How to Assassinate Someone with Grappling

[cranewings]

One of my players is playing a stealthy maneuver master. He got behind a first level orc and asked, "can I just snap his neck?" I said sure, but it was on the basis that he was going to trash the thing anyway.

I was trying to think of a fair way to handle killing with grappling.

Normally, a tied up enemy can be killed with a coup de grace as a full round action. I was thinking that the maneuver master could kill his enemy after pinning them instead of tying them up. For the most part, tying up an enemy takes them out of the fight. Killing them doesn't make much difference.

[Jiggy]

Hm... I'd maybe try something like adding a "kill" option to the "grapple--->pin" progression.

First successful grapple check gives the grappled condition.

Successfully maintaining it allows the option of a pin, as normal.

The houserule part would then be that a successful grapple check against a pinned target would be the kill (perhaps with a fort save to survive but be severely hurt?).

That might seem slow, but for the maneuver master, you can do it a lot faster. Thanks to the unique ability to grapple in a full-attack, you can do a flurry of maneuvers and make two grapple checks; if successful, you've gone from nothing to pinned in 1 round.

And that's at level 1.

A few levels later, when you add another maneuver to your flurries, suddenly you can go Grapple-->Pin-->Kill in a single full-round action (assuming three consecutive successful rolls, of course).

That sounds kinda fun...

EDIT: I'd also include a restriction that, due to being a neck snap, it'd only work against the same set of creatures that a Vorpal weapon works against.

[Foghammer]

Sounds like a special kind of coup de grace, at least to me. I'd have made it a coup de grace action using unarmed damage (treated as lethal for the purposes of this attack).

This should definitely be a special action though, perhaps with a strength check, though I don't think coup de grace is a bad way to handle it.

OP, did you just rule that the target died without a check or what? I gather that's the case since you expected him to get "trashed" anyway.

[Coaltongue]

Pinned is not helpless.
Grappling players are grappled.
Coup de grace provokes and is a full round action.
In my opinion, this is over powered and a no-no.

[cranewings]

Foghammer, I had the monk player make a normal grappling roll to do it I think. I might have had him make two in a row. I can't remember now. We are fairly loose on the rules so it isn't like I need to worry about a rules lawyering player writing it down and demanding it stay that way or anything.

Jiggy, that is pretty much exactly what I was thinking. Grab - Pin - Kill.

[cranewings]

pietri314 wrote:

Pinned is not helpless.

Grappling players are grappled.
Coup de grace provokes and is a full round action.
In my opinion, this is over powered and a no-no.

How about Grab - Pin - Tie up - Kill? Tie up can be called, "Control" and if the monk uses his own body to do the tying, he can progress to kill and gains another +2 on his roll?

[Foghammer]

cranewings wrote:

pietri314 wrote:

Pinned is not helpless.

Grappling players are grappled.
Coup de grace provokes and is a full round action.
In my opinion, this is over powered and a no-no.

How about Grab - Pin - Tie up - Kill? Tie up can be called, "Control" and if the monk uses his own body to do the tying, he can progress to kill and gains another +2 on his roll?

Sounds like a much longer process than you see in fiction. Stealth rules being what they are, it's going to be insanely difficult for a PC to find his or herself adjacent to a target undetected. If they do, an insta-kill isn't a bad way to reward them. If they've managed to do this versus an important NPC... why was it so easy?

I think you handled it well enough. I still think it's a coup de grace though, even if the target isn't "helpless" in the strictest sense they are completely unaware and flat-footed. In my mind, that's helpless enough.

I wonder how it might have changed your ruling if the player had asked to slit his throat from behind instead. Much easier, if a bit messier, and it would make it very difficult for the target to scream or cry out.

[cranewings]

Foghammer wrote:

cranewings wrote:

pietri314 wrote:

Pinned is not helpless.

Grappling players are grappled.
Coup de grace provokes and is a full round action.
In my opinion, this is over powered and a no-no.

How about Grab - Pin - Tie up - Kill? Tie up can be called, "Control" and if the monk uses his own body to do the tying, he can progress to kill and gains another +2 on his roll?

Sounds like a much longer process than you see in fiction. Stealth rules being what they are, it's going to be insanely difficult for a PC to find his or herself adjacent to a target undetected. If they do, an insta-kill isn't a bad way to reward them. If they've managed to do this versus an important NPC... why was it so easy?

I think you handled it well enough. I still think it's a coup de grace though, even if the target isn't "helpless" in the strictest sense they are completely unaware and flat-footed. In my mind, that's helpless enough.

I wonder how it might have changed your ruling if the player had asked to slit his throat from behind instead. Much easier, if a bit messier, and it would make it very difficult for the target to scream or cry out.

I've always wanted to let people kill truly unaware targets with a single attack but have always thought low level spells were too nasty then. If the person can never fight back against even a wizard with silence and invisibility cast, the game pretty much stops at that point.

I Palladium, Invisibility is such a strong power it is usually the only thing you can do. Someone might have martial arts or custom super equipment or be able to lift and throw a tank, but the invisible guy can't do much besides be invisible. In Pathfinder, everyone can be invisible from level 3. The sorcerer just casts it and presto, instant non-detection.

Taking the ever present Wizard problem out of this, imagining a world of just Monks, Fighters, Rogues and Cavaliers, sure, a coup de grace on unaware targets is probably the best way of doing it.

[cranewings]

On a side note, to help the player out, I narrated that he grabbed the guy's trachea first with his big nasty monk fingers to keep him from yelling, and then broke his neck.

[Coaltongue]

cranewings wrote:

pietri314 wrote:

Pinned is not helpless.

Grappling players are grappled.
Coup de grace provokes and is a full round action.
In my opinion, this is over powered and a no-no.

How about Grab - Pin - Tie up - Kill? Tie up can be called, "Control" and if the monk uses his own body to do the tying, he can progress to kill and gains another +2 on his roll?

Tied-up is treated as pinned. The pinned condition is not helpless and it shouldn't be. If a creature is manacled or hog-tied, that creature can see something coming to cut its throat and can attempt to avoid the attack.

The helpless condition includes the word "bound". I believe this word was included to accommodate for a creature who is restrained to the point of helplessness. Like a person being water-boarded. This is a creature that isn't simply manacled. It is a creature that is completely immobilized and incapable of defending itself.

The rules for giving a creature this condition within the confines of a combat round are not defined.

The idea that a creature could, within the confines of a combat round, take another creature from the grappled condition to the helpless condition using rope and a grapple check is unrealistic (all "realism" jokes aside) in my opinion.

You should be allowed to tie up the creature, using your grapple - pin - tie up strategy. The tied-up target is then pinned, according to the rules, and you are free to mess with it, because you no longer need to grapple a tied-up foe. It gets -4 to ac for being pinned. You can sneak attack it, because it is denied it dexterity bonus. It is prone for an additional -4 vs. melee attacks. But, in my head, that target is not helpless and may not be the subject of a Coup de Grace.

[cranewings]

pietri, is your objection just for balance or is it because it is easier for you to picture someone being hacked to death over 6-12 seconds rather than hit once and killed?

If the target can't hit back, is just laying there, I could even be inclined to let someone take 6 attacks on him in a round. I can chop wood with an axe pretty fast, and I usually care to specifically hit a certain spot with each chop. If I was hitting a tied up person with an axe just to hit them anywhere, I could probably do it pretty fast.

If taking your time to deliver a killing blow to someone that can't get away and can't strike back breaks immersion for you, a single person hacking on him once every six seconds, three or four times as his best attempt to kill said person, breaks it for me.

[LoreKeeper]

If we're just talking about a first level orc (rather than a 100hp monster); than a simple grapple and maintain for damage is enough to kill. That's like... 10hp? A specialist unarmed grappler can do that in one or two turns of grappling.

You may totally narrate that as "snapping his neck".

Going something like grapple - pin - [?] - death is a bad idea. This sets the precedent and a specialist grappler like your maneuver-master PC will be able to pull that off in a round consistently once he reaches level 5 or a bit higher. You do not want all your special monsters and bosses to be 1-shotted by the grappler of doom. And it will be that good.

[cranewings]

Lore Keeper, I honestly don't see the problem with him one rounding enemies with grapple. The game before last he went up against an equal level fighter, failed his grapple roll twice and got cut down by two blows from a short sword. The only reason he lived was because the paladin got to him before he died and the enemy was just trying to get away / didn't care about killing him.

Most monsters and fighters can blow up a monk with one or two full attacks. Most wizards can do it with one spell. If the monk can do it with one round where he manages to roll a successful grapple three times in a row, what's the big deal?

[Coaltongue]

cranewings wrote:

pietri, is your objection just for balance or is it because it is easier for you to picture someone being hacked to death over 6-12 seconds rather than hit once and killed?

If the target can't hit back, is just laying there, I could even be inclined to let someone take 6 attacks on him in a round. I can chop wood with an axe pretty fast, and I usually care to specifically hit a certain spot with each chop. If I was hitting a tied up person with an axe just to hit them anywhere, I could probably do it pretty fast.

If taking your time to deliver a killing blow to someone that can't get away and can't strike back breaks immersion for you, a single person hacking on him once every six seconds, three or four times as his best attempt to kill said person, breaks it for me.

Hey, Crane.

You make a pretty good point.
And let's face it, the grapple rules are a hassle at best, and we are talking about details of details. As a DM, given what you are talking about in spirit and not trying to be a super-rules-lawyer guy, this what I would offer you as rationale:

Firstly, with a +8 to hit on an Orc peon denied its dex bonus, the little fella isn't going to last long. Secondly, if this is a higher level NPC or character, I would like it to have a fighting chance, because this a challenge-based game, and I find generally when people try to change those challenges to make it easier for them to handle or more flavorful, they generally mess up a really well-thought-out system. I am assuming that while the creature can't fight back, it hasn't lost its will to live and that it is going to attempt get its neck out of the way when an attacker tries to obliterate it. This is the difference between losing one's dexterity bonus and being helpless.

Secondly, if I was going to offer your player an option like this one (and by that I mean the ability to "snap a creature's neck after sneaking up behind it and briefly observing it"), I would be more tempted to look at the "assassinate" ninja class Master Trick rules and fiddle with those mechanics (also a very powerful ability and has a high potential for abuse.) Maybe the players you play with are different than mine. If I give my folks an inch they'll take a mile, and in my opinion the rules given are just fine.

*edit for bad grammar, yo.