Fantastic Dungeon Grapples: ST differential for breaking free

Yesterday I made a post about how breaking free is harder than perhaps it should be in Fantastic Dungeon Grappling. Is this true? Does it matter? If it does, what’s the fix?

The Normal Rules

Consider: two identical ST fighters, let’s say ST 13, DX 12, Wrestling-12 (I chose ST 13 deliberately as it will eventually mean 1d control points). They’re grappling each other in the regular rules. One wants to break free. Accordingly, as per p. B371 the grappler rolls at +5 for using both hands, and it’s a contest of ST. So ST 18 vs ST 13. Our poor ST 13 guy will win about one time in seven. Grappling is binary: you’re grappled or you ain’t. And if you are, unless you have ST significantly higher than your foe, you’re going to stay that way.

(Alternately: if you’re as strong as your foe, on the average it’ll take you five or ten seconds to shed the grapple. In the scope of things from a real-world perspective, this isn’t necessarily far wrong. In a turn-based game with one-second time increments, this is “the entire combat” in many cases. You decide if this is a problem or not.)

In Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, it’s handled differently and the grapple can be anywhere from “really weak” to “dominating.”

After one successful grapple, one of our fighters up there will apply 3-4 control points on his foe on the average, who will be at -2 to DX as a result. To break free, he attacks back, at -2 due to the existing grapple. he will hit 50% of the time; his foe gets to parry the counter-grapple (in that sense, it’s a regular attack). Wrestling-12 parries 37% of the time (on a 9). So the person grappled will on the average successfully counter grapple about one third of their attempts, cancelling out the grapple and breaking free if they succeed…but on the average they will NOT succeed.

The next round, grappler attacks again; defender is at -2 to skill and -1 to Parry. So now it’s 75% chance of a hit, 25% of a parry, and one time in two an extra 3-4 CP are scored. Now we’re at -4 to DX for being 6 or more (half the target’s ST), and it got that much harder.

As noted yesterday . . . breaking free is hard to do.

Grappling BACK is the usual answer to even things out, but even that suffers from the same basic math. The attack is penalized to to being grappled, parries still apply. So there’s still a strong first-mover advantage.

Hey, it’s Thurs-day

Well, no. It’s a Friday. But the thurs is a brutish faerie that is one of several types of trolls found in Nordlond. The key is that it’s ST 24 (so beefy), but only DX 9.

What does this mean? Versus the typical 250-point combatants that are likely to come face to face with it (as opposed to shooting it full of arrows from 50 feet away or immolating it with an 18d fireball) it is almost certainly true that despite its fearsome strength, it is unlikely to ever pose even a tiny threat. It hits only 1/3 or so of the time with a grapple, half the time with a claw, and 3/4 of the time with its club…and almost certainly our heroes will have defenses that negate those attacks half the time or more (Skill-14 to Skill-20 in hand to hand combat, some with Combat Reflexes and many with the option to retreat).

Grappling, which is where with 2d+1 CP per successful attack, should be important for it. One successful hit and most foes are at -4 DX, and it can apply up to 24 CP without having to All-Out Attack.

But it’s never really going to HIT the delvers, except by luck on several levels.

If it does hit (maybe the knight was looking the other way), out of the box our knights and holy warriors rock effectively ST 14, Wrestling-14, and either 1d or 1d+1 for CP. This is more interesting, because even at -4, they’ll attack to break free 50% of the time, and the thurs fails to parry about five times in six. But facing 8 CP, the delver can’t fully break free in one turn, but can remove some CP. The thurs? Attacking to increase CP for more grapples is a better bet, but only rolls a hit a bit more than 1/3 of the time; the -2 to Parry for the delver makes it even less frequent. It’ll increase its CP by 8 every four turns or so. The delver decreases by 3.5 to 4.5 every second or third turn. This is actually a somewhat interesting case, as the hero scores more frequently with lower CP removal, but every time the thurs hits, it’s a big deal. Assuming both of then fail to remember that they’re weapon fighters.

In reality, our hero uses an Armed Grapple with an axe at Armed Grapple-18 or so for the same thrust-based CP while hooking, or just decides that the best way to grapple is to break the thurs’ skull open with said axe, likely with the benefit of Weapon Master and other goodies.

But what happens when the thurs gets grappled by the knight?

Turning the Tables

I mean, it’s not an optimum strategy (that would be the aforementioned axe). But if our Wrestling-14 knight goes after the thurs, he will probably hit: 90% hit chance and only 15-25% chance to parry, about the same to dodge. So by and large, knight will eventually land a grapple on thurs, and will do so in all probability before thurs can return the favor.

So, that’s about 4 CP on a ST 24 critter. More than 1/10 ST, so the thurs will feel it, but not 12, so we’ll hang out at -2 to DX for a while. But that means the thurs is operating at DX 7. Counter-grapples have only a 14% hit chance at all, and after the knight parries half the time or more, really something like “good luck,” with only a 1 in 14 chance to be able to apply its prodigious ST. The thurs can’t use the humongous club in close combat. So even the brawling attack is down to Brawling-8, so one in eight lands after accounting for the knight’s defense.

The maximum CP the knight can apply without AoA is 14. That puts thurs at -4…and stays there. If he chooses to AoA, knight can reach 28, which (woo hoo) is only enough to put thurs at -6 to DX. That’d reduce it to DX 3, but seriously, it was bad enough at DX 5. Grappling at a 5 or less, brawling at a 6.

This is Wesley vs Fezzik here. And we’re not even talking a ST 17 barbarian with Wrestling-13, or one who drops a few points into it to get to DX+2, which gives effectively ST 19 for raw consideration, and the +1/die bonus (which is another 2 CP) as well…2d+1, the same as the thurs. If they invest somewhat heavily (14 extra points) in Wrestling skill, they can hit the +2/die at DX+4, and be at 2d+3.

(That’s super respectable, but if you really want control point cheese, convince your GM to allow Wrestling Master from Pyramid #3/111. That has your ST bonus from Wrestling uncapped, so if you’re at DX+4, you get effectively +4 to ST; DX+10? Yeah. +10 to ST. Yowzers.)

In any case, what this seems to show is that for an out-of-the gate knight or holy warrior, and even more so for a barbarian, a creature that is very strong, but slow, is only sorta scary to be grappled by, since by and large you can probably break free in time. The best defense is still a good offense, with knights and holy warriors with balanced ST and skill (as opposed to the high-skill, low ST Swashbuckler and Martial Artist)

What About Breaking Free?

Oh, right.

Basically, Exxar, the Chaotic GM, and I took a look at what would happen if a stronger grappler could add the ST differential between themselves and their for to the hit roll ONLY for the purposes of breaking free.

So instead of our thurs having to rely on their horrid DX to break free of our knight, their roll when attacking to break free is boosted by the difference between their effective grapple ST (24) and that of the target (ST 14). That means the hit roll favors the giant huge creature when shedding grapples. The knight is going to have to work it a lot harder to stay on top of poor Fezzik the Thurs. Even grappled at -2 or -4 to DX, the bonus to to how strong the thurs is makes it always a struggle to keep them grappled. The higher skill of the delvers will be telling here, as while the strong thurs has a very high hit chance, skilled grapplers will parry that counter-grapple.

Also, the “only breaking free” means that it doesn’t help grappling Westley BACK.

Also: an appropriately awesome character (like our ST 17 barbarian with Wrestling at DX+4, for effective ST 19 and Wrestling-17 and 2d+3 CP per hit) is looking at the thurs only being five points stronger than he is. So very quickly Clampy the Barbarian can rack up enough to put the thurs at -4 to DX, and that means that even with the ST bonus the thurs tries to break free at a success rate of 50%…and will be parried more than half the time. And does more CP per successful hit than the thurs anyway.

This is good, because it lets awesome characters be awesome, and protects the “I can grapple and suplex a troll” niche for that barbarian.

It also means that if you’re a knight or holy warrior, in order to successfully grapple a troll, you need to use grappling weapons or bring friends.

And that doesn’t bother me at all.