Rules Compendium excerpt

[Crothian]

Or to ask a more serious question: Even if you never had any problems with the grapple rules, can you honestly say that you consider them good rules?

They have always worked fine for us. It wasn't till the net started complaining about them that I saw people that didn't get them. Since they work fine for us I'd call them good rules. Any rule that works is a good one.

 

[DaveMage]

No problems with the grapple rules here either.

 

[HellHound]

My god, you're right. Me and my nine players (from two different groups) are the only players on earth who have not stumbled over, nor have any problems with, the current 3.5 grappling rules.

I'll join you with my three different D&D 3.0 / 3.5 groups. Never been an issue.

The only problem with the grapple rules is when very large creatures grapple and hold very small creatures and you begin to wonder why I can't hold on to a cat...

.pdf .zip

Good grief.

This is done because a lot of older browsers SERIOUSLY mishandle direct PDF links. They open the PDF in the browser using the Acrobat plugin, and on slower machines and older browsers this often results in very slow loading, and reduced usability. Further, many novice users have shown that they cannot figure out how to then save the file to their computer once it has opened in the browser.

By making the file a zip file, the vast majority of users will download it and then open it instead of opening it natively in their browser.

This makes for many happier users.

This was an issue back in the early adopter phase for PDFs. Every time I see people explain it, however, it is usually rebuked with a whole variety of anecdotes about how user X has never had such a problem and thus it is dumb that people have implemented systems to avoid the so called problem.

It has been a problem, it continues to be a problem, this is a simple work-around for that problem.

 

[Crothian]

The only problem with the grapple rules is when very large creatures grapple and hold very small creatures and you begin to wonder why I can't hold on to a cat...

Either the cat is attacking you with its light weapons and you choose to drop it or it has a great escape artist check.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

Either the cat is attacking you with its light weapons and you choose to drop it or it has a great escape artist check.

Yup, that's pretty much it.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

No problem here with the grapple rules.

For easy access to them I use the cards from Firey Dragon's Battlebox. Better than flipping through the rule book for the rule.

 

[DM_Jeff]

Or did you cheat by never using any tentacled monstrosities with improved grapple?

No, we've used them in all sorts of circumstances!

Or to ask a more serious question: Even if you never had any problems with the grapple rules, can you honestly say that you consider them good rules? The 3.5E grapple rules may be the best we've had in any edition of D&D so far, but I refuse to believe they cannot be improved.

So, seriously, then, are they good? They work for my group and get the job done. I have no problems and answer the questions players and I have when using them. They probebally could be improved, but that's my whole irrational beef reinvention to begin with. it's not broken ior even bothersoem in my game, so why fiddle?

And my opinion of cool has just been raised, seeing folks whome I've come to respect on here like Crothian, Davemage and Hellhound say they can also use Grapple. I think it's more disturbing hearing how R&D designers at WotC can't!

-DM Jeff

 

[Delta]

'Course, the Belt of Battle didn't exist when the rules for grappling were written - but 3.0 Haste did, which I believe would also have worked.

There was no "move" option in 3.0. That's another 3.5-ism add-on.

 

[resistor]

This book looks wonderful to me, but my expectations seem to have been somewhat different from others.

The RC, for me, is 3.75e. It's 3.5e updated with all the tweaks, improvements, and changes (see polymorph) that have been made since the core books came out. It's a summary of the peak of the 3.5e rules evolution. It's what I will use as the core book for my future 3.5e campaigns.

That said, I don't really expect it to address every corner case. In fact, I don't think I'd be interested in buying it if it did. A lot of the corner cases are very subjective and will probably be different for different DMs. I'm not going to shell out $25 for a book that tells me how magic arrows interact with AMFs. But I am willing to pay for a book that'll serve as the core rules for my campaigns in the future (since I'm not currently planning to go 4e).

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This was an issue back in the early adopter phase for PDFs. Every time I see people explain it, however, it is usually rebuked with a whole variety of anecdotes about how user X has never had such a problem and thus it is dumb that people have implemented systems to avoid the so called problem.

So, sort of like the grappling rules debate, then?