment to Dfish.
      [3] Madrax was eventually killed, of course. Murder weapon was a glaive-guisarme.

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    3. I'll note that all of them veer from "attempt to disarm in a single move" to "grab and neutralize foes, foe's weapons, or foe's gear." I do see a lot of grappling in my games, and a lot of grappling in order to neutralize other weaponry. It's the main reason otherwise-equipped enemies grapple - it's very hard to fight back with a long weapon at Reach C while also suffering from 2-10 CP worth of grappling on you or your weapon.

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  2. Just to be clear, I agree with Peter as well as brad.

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    1. I think this pretty much nails the discussion

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    2. That Brad guy said a lot of good stuff. I hope everyone saw Brad's post. It simply cannot be summed up or expanded upon. I'd link to it, but even that would diminish it.

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  3. Yeah, there's no question that if the werebear was affected in the slightest way by Hjalmarr's weapon attacks, he never would have attempted the disarm (and even that tactic was not so great--didn't realize the were's skill was so high). Also, in the long run, it backfired...perhaps the were would have tried striking Angus instead of shield bashing him, and he'd still have a left hand! (Maybe not, though...the Targe of the Tiger is pretty awesome).

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    1. He'd still have done it, because of the shield and because of Angus's loadout.

      It's not that the were's raw skill was so stellar, just that ST-based skill is going to be high when he's pretty skilled and very strong. You wouldn't want to try and Beat against a strong foe, for that same reason.

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  4. Disarm

    Good for when you can't or don't want to harm the opponent at all.

    You really want the weapon to be free perhaps because there's some consequence to losing it or someone else (like you) wants to pick it up

    Showing off


    Anything else?

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  5. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  6. TheOneRonin here.

    I posted this on Doug's blog too, but I figured yours would be good for this discussion as well.

    I really like the feedback and analysis present in this melee academy article, and generally agree with all of the thoughts presented here, with a few small exceptions.

    Granted, scenarios where disarms would be the go-to tactic are going to be rare and genre dependant. But what I see as the biggest discourager from disarms is the mechanics that surrounds disarms and related combat rules.

    The scenarios where disarms should be the go-to technique are actually pretty easy to come across if you are playing a modern setting game. If an unarmed PC is facing one or more armed opponents and cannot simply run away for whatever reason, disarms SHOULD be the order of the day. Here are some reasons why they are not:

    -It is easier mechanically easier to stun/cripple/debilitate your opponent with punches/kicks/etc. than to pull off an attempted disarm. GURPS is guilty here, as are a handful of other games I’ve played. PCs are efficient, if nothing else, and in combat, they will tend to use the most efficient means to come out victorious. If it is easier/faster/more efficient to knock your opponent out with a punch to the face or break his wrist with joint lock than to try and disarm his weapon, PCs will almost always chose the former over the latter.

    -A disarmed opponent is not significantly less of a threat than an armed opponent. Again, this often shows up in GURPS, but more so when you are dealing with weaker opponents armed with small weapons (DX 10 gang-banger with a knife) than with tougher opponents (ST14, DX12 Knight with two-handed sword). A disarm that results in minimal threat reduction is just a wasted action.

    -Weapons are not significant DEFENSIVE threats. Of all of the games I have played, GURPS makes the best effort to translate “punching at a guy holding a machete is BAD” into actual mechanics, but it still falls relatively flat. Not only does the armed person HAVE to succeed on a Parry to have a chance to do damage to an attacker, but then you still have to roll against your skill with a penalty. If that roll is successful, then the armed person can damage the attacker. Given that in GURPS defenses will most likely be lower than offensive skills, and given that often times, the PCs will be more skilled (sometimes significantly so) than their opponents, the chances of suffering damage when punch a guy with a knife are VERY low…almost negligible. IRL, throwing a punch at a guy with a knife is a good way to get cut/stabbed.

    So even in real life scenarios where experts agree that getting control of and/or removing the weapon from an attacker should be the primary focus, most games have mechanics that encourage the players to do exactly the opposite, and rewards them for it.

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    1. "So even in real life scenarios where experts agree that getting control of and/or removing the weapon from an attacker should be the primary focus, most games have mechanics that encourage the players to do exactly the opposite, and rewards them for it."

      Generally, though, experts aren't recommending this because it's the better move from a success/effectiveness standpoint. It's the better move from a legal and long-term effects standpoint.

      If you check with military guides, where lethal force is allowed, disarms as a last resort if you don't want a weapon. If you do, your immediate resort is generally lethal force. Police use lethal force and a threat of lethal force to disarm (something Chris put into mechanics.)

      The thing about disarms is that they are a subset of the possible solutions to the problem. That legal ramifications (legally you might not have lethal/injurious options) or social ramifications might restrict you to attempting to disarm doesn't make it a better, more effective move. Disarming is simply the best of all the other options. Experts I know generally encourage you to flee, call for help, etc. before you resort to attempting to disarm.

      Perhaps the mechanics could be different, but it's still not a high percentage move realistically. It's a resort when the better options just aren't available or are limited for some reason.

      And yes, punching a guy with a knife is a good way to get stabbed. That's less true in games because PCs tend to overmatch their opponents - skill levels are probably close in real life, and even a small chance of getting stabbed or sliced might discourage you from even trying. In game and in real life, you don't go for a disarm there, though - you might want to grapple and neutralize the ability of the knife arm and then go for something like an unarmed disarm or - if lethal force is okay - direct, damaging attack. I did a whole post about that: Melee Academy: Unarmed vs. Knife. Damaging attack is the way to go when unarmed vs. armed, or poorly armed vs. well armed - it is actually easier, realistically. Try taking a weapon away from someone without hurting them vs. taking a weapon away from someone without caring about any consequences to them long term. The first is going to be easier, realistically.

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    2. "disarms are a last resort if you don't have a weapon" not "don't want a weapon."

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    3. Okay, based on your reply, Peter, I think we may be talking about different but related things. Let me try to clear up my stance here.

      1. Regardless of the ROE, if I’m facing someone who is attempting to use lethal force (i.e. a knife or whatever) against me, I will use lethal force in return. I am perfectly willing to jam my car keys into someone’s neck or bash their skull in with my laptop if I and/or my loved ones are in danger. The martial arts training that I have done since the 90s (Modern Arnis, Balintawak, Pekiti-Tersia Kali, and Inosanto Blend JDK) all reinforce that response, so it’s not an issue of just “disarm” that nutjob who is waving a knife in your face because you don’t want to go to jail. Where I live, if you can articulate your reasoning, lethal force is a legal resort to a lethal threat.

      2. Yes, fleeing/escaping is the best and first resort when unarmed and facing an armed attacker. I said as much in my previous post, and did not mean to insinuate that trying to be Jason Bourne is a better/more tactical solution. However, the scenario I’m posing is already a bad one (unarmed vs. armed, escape is not viable for whatever), but precludes fleeing.

      3. So when in that type of situation, the top priority is to not get cut/stabbed. Gaining control of the weapon is way up on the priority list. Removing the ability of the attacker to employ the weapon against you is pretty much the best way to “not get cut/stabbed”. I never said dispose of the weapon or throw it away. Most of our disarming techniques involve gaining possession/control of the weapon, and using it on the attacker if that is the best option available. But trying to box or wrestle with a guy who has a knife and is intent on pretending it is a can-opener and you are a tin of baked beans is pretty much going to result in either a trip to the ER or a trip to the morgue.

      4. TL;DR In a nutshell when you are faced with one of those bad situations where you are unarmed and facing an armed attacker and CANNOT flee, attempting to gain control of the weapon and/or remove it from your attacker’s passion is, while far from easy, is the best way to keep your flesh intact and internal organs whole.

      "Perhaps the mechanics could be different, but it's still not a high percentage move realistically. It's a resort when the better options just aren't available or are limited for some reason."

      This I agree with 100%. Even if you are trained to do, disarming is difficult to pull off and will never be a high percentage move. I’d much rather smash your hand with my Asp or put two 230grain federal hydroshocks in your torso with my FN-45.


      "And yes, punching a guy with a knife is a good way to get stabbed. That's less true in games because PCs tend to overmatch their opponents - skill levels are probably close in real life, and even a small chance of getting stabbed or sliced might discourage you from even trying."

      But even when a PC overmatches an opponent, I still think doing a simple attack when your foe is armed with a bladed weapon is VERY risky. Not only does this fail the reality litmus test, it fails the cinematic one too. The rules shouldn’t support that, but that is just my opinion.

      "In game and in real life, you don't go for a disarm there, though - you might want to grapple and neutralize the ability of the knife arm and then go for something like an unarmed disarm or…"

      I’m kind of confused here. We are already talking about being unarmed and facing an armed attacker. An “unarmed disarm” is exactly what I’ve been talking about. In fact, the limb grapple followed by a disarm is really what I’ve been talking about this whole time.

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    4. We are definitely talking about different things. I'm talking about non-grapple disarms in the post above. You're including unarmed vs. armed, based on grappling. I don't even touch on that in the post except to mention that I never see it.

      I do occasionally see Judo Parry->Arm Lock, but it doesn't end with wrestling for the weapon and disarming, but lethal force, because those are the kind of games I play.

      I'm not sure what cinematic test punching a knife-wielder fails, though. What kind of movies are we talking about here? There is a genre rule I mentioned in the post that keeps armed guys from parrying unarmed strikes (models kung fu movies well, and Kill Bill 1's big fight scene too). There is one where gun-armed folks don't hold onto guns, and that's easily extended to "any lethal weapon." Realistically, well, GURPS might err on the heroic side, but my players have the rules for "free damage when you parry unarmed guys!" memorized for a reason - attacking armed folks with unarmed attacks is dangerous. I linked to a post talking about that.

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    5. Actually, I'll go a question further - what in-play problem are you seeing? Characters totally disregarding knife-armed foes, or choosing non-disarming options when confronted by guns and legal issues with using lethal force, or something of that sort?

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    6. “We are definitely talking about different things. I'm talking about non-grapple disarms in the post above. You're including unarmed vs. armed, based on grappling. I don't even touch on that in the post except to mention that I never see it.”

      Thanks for the clarification. It looks like there is some term confusion on my part. Years of FMA has hard coded a specific definition of “disarm” into my brain, and so I think of all “disarms” as “leveraged based techniques that almost always involve both hands (whether or not you are armed) and result in removing the weapon from your foe’s control, and occasionally result in you obtaining control of their weapon.”

      A real life “disarm” that doesn’t involve some kind of grapple (or even an armed grapple) is far outside of my experience, or even my ability to visualize.


      “Realistically, well, GURPS might err on the heroic side, but my players have the rules for "free damage when you parry unarmed guys!" memorized for a reason - attacking armed folks with unarmed attacks is dangerous. I linked to a post talking about that.”

      To be fair, it’s not quite free damage, though if it was, it would probably go a long way towards discouraging unarmed attacks vs. armed opponents. Even if your foe succeeds on the parry, he still needs to make a roll, at a penalty, to hit you. Mooks in the skill 10 – 12 range are going to miss that roll, a lot. Thus you have what I stated earlier…it’s just not that big of a threat because it’s only really going to happen like 15% of the time.

      “Actually, I'll go a question further - what in-play problem are you seeing? Characters totally disregarding knife-armed foes, or choosing non-disarming options when confronted by guns and legal issues with using lethal force, or something of that sort?”

      It is an issue when unarmed characters face foes who are armed with “street” melee weapons…mostly knives, and the occasional machete. Of course, I’m usually dealing with fairly to highly skilled PCs, but most of the actions I see are “I punch his face/neck”, “I kick the arm holding the weapon”, or some other move that would be suicide if your opponent really does have a knife. I recently had one player running a Krav Maga expert, and his go-to was AoA: Double, Torso Grapple + Knee to Groin. We play with Doug’s Tech Grappling rules, so this attack combo was super effective. He took no real penalties to either the Grab or the Knee (Knee Strike maxed, no penalty if aimed at the groin of a foe you’ve grappled), so he could stack up DA to really make sure both attacks hit. Then he could add CP from the grapple to the damage of the Knee Strike, so the foe was pretty much guaranteed to be at -8 from Shock, and probably suffering a major wound, so wouldn’t really be a meaningful threat next turn even if he was still standing.

      In all honesty, I don’t have a problem with the general effectiveness of this technique. It made him vulnerable to attacks from others, and it was really a return on the points he invested in high Wrestling, high Karate, a good ST, and a good DX.

      My problem is there really is no way that you do that in real life and don’t get cut/stabbed in the process. Hell, I’d be totally okay with “Grapple the weapon arm and kick the groin” as a viable tactic, but this guy’s approach to dealing with armed foes was very hard to swallow.

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    7. I'd say that, really this: "Mooks in the skill 10 – 12 range are going to miss that roll, a lot." is the root of the "it's safe to punch guys who have weapons" problem. It's not actually safe, without Feint or Deceptive Attack, but if you are dealing with significantly higher skills than the mooks, then their knives are at best for show. You can say that in real life they'd stab you, but in real life you generally don't massively overmatch your opponents. If you do in game, well, a heroic edge in skill levels will lead to heroic results.

      You can give the mooks better skills, have them choose better options (All-Out Defense is great when people strike and your weapon gets a free chance to hurt them), and otherwise stack the deck towards the foes. But if you give them low-ish skills and face skilled attackers, well, I'd expect the skilled attackers to feel pretty safe ignoring the knife!

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    8. Good point, but how do you define “Massively Overmatch”? Obviously, if you are talking a skill 24 PC vs. skill 12 mooks, then you have Jason Bourne vs. the Swiss cops in the park. But what if you are talking Skill 15 or 16 PCs vs. skill 12 mooks? Is that a case of massively overmatching your opponent? Maybe it is, but in the games where this is an issue generally take place in fairly modern settings with skills that can get high, but stay in the realm of believable. The Krav guy above had a 15 in Karate and a 16 in Wrestling, plus some improved techniques. A badass? Maybe. But someone who massively overmatches switch-blade-armed gang-bangers…I’m not so sure I agree with that assessment.

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  7. This pretty much echoes what I was saying in the SJGames forum. It tends to be easier to bust the object carrying the weapon than remove or bust the weapon.

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    1. That's been my experience. I don't think it's a bad thing, either. A "reality" where it's easier to shoot guns out of people's hands or fling their swords aside with a flick of the wrist should, IMO, get genre switches that do that. Otherwise, weapons aren't the weak point in the wielder-weapon combination.

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  8. Wrestling for a gun does seem to be a major part of fiction.

    I suppose that in GURPS the grapple to stop them firing is a good idea, but trying to gain control of it is a waste of time?

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    1. I'm not sure - it's never come up in my games. Relatively few gun-centered games, really.

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  9. Opponents that require disarming might be a decent niche enemy for DF (where tendency towards efficiency ie damage is the norm)

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    1. It's true. It's another kind of Trick Monster, usually of the Unkillable Monster kind. If you must disarm them before you can defeat them, it can be a real trick for players who never choose anything but direct attack. The old "it can only be slain with the weapon it wields" thing. I specifically included one like that in DFM1.

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  10. Really is disarm week

    https://shootingdiceblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/16/martial-arts-sherlock/#more-303

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    1. It is specifically Disarm Week - that was the Melee Academy topic!

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