What's so Hard About Grappling?

[Lizard]

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

I strongly disagree, as this is a case where 'simplification to speed gameplay' becomes oversimplification to the detriment of play. People WILL want to grapple -- they've been disarmed, they're in barroom brawl, they're trying to keep their mind-controlled friend from marching off a cliff, etc, -- and if there's no rules for it, every DM will 'roll their own', leading to chaos, confusion, dogs and cats sleeping together...and a certain %age of DMs, especially the noobs WOTC fervently hopes exist, will say "There's no rules for it. You can't do it."

The real problem is that weapons combat is at a high level of abstraction (no facing, no hit locations, no concern for weapon speed, armor penetration, reach (beyond a few special cases), etc) and grappling is, while not 'realistic', much less abstract. You go from a very abstract, DM-tells-you-the-flavor-text system to a much less abstract one, and I understand that can be jarring. I'm guessing a 4e goal is to keep all systems at the same abstraction level, but i'm not sure how much more abstract you can make grappling and still have it be "believable" and not end up in a lot of arguments over what you can and can't do.Most of the rules for grappling in 3x grew out of endless tabletop fights in AD&D 1 and 2. (Which sometimes served to playtest the grappling rules, if you get my drift...)

Only a relatively small %age of player have ever been in a swordfight, even an SCA-style one, but a lot have been involved in brawls and scuffles. Thus, there are higher expectations of "realism" because there's more direct experience. Sort of how my expectation of how computer hacking should work in a modern-era game is different from that of someone who only knows about it from watching bad movies.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

It's not "hard" in the sense of being unable to handle 90% of the grapple situations by looking up the rules and following them. It's hard in that:

1) The 10% unusual situations that arise during a grapple are not easily discernible from the rules. Lackhand and Eric have mentioned a few, but there are many, many more, e.g., trying to grab the medallion off the evil cultist before he can complete the ritual, etc. The principle problem -- even though these particular events occur infrequently -- is something of a chilling effect. People don't like to use the grapple rules because of that pang of uncertainty that they are potentially getting into murky waters.

2) By extension, because people tend not to use the rules, they do not achieve the level of familiarity that they do with other rules. This creates a vicious cycle between reason #1 and reason #2.

Compare, if a PC wants to, say, bull rush an opponent as opposed to grapple. You look up the rule, and it's like one paragraph, easy to follow.

 

[Storminator]

The worst part is that monsters never fail grapple checks. Attack -> improved grab -> +27 grapple modifier -> PC wishes he was swallowed whole.

And since you'll never win a grapple check, you don't get to play any more while your friends have to save you quickly because you're going to die.

I'm running the Savage Tides adventure path, and after a while I just stopped grappling because everything has improved grab and I'm tired of grappling by now.

It greatly magnifies the "out of the sweet spot" problem by having grapple monsters be soooooo much better at grappling than non-specialized PC (even at relatively low levels).

PS

 

[delericho]

The problem with Grapple (and Turn Undead) is not that the rules are hugely complex in and of themselves, but rather that it's a wierd subsystem that doesn't mesh with the rest of the systems terribly well, and also comes up only infrequently in play. This means that every time it does come up, it then requires the game to stop while the DM and the player involved each consult their PHB to find out the specifics of how it operates.

If something is going to occur only infrequently in play, it really needs to be simple and intuitive, and it is strongly preferably that it matches the general rules as closely as possible.

Since Derren mentioned it, the difference between this and the 1-2-1-2 diagonal movement is that the latter is a relatively common occurrence. It is the rare combat that does not involve some character moving diagonally at some point in time, where I have run entire campaigns in which Grapple did not feature - and most of the campaigns I have run have not featured any use of Turn Undead.

 

[Hussar]

/snippage


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)

Or you're one of umpteen monsters with Improved Grab, in which case you not only skip the AOO, but the touch attack as well.

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.

Again, unless you have Improved grab that is. And, as mentioned above, let's not forget the movement part, which draws an AOO. Unless, again, you have improved grab, in which case the victim is pulled into your square and suffers AOO's from all your buddies, but not you. Better hope your buddies don't have improved grab too, 'cos then you're going to bounce the victim around like a ping pong ball, drawing AOO's each time.

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.

Don't change in play? Unless, of course you're a raging barbarian, under the effect of any number of buffs to your strength, enlarged, enfeebled, or any number of other modifiers which can affect a grapple check.

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.

Now, at what point does my constrict damage come into play? Or my rake damage? How many times can a Behir grapple you in a single round? An enhanced Giant Constrictor Snake gains iterative attacks. If it chooses to make an unarmed strike attack, and succeeds, does it now get multiple constrict damages?

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...

I suggest you take a look at the Rules forum and go back a few pages. Pretty much every page there, you will find a multipage thread discussing grapple. Going back for the past several years. That you have no problems with grapple, you should be a snap at giving everyone the answers to their questions. Because the combined wisdom of the posters here at En World previously certainly can't.

 

[Haffrung Helleyes]

I don't have a problem with the complexity of the grapple rules in 3E.

What I have a problem with is that I think too many monsters have Imrproved Grab, and that the scaling BAB and STR of monsters make it impossible to avoid a monster's grapple.

It should be hard, not easy, for the big lumbering brute to grab the quick little creature darting around it.

Ken

 

[Celebrim]

Grappling is fine how it is. Any simplification of it has unnecessary side effects.

Do away with the AoO, and there really is no penalty for attempting to grapple. An unarmed guy can just reach around a sword with no problems.

Do away with the touch attack, and big clumsy ogres can grab nimble little pixies out of the air with ease.

Note that once you are grappling, these two complexities go away. They are things that happen before the grapple that are very helpful for balancing the game.

Do away with the grapple check and there isn't much left in the way of resolution.

All the real complexity of grappling is in the condition 'grappled' itself. That is, for each action you could normally attempt, 'grappled' has some impact on the action. IMO, alot of the confusion here comes from minor differences between 3.0 and 3.5. Some changes were for the better (and some weren't) but I'm not sure that any were worth the confusion that they caused.

The grappling rules aren't perfect. There are some conceptual improvements that I think are needed, like for example, it shouldn't take a special feat to throw someone from a grapple. Also, there have been repeated requests for another fantasy staple - scrambling up a large foe and hanging on - which is not actually a grapple but neither is there a rule covering it. But simplifying and abstracting the rules carries with it a price that I don't think most people really want to pay.

Grappling is a horribly unbalanced attack form. It is IRL too. My suggestion would be consider as a DM whether PC's foe needs to be 200' feet tall and weigh 160 tons, and consider as a PC whether getting up close and personal with something like that is actually a good idea.

Now, as for the claim that the rules would be better if grappling was simply removed as an option, that's pretty typical 4e thinking. My thinking is that its pretty easy to ignore a rule you don't like, but it's hard to create one you need.

The grappling rules are far simplier than the combat rules as a whole. Perhaps we should simply get rid of the combat rules.

 

[Storminator]

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!

Unbelievable...

I can't believe that rule isn't listed under Grappling Consequences... I completely missed that, and I specifically looked for it many times...

And does the size difference make the grapplers count as different numbers of creatures?!

PS

 

[Celebrim]

What I have a problem with is that I think too many monsters have Imrproved Grab, and that the scaling BAB and STR of monsters make it impossible to avoid a monster's grapple.

It should be hard, not easy, for the big lumbering brute to grab the quick little creature darting around it.

My basic problem with Improved Grab is my problem with many similar 3E rules - it's too absolute. Instead of giving the monster a relative bonus, it gives an absolute bonus - it never draws an AoO when attempting a grapple.

Which leads to things like this:

Improved Grab: You don't draw an AoO when starting a grapple.
Improved Grab Defence: Yes, you do.
Improveder Grab: No, you don't.
Improveder Grab Defence: Oh yes, you do.
Improvedest Grab...

Ect.

But improved grab does simplify the game, since otherwise (and I've really struggled with whether to go this route), it seems like any attack by natural weapons that aren't sufficiently 'weapon-like' (that is damage to the weapon is lethal damage to the creature) ought to draw an AoO.

Personally, I don't think your strength bonus should apply to a touch attack, sense everything that the strength bonus conceptually goes to overcome isn't part of the defence against a touch attack. The main reason to not go this route is that for the most part it wouldn't matter, since most large creatures have enough HD to overcome most PC's touch AC.

 

[Lizard]

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

Utter bilge!

http://watermark.drivethrustuff.com/pdf_previews/584-sample.pdf

(See page 3.)

We played this game in *High School*. That's my standard of "complex", and why grappling rules in 3x don't scare me.