There are two areas of the 3e rules that invariably cause people grief. One of these is attacks of opportunity, which are mostly fine apart from one thing: the table of actions that causes an AoO. The other, which causes grief in so many games, is Grappling.
Grappling is a real nuisance because it both comes up so rarely and because it requires a slew of special rules to deal with. There are two conditions (grappled and pinned), there's a special list of actions you can and can't take in each case, and then there's the rules for starting and ending grapples themselves.
I've just had something of an epiphany that I think might help, in a similar way to my previous fix for Turn Undead.
So, here goes:
Grapple check: Rather than having a special check, with a set of special rules and modifiers to consider (and probably not record until it's needed), turn this into a skill, called Grapple. The special size modifiers for grapple apply as normal (for now, though as for Hide these really should be eliminated). This is a class skill for any class with a good BAB - that is, the Fighter, Paladin, Cleric, Barbarian; and also the Monk. (This would be rolled into Athletics in a 4e-like system.)
To initiatiate a Grapple: you must have at least one hand free. Make a melee touch attack (that provokes an AoO). If this succeeds, you begin the grapple. Grappling characters move into the same space, and lose their Dex bonuses to AC.
To "do something" in a Grapple (that is: end it, cause damage, disarm your opponent, move, cast a spell...), make an opposed Grapple check as a move action.
And that's basically it. The truth is that this doesn't actually change things all that much - all it really does is switch Grapple checks to a skill and narrows down the huge range of special cases down to a single clause. But that's probably a worthwhile goal in itself. Plus, this new rule is simple enough that it should be possible to remember all the details in one go, without having to consult the book in some detail on those rare occasions when it actually comes up.
It does, however, have the slightly nasty consequence that a character who was previously good at Grapple before (such as a Fighter) now has to spend skill points to get the same benefit. That may not be a good thing.
Grapple has always been a weird one. Annoyingly complex too. Rules that seem simple enough suddenly become less-so when players start asking "can I do X while grappling?"
ReplyDeleteHowever, having it as a skill does lead down the slightly silly route that you have with some other skills, where everyone ignores the rules completely and no-one invests in the skill because "no-one bothers with grapple" until you get one player who invests really heavily in it for his character and suddenly can grapple a dragon (or big, bad evil guy) to the floor.
Not sure that I have a solution - just thoughts.
Yeah, it's a bit of a tricky question, which things should be class based (Wild Empathy, Turn Undead, Bardic Knowledge) and which should be skills. And, actually, grapple checks themselves aren't the issue - you just calculate once and write it on the sheet.
ReplyDeleteThe big issue with Grapple, as with Attacks of Opportunity, is that set of things that you can and can't do. Collapse that down to a single rule ("roll a grapple check"), and the job's basically done.
But balancing grapple is also a bit of a trick. Because it severely limits the actions an opponent can take, it's actually a hugely powerful option. So, it needs either some pretty severe down-sides, or it needs to be pretty difficult, or it needs to be pretty expensive (in skill points, feats, etc). Or all of the above.