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Another thing never spelled out in the rules, however, I typically allow them to knock it away or take possession of the weapon however they wish.

I never really bought into the fact that you could never obtain the weapon. There's no bluff check in Rifts, but you really wouldn't even need to in order to disarm them. I guess if you wanted to give them a penalty to defend against being disarmed you could say the distraction could be treated as a.. well, there's no will save either, but you could do a ME save of some kind. If distracted the thug might be -2 to his disarm.

The standard D20 vs a set number works for me when I need to make rules on the fly as well...Maybe oh a set 15 with modifiers as to the level of 'thug' As the higher they person is on the 'henchman scale" the less likely they are to not have a death grip on their weapon. If you wanted to have some sort of scale, or just make the target 10-18 depending on circumstances.