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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3757443" data-attributes="member: 4937">Equally important, it is the DMs job to be sufficiently familiar with the rules that the game is not slowed down or altered by his lack of knowledge of them. The DM sometimes wears the hat of a referee, and as the referee he is respocible for having a working knowledge of the rules regardless of how arcane they are, how rarely they come up, or how confusing they may be.Since, no one else will defend the grappling rules, I will.  The existing grappling rules are largely intuitive.  They model the sort of things that you would naturally want to do when you choose to grapple.  In total, with all of thier complexity, they run about 1500 words (3-5 pages).  Most of those words cover special cases.  The general, sequence of grab, hang on, and twist is pretty straight forward.  In my experience, the main thing that confuses players about the normal process of grappling is the fact that during the grapple, grapple checks are used for two things - attacking and initiating/breaking the grapple.  They get confused about the consequences of the two, and for example don't understand that a failed grappling check to do damage (basically a replacement for your attack roll) doesn't break the grapple.I've never seen anyone who complains about the grappling rules suggest something simplier that doesn't involve lose of detail.  The rules can be simplified by drop pinning, but then you can't pin something.  The rules can be simplified by dropping the touch attack, but then its easy for big things to grab small fast dodgy nimble things.  The rules can be simplified by removing the penalties for grappling, but then the already powerful attack just gets stronger.  And so forth.</blockquote>

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