Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Austin Jimm's Simple Grappling Rules

 
Austin Jimm, proprietor of the fantabulous Contemptible Cube of Quazar, posted his simple house rules for grappling over at the Knights & Knaves Alehouse. Jimm's rules are based on a combat example published in the Summer 1975 issue of The Strategic Review. Thanks Jimm for rewriting these rules in such a clear way. I think I like this better than what I've been doing (i.e. a to hit roll followed by a dex check) because it allows for dog piling!

Grappling:
Any character, or group of characters, may attempt to grapple and subdue an opponent. This is accomplished by having the attacking character, or characters, roll a normal “to hit” roll against the target. The hit dice of all attackers who successfully hit the target is totaled, and a number of d6 equal to this total is rolled. The target must then roll a number of d6 equal to his own hit dice. If the attackers' roll is greater than that of the defender, the target is considered pinned and may be disarmed, shackled, bound, knocked-out, or otherwise subdued. If the defender's roll prevails, he has thrown off all of his attackers and they must spend one combat round recovering as if from a fumble. If the dice are tied, they are struggling, with the defender still on his feet, and another set of grappling rolls will be made on the next round. Any additional attackers who score a hit may add their dice to the roll.

8 comments:

  1. Interesting, but I think I'd like the comparative strengths of the characters to pay a part.

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  2. See, that picture says everything about why you don't halflings with you in a fist fight.

    Or at any other time. I haven't really liked Hobbits since "Bored of the Rings."

    Not related to your post, of course. It's the Mt Dew talking.

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  3. Interesting, but I think I'd like the comparative strengths of the characters to pay a part.

    The normal STR to hit modifiers in most versions of D&D should compensate for this, in my opinion. Also, I personally wouldn't relish the idea of noodling around with a bunch of monster and PC STR values during a fast and furious combat.

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  4. I really like it. One could add the strength modifiers in to the respective rolls of course. Anyway, consider it stolen.

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  5. Interesting. I think simple combat maneuvers can work for trying to tackle one person--roll to hit and they decide to take damage or let you succeed-- but this would be very easy to switch to as soon as a second grappler jumps in. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. So how many hit dice does Konishiki have? I'd say he gets a few more d6's than the kid.

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  7. No, no, this is waaaaay too easy to understand. Grappling should strike fear into the hearts of players, so much so that they'll never use it.

    http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0232.html

    http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0233.html

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  8. If you are using a retro-clone system that uses an attack bonus instead of (or to summarize) a level attack matrix, then I'd say roll D6 for each character equal to his melee attack "to hit" bonus, or d4 if there is no bonus. That takes Strength into account and also means an 11th level wizard can't outwrestle a hill giant. Otherwise, a very neat system!

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