Kaiin Retsu's page

That kind of depresses me to see something that could be perfectly logical and a great asset to any grappler build be already told that dev intent was to make a worthless ability no one would ever want to use. Makes me wonder why the devs would ever want to release such an ability that has no true use over other builds. I mean, come on, either just raise the extra damage or something, but the odds of anyone using this against a caster will ever get to the true 'suffocating' phase is basically nonexistant. Unless of course you are roleplaying a 1v1 arena and you sit there for 15-20 rounds until you finally win...

Soooo, how about that Kraken Throttle eh? I heard thats totally a thing to discuss in this topic, not the nuances of how you objectify(haha get it?....) the use of a spell......

Okay so I am going to be DM'ing a new realm with 4 new players to the tabletop gaming scene. My wife has never played any form of DnD or Pathfinder, but her friends are slightly experienced as far as I am aware. I am not 100% sure on what their experience is however, yet it seems minimal. So, when I decided I would want to DM for them, I decided I would create my own realm, with my own pantheon, and my own changes to current, and some new, races. I also decided that this particular 'campaign' would not be a campaign at all, but an adventure that I tailor to the players as we go. We will be using Roll20, since 3/4 players live in another state, and I will be making a lot of tables to reference in order to react to what they want to do, instead of leading them down a path.

There will be an overall story, if they so choose to go through it, but I will not force that upon them. As it stands right now, I am creating the half of the continent that they live on that the setting will take place in, initially at least. I am looking to get some creative advice to how I can change things around as is. Already I have made a custom race for Anthromorphs, so some of the players could use it if they want. I am already aware that they would want to make one, so I am infusing it in to the realm as is. Something major that I am changing is that Elves, for the most part, favor the water over the land and thus mainly have the Spirit of the Waters alternate trait. In order to get the normal traits, they would have to be from a specific grouping of Elves instead of the general race.

Humans, Elves, and Dwarves, along with my custom race currently named Nyrashi(the name is a derivative of their Goddess, Da'nyra- Queen of the Hunt, Nyrashi meaning Of the Hunt) are the main races across this continent. Of course the standard races still exist past this, but I think the Featured Races list might be limited severely. Anyway, the social interaction is basically as follows:
Main Elf Society keeps to itself, but is always open to outsiders and trade in the favor of knowledge.
Nyrashi keep to themselves among the forests of the realm, although not exclusively to the forest. They are very religious society that Druids and Shamans are often their village leaders, and thus emulate the withdrawn standard of Druidic societies.
Humans vary from kingdom to kingdom. This is one of the main things I would like some feedback on. The kingdoms will be spread out, but I have yet to come up with a good idea for the kingdoms. Most of the human race lives in smaller settlements and live off of the land peacefully.
Dwarves are completely xenophobic. They do not trust outsiders at all, and keep to their mountains. I do not think I will let a PC be a Dwarf unless their backstory really removes them from the Dwarven Society. They sometimes trade with humans, but very rarely. I think I will make a human kingdom somewhere near the main Dwarven strongholds for this purpose.

As it stands, I am not looking for help as far as story, but suggestions for more social interactions from the main races, for types of locations I should incorporate in to the map, and any ideas for kingdoms that are not cookie cutter Tolkein Fantasy or the like. I just figure, with all the different minds and perspectives on this site, I can get a more diverse feel to this realm as I create it! Please and thank you for your input!

You absolutely can choke and do something else if you have Greater Grapple, and any character that invests two feats in a grapple-related combat style will take Greater Grapple ASAP - level 6 for a fighter, tetori, or maneuver master monk; 7 for a brawler (but 6 using Martial Flexibility); 9 for other monks.

Rapid grappler lets you do up to three things.

It's also not at all clear that if you give air to a creature that has dropped unconscious due to suffocation they immediately become conscious with no HP loss. In fact, since suffocation mentions dropping to 0 and then to -1 HP I think it's more likely that you do not regain consciousness. Otherwise it would merely say you become unconscious the first round after failing your Con check, and die in the third round.

The Kraken Throttle specifically states that you can chose to choke the enemy instead of any of the other actions. If you perform any other action, you release the choke and have let the enemy breath. The fact that they take a breath any round you do not maintain the choke means that they have the status of suffocate removed from them. If the status is gone, which while breathing you can not be suffocating, that means all temporary effects from the status are also gone. The concept of 0 hp is the fact that this is the unconscious HP level. The -1 says they are dying and then the following turn they die. If the status did not drop them to 0 HP and then -1 HP, they would have no reason to die.

Once they breath, and their brain starts getting oxygen, they regain full consciousness. Honestly, they should restate the way they are unconscious. Someone whose brain is receiving no blood, which causes hypoxia(lack of oxygen and will be caused by the stopping of blood flow to the brain), will not fall completely unconscious in this amount of time. What the author seemed to forget that when you suffocate someone, it is actually a heart and lung trauma in which the heart and lungs basically panic because of the lack of air. The state of panic makes the heart beat faster, increasing blood pressure, and drains the body of what oxygen it has even quicker. If the person is calmed completely, they can survive much longer. However, this entire time, the person suffering will be in an AMS, Altered Mental Status. They will not be unconscious, but basically semi-conscious. The second their lungs can take a breath, the body starts recovering instantly because of the raised blood pressure, pushing the new oxygen to the many areas of the body. Just because the creator of the feat did not take the real world anatomy and medical functions behind the ability in to the ability description does not mean that it should not, and probably will, work this way.

Divvox, you quoted Brain in a Jar with these additions:
Round One: Grapple -can't be dispelled and grease probably won't help. Body Shield reduces the likelihood anyone will hit anything but the grappled target.
Round Two: Maintain or reposition (0 HP) -reposition action to run away from opponent's allies, can't be dispelled and grease probably won't help. Body Shield reduces the likelihood you'll hit anything but the grappled target.
Round Three: Maintain (-1 HP) -can't be dispelled and grease probably won't help. Body Shield reduces the likelihood you'll hit anything but the grappled target.
Round Four: Maintain (Death) -can't be dispelled and grease probably won't help. Body Shield reduces the likelihood you'll hit anything but the grappled target.

I think you need to go back and read the feat itself.

While using this style, you can choke your opponent when you successfully maintain a grapple instead of choosing to damage, move, pin, or tie up your opponent. This suffocates your opponent. The grappled opponent can take a breath during any round in which you do not maintain the grapple.

You can chose to choke your opponent on a successful grapple instead of choosing damage, move, pin, or tie up the opponent. At any point, if you make another grapple check to maintain, but chose something else besides the choke, you just released the choke completely. However, maybe it would be smarter to grapple an opponent, move them away from their allies, hope their allies do not realize what you are doing, go for the choke on another confirmed grapple, and then sit there for 3 turns, immobile, choking an opponent and hoping its allies do not swarm you to take you out. This seems quite the amount of work to do something that a single spell is capable of doing, saves or not.

As someone who has participated in MMA in real life, I can say, without a doubt, that this move can make sense as an instant suffocation. It is called Kraken Throttle. It uses Kraken Style. When using said style, "You savagely squeeze and twist when grappling." If you savagely squeeze someone, you will pull the breath from their lungs. If you manage to get your hands around their throat, or arm or what have you, and begin to choke them in this fashion, they will not have a breath inside them to hold.

Now, that is just my opinion on how it makes sense in a real life situation. If you want to talk RAW vs RAI though, there is nothing in wording that says anything about holding their breath. You make a grapple check against your opponent, which allows you to do something to them. In this case, you throttle their neck and suffocate them instead of moving or damage them. When suffocating, you fall unconscious. It does not specify a certain amount of turns for such a thing. Being someone who used to be a Combat Medic in the Army(where I did the MMA), I know that if someone who is suffocating and is unconscious takes a breath, they will regain consciousness.

If you were to fail your second grapple check(which should be stated, gets harder over time to fail since you get a cumulative bonus), the enemy takes a breath and is back in the fight. At this point, however, what do they return to? I would assume that they would go back to their health before falling unconscious, seeing as how you are doing no damage. Basically, as it is written, this move will kill an enemy in 3 rounds. I do not believe it takes effect the round it first happens, all it states is the first round. You inflict the status upon your enemy in during a round, and coming the first round in which you have this status effect, you fall unconscious.

To me, this does seem a little too powerful for how early you can possibly pick it up. However, there is 3 rounds where your enemies allies can move to stop you from doing such a thing. It does not take long to kill someone who has no blood flow to their brain, especially when it is physically being prevented completely, and not just slowed or partially stopped due to medical reasons.

I have one suggestion for you. Your armor, instead of Darkleaf Leather, you should get Darkleaf Quilted Cloth Armor. If you get your Dex up high enough, which with the proper equipment at high levels is easy, you get an AC of 16 from the armor alone, 26 with the base 10. You can get a max Dex bonus of +10, and the armor +5 with the base +1. This beats out the Darkleaf Leather, which peaks at AC of 15, not only because of the 1 more AC, but due to this little special effect of Quilted Cloth Armor.

This enhanced form of padded armor has internal layers specifically designed to trap arrows, bolts, darts, shuriken, thrown daggers, and other small ranged piercing weapons. When these kinds of weapons strike you, they tend to become snagged in these layers and fail to harm you. Wearing quilted cloth armor gives you DR 3/— against attacks of this kind. The special layers of the armor have no effect on other kinds of weapons.