In a real fight, they usually end up wrestling on ground partly because if someone has a hold of you, you can't just easily push them away. So maybe your intuition is bad.
Maybe. Plenty of folks have managed to break away from a grappling attacker without getting grounded. Ask anybody who's ever managed to escape a mugging.
I just know a lot of D&D players have a weird fixation on "if the rules don't explicitly say you can do it, it's because you can't do it", which is one of the absolute dumbest statements anybody can make about the game. The entire reason the DM exists is to adjudicate times/actions where there is no clear rule; if that wasn't the case we'd just all be playing the video game and having done with it. Using the new Unarmed rules to try and shove a grappler away is an elegant fix to the fact that grappling, i.e. the real-world methodology behind grabbing/wrestling somebody, does not and never has worked properly in turn-based fights. No one has ever invented turn-based grappling that wasn't absolute garbage because grappling is 100% centered on things turn-based "I slap him then he slaps me" fight engines cannot account for.
Even Pete's version leaves the definition of "drag or carry" unstated, and I guarantee people will complain about the line "The Condition also ends if something results in you being outside the grapple’s range". Namely: "what counts as 'Something'? What counts as 'Something'?! 'Something' is so vague! What does SOMETHING mean?!" because they do it now, with rules that state an end condition rather than an end action.
Well, at least I got a good laugh out of reading this last paragraph.
a) Drag and carry absolutely should be defined somewhere, but not in the Grapple rules.
b) Anyone who thinks the current rule is "good enough just leave it to the DM" is not paying attention to the number of posts on this thread about this issue. Its just a bad rule as currently written.
c) The simple/slight changes I suggested solve almost every problem with the current version of the new Grappled rules, without turning it into a 3.5 ruleset as some think it would require.
I suppose. Just annoys me that this is yet another piece of the OPT document that's going to get thrown out entirely because people literally nitpicked it to death. With some time to digest I'd come around to the idea that these new grapple rules were, in fact, better than the existing rules (in large part because of how clean and simple the "shove to break away" interaction was), but...well. I poke my nose in this thread and discover that we're well on our way to losing this change too. Ardlings are dead, people screamed down the new crit rules, one freaking guy single-handedly screamed down the new background methodology...the whole damn document is dead in the water and I honestly hate it.
I suppose. Just annoys me that this is yet another piece of the OPT document that's going to get thrown out entirely because people literally nitpicked it to death. With some time to digest I'd come around to the idea that these new grapple rules were, in fact, better than the existing rules (in large part because of how clean and simple the "shove to break away" interaction was), but...well. I poke my nose in this thread and discover that we're well on our way to losing this change too. Ardlings are dead, people screamed down the new crit rules, one freaking guy single-handedly screamed down the new background methodology...the whole damn document is dead in the water and I honestly hate it.
Blegh.
LOL! So you have personally seen the survey results and know for a fact that WotC decided to just toss everything in the trash and not bother?
First off, no one is saying you shouldn't be able to use one of your attack actions to shove away a grappler, just that the rules should make it clear. I can't for the life of me figure out why making a few minor adjustments to the wording to make the intent more clear before it is published is some how bad.
You'd swear that ninety percent of the userbase are vampires and that the OPT document is a twenty-pound sack of garlic covered in silver shavings soaked in Sunny D. I've seen calmer, more measured reactions to literal war than I've seen in this forum from people who've already decided that this one document means D&D Is Ruined Forever and that the entirety of the 1DD ruleset - which hasn't even been written yet! - is "Fourth Edition but ten thousand times worse!"
Like, holy god damn. If this place had its say the entire 1DD initiative would be scrapped, everybody at Wizards from J-Craw on down to the janitors would not only be fired but also lined up against a wall and shot, and anybody who left any sort of feedback on the survey that wasn't total 100% rejection of the entire idea would be banned not just from DDB, but from the entirety of tabletop gaming forever.
Yes Yurei, I have seen the dumpster fire that is the forums, but I also realize this is a very small part of the community. I, for one, am not against most of what is in the UA. Are there some things that I DON'T like? Of course, but most of it is pretty good. The only reason I am even on this thread advocating for clearer wording, is that I think the new grapple rules have potential. They aren't perfect, but nothing ever is, but that doesn't mean that we should give up even trying.
Edit: As a side note, I don't hate Ardlings either, but for those that want them to replace Aasimar completely, this is one Tiefling that will fight for my pretty golden bois till the bitter end.
The vocal minority argument doesn't fly nearly as well when that same vocal minority is also the group most likely to engage with the feedback process. Casual Sally isn't going to be filling out the 1DD survey, at least not in dramatic numbers. The silent majority is effectively invisible in this case, as anyone who doesn't engage with the feedback surveys is basically white noise. Wizards will have ways of gauging those people's reactions, certainly, but almost by definition those ways will be cruder, less reliable, and given less weight than direct, active feedback from engaged players participating in the process.
I'd be willing to bet five dollars that not one single component of the OPT document will be retained in any form moving forward. Which sucks, because the species updates were a pretty good framework and the new background crafting system was fantastic. But as per usual, the evil planet-sized gibbering mouther that is The D&D Playerbase will destroy the whole thing before it even sees the light of day.
I would be very sad to see the species/background/feat portion of the document go. It was my favorite part. Though I would have liked Aasimar to make it into the PHB too, but I'll live.
The vocal minority argument doesn't fly nearly as well when that same vocal minority is also the group most likely to engage with the feedback process.
The vocal minority will respond at a higher rate than the average reader, but it's an incredibly small minority. DDB has something like 10 million users, if they get a 0.1% response rate that 10,000 people still vastly outweighs the entire vocal minority.
A point-one response rate is likely very generous from the Silent Majority. The Silent Majority is silent. It doesn't care. If they don't like something Wizards does, they just shrug and leave. They're not invested, they never will be. That's different from not being worth the time of day, a'la the usual grognard gatekeeper argument, but it does mean they don't generally care enough to take a thirty-minute survey to Shape The Future of D&D. It's just not worth their time spent, if they paid attention to the OPT document at all in the first place. Even with DDB helping with exposure, getting a trhousand replies from a ten million strong Silent Majority pool would be outstandingly thorough.
Nah. The D&D Playerbase, at this point in time, basically consists of a bunch of folks proclaiming "DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" so hard I have to wonder if they're trying to invent a new Power Word spell and/or warning everybody that a Marvel supervillain is coming. It's incredibly disheartening and honestly spoils most of the massive excitement I originally had in my heart for the 1DD playtest cycle. Like, the **** is even the point of any of these if every yaybo in the forum is going to spend the entire month for each new playtest document scremaing "THROW THIS TRASH OUT!!!" as loudly and stridently as it possibly can, half the time without even reading it first?
I suppose. Just annoys me that this is yet another piece of the OPT document that's going to get thrown out entirely because people literally nitpicked it to death. With some time to digest I'd come around to the idea that these new grapple rules were, in fact, better than the existing rules (in large part because of how clean and simple the "shove to break away" interaction was), but...well. I poke my nose in this thread and discover that we're well on our way to losing this change too.
I doubt that discussing relatively minor changes to the wording is going to cause the new grappling rules to be lost. With any luck, someone higher up will see the discussions and rule change suggestion, and we end up with a final rule that does not provoke this kind of discussion once it become official.
Most people commenting on these changes are basically in agreement with making slight changes to make the rule more clear and to more explicitly allow what probably was meant to be allowed.
A point-one response rate is likely very generous from the Silent Majority.
WotC is not perfect at market research, but they're also not incompetent. If the vocal minority was so very powerful, Monsters of the Multiverse would not exist in its current form. Honestly, random influencers doing youtube reviews (treantmonk answered the survey on channel; he was generally pretty positive) probably matter more than the forum loudmouths.
I doubt that discussing relatively minor changes to the wording is going to cause the new grappling rules to be lost. With any luck, someone higher up will see the discussions and rule change suggestion, and we end up with a final rule that does not provoke this kind of discussion once it become official.
Most people commenting on these changes are basically in agreement with making slight changes to make the rule more clear and to more explicitly allow what probably was meant to be allowed.
I took a look at your suggested changes and while they're pretty fantastic (the wording could be tightened up slightly, but only for the sake of brevity) at fixing WOTC's word salad to make the rules playable, I do think letting a Strength 3 Dexterity 10 human simply grapple an S18 warhorse half the time (because the horse's AC is 11) with no possible fix until the end of the horse's turn has negative consequences; the game already overly rewards Dexterity over Strength. But every possible fix I can think of would add more complexity than many people might be comfortable with, like requiring the grappling attack to beat the target's Passive Strength Save (which is 14 for a Warhorse).
But every possible fix I can think of would add more complexity than many people might be comfortable with, like requiring the grappling attack to beat the target's Passive Strength Save (which is 14 for a Warhorse).
The standard answer would be to have a save against the attacker's Strength save DC, either in addition to or as a replacement for the attack roll.
the answer is a DM saying "Timmy Twigshins the sixty-pound cripple cannot grapple a warhorse" and not permitting the attempt. Just because the rules say something does not mean a DM has to allow obvious discrepancies and impossibilities into their game.
So the DC to escape the grapple is 8 + Strength modifier + Proficiency Bonus. The DC is not tied to a skill. It reminds me a little of a Spell Save DC, except for martial classes. It really reminds me of the Battlemaster Combat Maneuver DC. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit of combining these ideas. For example, maybe the "Combat DC" could be the target of certain unarmed strikes when AC doesn't seem appropriate.
So the DC to escape the grapple is 8 + Strength modifier + Proficiency Bonus. The DC is not tied to a skill. It reminds me a little of a Spell Save DC, except for martial classes. It really reminds me of the Battlemaster Combat Maneuver DC. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit of combining these ideas. For example, maybe the "Combat DC" could be the target of certain unarmed strikes when AC doesn't seem appropriate.
Save DC is absolutely standardized at 8 + Ability Modifier + PB, but they usually just spell it out, because that's barely more verbose than, say, "strength-based save DC".
Honestly the only thing I think might get completely canned is the nat 20/1 rules on all d20 Tests.
I mean, I guarantee the new crit rules are gone, and this thread is proof the new Grapple system is toast and every other Unarmed improvement with it. We might keep "pick a feat at char level 1", but if the other half-dozen thread on it are anything to go by, the super cool building-block background system is as toast as the crit rules. Ardlings are dead in the water before they even hit the pool, the Inspiration rules are donezo even if humans getting Inspiration as a species feature is actually a really neat idea, and even the idea of new Origin-dependent spell lists layered over class spell lists got shot down harder than Santa Claus over Normandy. I think the only things that will stick are the Slowed condition and price standardization for tools and instruments, and frankly I wouldn't bet on Slowed sticking around, either.
And, in a case of both irony and deep anger, the whole Auto Success Nat 1/20 thing. Because the Internet is obsessed with turning Nat 20s into Instant Frat Parties and turning Nat 1s into "your tool breaks, your armor breaks, your sword breaks, your pants break, you fall into a twenty foot hole full of custard and goldfish poo and then the gods descend from on high to laugh at you for thirty straight minutes" instead of just failure.
I'm not sure on the point of Timmy the STR dump stats grappling a warhorse. I mean, even on a success... The warhorse rears, kicks Timmy in the face and crushes his skull.
Grappling is a great way to grab enemy aggro. Can Timmy tank a warhorse?
You'd swear that ninety percent of the userbase are vampires
Can I be one of them? Pretty please? I mean, I'd prefer being a devil or going kitsune, but I would settle for being a draculina.
Joking aside, but I made a sword bard ardling with fox (read faerie) fire, blade, and can dash-jump (bonus action "fly") across the map.
I am giving a serious look at Cthonic Tieflings pulling off a dhampir somehow. A bit stuck on the blood thing, manly need custom cantrip, but otherwise I think it could work.
Honestly the only thing I think might get completely canned is the nat 20/1 rules on all d20 Tests.
I mean, I guarantee the new crit rules are gone, and this thread is proof the new Grapple system is toast and every other Unarmed improvement with it. We might keep "pick a feat at char level 1", but if the other half-dozen thread on it are anything to go by, the super cool building-block background system is as toast as the crit rules. Ardlings are dead in the water before they even hit the pool, the Inspiration rules are donezo even if humans getting Inspiration as a species feature is actually a really neat idea, and even the idea of new Origin-dependent spell lists layered over class spell lists got shot down harder than Santa Claus over Normandy. I think the only things that will stick are the Slowed condition and price standardization for tools and instruments, and frankly I wouldn't bet on Slowed sticking around, either.
And, in a case of both irony and deep anger, the whole Auto Success Nat 1/20 thing. Because the Internet is obsessed with turning Nat 20s into Instant Frat Parties and turning Nat 1s into "your tool breaks, your armor breaks, your sword breaks, your pants break, you fall into a twenty foot hole full of custard and goldfish poo and then the gods descend from on high to laugh at you for thirty straight minutes" instead of just failure.
I only said that because that was the only change that JC indicated was experimental. All the other stuff might be tweaked, but I expect to still see them in some form or another.
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Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
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Well, at least I got a good laugh out of reading this last paragraph.
a) Drag and carry absolutely should be defined somewhere, but not in the Grapple rules.
b) Anyone who thinks the current rule is "good enough just leave it to the DM" is not paying attention to the number of posts on this thread about this issue. Its just a bad rule as currently written.
c) The simple/slight changes I suggested solve almost every problem with the current version of the new Grappled rules, without turning it into a 3.5 ruleset as some think it would require.
I suppose. Just annoys me that this is yet another piece of the OPT document that's going to get thrown out entirely because people literally nitpicked it to death. With some time to digest I'd come around to the idea that these new grapple rules were, in fact, better than the existing rules (in large part because of how clean and simple the "shove to break away" interaction was), but...well. I poke my nose in this thread and discover that we're well on our way to losing this change too. Ardlings are dead, people screamed down the new crit rules, one freaking guy single-handedly screamed down the new background methodology...the whole damn document is dead in the water and I honestly hate it.
Blegh.
Please do not contact or message me.
LOL! So you have personally seen the survey results and know for a fact that WotC decided to just toss everything in the trash and not bother?
First off, no one is saying you shouldn't be able to use one of your attack actions to shove away a grappler, just that the rules should make it clear. I can't for the life of me figure out why making a few minor adjustments to the wording to make the intent more clear before it is published is some how bad.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
Have you seen the forums, Golaryn?
You'd swear that ninety percent of the userbase are vampires and that the OPT document is a twenty-pound sack of garlic covered in silver shavings soaked in Sunny D. I've seen calmer, more measured reactions to literal war than I've seen in this forum from people who've already decided that this one document means D&D Is Ruined Forever and that the entirety of the 1DD ruleset - which hasn't even been written yet! - is "Fourth Edition but ten thousand times worse!"
Like, holy god damn. If this place had its say the entire 1DD initiative would be scrapped, everybody at Wizards from J-Craw on down to the janitors would not only be fired but also lined up against a wall and shot, and anybody who left any sort of feedback on the survey that wasn't total 100% rejection of the entire idea would be banned not just from DDB, but from the entirety of tabletop gaming forever.
Please do not contact or message me.
Yes Yurei, I have seen the dumpster fire that is the forums, but I also realize this is a very small part of the community. I, for one, am not against most of what is in the UA. Are there some things that I DON'T like? Of course, but most of it is pretty good. The only reason I am even on this thread advocating for clearer wording, is that I think the new grapple rules have potential. They aren't perfect, but nothing ever is, but that doesn't mean that we should give up even trying.
Edit: As a side note, I don't hate Ardlings either, but for those that want them to replace Aasimar completely, this is one Tiefling that will fight for my pretty golden bois till the bitter end.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
The vocal minority argument doesn't fly nearly as well when that same vocal minority is also the group most likely to engage with the feedback process. Casual Sally isn't going to be filling out the 1DD survey, at least not in dramatic numbers. The silent majority is effectively invisible in this case, as anyone who doesn't engage with the feedback surveys is basically white noise. Wizards will have ways of gauging those people's reactions, certainly, but almost by definition those ways will be cruder, less reliable, and given less weight than direct, active feedback from engaged players participating in the process.
I'd be willing to bet five dollars that not one single component of the OPT document will be retained in any form moving forward. Which sucks, because the species updates were a pretty good framework and the new background crafting system was fantastic. But as per usual, the evil planet-sized gibbering mouther that is The D&D Playerbase will destroy the whole thing before it even sees the light of day.
Siiigh.
Please do not contact or message me.
I would be very sad to see the species/background/feat portion of the document go. It was my favorite part. Though I would have liked Aasimar to make it into the PHB too, but I'll live.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
The vocal minority will respond at a higher rate than the average reader, but it's an incredibly small minority. DDB has something like 10 million users, if they get a 0.1% response rate that 10,000 people still vastly outweighs the entire vocal minority.
A point-one response rate is likely very generous from the Silent Majority. The Silent Majority is silent. It doesn't care. If they don't like something Wizards does, they just shrug and leave. They're not invested, they never will be. That's different from not being worth the time of day, a'la the usual grognard gatekeeper argument, but it does mean they don't generally care enough to take a thirty-minute survey to Shape The Future of D&D. It's just not worth their time spent, if they paid attention to the OPT document at all in the first place. Even with DDB helping with exposure, getting a trhousand replies from a ten million strong Silent Majority pool would be outstandingly thorough.
Nah. The D&D Playerbase, at this point in time, basically consists of a bunch of folks proclaiming "DOOOOOOOOOOOOM!" so hard I have to wonder if they're trying to invent a new Power Word spell and/or warning everybody that a Marvel supervillain is coming. It's incredibly disheartening and honestly spoils most of the massive excitement I originally had in my heart for the 1DD playtest cycle. Like, the **** is even the point of any of these if every yaybo in the forum is going to spend the entire month for each new playtest document scremaing "THROW THIS TRASH OUT!!!" as loudly and stridently as it possibly can, half the time without even reading it first?
Please do not contact or message me.
I doubt that discussing relatively minor changes to the wording is going to cause the new grappling rules to be lost. With any luck, someone higher up will see the discussions and rule change suggestion, and we end up with a final rule that does not provoke this kind of discussion once it become official.
Most people commenting on these changes are basically in agreement with making slight changes to make the rule more clear and to more explicitly allow what probably was meant to be allowed.
WotC is not perfect at market research, but they're also not incompetent. If the vocal minority was so very powerful, Monsters of the Multiverse would not exist in its current form. Honestly, random influencers doing youtube reviews (treantmonk answered the survey on channel; he was generally pretty positive) probably matter more than the forum loudmouths.
I took a look at your suggested changes and while they're pretty fantastic (the wording could be tightened up slightly, but only for the sake of brevity) at fixing WOTC's word salad to make the rules playable, I do think letting a Strength 3 Dexterity 10 human simply grapple an S18 warhorse half the time (because the horse's AC is 11) with no possible fix until the end of the horse's turn has negative consequences; the game already overly rewards Dexterity over Strength. But every possible fix I can think of would add more complexity than many people might be comfortable with, like requiring the grappling attack to beat the target's Passive Strength Save (which is 14 for a Warhorse).
The standard answer would be to have a save against the attacker's Strength save DC, either in addition to or as a replacement for the attack roll.
the answer is a DM saying "Timmy Twigshins the sixty-pound cripple cannot grapple a warhorse" and not permitting the attempt. Just because the rules say something does not mean a DM has to allow obvious discrepancies and impossibilities into their game.
Please do not contact or message me.
Honestly the only thing I think might get completely canned is the nat 20/1 rules on all d20 Tests.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
So the DC to escape the grapple is 8 + Strength modifier + Proficiency Bonus. The DC is not tied to a skill. It reminds me a little of a Spell Save DC, except for martial classes. It really reminds me of the Battlemaster Combat Maneuver DC. I'm wondering if there would be any benefit of combining these ideas. For example, maybe the "Combat DC" could be the target of certain unarmed strikes when AC doesn't seem appropriate.
Save DC is absolutely standardized at 8 + Ability Modifier + PB, but they usually just spell it out, because that's barely more verbose than, say, "strength-based save DC".
I mean, I guarantee the new crit rules are gone, and this thread is proof the new Grapple system is toast and every other Unarmed improvement with it. We might keep "pick a feat at char level 1", but if the other half-dozen thread on it are anything to go by, the super cool building-block background system is as toast as the crit rules. Ardlings are dead in the water before they even hit the pool, the Inspiration rules are donezo even if humans getting Inspiration as a species feature is actually a really neat idea, and even the idea of new Origin-dependent spell lists layered over class spell lists got shot down harder than Santa Claus over Normandy. I think the only things that will stick are the Slowed condition and price standardization for tools and instruments, and frankly I wouldn't bet on Slowed sticking around, either.
And, in a case of both irony and deep anger, the whole Auto Success Nat 1/20 thing. Because the Internet is obsessed with turning Nat 20s into Instant Frat Parties and turning Nat 1s into "your tool breaks, your armor breaks, your sword breaks, your pants break, you fall into a twenty foot hole full of custard and goldfish poo and then the gods descend from on high to laugh at you for thirty straight minutes" instead of just failure.
Please do not contact or message me.
I'm not sure on the point of Timmy the STR dump stats grappling a warhorse. I mean, even on a success... The warhorse rears, kicks Timmy in the face and crushes his skull.
Grappling is a great way to grab enemy aggro. Can Timmy tank a warhorse?
Can I be one of them? Pretty please? I mean, I'd prefer being a devil or going kitsune, but I would settle for being a draculina.
Joking aside, but I made a sword bard ardling with fox (read faerie) fire, blade, and can dash-jump (bonus action "fly") across the map.
I am giving a serious look at Cthonic Tieflings pulling off a dhampir somehow. A bit stuck on the blood thing, manly need custom cantrip, but otherwise I think it could work.
I only said that because that was the only change that JC indicated was experimental. All the other stuff might be tweaked, but I expect to still see them in some form or another.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!