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Why Sneak attack damage does not apply to a garrote attack?
(Garrote is in the adventurer's armory if you wonder).
I mean, a rogue-ish character surprising and swiftly, silently killing by strangulation an enemy is iconic.
So, why not SA damage? Too strong? What about an half-SA damage for garrote attacks at least?
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You are already getting special damage from the garrote. Also, sneak attack is fluffed as precision damage from hitting vulnerable points with stabby, smashy, cutty weapons.
The garrote does not have to be a wire and can just be a length of cloth used to choke someone and that seems to be the mechanic at work here.
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Keep in mind that the Garotte also doesn't deal damage, but simply applies a condition. If something does not deal damage, it cannot deal sneak attack damage. The mention in the weapon entry is just reiterating a general rule.
But if you wait you enemy dies for suffocation you grow old.
It was a good chance to accomplish an archetype, lost, IMHO.
Agreed. The Choke mechanic is ENTIRELY too slow to represent the blood to the brain getting cut off. It really really needs to be moved to an incapacitate with consecutive fort saves leading to death. Something in the 3-5 rounds in order to kill, provided you can keep the hold.
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Agreed. The Choke mechanic is ENTIRELY too slow to represent the blood to the brain getting cut off. It really really needs to be moved to an incapacitate with consecutive fort saves leading to death. Something in the 3-5 rounds in order to kill, provided you can keep the hold.
Except that the average person in real life can hold their breath for 1 min (10 Rounds) before they start to suffocate. And anyone with a Con score higher than 10 should be able to hold their breath for longer.
3-5 rounds to kill means that you suffocate them in just 18 to 30 seconds, no where near realistic. Now them passing out after that amount of time is realistic but not death, that takes min on average.
I use the following method for garrote or choke kills.
at each round the grapple has to be maintained (with a bonus to the attacker) and if it is then there is a fort save. 3 failed saves (cumulative not necessarily consecutive) drops the victim to an exhausted state. 3 more drops the victim to unconscious and if the choke is maintained for 3 more rounds the victem dies.
thats less than a minute in game terms which balances very well and is close enough to reality.
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Agreed. The Choke mechanic is ENTIRELY too slow to represent the blood to the brain getting cut off. It really really needs to be moved to an incapacitate with consecutive fort saves leading to death. Something in the 3-5 rounds in order to kill, provided you can keep the hold.Except that the average person in real life can hold their breath for 1 min (10 Rounds) before they start to suffocate. And anyone with a Con score higher than 10 should be able to hold their breath for longer.
3-5 rounds to kill means that you suffocate them in just 18 to 30 seconds, no where near realistic. Now them passing out after that amount of time is realistic but not death, that takes min on average.
It's not about suffocation, but about cutting off blood flow to the brain. When garroted properly, holding one's breath doesn't do a damn thing.
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It's not about suffocation, but about cutting off blood flow to the brain. When garroted properly, holding one's breath doesn't do a damn thing.Agreed. The Choke mechanic is ENTIRELY too slow to represent the blood to the brain getting cut off. It really really needs to be moved to an incapacitate with consecutive fort saves leading to death. Something in the 3-5 rounds in order to kill, provided you can keep the hold.Except that the average person in real life can hold their breath for 1 min (10 Rounds) before they start to suffocate. And anyone with a Con score higher than 10 should be able to hold their breath for longer.
3-5 rounds to kill means that you suffocate them in just 18 to 30 seconds, no where near realistic. Now them passing out after that amount of time is realistic but not death, that takes min on average.
+1, A garrote's purpose is to perform a blood choke, not an air choke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokehold#Blood_choke
It should only take seconds (read: one round) to knock the average person out from a blood choke.
It should only take seconds (read: one round) to knock the average person out from a blood choke.
Factor on about 8 seconds... :p
Unconsciousness in 18-30 seconds simulates fairly well what happens when you cut off blood supply through the external carotid artery. This is what's commonly known as a Blood Choke or Sleeper Hold.
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I think it would be pretty cool to have separate mechanics for the common kinds of garotte.
- Cloth - A wide strip of cloth, like a scarf, used to gain leverage in order to break the neck of the victim. I'd rule this as a special attack to entangle, followed by a single lethal attack, strength based, sneak attack applies. (SA applies because getting the angles right is as important as applying a lot of force, so knowledge of anatomy and precision count.)
- Rope - A narrow rope or cord that crushes the trachea and external carotid artery. Impedes breathing (therefore speech and spellcasting) and constricts blood flow, causing unconsciousness followed by brain damage and eventually death. I'd rule this as a special attack to entangle, followed by non-lethal damage on a round-by-round basis, and difficulty speaking. No sneak attack damage, since you're just squeezing the neck in the same place anyone would.
- Wire - Applied the same way as a rope garotte, with the added ability to cause cutting damage. I'd rule this the same as a rope garotte, but with lethal rather than non-lethal damage.
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Factor on about 8 seconds... :p
It should only take seconds (read: one round) to knock the average person out from a blood choke.
I suppose it depends on how well you do it, but the super-hero-esque level 6+ characters should be capable of knocking out the average level 1-2 NPC in one round with the technique, and it certainly shouldn't take more than a few. Taking 10 rounds for an average person is just silly.
A standard Garrotte cuts the persons head head almost off historically speaking the paino wire when twisted basically acts has a saw. it is like saying people who are hung suffocate,that is not really true when you are hung your neck snaps and because of that you die yes you may suffocate but surviving a broken neck brings about a whole different slue of problems. I am in no way trying to be a history nit picker i understand swords and axes don't really translate real well to roleplaying mechanics. i just think the garrote is woefully under powered. have you ever tried to sneak up on some body and strangle them from behind....not so easy or smooth or quick as in the movies sure they can't speak or really cast a spell but they can make noise by slamming their shield on armor kicking around. It is my understanding that to drown/suffocate you have to surpass your con modifier. if you have a con modifier of say 14 you have to wait 14 rounds + what ever for the drowning dc of +1 a round it would take like seven hours! just my 2 cents. maybe have the garrote cut the suffocation rules in half maybe you have 3 rounds or 4 rounds then you die then i would use it . I assume if you are using it in game the object is not to be seen or heard and you would be amazed how many times a party has a foe like i have described being choked and they miss! have you ever tried to stab a person that is flailing around not so easy! it should be though
you can use garrote different ways. the cutting garrote should be used as a coup-de-gras. a choking garrote can be used as a blood choke but even a blood choke does not work THAT fast. (know this from personal experiance though a trick to my anatomy leaves me somewhat resistant)
the creature getting choked should have at least 3 rounds to get fight it. not out of any sence of reality but because a character has to consider the posibility of anything they do being done to them.
no character wants to die because they missed one roll.
A standard Garrotte cuts the persons head head almost off historically speaking the paino wire when twisted . . .
Cloth and rope garottes existed long before strong wire was invented, so I wouldn't call piano wire a "standard garotte".
I agree that a steel wire garotte properly applied by a strong person could cause a lot of cutting damage. That's why I think including lethal sneak attack damage is a good idea.
Hanging can be done either way, by breaking the neck or through strangulation. Breaking the neck is more difficult, but more humane.
Taking 10 rounds for an average person is just silly.
Indeed.
"I can hold my breath for a minute" doesn't mean a lot when you likely didn't have time to take a deep breath, and as the person is surprised and now struggling with an attacker who is most likely hurting them with the choke and manhadling them around... that minute will be more like fifteen seconds as the person has their heartrate climb massively and start to panic and claw at the restraint.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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I'd probably allow a rogue with the Strangler feat to deal sneak attack damage while garroting someone.
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+1, A garrote's purpose is to perform a blood choke, not an air choke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokehold#Blood_choke
It should only take seconds (read: one round) to knock the average person out from a blood choke.
Yeah, except that your article is talking about choke holds not a garrote. Here they specifically talk about strangling with garrotes, which is a form of ligature strangulation which takes around 10 to 15 seconds for unconsciousness, which is still 2 to 3 rounds for unconsciousness and not death. Just like I said.
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Yeah, except that your article is talking about choke holds not a garrote. Here they specifically talk about strangling with garrotes, which is a form of ligature strangulation which takes around 10 to 15 seconds for unconsciousness, which is still 2 to 3 rounds for unconsciousness and not death. Just like I said.+1, A garrote's purpose is to perform a blood choke, not an air choke.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chokehold#Blood_choke
It should only take seconds (read: one round) to knock the average person out from a blood choke.
Yes, but you skipped the post where I backed up a bit on the timeline while acknowledging that I don't have the proper expertise on the subject. However, I kept my assertion that there is no way in heck it should take longer than a minute except under very extreme/strange/fantastical circumstances (like garroting a troll or something, maybe).
Unconsciousness in 18-30 seconds simulates fairly well what happens when you cut off blood supply through the external carotid artery. This is what's commonly known as a Blood Choke or Sleeper Hold..
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I think it would be pretty cool to have separate mechanics for the common kinds of garotte.
- Cloth - A wide strip of cloth, like a scarf, used to gain leverage in order to break the neck of the victim. I'd rule this as a special attack to entangle, followed by a single lethal attack, strength based, sneak attack applies. (SA applies because getting the angles right is as important as applying a lot of force, so knowledge of anatomy and precision count.)
- Rope - A narrow rope or cord that crushes the trachea and external carotid artery. Impedes breathing (therefore speech and spellcasting) and constricts blood flow, causing unconsciousness followed by brain damage and eventually death. I'd rule this as a special attack to entangle, followed by non-lethal damage on a round-by-round basis, and difficulty speaking. No sneak attack damage, since you're just squeezing the neck in the same place anyone would.
- Wire - Applied the same way as a rope garotte, with the added ability to cause cutting damage. I'd rule this the same as a rope garotte, but with lethal rather than non-lethal damage.
The wire garrotte is fairly modern (19th century iirc) and not in common use until fairly recent times (WW II plus). Garrottes should be rope, cord or (in the case of the Thugee) silk. A knot in the cord or (again for the Thugee) coin placed in the silk rumil (? spelling) was used to crush the victims larynx. The modern garrotte is about a blood choke, the older versions not so much.
I'd say the time to unconsciousness / death should be randomized based on when the garrotte is secured in the breathing cycle. Catch someone just right and they go down fast, catch them at the wrong moment and you've got a struggle on your hands. The Thugee used to operate in groups by the way, the senior member was the strangler while the others distracted the victom and helped hold them down. It obviously wasn't an instant kill. If you want that use a knife. A cut throat is faster and more certain...
I'd personally handle it so that the opponent would have to make a fortitude save (DC = your grapple check) or fall unconscious for. He'd make the save for each round that he remains grappled.
Seems logical and mechanically smoother.
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It may be worth noting that the Choke option with the Pathfinder garrote is just that - an additional option when you grapple someone with the weapon. Nothing suggests that's the only option you can take with the thing so you could still, for example, move your victim or inflict the weapon's damage (1d6 slashing damage for a medium sized garrote, and it's a two-handed weapon too - with a decent Strength and a liberal application of Power Attack that head cutting-off thing is completely possible!) whilst grappling them with the thing.
The reason you don't get sneak attack damage seems to be simply down to the normal grapple sequence - [round one] grapple, [round two onwards] maintain and possibly inflict damage - the initial attack, when you'd normally get your sneak attack damage, inficts no damage (it just establishes the grapple), and after that, the other guy knows you're there. The question of whether you count as a flanking partner Vs the guy you're grappling pops in there too, of course, but I imagine it's just easier to state 'no sneak attacks' instead of listing all the posible variations.
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The way I would likely rule things is that when using a garote you may use it as a damaging weapon, as listed above by ProfPotts, or you may use it as a choking weapon. However, since suffocating a person requires getting a hold of them, this is how I would play the latter:
A) You must succeed at a grapple check to hold onto your opponent.
B) Each consecutive round you maintain your grapple after the first you begin strangling your opponent. Your opponent must make a DC 10 Constitution check to avoid going unconscious. This DC increases by one for each previous success.
C) If you maintain the grapple for another round after your opponent is unconscious, they start dying (-1hp).
D) If you maintain the grapple for another round after your opponent is dying, they suffocate.
E) If at any point your opponent escapes the grapple, the process resets and you must obtain an new grapple.
And for Rogues:
F) If you have the sneak attack class feature and you instead obtain a pin on you opponent (note that this makes them flat-footed), you may add the number of your sneak attack dice (note, the actual number of dice, not the number you would roll with them) to the initial DC of your opponents Constitution Check to avoid unconsciousness.
G) If your opponent escapes the pin, but not the grapple, you do not apply this bonus to your opponent's Constitution DC to avoid unconsciousness until the pin is reestablished. However, the cumulative increases to the DC from rounds spent grappled still apply.
I added in bullets F & G due to the fact that how you place the garrote over the throat will affect how well the maneuver functions, and rogues are'nt technically known for having a good CMB, given their BAB, but this ability to increase the DC offsets that oversight.
Note that Pinned is a more severe version of grappled, so rounds spent attempting to pin a grappled opponent still count towards maintaining that grapple, even if you do not succeed. Your opponent is still grappled and still has to make the Constitution DC or pass out. This also works in reverse for a pinned opponent who escapes the pin. They have just lessened their penalties, but are still grappled.
Also realize that as soon as your opponent is unconscious they are also helpless, so a smart strangler would likely use the garrote or another weapon to deal a coup-de-gras instead of waiting another round.
Effectively what this does is remove the delay on suffocation from having air in their lungs (which is irrelevant in a blood choke) by requiring you to grapple them with the weapon. And it gives the sneak attacking anatomist a small* bonus.
This is where amulets of strangulation would come in handy. Instead of using a garrote just slip that over their head and go about your business. After combat just cut their head off, perhaps above and below the amulet) to retrieve your weapon. Grisly, but super effective. Good luck finding one though.
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The huge limitation on the garrote is that you can only use one against a target which is 'helpless or unaware of you'. Now, as I'm sure we all know, a majority of the time you're going to be better off delivering a coup-de-grace against a helpless opponent (which does get your sneak attack damage added in too) if you want to do them in. That leaves only a few instances where you'd ever want to use a garrote: against opponents which are unaware of you, but not helpless - such as alert guards you manage to sneak up on; and if you happen to have an opponent helpless, but won't get a chance at a full-round action (which a coup-de-grace needs)- such as if the DM is being a hard-ass about the Stealth and / or Surprise rules...
If you do happen to ever get a chance to use a garrote, then they're pretty damned effective:
1. You can use it with two hands at no penalty to your CMB, using the bigger two-hander Strength and Power Attack bonuses to damage.
2. It automatically makes it difficult for the victim to speak (there's no need to choose one grapple option or another - as long as you're grappling with the garrote, then this effect occurs).
3. It has the grapple special quality - so any bonuses you have with the weapon get added to your combat maneuver checks to grapple with it too (so an enchanted garrote is a good thing to be using, for example).
4. If your victim happens to have a really vast amount of hit points, you can choose the choke option unique to the weapon to put them down without any concern for what their hit point total happens to be.
... The challenge is setting up a potential target to be 'unaware' of your presence. I'd take that to mean the target doesn't even realise you're in the area, so it wouldn't apply if, for example, he saw you, and then you cast vanish - as he's not 'unaware' that you're around... he just can't see you.
... Which is a little harsh, to say the least, but one assumes it's just a symptom of not having facing rules in the game: you need to get behind the other guy to garrote him, after all. I find myself wondering if it wouldn't make sense to allow flanked characters to be garroted - after all, the whole flanking thing was the solution to 'back stabbing' with no facing rules in the first place, and there are several ways to become immune to flanking in the rules, so it wouldn't be an insta-win option, and could represent the fact you can start to garrote the guy when he's looking towards your flanking buddy... But maybe the garrote would be too powerful a weapon then?
I see that this thread hasn't been posted in for awhile but I didn't want to open a new thread since I'm a newb.
Tell me if this sounds reasonable.
I have a Monk with Flurry of Blows and Improved Unarmed Strike.
If use of the Garotte is more of a Grapple Combat Maneuver than an attack and you can make an extra attack with Flurry of Blows can I use the Grapple as a CM and a knee as an attack?
Improved Unarmed Strike states that the Monk can attack even with arms full (as they would be with a garotte) and there is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a Monk that is unarmed.
So basically does the Garotte make the Monk 'armed' even though it isn't treated as an attack weapon?
From experience:
The average time from a clinched blood choke is 6-12 seconds.
A successful garrote sneak attack with a successful grapple, followed by a second round with a successful grapple check should be unconscious.
I will bet anyone here that they cannot stay conscious for 30 seconds with a proper blood choke.
$100.
Yeah, In all honestly spending a feat to be able to effectively use a rather difficult to use weapon unless you managed to get exactly the right number of circumstances is just.. well.. Silly to me. Especially when it doesn't allow you to apply the sneak attack damage.
Sneak attack damage doesn't apply, not ever with the Garrote, according to its description. Normal weapon damage however does apply the garrote in all uses of the garrote.
If you're gonna go and choke out someone, in all honestly, Bushwack is far better. Especially if you get the chokehold feat. Has the same conditions as the Garrote, But is better. Follow it up with a Throat Slitter feat, and you can coup de grace that pinned guy.
I think its to be noted, that you don't start to Choke the enemy until the second round you're grappling them.
Yeah, suffocation really doesn't do the garrote justice. Well, maybe if you're trying to strangle someone with a scarf or something. But as mentioned before the garrote is more of a blood choke. Most people in a good blood choke tap out very fast, those who try not to tap are usually unconscious in another 2-3 seconds.
Tell Brad Pitt's at the end of "The Counselor" he should have held his breath better. Note: The scene is R ratted; very realistic and very violent.
Also, yes, I do realize this isn't the same as the garrote available in most PF games.