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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jaer" data-source="post: 4038789" data-attributes="member: 57861">Not that I am a typical "PCs shouldn't do things real people can't do" person, but who really learns how to deftly swing someone around in front of them quick enough and percisely enough so that the person they are holding takes a hit instead of them?Really, attacking into a grapple should endanger both parties, and anyone can easily use their opponent as a shield...that is typical and normal and can be represented by a simple application of "this person has extra AC against your attack, and you might hit your opponent."  This is not anything special.  Using someone as cover as a deterent for people to attack you is fairly normal (i.e., they typical hostage situation).But the Strangler in this case isn't using the "meat shield" as a deterent from being attacked. He is using the Meat Shield to take the hit for him, which is a very percise maneuver.  The training it would take to see a sword swing coming, and twist around to put your opponent there to meet the attack right at the end of it so the attacker can't turn aside the swing is considerable....that would take a lot of time and practice and experience in handling a grapple, not just to get the timing right, but to have the strength to do it.  This is something most people who are training to skewer people with swords or blast enemies with spells are not practicing.  (Also not something someone encased in plate armor should be able to do at all, but the last thing I want to see is armor penalties to grapple checks, so never mind!)Anyone who can learn this trick in a few weeks is someone who is already a proficient physical combatant, someone who is well-trained in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat (which could include fighters and rogues and other melee characters).  But at the very least, this should be a feat, not just an in-grapple move like pinning.  But if grappling is not normally something worthwhile for a fighter or rogue to do because few to none of their class abilities are tied to grapple-based fighting, why would they bother adding this feat to the PH1?  If no class (or tiered path for that matter) is currently designed to be a grapple fighter, very few people would bother taking grapple-based feats and it would be deemed a waste of space by most people.As for the actual strangulation...that just takes a garrot wire to handle easily, and honestly, I would love to see PCs have a way of stealthily silencing guards (when it takes a few rounds of combat to kill anything past 1st level, how does one prevent the guards calling out a warning without a silence spell?), so a rogue with a garrot wire sneaking up and strangling a guard works for me and is something I would like to see, even if I need to modify rules for it to be feasible for PCs to be able to do.</blockquote>

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