What rules don't work?
- Thread starter RangerWickett
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youspoonybard
First Post
Are the grapple rules really THAT difficult?
I admit, when I first started playing and didn't know any rules they were a little hard to swallow, but the basic mechanic is an opposed roll; the modifier is right there on your character sheet!
Most time someone is grappling, it's either an opposed roll for 1) unarmed strike damage, 2) pin a person, 3) escape a grapple ot pin, or attacks with a light weapon (the same attacks you do all day long) at -4. Most other actions still just require an opposed roll.
I don't see what's fundamentally more difficult with grappling, then say, opposed strength checks.
I admit, when I first started playing and didn't know any rules they were a little hard to swallow, but the basic mechanic is an opposed roll; the modifier is right there on your character sheet!
Most time someone is grappling, it's either an opposed roll for 1) unarmed strike damage, 2) pin a person, 3) escape a grapple ot pin, or attacks with a light weapon (the same attacks you do all day long) at -4. Most other actions still just require an opposed roll.
I don't see what's fundamentally more difficult with grappling, then say, opposed strength checks.
Last edited:
Jeff Wilder
First Post
The folks you game with probably don't have a Strength of 10. 10 Strength is average in the D&D world ... modern average should be significantly lower.No Name said:
youspoonybard said:
Yes, they are that difficult. Grappling has become progressively more and more complicated since 2nd edition.
The original 2nd edition rules were simple, but a bit unfair to the defender, with each successful hit giving a flat percentage chance of knocking the defender out. It had great flavor though, and most importantly, it was easy.
Combat & Tactics came along and the rules evolved to something similar to what we have now. Unfortunately even then, I had to eventually sift through the rules and write up a full page outline detailing grappling from point A to point Z. Once I had the outline made up, it was a piece of cake though.
Now in 3rd edition and 3.5, even after 4 years, we still don't fully grasp grappling and what you can and can't do at each step of the grapple process. Like so many 3e and 3.5 rules, despite the simpler nature of the overall system, the subsystems are actually FAR more complicated than in ANY previous edition. Honestly, it's to the point where we would give up D&D and switch to another system if not for the hundreds (possibly thousands) of PCs and NPCs that we'd have to convert over.
In fact, the only thing keeping us with D&D is Jamis Buck's random generator. We rarely roll new PCs up anymore due to their complexity, instead using the generator to quickly get us set up and moving. Only problem is, if you look at it's output, there's no grapple modifier listed on the character sheet... Yeah, I know it's easy to just figure it out and write it on, but for some reason we never do it. You can't blame *us* for missing yet another number or modifier though... there's far too many to begin with.
Hrm... sorry, didn't mean to rant. Sorry.
I dont know grapple really isnt that hard. My group all got together and came up with more complex grapple rules because we are all MMA fans and several of us compete in martial arts tournemants as well so we wanted something to better simulate real grappling.
And yeah i think we can blame you for forgetting to write it down the 2nd time it happens in the same game. The first time you cant figure it out and spend a half hour going through the books the whole party should write thier modifiers down then and there. If no one does its not the rules fault. And making characters is time consuming but not complicated. You can print out the character sheets then just fill in all the blank boxes. Its pretty self explanatory.
And yeah i think we can blame you for forgetting to write it down the 2nd time it happens in the same game. The first time you cant figure it out and spend a half hour going through the books the whole party should write thier modifiers down then and there. If no one does its not the rules fault. And making characters is time consuming but not complicated. You can print out the character sheets then just fill in all the blank boxes. Its pretty self explanatory.
glass
(he, him)
Voadam said:
Conversly, I'd rather take away iterative weapon attacks than add iterative natural attacks. High level D&D can already involve huge numbers of attacks on both sides. The lastthing it needs is to give them more.
BTW, ancient dragon have roughly twice as many attacks as wyrmlings.
glass.
The grappling rules aren't hard per se, they're just clunky. I would like them to be more streamlined and offer more options (sounds like a contradiction, eh?) I am thinking of options concerning things other than just pinning, such as lifting/throwing, chokeholds, injury to limbs, rendering them unusable...
