Does performing Trip attempts every round ruin Suspension of Disbelief?

[Intense_Interest]

Then there's the larger point that a trip or takedown doesn't just succeed or fail; defense typically means a sprawl or a clinch, often with plenty of shifting.

However there is no spawl or clinch in D&D. Greco and Folk wrestling have little support for D&D combat, period, considering the "kindly" squares-and-reach battlefield.

Therefore if you abstract out the "sprawl and clinch" into results and counters told by the result of a D20 during a combat round, you have the same amount of action and mechanical support without having to push through the Power System as simulation.

 

[mmadsen]

Therefore if you abstract out the "sprawl and clinch" into results and counters told by the result of a D20 during a combat round, you have the same amount of action and mechanical support without having to push through the Power System as simulation.

I'm sorry; I don't understand what you're saying.

My thought is that a simulationist grappling system would have takedown attempts ("trips") result in things like clinches ("grabs") and movement ("shifting").

The player wouldn't choose exactly when his opponent moved exactly where, until he ran out of meta-game resources; he would go for a takedown, sometimes get it, sometimes instead just push his opponent around, and sometimes get himself thrown, etc.

The trick is in designing an elegant system to do that.

 

[Intense_Interest]

My thought is that a simulationist grappling system would have takedown attempts ("trips") result in things like clinches ("grabs") and movement ("shifting").

Gotcha. I was approaching the point from "Using D&D rules to approximate narrative combat without using metagame conceits".

But yeah, if you come from the point of breaking the game system in half and working up, I see how the Power System would be maybe the third to go (after Square-and-Figure combat and Classes).

Yet since I find Square-and-Figure combat to be the most elegant solution, I'll have to disagree that there is then also an elegant approximation of what occurs during a Greco-Roman match.

 

[Greg K]

After one roundhouse you can't do another, the opponent is too prepared for that.

Wrong. There is nothing from preventing one from trying to attempt another roundhouse. Is it guaranteed to work? Of course not, but there is always the chance that it might and fighters will employ feints and combos to set up certain attacks to increase the odds that it will. Or they may wait until they have an opponent dazed or stunned.


And if you are talking about roundhouse kicks, well there are fighters like Bill "Superfoot" Wallace, who was so good with his kicks that the roundhouse kick was his bread and butter technique along with left back hand punch. Opponents knew to look out for his roundhouse kicks. Yet, he could place his kicks with such speed and accuracy and utilized kicking feints and combinations to set it up his roundhouses that it really didn't matter that opponent's were on the lookout for the technique.

 

[Greg K]

I'm sorry; I don't understand what you're saying.

My thought is that a simulationist grappling system would have takedown attempts ("trips") result in things like clinches ("grabs") and movement ("shifting").

I would go for grabbing the person first and, if successful, do one of the following :
- attempt to use them as a shield so they take damage instead of you
- attempt to Immobilize/ pin them so they can't attack until they break the grab or escape it
- attempt to Shift them to an adjacent square
- attempt to Shove them backwards
- Squeeze them
- Thow/Slam them to the ground or into another object. Attacker decides whether to maintain grip or let go.
- takedown/sacrafice throw where both you and the opponent go down to the ground
- Redirect their weapon

 

[mmadsen]

Yet since I find Square-and-Figure combat to be the most elegant solution, I'll have to disagree that there is then also an elegant approximation of what occurs during a Greco-Roman match.

I guess I don't see why squares are such a problem. Grappling lends itself to some uses of squares, as I mentioned above. A grappling attack might have a number of possible outcomes:

- You take him down
- You shift him where you want, with the option to follow
- He shifts you where he wants, with the option to follow
- He takes you down
- etc.

 

[Intense_Interest]

I guess I don't see why squares are such a problem. Grappling lends itself to some uses of squares, as I mentioned above. A grappling attack might have a number of possible outcomes:

- You take him down
- You shift him where you want, with the option to follow
- He shifts you where he wants, with the option to follow
- He takes you down
- etc.

I also would wish to include top-bottom dynamics and clinch combat in which you both occupy "one square", along with the multitude of suggestions Greg K brought up.

I also think we've struck upon a fork of "Grapple in Combat".