Getting out of "swallow whole"

[Mark]

Have you ever seen a character cut its way out of the belly of a "swallow whole" monster? Did it break your suspicion of disbelief to see someone emerge from a beast's abdomen and the beast not die from the wound?

I've always felt that type of scenario was a bit over the top. Too cartoonish for me. In the unlikely situation that someone cuts their way out, they should be doing enough damage to slay the creature.

 

[lukelightning]

This happened in the Star Wars game I run. A big "t-rex" type creature swallowed one of the PC's. He pulled out a vibrodagger and started cutting his way out, and between the damage from that and the rest of the group shooting this thing they killed it, then cut the creature open with a lightsaber.

The swallow whole rules do require a lot of suspension of disbelief; personally I rule it as "if you do x amount of damage to the monster's insides it vomits you out."

 

[frankthedm]

A swallowed creature is considered to be grappled, while the creature that did the swallowing is not. A swallowed creature can try to cut its way free with any light slashing or piercing weapon (the amount of cutting damage required to get free is noted in the creature description), or it can just try to escape the grapple. The Armor Class of the interior of a creature that swallows whole is normally 10 + 1/2 its natural armor bonus, with no modifiers for size or Dexterity. If the swallowed creature escapes the grapple, success puts it back in the attacker’s mouth, where it may be bitten or swallowed again.

So FIRST, to damage with the light weapon, you have to win a grapple check, THEN attack [at -4] the internal AC. I would not be surprided if the take it on from the inside attack plans foget to account for that.

The swallow whole rules do require a lot of suspension of disbelief; personally I rule it as "if you do x amount of damage to the monster's insides it vomits you out."

I like that one too, I'd add "as an swift action that sickens it for one round.

 

[Felon]

So FIRST, to damage with the light weapon, you have to win a grapple check, THEN attack [at -4] the internal AC. I would not be surprided if the take it on from the inside attack plans foget to account for that.

Didn't see anything in that quote that said you had to win a grapple check in order to attack wth a light weapon. If you have to draw the weapon, then that requires a grapple check (I already covered this in a previous post) but if it's already in your hand when you're swallowed, you can use it a -4 penalty.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I can't remeber who suggested it, but I have seen someone on these boards suggest changing 'swallow whole' to 'chew'. Keeping the same mechanics, but changing the flavour text. Works for me.

Hey, that's me!

 

[Plane Sailing]

Someone had a variant on here the swallow whole rule in which they changed it to more like chew so that hte person stays in the mouth of the beast and retains the believablity

Hey, that's me again!

 

[DrNilesCrane]

I've had a few character end up in the gullet of creatures when I've DM'd and it wasn't terrible or great: I don't mind the mechanics as is as in the few cases, the creature was dead by the time the swallowed character cut itself free. The idea of a T-Rex devouring the same character several times in an escape/devour/escape routine would be a little too much for me to enjoy.