Meatpuppet's page

Greetings Paizonians,

I am in need of some clarifications.

The Grab special ability allows the following:

A successful hold does not deal any extra damage unless the creature also has the constrict special attack. If the creature does not constrict, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals the damage indicated for the attack that established the hold. Otherwise, it deals constriction damage as well (the amount is given in the creature's descriptive text).

Does that mean that the said creature will do "grab damage" with any succesful grapple checks, even those made to pin, move or damage (using another natural attack not used in the "grab")?

What about skipping the evasion-like effect and each one having 1hp, and simply put a "hit treshold" or something like that? When they take more than 1*CR damage from a single attack, they die. If they take less, nothing happens. Like some form of super-damage reduction.

I do something similar (which I borrowed from our Dark Heresy game)

Minions get 1/2 hit points (30 HP max) and inflict 1/2 the damage. They are destroyed when reduced to 0 hit points or less, or whenever they suffer damage while already being wounded (i.e. while not at full hit points). If the first successful attack against a minion hasn't killed it, the second one will regardless of the damage inflicted.
Any incapacitating effects other than straight damage (fear, blindness, confusion, etc) automatically takes the minion out of the fight.
A minion suffers no damage or negative effects on a successful saving throw.
Four minions are considered to be about the same as a standard monster of their level.

So it is fairly easy to track: A minion is either at full health or wounded (in which case the next hit will automatically kill it)

I've tried it in one of my campaign and it works quite well.