Yesterday my party encountered a trapper. The ranger stepped in the small dark room, failed the perception roll, and once in the middle of the monster, he was hit, damaged, and subsequently grappled and constricted (I assume the constrict damage is not to be dealt the same round it was hit... I started it the following round, am I wrong?).
However I am not sure exactly how to handle the rest of the encounter. The trapper is huge and has a reach of 10', and has combat reflexes too. I assumed he had a lot of tentacles outside of his body. Once the rest of the characters closed in, they were grappled by the tentacles on AOO and suffered full damage from each of these attacks (3d6+15!). This sounds weird since I thought it is the central maw that is able to deal such damage, and having the same damage on every tentacle hit seems wrong (although I guess by raw it works this way). Also how many tentacles can I use for AOO?
Also I am not sure what happened to the ranger which successfully escaped the grapple of the monster but is still in the middle of her body.
Also I seemed to recall a grappled character could only use small weapons but couldn't fine the rule, is it something from a previous edition?
The session closed before combat ended so I am thinking about alternate ways to handle the monster. My idea is having the tentacles inflict 1d8 damage, plus grapple, and that only ONE of characters that is under grapple can be chewed by the monster (full damage).
I know I haven't been not very clear, but I hope you understand what I mean eh!
"Question 1: Do you suffer the constrict damage in the same round as you started the grapple, or only in rounds that you maintain the grapple?" is one i would also like to know the answer too.
For the other questiojn: I believe that if you trapper is trying to maintain the grab against Target 1 *and* still wants to try and attack/grab the other ones, he needs to take a -20 on his CMB because of it.
I may be wrong, and others may correct me :)
The rules are a bit flunky on multi-grapples; but it can all be resolved over the trapper's "grab" ability. Scenario:
The trapper has 3 people grappled.
He could *maintain* grapple on 1 of them as a standard action. But this is a horrible waste of his resources.
Instead. He lets go all 3 grappled people, and attacks them again with tentacles (and attempts to re-grab them again on successful hits)