| elgabalawi |
I haven't been able to find this anywhere.
on the grapple flow chart, if one takes damage from an AoO while attempting to grapple, the amount of damage taken is subtracted from his CMB grapple roll.
once he succeeds with the first grapple, if the defender or his buddies damage our grappler with attacks, does that damage get subtracted from his next CMB roll to maintain the grapple/pin the guy?
like i said, couldn't find this anywhere.
thanks in advance.
| Troubleshooter |
Nope.
It's an interesting perspective. After all, it says:
"Unless otherwise noted, performing a combat maneuver provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of the maneuver. If you are hit by the target, you take the damage normally and apply that amount as a penalty to the attack roll to perform the maneuver."
The intent is to link the two sentences: Normally there's an AoO, and if the target damages you with the AoO then you take a penalty. But I suppose somebody could try to interpret them as separate clauses.
There's a similar case where this can be done. Characters can use Acrobatics to move through opponents' threatened squares with a successful check. However, if you take damage while using Acrobatics, you must make a second Acrobatics check at the same DC to avoid falling or being knocked prone.
It's a little more difficult to apply that logic to combat maneuvers in general. Note that only damage dealt by the target is applied as a penalty. If a creature has an Improved maneuver feat (such as Disarm or Trip), it doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. By interpreting the clauses separately, we introduce new conceptual problems. Can the target still Ready attacks against an opponent that trigger when it performs a trip? Some people would argue no, that the readied action takes place before or after the trip takes place. Other people will argue that the attack of opportunity normally does the same thing, and that it should be allowed. Then, if the answer to that was yes -- why does interpreting these clauses separately allow the victim of a combat maneuver to penalize his attacker's roll by readied attacks, but other creatures don't apply penalties? [And if you house-rule that other creatures can penalize the roll by readying attacks against maneuver users that aren't targeting them -- do all penalties applied by multiple readied attacks stack?]
You've got a stronger case for grapple, in my opinion. After all, it's a persisting condition -- there's no argument that you can attack a creature during a grapple, and not just before or after. But now the sequencing issue bites us with another logical issue. If a grappler establishes a hold on a target, and the target attacks the grappler, why doesn't the grapple break immediately? Almost a whole round of actions happens after that point until it becomes the grappler's turn and it suddenly has a much harder holding on to the target and fails the check.
If you determine that the clauses are unconnected, you're definitely going to have to start making rulings and possibly house-rules. Not only that, but combat maneuvers are supposed to be standardized and this interpretation pries the consistency of grapple further away from the others (and grapple is already special enough).
Grapple would be far more susceptible to failure and disruption than the other maneuvers, given that a creature doesn't have to ready an action to disrupt a grapple the way it would for a disarm or trip -- and the frequent penalties from this would penalize and neutralize grappling creatures much more frequently and easily than the existence of freedom of movement ever did.
Edit: Removed silly logic about multiple attackers.