Scion said:
So the psion has up a bunch of powers and is going to be blasted by his own energy ball? How is this a valid comparison again?
Well, the psion needn't worry too much about the energy ball if he's got his energy resistance power up. (And most mid-high level psions will usually have it up). However, that wasn't what I meant and everyone else seems to have understood that. Heavy artillery characters do not operate in a vacuum any more than fighters or clerics do--generally, they are a part of a party.
To expand the example and clarify what I meant for you: if the psion is grappled by a monk summoned giant crocodile on the other side of the battle, he can still drop an energy ball on the group of hobgoblins attempting to flank the party, Brain Lock the barbarian, or do anything else he would ordinarily do to defeat his foes despite being grappled.
The wizard can have an appropriate rod in hand ahead of time and not worry much about it.
May I nominate this for "most ludicrous contention of the thread?" Unless you count the metamagic rod as a club, the wizard can now be grappled without the feat since he is unarmed (the other hand has to be free to cast spells). In general, a wizard with access to a metamagic rod will have one that is more generally useful (like empower) in hand. Even so, metamagic rods only work up to a certain spell level and higher level rods are prohibitively expensive.
And finally, there IS no metamagic rod of still spell in the DMG.
Maybe he will have up a contingency that works whenever he is in certain situations, or says a certain word. Perhaps he has an item that will help with this situation (ring of freedom of movement, cape of the mountebak, or any of a hundred others).
Contingency is a good option but since wizards are limited to one contingency at a time, there's no guarantee that it will be an anti-grapple contingency. In my experience, a lot of Sor/Wiz characters DO have an anti-grapple contingency but that's a rather significant expended resource and rather cuts against your denigration of grapple as a marginal combat option. It is the single most devastating combat option against traditional spellcasters and those who are successful spend quite a few resources in order to resist it.
As for the other options you mention, only the ring of freedom of movement actually changes the equation of grapple for traditional caster=1+ rounds of non-contribution but grapple for a psion=0 rounds of non-contribution. The cape of the montebank is just dimension door. That's still a round of non-contribution. And, except at the very highest levels, that ring is a rather expensive item.
Both will be grappled, both will have to make the concentration check. The psion will be able to manifest his powers without having to worry about a somatic component, the wizard should have something preped ahead of time for just this sort of situation.
The wizard (or sorceror) may have something prepped but, in the vast majority of cases, it takes him out of the action for that one round. The psion stays in the action full time even when grappled. When APL+2 and APL +3 encounters often take only 2-3 rounds before being decided one way or the other, that round of inaction will make a very big difference to the outcome of the combat.
I really dont see a huge bonus here. One still has to worry but with enough ranks in concentration he'll be able to be almost as effective before. Strangely the wizard is in almost the same boat. Enough ranks in concentration and some minor planning ahead of time.
Minor and easy planning, maybe. The resources used by that planning, however, are not minor until high levels.
Easy enough. Once again, it is just like a fighter type who completely ignores a mode of combat.
Sure. And enabling a fighter type to completely ignore one mode of combat would be a VERY big advantage. I see a lot of archers taking two levels of Order of the Bow Initiate for close combat shot and that doesn't enable archers to ignore melee combat (they're still very vulnerable to trip and sunder manuevers) nearly as well as the lack of somatic and material components enables psions to ignore grapple.
Anyway, lets look at how grapple works.
1st: Aoo provoked. If this deals any damage at all then the grapple attempt fails. This can be gotten around by spending a feat.
It can also be evaded by having a high armor class. Neither psions nor sorcerors nor wizards are known for having a high attack bonus. Or by having DR. Mid-high level barbarians are unlikely to take any damage from a wizard's dagger. Characters in adamantine heavy armor will ignore the dagger more than half the time.
2nd: Melee touch attack. There are many spells and protective items to make this sort of thing more difficult. Fighter types will generally be able to make this pretty easily, but it is still an important step (worried about grapples? be displaced, blinking, blured, mirror imaged, phased, whatever.. have a high touch attack AC through whatever means, generally a good idea for a caster type anyway, these are general defenses to help out their poor hp, so none of this is out of order)
An important step to be sure but all of the options you mention (other than blink which I generally consider to make one practically immune to grapples) are equally effective against ordinary attacks and many of them are effective against magical attacks too.
3rd: Hold. Opposed grapple checks as a free action. It is even possible for the caster to win at this (athough highly unlikely). Or with a few spells/items they can be incredibly resistant, or even immune (if you are 2 or more size categories above the grappler then you automatically succeed vs them).
Now you're blowing smoke. The ring of free action is already mentioned (though it's worth pointing out that Freedom of Movement is available to psions as a power but not to wizards as a spell). As for the spells/items, the +5 bonus from Enlarge Person is not sufficient to bring a wizard's grapple check up to par, except at the lowest levels. And most wizards don't walk around enlarged anyway--except for grapples, they gain very few advantages from it and feel the disadvantages somewhat more keenly than some other characters. Absent polymorph (with which a caster will generally not assume a form that has a huge grapple advantage (huge size, high strength, etc) unless he is planning on engaging in combat in that form), and various potential countergrapple spells (gaseous form, blink, dimension door, teleport, ghost form, etc--all of which would primarily be useful in this context, only after the grapple has begun), there's not much that will let the wizard evade grapples. And even those don't make the grapple a failure--they simply make it a temporary disadvantage rather than a combat-ender (for the sor/wiz).
4th: maintain. This requires more grapple checks later on, but initially you have to move into your opponents space. In other words, if the caster is mounted then likely you cannot enter a grapple with them. If they are flying and the grappler is not then it is probably a dm call. If they are some sort of form that the grappler cannot get all the way up against (in the same square) then the grapple fails.
First things first. That's only for ordinary grapples. Improved grab pulls the victim into the creature's space. And Improved Grab is what characters face at least as often as ordinary grapples.
Second, I've yet to meet a DM who would buy either the "I'm mounted, you can't enter my space" or the "I'm flying, you can't grapple me" argument. I know I certainly wouldn't buy either. The mounted grapple would probably be treated as either pulling the rider off his steed (possilby requiring another check) or grabbing onto the steed and both combatants in the grapple being mounted (similar to Aragorn and Sharku's battle while riding or hanging onto the Worg from in the Two Towers film). The flying grapple would probably be treated either as the grappler grabbing onto the flyer (and possibly being pulled off the ground) or the flyer being pulled to the ground.
Now, at this point it can still be foiled by a simple ring of freedom of movement or a few other items/spells.
I believe this is the third time you've mentioned that fact. However, there's nothing "simple" about a ring of freedom of movement. For nearly half of the a character's career, that costs more money than the character is likely to have in total. Moreover, not every PC or NPC will have such a ring. They tend to be rare due to their cost.
Then, we get down to actually doing the grappling (assuming everything went well for the grappler). This is likely a much slower way to kill the opponent,
Absent constrict or rake, that's true. With either of those abilities, it's either just as fast as not being grappled (rake) or even faster (constrict).
although it does potentially take one member out of combat (they are still able to do things however, even then). It also takes the grappler out as well.
And taking one enemy out of combat in return for being "out of combat" yourself is very often a good trade. If the enemy outnumbers the PCs, it's nearly always a good trade. If the enemy does not outnumber the PCs, it is still often a good trade as long as it disadvantages the PCs more than it disadvantages said enemy. A shambling mound or assassin vine, for instance, is almost always better off grappling a foe than not doing so. A monk or warrior who is outnumbered may well need to think before grappling the wizard but, absent rogues or given fortification armor, it is usually a good idea.
So, even once all of this has occured, all it does vs the mage is make him unable to use some spells. Say that this particular mage is dumb and has no plan for this sort of thing (as is evident from failing everything above as well and he rolls poorly).
You seem to have the strange idea that mages always begin combat with all their defenses up (and never get dispelled--one of the first things to happen to any obviously buffed NPC spellcaster in the games I play in and something that isn't uncommon against buffed PC spellcasters either). Since you didn't mention a single sor/wiz defense with a duration higher than 1 min/level (FOM is 10 min/level but isn't on the Sor/Wiz list) and several of them (displacement, blink, etc) are 1 round/level, that's not very realistic. And, considering that the touch attack is the only situation where a wizard is likely to foil the grapple, the fact that only a fully prepared wizard with min/level spells is going to foil that does not justify calling the wizard dumb. For a wizard, preparation consists of a way to get out
after being grappled (thus forfeiting one round) not a way to avoid being grappled in the first place.
Effectively he will take some damage, but the rest of his party gets to do bad things to the grappler, so this means that less spells are used by the wizard potentially, less damage is caused to him overall, and in the end it was actually a worse option than just beating him up with the sword a good portion of the time (not always).
This is why I dont see it as being a very big bonus. It isnt a great strategy most of the time to begin with, there are a dozen easy ways to become resistant/immune (and several more difficult to do the same), and, in the end, all it does is save some of the casters spells so that he can actually do more in later battles that day.
Woo.
Three things.
First, you are obviously only looking at this from a PC's perspective. If you look at it from an NPC's perspective, it looks very different. Against a group of NPCs, it is very often the first thought of PCs to grapple the spellcasters and thus take them out of the fight. The NPC gets to inflict harm on the party for two rounds rather than being grappled while flatfooted and never being able to do anything is a HUGE difference that merits more than a "woo." (And, even if, at low levels, the NPC only makes half the concentration checks, that's still much better).
Second, you're falling prey to the tendency to exaggerate. There are
not a dozen ways to be immune to grapples. You mention three:
Ring of Freedom of Movement
Being two sizes bigger than the foe (practical only through polymorph/metamorph and shapechange).
Contingent forms of the above
To this, I added a few more:
Blink
Gaseous Form
Ghost Form
Improved Blink
However, that's still only six ways, only a few of which are actually practical when non-contingent (freedom of movement, Improved Blink, Shapechange, and Ghost Form).
Third, the party does not always get to do "bad things" to the grappler. Against a party with a lot of archers or spellcasters, it's actually safer to be in a grapple (where there's a 50% chance that any non Improved Precise ranged attack will hit your victim and a 100% chance that any area effect attack will damage your victim too). A lot of foes will only have a dex bonus of one or two so grappling doesn't really make them significantly more vulnerable to the fighter types. Really, the only character who can
really do bad things to a grappling foe is a rogue--and even then, only if the foe is vulnerable to sneak attacks. Often a grappling foe is at a disadvantage vis a vis the other members of the party but not always.
So, for a fairly lackluster option, psions are slightly better off because they still have most of their options open even if pinned. Of course there are so many other things that are going on here that most of the time it just isnt a good option to grapple someone to begin with. Also, for those few times when it does happen if the caster does not have a thought in mind then he, again, deserves to die. Just like the fighter type who completely ignores a mode of combat (what do you mean I cant charge the guy 20' up and 200' away? how come he keeps on hitting me every round?).
Grapple is a much more effective option than you give it credit for being. I suspect you haven't had much experience with either improved grab monsters or grappling focussed PCs.
