Round 2 of Errata for Technical Grappling

A new revised version of Technical Grappling is now live.

If you’ve already got a copy, you’re going to want to download it again. The alterations are significant and beneficial. If you don’t have a copy, you need run right over and get one.

Thanks again to Steve Jackson Games and +Steven Marsh for allowing this sort of thing to happen. I love the fact that they take good advantage of the digital medium.

What’s goin’ on?

Two things happened here. One was a really productive discussion initiated by Ryan W that turned up what wound up being a clear Murphy. As I noted to Gef, these sorts of fixes aren’t discussed and iterated (and there’s always iteration) on the public forum – but they do happen, and the first set of related changes have to do with that.

The second thing that happened was that I hit the right combination of search terms that gave me raw bite force instead of what mostly I’d found before, which is bite pressure. A billion psi in a tiny mouth can still be pried apart with your little finger, while a relatively low pressure but a huge area imparts enough force to fully immobilize – so that wasn’t terribly game-useful. The new data (it was always there, I just rolled better on my Research/TL8 skill this time) led to a useful calculation that, yes, the force applied by a mouth tracked well with 8xBL, and for humans, that meant ST 7-9 for an average bite. Well hey, Control Points (usually based on thr) for a ST 8 are the same as thr-1 for ST 10 . . . and doesn’t that sound familiar (see p. B271). Given that new information, I felt it was only proper to make a comprehensive change, which renders a lot of my commentary here moot.

Here’s a list of what’s different, why, and the new text (most of the time).

pp. 5-6 Referred Control and Whole-Body Actions


The entire section got replaced and clarified to address the issue above. Referred control is now the same formula – a simpler formula – regardless of number of locations grappled. The ‘grapples can reinforce each other’ rule is still there, but only strong grapples qualify. If a location is grappled weakly enough such that the referred control from other sources is larger than a local specific penalty, you use the larger one. Whole-body penalties are slightly and usefully revised given that the neck was rolled into the head where it belongs, giving truth to “control the hips, control the head, control the person.” Also, it so happens that if you’re grappling neither the torso or head, but lots of other places, the Whole-Body penalty is based on simply the sum of all Active CP. So you don’t need to do complicated math – just take all CP, divide by two, and that’s your ST penalty. If you are grappling the torso or head in addition to other places, you take the active CP on the torso/head and still add total active CP/2. If you’ve got both, likely the reinforcement rules come into play, and thus it’s actually better to achieve a one-handed grapple on each of head/neck and torso than it is to do a two-handed on only one location. This pleased me as well.

If you hate the reinforcement rule (something I’ve not heard), or find it bogs down play, ignore it. No one will care.

p. 6: Mouths


Here’e the moment you’ve been waiting for, with the replacement of CP based on ST/2 revised upward to thr-1 based on the user’s full ST. This means that you’re going to need industrial equipment to pry open a croc’s jaws, while the ST/2 rule meant that if you take a fairly large critter, say a ST 18 big-ass bear, he’s going to be capable of being resisted by an attack to break free by a ST 10 man pretty easily. That didn’t work well, even if it was correct that it’s very hard to do funky grappling moves with that grip. I fixed that in a different way, on p. 29, in the Teeth section.


p. 13: Drop that Weapon


A quick change to comply with the fact that penalties to skill are now the worst of a grappled limb required to use the skill and the whole-body penalty. This makes it a heck of a lot harder to swing a sword when someone grabs your wrist. Again, sensible, and the direct clarification on pp. 5-6 of what penalties are used for skill use came in handy here.

p. 22: Dodge


This was altered to conform with the head/neck + torso change, and clarify that the Dodge penalty is 1/4 of the DX penalty, like just about all other cases in GURPS.

p. 27: Extra
Head


This section referenced Bite ST, so got a tweak.

p. 29: Teeth


Here’s the other half of the biting rules change that makes a difference. When spending CP in Quick Contests, you need to spend 2 CP to get 1 point worth of effect on the roll. This has the effect of making biting half as effective as more-dexterous manipulators for doing techniques, but still quite powerful. Very strong biters won’t need the help anyway.

p. 36: Choke Hold


A wording tweak emphasizing the term of art “active CP” instead of the less-specific “scored.”

p. 44: Bears


Given the new Bite ST data, comparisons were made based on the 8xBL figure and black bears got a Bite ST boost, while brown and polar bears got an even bigger one.

p. 44: Canines


Same deal. Dogs bite quite hard for their body weight – much harder than humans. So they too got the boost.

p. 45: Felines


Housecats actually bite about proportionally to what humans seem to, but big cats get about half the boost of dogs.

Parting Shot

I hope these are the last fixes that need to be made that are closer to “Murphy” than “style.” In fact, I hope they’re the last fixes ever. The new information I got on bites actually allowed a great simplification on the whole Grip ST for bites issues: it’s the same as damage for strikes, and yeah, use the same roll. If you want to make two rolls (so you can have a very damaging bite that is a weak one, or vice versa), more power to you . . . but the capability for simplification is there. Also, now the Bite ST version of Lifting ST adds 1:1 to regular ST for bites, which will make those unhappy about needing 2 pts of Bite ST for an equivalent +1 to the Grip ST of the bite instead of 1 point less unhappy. So now, yeah, Bite ST = ST + levels of Lifting ST (Bites), and you do thr-1 for chomps and grips. Easy peasy.

The referred control fix is fun because it too makes things simpler, while fixing a real Murphy. I like it better, it scales better, and makes a lot more calculation possible using just “what’s my total CP I’ve got on the guy.”

Overall, good changes. Thanks to all for the feedback. Technical Grappling just got better.