Grapple and Monks

[Trainz]

Greetings,

Players Handbook P.152:

"Step 2: Grab. You make a melee touch attack to grab the target"

Does that mean that you do not take into account the target's armor, shield, and natural armor, as with a touch attack with a spell ?

And, when making grapple attacks (such as to inflict damage for example), can the monk use his flurry of blows attack sequence ?

 

[Camarath]

Greetings,

Players Handbook P.152:

"Step 2: Grab. You make a melee touch attack to grab the target"

Does that mean that you do not take into account the target's armor, shield, and natural armor, as with a touch attack with a spell ?

Yes it is a normal touch attack.

And, when making grapple attacks (such as to inflict damage for example), can the monk use his flurry of blows attack sequence ?

From SRD
Damage Your Opponent: While grappling, you can deal damage to your opponent equivalent to an unarmed strike. Make an opposed grapple check in place of an attack. If you win, you deal nonlethal damage as normal for your unarmed strike (1d3 points for Medium attackers or 1d2 points for Small attackers, plus Strength modifiers). If you want to deal lethal damage, you take a –4 penalty on your grapple check.
Exception: Monks deal more damage on an unarmed strike than other characters, and the damage is lethal. However, they can choose to deal their damage as nonlethal damage when grappling without taking the usual –4 penalty for changing lethal damage to nonlethal damage.

Using this option (Damage Your Opponent) you are not making attacks so you can't use flurry of blows. IMO You can use flurry of blow with the following option (Attack Your Opponent).

From SRD
Attack Your Opponent: You can make an attack with an unarmed strike, natural weapon, or light weapon against another character you are grappling. You take a –4 penalty on such attacks.
You can’t attack with two weapons while grappling, even if both are light weapons.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Re: Re: Grapple and Monks

Yes it is a normal touch attack.

From SRD
Damage Your Opponent: While grappling, you can deal damage to your opponent equivalent to an unarmed strike. Make an opposed grapple check in place of an attack. If you win, you deal nonlethal damage as normal for your unarmed strike (1d3 points for Medium attackers or 1d2 points for Small attackers, plus Strength modifiers). If you want to deal lethal damage, you take a –4 penalty on your grapple check.
Exception: Monks deal more damage on an unarmed strike than other characters, and the damage is lethal. However, they can choose to deal their damage as nonlethal damage when grappling without taking the usual –4 penalty for changing lethal damage to nonlethal damage.

Using this option (Damage Your Opponent) you are not making attacks so you can't use flurry of blows. IMO You can use flurry of blow with the following option (Attack Your Opponent).

A monk fighting unarmed gets to use his flurry of blows progression, which gives him a certain number of attacks with certain bonuses to each attack.

A grappler may use grapple checks in place of attacks to deal damage.

Therefore an unarmed grappling monk may replace each attack in a flurry of blows with a grapple check to cause damage.

 

[Camarath]

Re: Re: Re: Grapple and Monks

A monk fighting unarmed gets to use his flurry of blows progression, which gives him a certain number of attacks with certain bonuses to each attack.

A grappler may use grapple checks in place of attacks to deal damage.

Therefore an unarmed grappling monk may replace each attack in a flurry of blows with a grapple check to cause damage.

From SRD
If You’re Grappling
When you are grappling (regardless of who started the grapple), you can perform any of the following actions. Some of these actions take the place of an attack (rather than being a standard action or a move action). If your base attack bonus allows you multiple attacks, you can attempt one of these actions in place of each of your attacks, but at successively lower base attack bonuses.

My interpretation of this is that only additional attacks that are granted by your BAB (and only your BAB) can be used to perform these actions. This would exculed attacks granted by abilities.

The provision excluding the use of TWF in the "Attack Your Opponent" option would in my opinion seem to support the contention that additional attacks granted by abilities can not be used wile grappling. But since Flurry is not specifically excluded in the "Attack Your Opponent" option and since IMO monks should be better grapplers than standard characters I think it is fair to allow them to use Flurry wile using the "Attack Your Opponent" option.

One could agrue that the "Attack Your Opponent" option is limited by the "If your base attack bonus allows you multiple attacks, you can attempt one of these actions in place of each of your attacks, but at successively lower base attack bonuses." provision but I think that is a bit draconian.