What's so Hard About Grappling?

[Lizard]

(Posting this in the 4e forum since grappling is one of the things many people want to see "fixed" in 4e; convince me that it's broken in 3x.)

This is the constant refrain: Grappling is hard! (Just like math, Barbie.) NO ONE uses it EVER because it's JUST TOO COMPLICATED! (I apparently game with the only people on the entire planet who grapple in D&D 3x.)

The frack?

Everything about the grappling rules is logical -- indeed, they're more logical than most of D&Ds abstract rules.


a)Suffer an AOO: You've dropped your weapons, or at least aren't using them, and are rushing at some orc with your arms wide. Yeah, he's going to take a stab at you -- unless you've spent extra time and effort to learn to do this right. (Improved Grapple)

b)Make a touch attack. In order to grapple someone, you have to, y'know, touch them. Why a touch attack? Because having thick hide or wearing plate armor doesn't keep people from hugging you. A low charisma might, but those rules are in BOEF.

c)Roll opposed grapple checks. You want to hug the orc; the orc thinks you're invading his personal space and doesn't want it to be hugs time now please. He tries to push you away; you try not to be pushed away. The numbers which make up the grapple check -- strength, size, and general combat skill -- all make sense. And they're pre-calced for you and usually don't change in-play.

d)If you win, you've grappled the foe. There's a lot of changes to what you can and can't do when playing hug-an-orc, and they're all spelled out, and they're all pretty logical. You can't leap around the battlefield (you're flat footed), it's hard to make those 'subtle hand gestures' when someone's crushing your arms (no spells with somatic components) and so on.

Frankly, I find the Turning rules more annoying, since they don't work like anything else in game. I figure that if I don't more to 4e, I'll be rolling those into my 3x games. But that's another thread...

 

[EricNoah]

I'm not moving to 4E. But I avoid grappling because it is complex.

So help me out here...

Two opponents are grappling. Someone else wants to hit one of the grapplers and not the other. How does that work -- do they each provide a certain amount of cover for the other? How does size factor in -- does the larger creature provide more cover?

Also I am unclear on how multiple grapplers work.

And finally, I think there should be a good rule for how to hack off tentacles. It's a standard fantasy element that can't really be replicated with the rules. (My own house rule I may try tonight is -- anything with improved grab and tentacle attacks can have its tentacles hacked off -- give the tentacle some hardness and hit points and voila).

 

[Derren]

Whats so hard about Grappling? Imo the same thing which is hard about 1-2-1 diagonal movement.

If you know this rule well it goes very fast (although it does involve quite some rolling). But if you don't know the rules (grappling doesn't tend to come up that often and as most people "learn by doing" doesn't get memorized very fast) it stalls the game.

 

[Lackhand]

a)Suffer an AOO: You've dropped your weapons, or at least aren't using them, and are rushing at some orc with your arms wide. Yeah, he's going to take a stab at you -- unless you've spent extra time and effort to learn to do this right. (Improved Grapple)

b)Make a touch attack. In order to grapple someone, you have to, y'know, touch them. Why a touch attack? Because having thick hide or wearing plate armor doesn't keep people from hugging you. A low charisma might, but those rules are in BOEF.

c)Roll opposed grapple checks. You want to hug the orc; the orc thinks you're invading his personal space and doesn't want it to be hugs time now please. He tries to push you away; you try not to be pushed away. The numbers which make up the grapple check -- strength, size, and general combat skill -- all make sense. And they're pre-calced for you and usually don't change in-play.

d)If you win, you've grappled the foe. There's a lot of changes to what you can and can't do when playing hug-an-orc, and they're all spelled out, and they're all pretty logical. You can't leap around the battlefield (you're flat footed), it's hard to make those 'subtle hand gestures' when someone's crushing your arms (no spells with somatic components) and so on.

You neglected to mention the "step into the same square and draw AoO from everyone but the one you're hugging", but yes.

I use them too.

Does the fact that they take up more space than I'm comfortable quoting here give anyone pause, though? I mean, sure, you're grappling so there have to be rules in place... but there are such a lot of rules that get put into place. There's a huge context shift between what you can do outside a grapple, and what you can do inside a grapple, which causes a lot of people to pour smoke from their ears.

Since we're in the 4e forum... My rampant speculation is that all (or almost all) combat maneuvers will use the grapple check to resolve them, and that the grapple qua grapple will go away. We'll have the star wars saga 'grab' instead; some maneuvers will require, or befit from, a grab, first. Then I'd be able to cut & paste the grapple rules into this post, and there wouldn't be quite the context-shift when you're sucked into a grapple.

 

[Wormwood]

Grappling is three steps too long for what is basically a simple attack.

The rules may be 'realistic and logical', but they're also annoying to play at the table---and I'm not really convinced that emulating reality is more important than smooth gameplay.

At this point I'd be happy with grappling going away entirely, leaving constriction and strangling reserved as special attacks for specific monsters.

ps. Agreed---Turning undead also sucks, as it imposes a strange subsystem which has almost no relation to anything else in the rules.

 

[Lackhand]

Followup attack: they're also badly presented. The problem is that it's entirely unclear (until you've spent some time parsing it, which I know everyone who posts here has ) exactly how many of the things you can do in a grapple you can do on your turn. Claw/claw/bite? Only one. Multiple attacks? Go ahead and take them all, even if you're an animal who doesn't have them broken down. Rakes? Take 'em now, since now is the only time you can take them (depending on how one parses pounce).
Constriction damage? Deal it every turn you're still in a grapple (since you're succeeding on grapple checks, don't you see. Sucks to be an iterative attacker there, doesn't it?)

So even if the rules are clever as crystal (and I don't think they're all that bad) -- simplifying their presentation involves breaking them up into rulelettes, and is very necessary. A flow chart broken down by rounds, please?

 

[Lizard]

I'm not moving to 4E. But I avoid grappling because it is complex.

So help me out here...

Two opponents are grappling. Someone else wants to hit one of the grapplers and not the other. How does that work -- do they each provide a certain amount of cover for the other? How does size factor in -- does the larger creature provide more cover?

As far as I can tell from the SRD, the only time grappling affects AC is when you're pinned -- you have a -4 AC to attacks from anyone other than the one pinning you. (This is in addition to being flatfooted.) I think the 3.0 rules had Cover for being grappled, that's where the 'carry a hamster in one hand and get 50% cover' meme came from. If I'm wrong and there's cover-while-grappling rules hidden outside the grappling section of the SRD, well, that's a good case for the rules being too complicated -- or at least poorly organized.

Also I am unclear on how multiple grapplers work.

Multiple Grapplers
combat
Several combatants can be in a single grapple. Up to four combatants can grapple a single opponent in a given round. Creatures that are one or more size categories smaller than you count for half, creatures that are one size category larger than you count double, and creatures two or more size categories larger count quadruple.

When you are grappling with multiple opponents, you choose one opponent to make an opposed check against. The exception is an attempt to escape from the grapple; to successfully escape, your grapple check must beat the check results of each opponent.

I guess is you have a halfling and an ogre grappling a dwarf, things could slow down while you work out how many 'creatures' that is, and the halfling quits to start a protest movement about being counted as half a creature.

This has never come up in my games, but this doesn't mean it doesn't come up -- and indeed it might in our current game, since we're doing Savage Species and have a lot of odd-sized PCs.

And finally, I think there should be a good rule for how to hack off tentacles. It's a standard fantasy element that can't really be replicated with the rules. (My own house rule I may try tonight is -- anything with improved grab and tentacle attacks can have its tentacles hacked off -- give the tentacle some hardness and hit points and voila).

I absoltively, posilutely agree -- but then you're veering towards hit locations and those are also (to some people) complicated, and really don't work well with the abstract combat model of D&D. Except when there's specific cases where they've been added, to much confusion. (Anyone remember 1e, when different parts of some monsters had different Armor Classes...but there were no rules for striking at those parts?)

 

[Wormwood]

A flow chart broken down by rounds, please?

IMO, if you need a flow chart to explain a rule, you need to simplify the rule.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Turning rules only "defense" is that they apply to only one character class. The Fighter, Rogue and Wizard don't have to bother with them, they just see whether the undeads run, turn to dust, or laugh at the whimsical cleric...
Still, the rules suck.

The Grapple rules are a problem because everybody can be affected by them. You don't get to choose whether you use them or not. That makes it important to keep them simple.

Personally, I think we managed to use grapple fairly often and effectively (in fact, in our Shackled City campaign, my Fighter was quite good at it and relied on it against many monsters or NPCs).

But sometimes I am not so sure anymore:
- If you have established your hold, do you deal damage? Or is this only possible with a special ability like Constrict?
- If a monster has the Constrict ability, does it deal its constrict damage in addition to normal damage on subsequent grapple checks? Does it add its natural weapon damage or its unarmed damage?
- If you pin someone, do you deal damage? How much damage do you deal?
- What kind of attacks are still possible while grappled? What's with all my natural attacks?
- Can I use sneak attack or Feint in Grapple?
- Can you sunder, disarm, or trip while yoU're or he is in Grapple? What's when you're pinning someone?
- Can a ranged attacker firing into grapple accidently sneak attack his ally, or make a succesful critical hit?
- Can you use a ranged weapon in grapple?
- Do I keep my shield bonus (against the grappler or an outside enemy?)

Other people might have problems with even determining what they can do at all in a Grapple. Sometimes you forget that you (or rather the grappling monster) lose your Reach (unless off course you use the -20 penalty to grapple checks option - by the way, do I need Improved Grab for that or is it an autoamtic option?) and can't take AoOs against opponents outside of Grapple (But can you do against opponents in Grapple)

It would be far easier if "Grappled" was just a condition similar to Entangle. It would be enough to say that you suffer a penalty to AC and can't move unless your Grappler allows it (or you beat him with your Grapple check).

On top of all that, Grappling is also a horrible unbalanced attack form.
Larger monsters usually have more strength (very often a lot more than PCs) _and_ gain a strong modifier on their Grapple checks. This combination quickly outstrips the range of a d20, and that means that even a fighter (possibly even one with some feats for grappling) has no chance of defending himself in grapple. The best target to grapple is probably a spellcaster (if he doesn't have a teleportation spell handy) or a Rogue. Quick death is guaranteed (and if you catch the Rogue, nobody can really take benefit of your lost Dex bonus anyway)

The complexity of the grapple rules never bothered me as much as their bad game balance.

 

[Lackhand]

Derren: When the defender is grappling and the attacker isn't, from the combat modifier section, the defender is flatfooted and (I love this part) "Roll randomly to see which grappling combatant you strike. That defender loses any Dexterity bonus to AC."

That means you either hit your friend or your foe, but either way you sneak attack them.

Brilliant!