In a game I'm running I had a choker grappling one of the PC's using of course it's 10' reach so the group's paladin says: "I want to hack it's arm off" my question is: How should I deal with that?? What happened was that the choker had like 4hp left and when he attacked it it just died.. but that's no the point.. Again what types of penalties/effects would be inccurred/occur in order to have someone dis-"arm" someone else.
Attacking Grappled creatures
- Thread starter rtricher
- Start date
Grazzt
Demon Lord
rtricher said:
Page 156 in the PHB 3.5 lists the penalties and what happens to a grappled character.
* You can attack your opponent with an unarmed strike, natural weapon, or light weapon. You take a -4 penalty on your attack. You can't attack with two weapons while grappling.
To have him chop the choker's arm off, you could treat it two ways:
1. Just let him make a normal attack roll (at -4 since he's grappled). Damage dealt either cuts the arm off or kills the choker (as it appparently did). This almost falls into the area of called shots, which generally don't work well in D&D (because of its abstract combat system).
2 OR- you can deal with it the way the rules for the Roper work.
"A strand has 10 hit points and can be attacked by making a successful sunder attempt. However, attacking a roper’s strand does not provoke an attack of opportunity. If the strand is currently attached to a target, the roper takes a –4 penalty on its opposed attack roll to resist the sunder attempt. Severing a strand deals no damage to a roper."
Just set the choker's arm at however many hp you feel is appropriate.
The second way probably works better, IMO. But, it just depends on how ya feel about it I guess.
MarauderX
Explorer
Grazzt said:2 OR- you can deal with it the way the rules for the Roper work.
"A strand has 10 hit points and can be attacked by making a successful sunder attempt. However, attacking a roper’s strand does not provoke an attack of opportunity. If the strand is currently attached to a target, the roper takes a –4 penalty on its opposed attack roll to resist the sunder attempt. Severing a strand deals no damage to a roper."
Just set the choker's arm at however many hp you feel is appropriate.
The second way probably works better, IMO. But, it just depends on how ya feel about it I guess.
That's exactly how I handle any 'surgical' attacks by the PCs/NPCs. Sometimes it's a bit different for humans, but all in all it works better. Sure getting your arm lopped off won't kill you instantly, but if you were down to 1 HP it's gonna take you out of the fight, too, so some realism is usually applied IMC.
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