So been thinking about DnD where attacking for damage and attempting to grapple are distinct actions one does one of or the other. Sometimes an ability lets you grapple attempt after a successful hit.
Watching various unarmed and armed combat sports...
I figure there should be a way to more organically integrate "I deal HP damage" and "I grapple u" smoothly into DnD style combat.
Looking at the above gif, that grappling happened after both failed to land a clean hit on the other, then ended up in one 5x5' space (in DnD terms).
Perhaps it could be done as degrees of success/failure/fumbles?
Like... Red rolled a 1 to attack Black, so Black gets a grapple attempt. If it's like that then it only comes up a few times, thus more memorable but also the risk is always there.
Alright so the hand sign this person is throwing in the bottom right side of this gif is distracting for me. Just want to throw that out there.
As for whether this 'should' be in DnD I don't think so. This looks like it would be framed as a disarm for most people and not an actual grapple. I'd guess that most players probably wouldn't feel like having a sword duel go into a wrestling match.
Last edited by MGuy on Mon Jan 21, 2019 5:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
The first rule of Fatclub. Don't Talk about Fatclub..
If you want a game modded right you have to mod it yourself.
You could just abstract the whole thing and consider that sometimes your success on a sword attack roll means that you tried to attack with your sword, ended up grappling your opponent and dealing x damage.
I dunno. I watching MMA I feel like it is like suitable to have a transition to a separate mini game when trying to grapple vs strike. You try to gain an advantageous position/hold or escape it. In Nexus I straight up made grapple damage something that went away immediately if the grapple is broken out of or released. Basically simulating that it’s easier to grapple someone who is weakened/wounded but if you wind up hugging and releasing then nobody is the worse for wear.
One thing that may be an improvement for Raelsim is to make it easier to escape than win a grapple when defending. Maybe in DnD +4 to attempt to escape instead of trying to counter grapple, and gotta declare ahead wherever attempting to escape vs counter.
Last edited by erik on Mon Jan 21, 2019 4:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
An attack resulting in a state change seems like a positive. You could even design your combat system around "every attack results in a state change." It'd require that things like grappling are normal combat states rather than special status effects (yes, that distinction is partly frame of mind), otherwise it'd bog down in a hurry.
Black in the gif doesn't engage trying for a grapple, they go for it because their opponent gave them an opening. That could be margin of success, though why was it a disarm instead of a throw? I like the idea that the bonus is somewhat random. Maybe both players have a deck of possible effects and Black knows more disarms than throws (or didn't and just got weird luck). Maybe the size of that deck doubles as your attack bonus, so deciding you won't go for a throw means you're at a disadvantage. Deciding you won't go for HP damage means removing the HP damage cards; so there's some free nonlethal combat rules.
You could also shuffle two such decks together instead of an opposed roll, which is cute, but unshuffling decks is slow unless this is a computer game, so probably not.
If slashing is a different mini-game than grappling, my desire to engage in one or the other as a character depends on how likely I am to win in each one.
If I'm fighting the kraken, every one of my successful strikes that turns into a grapple is hardcore BAD for me. The kraken is really good at grappling, and even with invested resources, I'm not THAT good. I would rather my successful attacks PREVENT grapples.
You can offer 'free extra attacks' if your special attacks succeed - in fact, we do exactly that in our heartbreaker - but if you FORCE the special attack you're going to create problems. Giving people a free extra option is fine - requiring a state change that is potentially disadvantageous is not the way to reward play.
The scale of a kraken arm, it’s more like a car coming at you than fencing a human. So such a system would have to support cutting and evading a giant tendril as well as disarming a human or giant
Using that idea of your attack bonus being tied to the size of the deck of possible effects you'll accept, you would remove the grapple results from your deck (and get a lower attack bonus) against a kraken, because parrying a tentacle and turning it into a grapple is a bad idea. You'd remove your disarm cards too because they don't work. And you'd be at a disadvantage because some of the things you trained for are irrelevant.
And this does hint at a problem for making things like grappling and disarming first class citizens in a D&D-esque game. You're going to fight a lot of krakens, bears, and ghosts. It's okay to occasionally have a puzzle monster that makes half your system irrelevant, but half your bestiary is immune to disarming and that's not occasionally.
Disarming comes from having some kinda positional bio-mechanics advantage over your foe so the equivalent would be like grabbing a bull’s horns to wrestle it down, running up the Kraken’s arm if you’re sufficiently heroic, getting on the hydras back
And then a stabbing hero on the manticore’s back inflicts a penalty on some of its attacks and actions
