Fantastic Dungeon Grapples: Breaking Out is Hard to Do

Fantastic Dungeon Grappling

I think Fantastic Dungeon Grappling is my best-ever distillation of a grappling system that plays well with the rest of the game. It’s only eight pages, and manages to successfully subsume most of Martial Arts and my original 50-page Technical Grappling books in those short pages.

The original rules concept were strongly centered around normal human people. And FDG continues that, in its way.

Joe Mook with all stats of 10, and no special grappling skills has a 50% chance to land a grappling attack on the torso, and only rolls 1d-2 control points even on a successful attack. That’s an average of 1.6 CP per hit. So after two turns, the foe (Moe Mook, identical stats) has 1 or 2 CP on them, and is -2 to DX. It will take about six more turns to get to -4 DX at 5 CP accumulated, at which point the -4 to DX (and -2 to defenses) probably trigger an unavoidable grapple spiral. And that’s assuming Moe biffs all of the defense rolls (he’ll only make one in four anyway, so I don’t think the answer changes much).

Anyway, on the GURPS Discord, Exxar, the Chaotic GM who wrote the “how to do Martial Arts Techniques using FDG” linked above, noted “breaking a grapple is HARD to do.”

Hmmm and hmmm. Makes me wonder if the grappling immobility spiral is too much one-way.

The Players

One thing to stare at hard is that the combatives who will wish to grapple on the PC side are tough customers. A quick look at the templates:

The Barbarian starts with a minimum ST 17 and Wrestling or Sumo Wrestling at DX. That’s 1d+2 CP as a base. Dropping points into Wrestling to get to DX+4 provides dividends: The +2 boost to ST you get from Wrestling at DX+2 means effective grappling ST is already 19, and with +2 per die to CP as well. There are 40 discretionary points to spend, getting to the 2d-1 threshold for CP at (effective) ST 19 means you grapple at Wrestling-17 and 2d+3 CP (average 10) per hit. That’s -6 to DX for Joe Mook in a single hit, which you will almost certainly achieve in one turn. A best-case roll is -8 to DX in one turn.

The Holy Warrior isn’t a grappling powerhouse, but she ain’t nothin’ either. ST 13, DX 13, Wrestling-14 (DX+1)  out of the gate is 1d+1 CP on a successful attack, which you’ll make 90% of the time. Joe Mook is looking at -2 DX or -4 DX on the first turn, and certainly -4 DX on the second. Pushing to multiple dice of control points is point-heavy, but a focus on armed grappling with weapon and shield starts out at Armed Grappling at 14…equal to Wrestling…and gets better from there. Activate some Heroic Feats such as Heroic Might and you can push grappling damage up quite nicely…and following up a grapple or shield bind with a skull-crunching attack can provide great pleasure.

The Knight is like the Holy Warrior, but more so. ST 14, DX 14, and Wrestling or Sumo Wrestling at DX  makes one actually slightly LESS effective in unarmed grappling than the Holy Warrior, but is unparalleled out of the gate as an ARMED grappler. With the “focus on one weapon” ability looking at Armed Grapple (Axe/Mace or Polearm)-18 after the -2 is applied, and Shield-16.

The Martial Artist deserves special mention. With only ST 11 out of the box (1d-1 base CP) but with DX 16, the Judo Master option is only at DX +1, and FDG requires DX+4 before any bonuses accrue. This template’s abilities heavily favor striking. Certainly one could allow the ST boost from (say) Power Blow to apply to a single grappling attack, which suddenly makes you ST 22 (2d CP) for the price of 1 FP. Pressure Points might be allowed with Judo, or just spending CP to cancel out the location and technique penalties. But as written, trying to grapple with a Martial Artist is, like many things, “DFRPG on Hard Mode.”

The Swashbuckler should absolutely focus on weapon and shield binds and spend the CP achieved on disarms on human attackers. Applying the Weapon Master damage bonus to grappling attacks (binds) wouldn’t be crazy talk. Still: noodle-arms make mediocre grapplers.

The rest are too low ST, too low DX (though minimum DX is 12 for all templates), or either lack a grappling skill, or are unlikely to improve it usefully. Such templates and characters will not be grappling (though the Druid, Cleric, and Wizard all might be able to grapple using magic…from a distance…based on IQ…). This usually implies that not only are such folks not likely to grapple, they should avoid being grappled as well.

Note that Lizbet, the deliberately over-the-top Wrestler from Hall of Judgment, 2nd Edition gleefully abuses all the loopholes and adders, delivering an effective ST 28 and 3d+5 control points off of Wrestling-15. She’s near the peak of what you can do…and it’s a LOT.

The Opposition

It just doesn’t take much in the way of a grapple to start racking up significant DX penalties. Your typical human and humanoid opposition is probably rockin’ ST 11 through ST 15 or so, meaning 6-8 CP for -4 to DX starting to apply, and many of these characters sport Wrestling and grappling abilities at DX or not much higher. So the first successful attack lands at -2 to DX in the first attack…and if the grapple isn’t broken right then (and remember: rolling DX or Wrestling at -2, with CP removal in the 1d-2 to 1d+2 range is not a sure thing) it’s downward-spiral city.

Monsters are a different story. They can rock in at arbitrarily high ST. The thurs is a type of troll from Hall of Judgment (2nd Edition), and comes in with ST 24 but only DX 9. A thurs with Wrestling-10 (DX+1) gets effective ST 25 for 2d+2 base, and +1 per die hits 2d+4 per grapple. Low DX hampers the ability to score, but once it’s on there, 11 CP will put a crimp on nearly anyone, and a good roll hits the -6 to DX for all but the wrestler.

Monsters with tentacles, multiple limbs, or crocodile-strength jaws are as legion as the GM wants to make them.

Resistance is Futile

The key here in both directions is not “fight back effectively.” It’s don’t get grabbed in the first place.

I’ll admit I find that vaguely unsatisfying.

What to do?

Do Nothing. Look, characters that are good at grappling paid good points to be that way, and denying the ability to be awesome is about as brutal a removal as agency as one can ask for. Also: sure, you can dominate ONE OTHER GUY. But as my old martial arts master used to say: “the problem with gangs is there’s always more than one.” If the monsters/foes bring friends, the ability to immobilize one or two, but only one at a time, is limited. The flip side of that is on the PCs. Getting grabbed by Tentacle McTentaclepants zilching out a heavy hitter is a useful tactical challenge for the players, and while Lord Nelson’s advice (“never mind the maneuvers, just go straight at ’em) has its place, making folks occasionally think about something else can be fun too.

Lower Counter-Grappling Penalties. That’s really the only other thing. Incentivize counter-grappling by (say) halving the penalties applied on you if you attack to break free. So light grapples are only -1, half ST to just shy of full ST are -2, full ST on you is only -3, etc. Even getting grabbed at 2x your ST is “only” -6, which heroic PCs can probably eat. It actually helps the high-DX, low-ST set as well, as the Swashbuckler and Martial Artist will likely be able to remove a few CP every time, and their defenses are high enough in this situation to make putting more CP on them difficult.

What about more CP for Breaking Free? It’s the DX penalties that cripple the ability to wriggle out. Failing repeatedly to remove even larger sums of CP is still failing.

Parting Shot

I really have no idea if this is good or needed. But while real grappling matches tend to feature a LOT of back and forth and rolling around, GURPS/Powered by GURPS ones tend to be a bit more one-sided.

Now, this actually mirrors the rest of the system. By and large, the first person to take a good hit has begun the process of needing to seriously reconsider their life choices. So from a design perspective, having grappling work like this might be a feature, not a bug. Spending a bunch of points on an ability only to have it easily countered is likely frustrating.

But if in your games, you find that one-way ratchet unsatisfying…try lowering penalties to break free/counter-grapple. Let me know how it goes.