Improved Grab and Constrict

[youspoonybard]

About the Bite: You can't.

If you want to attack with a light weapon, you roll an attack roll, and have the -4 penalty. There is no grapple check involved.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Poking this phrase apart, this is what I get out of it:
1) It does not say, "The creature can make a grapple check to do the damage..." ... it says "Each successful grapple check it makes ... automatically deals the damage ... ". This seems to mean that as long as you're rolling an opposed grapple check, you can do damage, be it with a pin, an escape, or an attack. I can visualize this; the snake has its fangs in the person, and using grapple checks to hurt the opponents is just pushing the opponent around. The snake is swinging the person around with his fangs stuck in him. Poor guy. Likewise, when the snake tries to flee a grapple (yeah, right), he flings the guy off the fangs. That's got to hurt. But flavor text aside, it seems that the damage is dealt.

Careful. A successful check is not the same thing as winning an opposed contest. A check is made by the one initiating the action; the DC for success just happens to be variable in the case of an opposed check.

I would agree that your constrictor druid does damage even when escaping a grapple -- a useful tactic that. I would not agree that some poor slob who attempts to escape and fails takes damage.

 

[reapersaurus]

to be honest, I'm getting already sick of this grapple interpretation.
Anyone that thinks they should be able to do melee damage to their opponent on the opponent's turn (without an AoO) is &*(* ^&*&* %^&^%& (censored for everyone's sake).

Suffice to say, I wouldn't afford them much respect, and think that;s one of the munchkinny-nest things I've ever heard, and would laugh at them if they tried it in a game I was in.

But that's just my opinion.

BTW: are you familiar with the term "rules lawyer"?

 

[youspoonybard]

Note that I'm not talking about that whatsoever, even though the people I play with agree with me, and they're the ones that have to fight the darn things : P.

If you exclude that, and note that that's not in this scenario, what do you think?

 

[DM2]

Nevermind...I'll just assume you hit this thread on a bad day reaper.

Otherwise, I think there is every right to discuss the limits of a rule, even ridiculous ones in a __rules__ forum.

DM2