Chokehold Feat (UC)

[Balin]

I just want to make sure I understood this correctly.
round 1 - grapple the opponent
rnd 2 - -5 to my grapple (CMB) to apply the choke
rnd 3 - ... opponent has 1/2 their Constitution to use their CMB to beat my CMD.

so a mage with a CON of 10 has 5 rounds, and the fighter with 18 has 9 rounds.
to a mage, they are pretty well useless as they cannot use their arms (grapple) or speak (choke). But 5 rounds is still a long time.

To me, this feat seems pointless. Please explain to me why this feat is worth taking?

Also if 1 round is 10 seconds, then a choke taking 5 rounds is pretty silly. As a fan of UFC, a choke can knock someone out in 20 seconds or less.

[grasshopper_ea]

Balin wrote:

I just want to make sure I understood this correctly.

round 1 - grapple the opponent
rnd 2 - -5 to my grapple (CMB) to apply the choke
rnd 3 - ... opponent has 1/2 their Constitution to use their CMB to beat my CMD.

so a mage with a CON of 10 has 5 rounds, and the fighter with 18 has 9 rounds.
to a mage, they are pretty well useless as they cannot use their arms (grapple) or speak (choke). But 5 rounds is still a long time.

To me, this feat seems pointless. Please explain to me why this feat is worth taking?

Also if 1 round is 10 seconds, then a choke taking 5 rounds is pretty silly. As a fan of UFC, a choke can knock someone out in 20 seconds or less.

Yes the strangle rules as written are useless in most combat situations. In the time that you can choke out a kobold you can kill 8 of them with a sword. Now in a roleplay 1-2 player game this could be more useful or against one enemy, but usually you're wasting your time.

[Nejrael]

It's handy for taking out sentries quietly.

[Richard Leonhart]

what the others said before is correct

also I believe one round is roughly 6 seconds.

[ProfPotts]

The point of the Feat is that it bypasses Hit Points and most defenses completely.

Also remember that as well as only being taken by characters who are designed around grappling anyway (due to the prerequisites), applying the chokehold gives your opponent the pinned condition as well - so once applied, it should be hard to break.

Plus, the chokehold is automatically maintained as long as you maintain the grapple. On subsequent rounds you can still use your grapple action to do other stuff (tie up the victom, inflict damage, etc.) as well.

If anything, this Feat verges on overpowered...

[Czardha]

Actually, a creature can hold its breath for 2 rnds / point of Con, so that Mage w/ 10 Con can hold his or her breath for 10 rounds before it begins to suffocate.

[enrious]

Were I DM, I'd rule that the "Chokehold" is in reality a "Stranglehold" and thus the bit about holding one's breath doesn't apply.

From my judo days, there was a clear division between choking and strangling.

Choking was the prevention of air to the lungs, such as what happens when someone gets food stuck in their esophagus.

Strangling is the prevention of oxygen-rich blood from reaching the brain, by inhibiting the carotid arteries. This covers virtually all of the combat "choke" holds I'm aware of. Yes, you may be stopping the flow of air to the lungs, but the more immediate danger is the lack of bloodflow to the brain.

Chalk it up to language. Choke means something specific. Strangle means something specific.

Choke is often used to mean both.

And even at that, I wonder at how many people can hold their breath to maximum capacity in the middle of grappling, but ah well. It's D&D, not "Reality: The Game".

[Balin]

So if you use different rules for strangeling, what rules do you use?

[Richard Leonhart]

@enrious, thanks for making the difference clear.
The feat description is a bit weird, it cuts off air and blood supply, but the mechanics still only use suffocating.
Also if ennemy is immune to bleed, critical hits OR does not breathe, then he is immune to this.

So I think it's a cool feat for NPCs who chokehold the wizard while the others try to free him, but it's very circumstantial.
Anyhow, I like that there is something like this in the books.

edit: use suffocation with this, and it's much quicker, but the spell alone might be mostly sufficient.

[enrious]

It seems to me that you quoted strangling rules in the very beginning of this thread.

Later, someone mentioned rules for avoiding choking.

Not sure where the confusion is.

I do agree that 1/2 CON is likely too long (although if you figure the average person is at 10 CON, then 25 seconds isn't stretching it too much - I could see escalating CON checks each round after the hold is employed, but then you balance "realism" with bogging down the game with yet more rules) but then, there are so many factors at play.

These factors include things such as how well the hold is made, the strength and experience of the person using the hold, the position of body weight, the physiology of the person in the hold, etc. Short of making some sort of Rolemasteresque chart, you have to sacrifice some abstraction in order to make it actually playable.

It's always a balancing act between playability and reality. In reality, grappling with someone who has a knife is usually a fatal mistake but in D&D hit points usually let you shrug that off. In reality, someone armed with a sword will prefer to use that rather than grappling with someone.

Indeed the only real advantage a stranglehold gives you over attacking someone with a blade is a better chance of keeping them quiet, but there are a ton of real downsides, the most immediate being that you've placed yourself in easy range of their weapons. Oh and I guess you could potentially take a prisoner alive, which is a factor, but even with D&D rules that's the difference between -4 to hit or not.

But again, that's my take. Should a player of mine want to strangle someone using the chokehold feat, I'd likely let it go with little if any modification - there's a balancing act. As written, I couldn't see myself wasting the feat choice for it (it takes too long against everyone I'd want to use it on - beefy fighter types with higher than average CON) but at the same time I wouldn't want to make it so good that it becomes the tactic of choice. So I don't know, I might cap it at 5 rounds or something, but I would never allow a player to cite the holding the breath rules to try to delay the effects of this feat to them.

[enrious]

Richard Leonhart wrote:

@enrious, thanks for making the difference clear.

The feat description is a bit weird, it cuts off air and blood supply, but the mechanics still only use suffocating.
Also if ennemy is immune to bleed, critical hits OR does not breathe, then he is immune to this.

To me, this makes sense because if you don't need to breathe, then you don't need air (choking) nor do you need oxygenated blood to your brain (strangling) so I don't see the vulnerability to this feat.

Likewise with bleed and critical hits - the general rules explanation is that you lack the proper physiology for such a tactic - for example, if you don't have a brain or if your brain is diffused throughout the body, you can't single out one area for attack.

Quote:

So I think it's a cool feat for NPCs who chokehold the wizard while the others try to free him, but it's very circumstantial.

Anyhow, I like that there is something like this in the books.

I agree. Short of having tons of feats or setting myself up as an uber-grappler, I'm not sure I'd take this feat because of the circumstantial nature of the feat (although I may turn it into a trait for my upcoming Pathfinder Rokugan game), but I'm glad we have some sort of strangling rule to serve as a base.

Quote:

edit: use suffocation with this, and it's much quicker, but the spell alone might be mostly sufficient.

Were I to write something from wholecloth, I might start with the suffocation spell, slow the effects somewhat but use the mechanics as a base.

Which, I don't know, I may end up where the current feat is.

[Ravingdork]

Nejrael wrote:

It's handy for taking out sentries quietly.

No it's not. The target needs to be grappled first. That's a whole round they can call out an alarm before you even cut off their air supply.

Even if you have Greater Grapple and can pull it off in one round, talking is a free action that can be taken even when it is not your turn.

You spend a move action to grapple, now aware of your presence the guard calls out, you spend a move action to start chokehold. Guard's friends show up and cut you apart.