Silly bears

[BlubSeabass]

Hey guys,

I was playing Kingmaker, when my players started fighting a bear. The bear started to grapple, and that's when I noticed something seems off.

First, I can't find anywhere that a bear could make a full round attack during grapple. There is no rake, so he loses 2 good attacks. Second, he gains the grappled condition, which doesn't help at all. Second, his bonus for grapples only goes for his CMB, making it relativly easy to take over the grapple on the defenders turn. The only good part is that your partly disabling one person (which with a little though luck ends up disabling you), but Pathfinder was never a one on one thing to begin with.

So why would any (Owl- Dire) bear grapple? Or am I seeing something completely wrong?

 

[The_Gneech]

The general consensus seems to be that a Combat Maneuver counts as an attack -- so a critter with iterative attacks can do multiple CMs, with a cumulative -5 each.

paizo.com - Paizo / Messageboards / Paizo Publishing / Pathfinder® / Pathfinder RPG / Rules Questions / Archives / Iterative attacks and CMB

-The Gneech

 

[ruemere]

Note that maintaining the grapple is a standard action. So have the bear grapple from one round to another, drop the grapple as a free action at the beginning of its turn, then grapple again.

That way your bear can lock down an opponent with reasonable ease, and still profit from at least one attack.

For your reference:
Bear, Grizzly
Grab

Regards,
Ruemere

 

[Jared Rascher]

Also, a high armor class opponent might be better combated by "hugging" him to death. The bear is only +7 to hit, but +13 to grapple, with a +5 bonus if he maintains the same grapple from round to round, and can count on doing 1d6+5 damage each round if he doesn't want to pin his opponent (which seems less than bear like).

So there is still an advantage in just taking the grapple from round to round as well.