I'd allow for it on a restrain if your asking for advice on how it would function. Athletics versus either constitution save or athletics. Dealing unarmed damage and forcing disadvantage onto the target if they couldn't get out of it the first time. After each turn it multiplies its damage by 2. 1>2>4>8 because of lung capacity and each round taking 6 seconds.
Can't think of a way to balance it without making it either harder than it should be, or easier than it should be, so in general I just wouldn't let the choker do it very often. If you're going to allow it once or twice, maybe just have the choke-ee roll a death save at the end of each round that they fail to break free from restraint, after three fails they've dropped unconscious. Considering death saves are a little easier than 50/50, should take someone 3-6 rounds to fall unconscious, on top of the chance that they might break out of the grapple earlier, which sounds like enough of a pain in the ass to discourage players from doing it too often.
Grapple check to choke. In combat against a hostile creature I would consider disadvantage since you are targeting a small specific area and while in combat the enemy would know to be wary of its throat and ready to respond to you. But straight check out of combat because it would be a surprise and the target is not actively ready for you.
On success the target would immediately begin choking. There are rules for this in PHB.
Chapter 8: Adventuring >> The Environment >> Suffocating:
A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds).
When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can't regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes. If it starts suffocating, it has 2 rounds to reach air before it drops to 0 hit points.
So, if PC wants to choke an enemy it makes the grapple check and on success the enemy begins choking. If the enemy had a CON modifier of +3 it has 3 rounds - or 3 turns, to escape the choke. They can escape using the normal rules for grappling and neither has advantage or disadvantage for the grapple unless some other means grants it. If it fails to escape it drops to 0 HP, is dying, and starts making saving throws but 3 successes does not stabilise it - they continue to make saving throws until they are no longer choked and can breathe again or until they get 3 failures. If they get to breathe before they die and have 3 successes they immediately stabilise.
I would also let characters use a non-lethal version, a chokehold, where if the target drops to 0 hp and goes unconscious but the character doing the chokehold immediately stops at this, the choked character auto-stabilises.
Choked characters follows normal rules on grapples but also cannot speak.
Choking also would only work on creatures if the choker can actually get their arms around their neck.
The tricky thing about figuring out how to make choking or strangulation work as an attack is that the people most likely to want to perform this action (i.e. rogues and other stealthy characters) are the least likely to be able to successfully pull it off. Cyb3rM1ndhas a good set of base rules to work from, but you would probably have to homebrew a simple weapon like a garrote that does no damage (like a net), has a special property to allow for a choking attack, and has the finesse property. Using the net's special property as a guideline, I would write the special property's rule something like this:
Garrote. A Large or smaller creature hit by a garrote while surprised is choking until it is freed or the creature who attacked it moves away from the target creature or uses their action to do anything else. A garrote has no effect on creatures that are formless, or creatures that are Huge or larger. A creature with multiple heads is not choking until all heads are choking. A creature can use its action to make a DC 12 Strength check, freeing itself or another creature within its reach on a success. A creature attempting to free itself makes the Strength check with disadvantage. Dealing 2 slashing damage to the garrote (AC 18) also frees the creature without harming it, ending the effect and destroying the garrote. When you use an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction to Attack with a garrote, you can make only one Attack regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.
The first sentence is a little wordy, but I believe this covers all the usual combat options. However, a quick note, this rule assumes the garrote is simple everyday material. A magical garrote or one made from exotic materials would of course have different properties.
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Bark side up, bark side down, it really, truly does not matter.
So is the main effect of choking stopping air from getting to the lungs or stopping blood flow to the brain? It seems like it would make a difference in how quickly the effects occur.
Suffocation rules work fine if you mean an air choke like putting a bag over someone's head or covering their nose and mouth. Blood chokes are much faster and more effective in real life but hell if I could say whether a triangle choke or RNC would work on a goblin... or a troll... or a dragon.
There are no specific rules for actively choking another creature. RAW, this falls under the category of an Unarmed Strike. You cause damage to their trachea with each attack (squeezing of the neck). When you've damaged their trachea enough to be reduced to 0 HP (crushed), the creature begins dying.
Unless the creature is Incapacitated, or in an environment/environmental circumstance where it is not physically possible to breathe (like with some spell effects), they are capable of resisting you and taking breath. You cannot circumvent game mechanics in this way. If the creature is capable of breathing, or capable of resisting you, they are.
You can make attacks with an Unarmed Strike until the creature is incapable of resisting (0 HP), or some other method of causing the Incapacitated condition. Then you can begin tracking their suffocation.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
There's an argument to be made that a homebrew grappling, choking and more developed unarmed combat system could be a benefit to your game if your campaign leaned that way. If you decide to make one, I would be very interested to see what you come up with. Since this is the rules subforum, I'm sorry to say that the rules concerning what you are interested in are pretty basic and probably not all that satisfying for you.
Does the book have good rules for what happens when you do? As has been pointed out, not really.
The closest option is probably Cybermind's analysis, using the "Is Choking? [Y/N]" rules for suffocation. It's not a great solution, but it is a solution. Homebrew options are technically beyond the scope of this subforum but homebrew proposals get thrown around in here all the time when the official R&GM answer is "there really aren't good rules for this situation".
Grappling is weird because certain characters you'd naturally expect would be very good at grappling - i.e. monks - often suck royal donkey wang at it, while other characters end up as Master Wrasslors as a byproduct of simply being good at physicality, i.e. Athletics. Fixing this requires some hefty homebrew work, however - there's not really any quick, simple rules tweak that suddenly makes grappling better. Texas is correct - if your table is leaning hard enough into unarmed combat and grappling for this to be a serious issue and not just a one-off "I wonder if..." question, then you would benefit from drawing up an Enhanced Unarmed Combat ruleset.
Or finding one you like from the swarming legion of such options no doubt available online.
As a matter of fact, this is actually a big YES YES.
It is very much possible, there are rules about it, and it can be very, very, very effective against low CR monsters, or encounters with few enemies.
There are no rules about choke holds themselves in the PHB or basic rules, but there are rules about suffocating.
A creature can hold its breath for a number of minutes equal to 1 + its Constitution modifier (minimum of 30 seconds).
When a creature runs out of breath or is choking, it can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 Hit Points and is dying, and it can’t regain Hit Points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
For example, a creature with a Constitution of 14 can hold its breath for 3 minutes. If it starts suffocating, it has 2 rounds to reach air before it drops to 0 Hit Points.
"When a creature runs out of breath or is choking..."
One way to choke someone is through a rear naked choke or another classic choke hold.
How you would do it is you would specify to grapple a target's neck. Roll the Strength(Athletics) vs Strength(Athletics)/Dexterity(Acrobatics) check. If you win, your next goal is to maintain the grapple for as long as you can, or until the DM says that he dies.
With the example of the creature with a CON score of 14, they would die(technically drop to 0 hp) in 2 rounds.
Remember, how long a creature can hold their breath for is different than how long someone can survive while being choked.
So Polymorph into a Storm giant and suffocate that tarrasque!
I know of 3 NPC's that have a garrotte action as part of their stat blocks: Ettercap (variant), Meazel and Ghald. There are 2 versions of this attack, with the Ettercap (variant) and Ghald using one method and Meazel using the other. I will call these methods method 1 and 2 respectively.
Method 1: The attack modifier can use strength or dexterity and can only be used on a target that's medium or smaller that the attacker has advantage on the attack roll against. The attack deals 1d4+str/dex bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 8+str/dex+prof bonus). Until the grapple ends, the attacker has advantage on all attack rolls against the target and the target cannot breathe. If the target fails to break out of the grapple before a number of rounds equal to their con modifier (minimum of 1) the targets hp fall to 0hp.
Method 2: The attack modifier can use strength or dexterity and can only be used on a target that's medium or smaller. The attack deals 1d6+str/dex bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 8+str/dex+prof bonus). Until the grapple ends, the target takes 2d6+str/dex bludgeoning damage at the start of each of the attackers turns and the attacker cannot make weapon attacks during this time.
Whilst Method 2 does more damage and doesn't require advantage, it doesn't restrict the targets breathing. I prefer the first method as I feel like you should NEED advantage in order to garrotte someone and not just be able to do it in open combat.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu blue belt here. I don't personally see a need for an additional rule to simulate a choke.
The way we adjudicate this at our table is just to use the grappling rules as written, and let players use unarmed damage to simulate the choke. I think folks get too hung up on the idea of an "Unarmed Strike" being a STRIKE, as in winding up and swinging at someone with a hand, foot, knee, elbow, or headbutt. But there's no reason you can't describe your unarmed attack damage as the crushing pressure of a body lock, the impact from the ground when you pull off a successful Trip attack (here's to you, Way of the Open Hand Monks), or a successfully executed rear naked choke that puts the target to sleep.
If you're describing any kind of choke (what we call a "vascular neck restraint"), when the grappled opponent's hit points drop to zero, they're out. Just use the rule from page 198 of the Player's Handbook. "An attacker who reduces a creature to zero hit points with a melee attack may choose to knock them out instead of kill them."
Simple and straightforward.
I'd agree in a real world type situation being a BJJ practitioner myself. But I would probably not allow a blood choke in a game I DM unless the character was a monk and whomever they were choking out was a human or very close to it. I doubt the anatomy of many of the monsters would be very similar to humans and the carotid may not be in a place that could be pinched off. Not to mention you pop back up fairly quickly from a blood choke so the drop to 0 and then make death saves wouldn't be too realistic.
As someone who has done a fair bit of pajama rasslin myself, I agree that BJJ and D&D are both hilarious and offer interesting opportunities to explore body mechanics and leverage. Where else can you try a triple-leg takedown on a xorn or tag team a rear naked choke on an ettin? Aside from that, I see this is an older thread that has been bumped and I had posted similarly before. I will reiterate that if anyone feels like taking a crack at writing a more robust grappling system for 5e, I would love to take a look at it and consider incorporating it into my game.
The problem with a blanket rule for choking is that you essentially are giving just about every monster the ability to do it also, which would be problematic to balance. There's probably a reason so few monsters have suffocation/choking as an attack.
How you would do it is you would specify to grapple a target's neck. Roll the Strength(Athletics) vs Strength(Athletics)/Dexterity(Acrobatics) check. If you win, your next goal is to maintain the grapple for as long as you can, or until the DM says that he dies. With the example of the creature with a CON score of 14, they would die(technically drop to 0 hp) in 2 rounds.
What you are describing here is mechanically just a grapple, which by the rules do no damage. You can't just say "I grapple his neck" to upgrade that to death in 2 rounds.
That's like swinging your sword and saying "I stab out his eyes" and claiming that the monster is now permanently blind. D&D combat just doesn't work that way.
Outside of combat, I'd probably allow a silent choke takedown through an opposed check. But once enemies are alert and fighting, you are in combat rules and you need to consider that any "I win" buttons you allow in combat will be used forever after.
Not sure if I like this; but if one were to incorporate it, chokes should probably be limited without restrictions, so to speak, to humanoids. Maybe beasts lacking natural armor if you did want to try to blood choke a horse. Aberrations and Abominations probably have choke immunity. Other types of monsters would range from immunity to resistance.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Would you just use unarmed strike or is it just a no no
The combat rules let you improvise an action. The DM decides how that works. I'd look at the Grappler feat for inspiration.
I'd allow for it on a restrain if your asking for advice on how it would function. Athletics versus either constitution save or athletics. Dealing unarmed damage and forcing disadvantage onto the target if they couldn't get out of it the first time. After each turn it multiplies its damage by 2. 1>2>4>8 because of lung capacity and each round taking 6 seconds.
Can't think of a way to balance it without making it either harder than it should be, or easier than it should be, so in general I just wouldn't let the choker do it very often. If you're going to allow it once or twice, maybe just have the choke-ee roll a death save at the end of each round that they fail to break free from restraint, after three fails they've dropped unconscious. Considering death saves are a little easier than 50/50, should take someone 3-6 rounds to fall unconscious, on top of the chance that they might break out of the grapple earlier, which sounds like enough of a pain in the ass to discourage players from doing it too often.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
Grapple check to choke. In combat against a hostile creature I would consider disadvantage since you are targeting a small specific area and while in combat the enemy would know to be wary of its throat and ready to respond to you. But straight check out of combat because it would be a surprise and the target is not actively ready for you.
On success the target would immediately begin choking. There are rules for this in PHB.
So, if PC wants to choke an enemy it makes the grapple check and on success the enemy begins choking. If the enemy had a CON modifier of +3 it has 3 rounds - or 3 turns, to escape the choke. They can escape using the normal rules for grappling and neither has advantage or disadvantage for the grapple unless some other means grants it. If it fails to escape it drops to 0 HP, is dying, and starts making saving throws but 3 successes does not stabilise it - they continue to make saving throws until they are no longer choked and can breathe again or until they get 3 failures. If they get to breathe before they die and have 3 successes they immediately stabilise.
I would also let characters use a non-lethal version, a chokehold, where if the target drops to 0 hp and goes unconscious but the character doing the chokehold immediately stops at this, the choked character auto-stabilises.
Choked characters follows normal rules on grapples but also cannot speak.
Choking also would only work on creatures if the choker can actually get their arms around their neck.
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The tricky thing about figuring out how to make choking or strangulation work as an attack is that the people most likely to want to perform this action (i.e. rogues and other stealthy characters) are the least likely to be able to successfully pull it off. Cyb3rM1nd has a good set of base rules to work from, but you would probably have to homebrew a simple weapon like a garrote that does no damage (like a net), has a special property to allow for a choking attack, and has the finesse property. Using the net's special property as a guideline, I would write the special property's rule something like this:
Garrote. A Large or smaller creature hit by a garrote while surprised is choking until it is freed or the creature who attacked it moves away from the target creature or uses their action to do anything else. A garrote has no effect on creatures that are formless, or creatures that are Huge or larger. A creature with multiple heads is not choking until all heads are choking. A creature can use its action to make a DC 12 Strength check, freeing itself or another creature within its reach on a success. A creature attempting to free itself makes the Strength check with disadvantage. Dealing 2 slashing damage to the garrote (AC 18) also frees the creature without harming it, ending the effect and destroying the garrote. When you use an action, Bonus Action, or Reaction to Attack with a garrote, you can make only one Attack regardless of the number of attacks you can normally make.
The first sentence is a little wordy, but I believe this covers all the usual combat options. However, a quick note, this rule assumes the garrote is simple everyday material. A magical garrote or one made from exotic materials would of course have different properties.
Bark side up, bark side down, it really, truly does not matter.
So is the main effect of choking stopping air from getting to the lungs or stopping blood flow to the brain? It seems like it would make a difference in how quickly the effects occur.
Suffocation rules work fine if you mean an air choke like putting a bag over someone's head or covering their nose and mouth. Blood chokes are much faster and more effective in real life but hell if I could say whether a triangle choke or RNC would work on a goblin... or a troll... or a dragon.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
DMing ain't easy, yo.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
There are no specific rules for actively choking another creature. RAW, this falls under the category of an Unarmed Strike. You cause damage to their trachea with each attack (squeezing of the neck). When you've damaged their trachea enough to be reduced to 0 HP (crushed), the creature begins dying.
Unless the creature is Incapacitated, or in an environment/environmental circumstance where it is not physically possible to breathe (like with some spell effects), they are capable of resisting you and taking breath. You cannot circumvent game mechanics in this way. If the creature is capable of breathing, or capable of resisting you, they are.
You can make attacks with an Unarmed Strike until the creature is incapable of resisting (0 HP), or some other method of causing the Incapacitated condition. Then you can begin tracking their suffocation.
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
There's an argument to be made that a homebrew grappling, choking and more developed unarmed combat system could be a benefit to your game if your campaign leaned that way. If you decide to make one, I would be very interested to see what you come up with. Since this is the rules subforum, I'm sorry to say that the rules concerning what you are interested in are pretty basic and probably not all that satisfying for you.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
Can you? Yes.
Does the book have good rules for what happens when you do? As has been pointed out, not really.
The closest option is probably Cybermind's analysis, using the "Is Choking? [Y/N]" rules for suffocation. It's not a great solution, but it is a solution. Homebrew options are technically beyond the scope of this subforum but homebrew proposals get thrown around in here all the time when the official R&GM answer is "there really aren't good rules for this situation".
Grappling is weird because certain characters you'd naturally expect would be very good at grappling - i.e. monks - often suck royal donkey wang at it, while other characters end up as Master Wrasslors as a byproduct of simply being good at physicality, i.e. Athletics. Fixing this requires some hefty homebrew work, however - there's not really any quick, simple rules tweak that suddenly makes grappling better. Texas is correct - if your table is leaning hard enough into unarmed combat and grappling for this to be a serious issue and not just a one-off "I wonder if..." question, then you would benefit from drawing up an Enhanced Unarmed Combat ruleset.
Or finding one you like from the swarming legion of such options no doubt available online.
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Thinking of starting ANOTHER thread asking why Epic Boons haven't been implemented? Read this first to learn why you shouldn't!
As a matter of fact, this is actually a big YES YES.
It is very much possible, there are rules about it, and it can be very, very, very effective against low CR monsters, or encounters with few enemies.
There are no rules about choke holds themselves in the PHB or basic rules, but there are rules about suffocating.
"When a creature runs out of breath or is choking..."
One way to choke someone is through a rear naked choke or another classic choke hold.
How you would do it is you would specify to grapple a target's neck. Roll the Strength(Athletics) vs Strength(Athletics)/Dexterity(Acrobatics) check. If you win, your next goal is to maintain the grapple for as long as you can, or until the DM says that he dies.
With the example of the creature with a CON score of 14, they would die(technically drop to 0 hp) in 2 rounds.
Remember, how long a creature can hold their breath for is different than how long someone can survive while being choked.
So Polymorph into a Storm giant and suffocate that tarrasque!
I know of 3 NPC's that have a garrotte action as part of their stat blocks: Ettercap (variant), Meazel and Ghald. There are 2 versions of this attack, with the Ettercap (variant) and Ghald using one method and Meazel using the other. I will call these methods method 1 and 2 respectively.
Method 1: The attack modifier can use strength or dexterity and can only be used on a target that's medium or smaller that the attacker has advantage on the attack roll against. The attack deals 1d4+str/dex bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 8+str/dex+prof bonus). Until the grapple ends, the attacker has advantage on all attack rolls against the target and the target cannot breathe. If the target fails to break out of the grapple before a number of rounds equal to their con modifier (minimum of 1) the targets hp fall to 0hp.
Method 2: The attack modifier can use strength or dexterity and can only be used on a target that's medium or smaller. The attack deals 1d6+str/dex bludgeoning damage and the target is grappled (escape DC 8+str/dex+prof bonus). Until the grapple ends, the target takes 2d6+str/dex bludgeoning damage at the start of each of the attackers turns and the attacker cannot make weapon attacks during this time.
Whilst Method 2 does more damage and doesn't require advantage, it doesn't restrict the targets breathing. I prefer the first method as I feel like you should NEED advantage in order to garrotte someone and not just be able to do it in open combat.
I'd agree in a real world type situation being a BJJ practitioner myself. But I would probably not allow a blood choke in a game I DM unless the character was a monk and whomever they were choking out was a human or very close to it. I doubt the anatomy of many of the monsters would be very similar to humans and the carotid may not be in a place that could be pinched off. Not to mention you pop back up fairly quickly from a blood choke so the drop to 0 and then make death saves wouldn't be too realistic.
As someone who has done a fair bit of pajama rasslin myself, I agree that BJJ and D&D are both hilarious and offer interesting opportunities to explore body mechanics and leverage. Where else can you try a triple-leg takedown on a xorn or tag team a rear naked choke on an ettin? Aside from that, I see this is an older thread that has been bumped and I had posted similarly before. I will reiterate that if anyone feels like taking a crack at writing a more robust grappling system for 5e, I would love to take a look at it and consider incorporating it into my game.
"Not all those who wander are lost"
The problem with a blanket rule for choking is that you essentially are giving just about every monster the ability to do it also, which would be problematic to balance. There's probably a reason so few monsters have suffocation/choking as an attack.
What you are describing here is mechanically just a grapple, which by the rules do no damage. You can't just say "I grapple his neck" to upgrade that to death in 2 rounds.
That's like swinging your sword and saying "I stab out his eyes" and claiming that the monster is now permanently blind. D&D combat just doesn't work that way.
Outside of combat, I'd probably allow a silent choke takedown through an opposed check. But once enemies are alert and fighting, you are in combat rules and you need to consider that any "I win" buttons you allow in combat will be used forever after.
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Not sure if I like this; but if one were to incorporate it, chokes should probably be limited without restrictions, so to speak, to humanoids. Maybe beasts lacking natural armor if you did want to try to blood choke a horse. Aberrations and Abominations probably have choke immunity. Other types of monsters would range from immunity to resistance.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
And only vs humanoids who weren't wearing armour that might include a gorget as part of its pieces.