Oh and in regards to the "grabbing the family jewels", eye gouging, biting, fingerbreaking, hairpulling acts not done in wrestling or grappling...I think you fail to realize how dirty some grapplers, fighters , and wrestlers are.
I've had each one of these things done to me by a person I've beaten in actual competition... The only really dirty thing I can think of that I have not had somebody try to do to me is fishhook, but I have seen it tried.
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I have a small playtest experience to add.
Ran my group (now 3rd level) in Home Under The Range by Michael Kortes. The first actual fight of the night was against a choker adept 2. With the changes to size penalties and improved grab only giving a +2, I calculated her CMB for grappling at +7. Per the encounter tactics, she tried to grapple a foe from hiding to drag into an acid pool. I grabbed for the rogue. CMB of only +2. I couldn't do better than "grabbed," and she escaped before I could try again the next round with the extra +5, so I don't know if the results would have been any different.
I'm fine with grappling being a little harder, but a monster that relies on grappling for it's CR (like the choker) really suffers under the current rules.
Isn't a choker the size of a toddler?
It probably shouldn't be able to 'drag off' a struggling human.It could wait near a slippery ledge, and wrap its arms round someone's legs, forcing them to take a Balance check, or fall into the pool, maybe?
Did you allow it two consecutive grapple attempts, to allow for its supernatural quickness?
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Pain compliance works because most people aren't used to pain. An untrained person will often shut down a bit when pain is inflicted, which supports the concept of pain compliance. This doesn't work with trained fighters, or by people who have overcome their natural reactions in a dangerous situation.
Pain tolerance is not pain immunity. Past a certain point, only someone completely drugged out will not react to pain.
One of my fights I got . . .
I have absorbed a considerable amount of punishment as well.
And delivered a considerable amount of punishment.In sports competition.
In actual fights, where the person was still not trying to kill me, things proceeded differently.
Intent is an overwhelming factor in understanding the different requirements.
In this sense, I would say that every D&D character is a well trained combatant with the ability to deal with pain. Given that, I would say that pain causing a grapple to break would be an action of intelligence and not a pain compliance to shut the person down.
It is not pain compliance.
It is pain shock.The same thing you can focus yourself to resist when prepared can shock you into a sudden move, as you acknowledge, in other circumstances.
Also, pain compliance is for when you want prisoners. If you just want a corpse, pain compliance is not merely irrelevant, it is a waste of effort, again as you acknowledge. All you are going for is pain shock to provoke a response to achieve a specific end. (An end you would preferably go for directly if at all possible. Twenty move sequences have twenty potential failure points.)
Oh and in regards to the "grabbing the family jewels", eye gouging, biting, fingerbreaking, hairpulling acts not done in wrestling or grappling...I think you fail to realize how dirty some grapplers, fighters , and wrestlers are.
No, I do not. I know many, many ways to get around rules, and many ways to take a single warning to hurt an opponent enough to gain an advantage for the rest of a match.
I just keep it in perspective - breaking a rules of a sports competition for a temporary advantage to win a sports contest. It is only "dirty" in a sports context.In a fighting context, no such concept exists.
Chuck Liddel is one of these people...he's managed to stuff or immediately recover the takedown attempts of Randy Couture, Kevin Randleman, Jeremy Horn, Tito Ortiz, Jeff Monson, and Renato Sobral.
I haven't seen any MMA since coming to China, a few years before actually, I'm really interested in seeing this guy. When I used to watch a lot of matches would grind to a halt when the grappling went tight.