Thought about it as a result of this thread
But always bugged me a bit that you can't grab hold of someone running by or charge up and tackle someone in Pathfinder. Grapple being a standard action, much of what you'd see in any football game is actually disallowed by the combat rules. You can't grab someone as they run by, you can't charge someone and wrestle them to the ground (even though you can disarm them, which seems a much more complex maneuver).
How this works in real life is you grab them with an open hand. So occurred to me, what if you just gave a hand the ability to grab things, by just adding Grab to humanoids' normal unarmed attack.
So, you'd need a free hand, have to hit with an attack, it would be an unarmed attack, so would provoke an attack of opportunity, but it would be a melee attack so could be employed at the end of a charge or as an Attack of Opportunity (e.g to grab someone as they ran by) if you succeeded you could start a grapple. So, that's how you'd tackle.
The tetori in UC gets this ability at 8th level. and is able to make attacks of a00 while grappled and such
PG 61
yea, I'm talking about adding grab to unarmed attacks as a trait for anything with appendages that can serve as hands, humanoids, monsterous humanoids, etc. Could dilute the tetori a little, but they'd still get the AoO while grappled, which others don't.
Thought about it as a result of this thread
But always bugged me a bit that you can't grab hold of someone running by or charge up and tackle someone in Pathfinder. Grapple being a standard action, much of what you'd see in any football game is actually disallowed by the combat rules. You can't grab someone as they run by, you can't charge someone and wrestle them to the ground (even though you can disarm them, which seems a much more complex maneuver).
How this works in real life is you grab them with an open hand. So occurred to me, what if you just gave a hand the ability to grab things, by just adding Grab to humanoids' normal unarmed attack.
So, you'd need a free hand, have to hit with an attack, it would be an unarmed attack, so would provoke an attack of opportunity, but it would be a melee attack so could be employed at the end of a charge or as an Attack of Opportunity (e.g to grab someone as they ran by) if you succeeded you could start a grapple. So, that's how you'd tackle.
You can ready standard actions -- like grapple maneuvers.
As for charging with a grapple... I'm having a hard time seeing that work. On the one hand I see football tackles, but football tackles aren't grapples. They're bull rushes. Do they EVER end in both parties wrestling with each other...? On the other hand I see someone grabbing the back of someone's shirt as they run away -- hardly a grapple. I think grapples need a certain amount of finesse and science to them that you can't execute all that well if you're charging at someone.
You can't grapple someone by grabbing them with an open hand in most cases. You'd have to develop much more complex, fine-grained mechanics for things like grabbing and keeping hold of someone's limb, different clothing would have different bagginess (easing the grab), etc. etc. At the standard level of abstraction in D&D combat, creatures are cubes, and you grapple them by surrounding them (i.e. with tentacles, multiple limbs, etc.). One humanoid hand? Doesn't seem right to me.
Edit: I really think you're looking for a mechanic different from grappling, which expressly requires both hands for humanoid grapplers (or you suffer penalties). Grappling isn't grabbing a part of someone, it's actually restraining them bodily. The mechanic that's already in the game that's the most like what you seem to want is the net exotic weapon. Nets do two things at a range of up to 10 feet: first is they entangle, second is they restrict movement. They can be defeated with Escape Artist or Strength checks. What you want shouldn't entangle, and it should only be usable in melee (vs. 10 ft.), but the movement restriction and methods of escape seem spot on for [grabbing a piece of someone with your hand].
You can't grapple someone by grabbing them with an open hand in most cases. You'd have to develop much more complex, fine-grained mechanics for things like grabbing and keeping hold of someone's limb, different clothing...
The core rule book clearly states that it is possible to grapple with a single hand, and that any grapple attempt without using two open hands suffers a penalty.
Humanoid creatures without two free hands attempting to grapple a foe take a –4 penalty on the combat maneuver roll.
I think you're confusing the Grappled condition from the Pinned condition. Grappled does not mean that I have surrounded my opponent. They're still able to cast spells or attack with light/one-handed weapons. It means that I have held on to them in some manner which prevents them from getting away. Pinning them is more along the lines of surrounding my opponent.
Hence "in most cases"—for one thing, the penalty's pretty big. For another, I was speaking more in out-of-game terms (like you're not really grappling someone if you make an off-handed grab with the same commitment you'd use to swing a sword at a passerby). Anyhoo. Judging by the fact that grappled creatures take huge penalties, and have vastly limited actions, I don't think a one-humanoid-handed grab which takes less time and calculation than a standard action should have the same mechanical implications as the current canon combat maneuver.
The idea is modeling grabbing someone as they run by, or simmilar spur of the moment grabbing. Happens in real life all the time. You're not ready for them, you're reacting to them. Mechanically this should be available as an attack of opportunity melee attack alternative, like trip/sunder/disarm. Adding grab to a hand makes intuative sense since hands grab. The distinction between grapple and pinning is spot on, grappling is more like grabbing, pinning more like when you're in full wrestle. The -4 for going one handed makes sense too, so isn't an issue IMO.