Grapple: LIVING SHIELD [mearls]

[mearls]

Hey Mike!

How about garroting/strangling? Is that also something specific to the Bugbear Strangler, or can any assassin get the drop on someone and do the ol' Sam Fisher Squeeze?

I don't think the PH has rules for that, but I imagine it'll show up if/when we do assassin-style rogue maneuvers.

 

[Fifth Element]

Hey Mike!

I think it's very cool bitchin' that you take the time to post here. And I appreciate your comments addressing the game design decisions here.

 

[Rechan]

Couldn't it at least become a specific power a character could learn, as a talent or feat?

Ahem:

I imagine that when we do unarmed combat maneuvers, you'll find something similar.

 

[HeinorNY]

Ahem:

But I want it NOW!!!

 

[Nork]

Saying "DMs should handwave it" leads to what GURPS termed the 'flour in the face' problem -- if, in one combat, you let a PC get a big advantage by tossing a bag of flour in an enemy's face, they start carrying bags of flour instead of swords. Thus, the manuever needs to have risks/downsides or have a "works once, then everyone's heard of the trick and is wise to it" sort of thing built in.

But is that a problem with the game system or a problem with the players trying to put a round peg in a square hole?

If grabbing a handful of flower and throwing it into somebody's face is deemed appropriate by the DM for a fight taking place in a bakery, and is allowed, and then dis-allowed elsewhere as being situationally inappropriate... your playing a pen and paper RPG.

If you then start carrying around sacks of flour and throwing it into people's faces, your basically playing WoW. WoW is better at being WoW (following rigid rules perfectly that are wholly consistant every time) than D&D ever will. However, in WoW your not allowed to do anything 'cool' or have anything 'cool'. Almost no items have any meaningful effect other than adding more pluses, because abilites beyond the scope of bigger pluses can not be handled by a rigid rule system that lacks judgement on situational appropriateness.

One of the things that sets a pen and paper game apart from a video game like WoW is the ability to hand wave where appropriate.

I'm personally happy that 4e seems to be based around providing guidelines and a framework, and then allowing an appropriate level of hand waving to finish it out.

Having a monster that follows most 90% of the rules of the game, and then has an ability that is wholly outside of any mechanics or rules other than 'he can just do it because it feels appropriate for him to do so, there is no greater rules architecture that justifies it', provides a good baseline of consistency (he follows 90% of the rules), and a 'cool' factor where he breaks 10% of the rules. The DM serves to keep the 10% at an appropriate level.

If the rules are 100% spelled out, and followed 100% to the letter... I'd rather have a computer do it. Their better at it.

 

[Lizard]

The thing is, we CAN make this a rule as a maneuver or feat. We just didn't have room in the first book. It's a cool maneuver for a monster with a garrote, but we have to draw the line somewhere.

We could make rules for every maneuver that sounds cool, but then we'd have a 1,000 page PH and maybe 5 or 6 people patient enough to play the game.

The nice thing about supplements (aside from my paycheck ) is that they allow you to eventually reach that 1,000 page mass, but not all at once.

I can live with this.

Of course, I'm the guy who pre-ordered Traveller 5 precisely because it was promised to be 1000 pages long. (Seriously...farfuture.net ) I am also aware that I'm at the far end of the bell curve...

One of the things I'm actually looking forward to in 4e is weapon-specific manuevers and powers, because I really want a guy with a sword to fight differently than a guy with an axe. So if there's Cool Garrote Powers coming up eventually...so much the better.

EDIT: Just followed the link in your .sig. I'm Retro Pretentious, I think...

 

[Lizard]

Having a monster that follows most 90% of the rules of the game, and then has an ability that is wholly outside of any mechanics or rules other than 'he can just do it because it feels appropriate for him to do so, there is no greater rules architecture that justifies it', provides a good baseline of consistency (he follows 90% of the rules), and a 'cool' factor where he breaks 10% of the rules. The DM serves to keep the 10% at an appropriate level.

But what about when it's just as cool to have the PCs do it?

Here's an example of that kind of system done poorly, and I am part of the team that did it. I worked on the S&S Gamma World. I was assigned the monsters, mostly converting a lare subset of the original critters and adding a few originals. Since the PC mutation rules hadn't been written yet, I hand-converted all the old Gamma World mutations I needed and gave them to the appropriate monsters, in some cases trimming out a lot of hodge-podge powers to help give each creature more of a coherent focus (uhm, sounds familiar all of a sudden...)

The problem was, the PC mutation rules were very different -- and much, much, sparser -- than the original GW rules, due to those designers having a different 'vision' of GW than I had (I was going for as much of the original gonzo spirit as possible, tied to a richer backstory and more of a reason for most of the creatures which existed; they wanted to get much further away from classic GW, but that's another issue). The result was that the monsters had cool mutations which the PCs should have been able to have, but couldn't. I eventually got to extracting them all from the monster lists and writing them up for PC use, but the frustration at the design disconnects in the original PHB tainted the overall reception of the game, and I still get flamed on GW lists over it. So it goes.

Fact is, when a monster does something Really C^h Nifty, and there's no obvious reason why a PC can't do it, too, a player will ask, "How can I learn to do that?" "Wait for the appropriate supplement" isn't always the best answer, though, given how much has to fit into the 4e PHB, it might be the only viable one. Probably won't be too hard, once we see the way powers are designed and scaled, to figure out what level of feat/talent/power this trick is and offer PCs a chance to buy it. ("Well, first, you need to find a friendly bugbear to teach it to you...good luck with that.")

 

[Scribble]

The DM is NOT handwaving it. He's using the guidelines for DCs, defenses, modifiers, damage, and other factors by level that are in the DMG.

This sentence in particular makes my mouth water for the 4e DM's guide... Seriously... it gives me the tools needed to make a balanced maneuver??? Right in the DM's Guide???

THAT is 4WESOME.

 

[Goblyn]

It's a unique ability for that bugbear. It isn't part of the core grapple rules for a couple reasons. The big one is that it would be really annoying if the PCs (or a big monster) could do that in every fight.

It's tempting to make it a core rule, or put that rule into grapple, but here's why we didn't.

One of the aims of 4e was to make the rules that everyone needs to know as small as possible. The game becomes complicated very quickly, as you add in powers and rules to cover all the corner cases, so it's important to reign that stuff in. Otherwise, you end up with a bloated mess.

So, things like the human shield maneuver are there for specific monsters. I imagine that when we do unarmed combat maneuvers, you'll find something similar. I also believe that the rogue has some abilities to trick enemies into missing the rogue and hitting one of the monster's allies.

Smaller? I don't think so. Now that this ability exists, variations on this ability will likely rise, not to mention feats, skill tricks, talents ... whatever you want to call them. That is rules bloat. Anyone without this special bugbear ability can't use the 'meat shield' technique ... impossible unless you have the feat. Doesn't that sound a lot like 3.5e? Or more specifically, one of the things that the design team were trying to get away from in 3.5e?

How would this more easily be applied? Thus: A creature within a grapple targeted by an external attack can use an AoO(or immediate action, or swift action, or whatever they are being called nowadays) to attempt a grapple check vs DC 20(or opposed check vs grappled creature/character) to interpose the grapple-ee in the way.

I'm sorry if I sound condescending and really do not mean to be as I am not a game designer and am not as expert at the various DnD rules as I sometimes like to think, but this ability in particular strikes me as one of the things that the 4e team was trying to avoid ... but then, I guess I would need to know the full 4e ruleset to be able to judge its viability ... sunofa ... I gotta wait and see! Curses!

Edit: clarity

 

[rkanodia]

4WESOME

I think we've just found the winner in the contest to replace 'cool'