After a weird scenario in game, I took a long look at the Gaseous Form spell, and nowhere does it mention grappling.
It is clear that the caster can't grapple anyone (or manipulate items) but can the caster be grappled?
I have no idea what insubstantial means as a game term, but as far as I can remember, the 3.5 version made you incorporeal, which covers grappling. Now, the spell gives you DR10/magic and a slow fly speed. You lose physical armor, can't be crit, sneak attacked, or bled.
This makes it sound like you turn into something like an air elemental. So I looked up air elementals... and nothing prevents you from grappling them either.
OTOH, you can slip through small cracks etc.
So, a question to the forums.... can you be grappled when under the effects of gaseous form?
An ethereal creature is invisible, insubstantial, and capable of moving in any direction, even up or down, albeit at half normal speed. As an insubstantial creature, you can move through solid objects, including living creatures. An ethereal creature can see and hear on the Material Plane, but everything looks gray and ephemeral. Sight and hearing onto the Material Plane are limited to 60 feet.
Doesn't look like it.
This thread considered the issue and had a developer response: http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2kc70?Grappling-VS-Gaseous-Form
Relevant quote from SKR in the linked the thread:
"You can't grapple a gaseous creature, that's obvious and we shouldn't need to state that in the rules. If a gaseous creature can slip through any crack because it's gaseous, it can easily slip through the gaps between your fingers or arms."
Honestly, this seems pretty obvious. I never thought that it was possible.
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The barbarian inhales. Hard. :P
Well its hard to apply common sense in some direct fashion when the spell doesn't act sensibly.
Common sense would say that an arrow to the chest would just harmlessly pass through you, but that isn't the case. SO the second question comes up.
Citing the rules for being ethereal are not helpful, because you are not ethereal and cannot move through objects or creatures, only through small gaps/cracks, and that is an important distinction.
Your movement still provokes AoOs while gaseous. You can be crushed by a falling object. Mundane weapons harm you. So if fist can harm you, it isn't some huge leap to say that it can also manipulate you via trip (if you aren't flying), grapple, bull-rush, overrun etc. It is also not unreasonable to suggest that other creatures can't freely move through the gaseous creature.
For a weapon to deal damage, it has to impart some kinetic energy onto the target. For this to occur, there must be some resistance from the target.
If the weapon is magical, it is now dealing full damage. So a monk with an AoMF or Ki strike is dealing full damage with his or her fists, so again, it isn't a big leap to say that they could also grapple the target. In the case of Ghost Touch vs. an incorporeal creature, the monk could indeed grapple... But what about gaseous form?
If the monk has a magic weapon that ignores the Gaseous Form DR, then can they grapple the target?
Isn't it reasonable to suggest that a Gaseous Target can be grappled normally, but escape without an action spent by moving?
Or is Gaseous Form the best counter to a Tetori's Inescapable Grasp that can stop incorporeal, dimension door and teleportation effects, and polymorphs, but not gaseous form?
Should we expand ghost touch to include "insubstantial" or gaseous form as a specific addendum? And if we do, is the gaseous target effected by a ghostbane dirge? It already takes full damage from magic weapons, so what would be the point?
Whatever a Dev says in a thread is not necessarily canon, and there are implications here. If the target cannot be grappled, then this should probably extend to any elemental that isn't an earth elemental right? I mean how can you grapple air fire or water? A caster druid, then, can be immune to crits, sneak attack, bleed, grapple, trip, etc. the entire time they are wildshaped into an air elemental.
Air elementals are far more solid and physically coherent than a creature in gaseous form. You know this because the air elemental stat block doesn't say it can flow through cracks under doors or various other abilities specifically granted by the gaseous form spell. Notice also that (unlike a creature affected by the spell), an air elemental retains its natural armor bonus, can still attack and cast VSM spells, still has its supernatural abilities, isn't prevented from using the run action, doesn't automatically succeed at Fly checks, can enter water, and can still manipulate objects.
"Creature of living air" is not the same as "in gaseous form." And the rules apply to each of those things differently.
Alright, fair enough. I knew going in that this would be a judgement call. I had always let gaseous form avoid grapples in the past, but when looking at the spell a second time I just didn't see a mechanical reason. (Since there is no game definition of insubstantial) for this judgement. Guess I should just go with my gut more often.
The group discussion the spell actually ended on a "lets just houserule that it breaks grapples" moment. I thought it was very strange that it wouldn't.
Pretty potent either way... makes vampires effectively immune to grapples since their gaseous form is Su, they can activate while grappled. I guess this is how a caster beats a tetori grappler.
Well, the comments about common sense are ill-suited to thhis issue.
Again I will suggest that common sense would say that mundane weaponry could not hurt you.... it would just pass right through.
Common sense and spells actually are often at odds. Things like a person in Gaseous Form getting killed by a falling rock (totally RAW) are not based on common sense, they are based on balance. If gaseous form granted blanket immunity, well it would be too powerful. So when I ask these questions, I am usually looking for the intent, not the common sense interpretation.
It could have been entirely intentional that immunity to manipulation (which is explicitly discussed under incorporeal) was left off of the Gaseous Form list of immunities intentionally. In fact, this is where my question came from, since there is a bit about not manipulating other objects that mirrors incorporeal creatures, but nothing about being manipulated. Whether this was a thought-out decision based on balance, an oversight, or an implied usage, I can't know unless I ask.
There are a lot of ruling that I see as defying common sense. For example, Pounce + iterative attacks. Pounce, I always saw as a creature pouncing on a target with all of its attacks hitting at once. This is reflected by a pouncer getting a full-attack plus rakes (all of their possible attacks). But apparently this works for iterative attacks as well
One description I found that helps people explain the "solidness" of air elementals is to thing of the wind pressure you get when you stick your hand out of a moving car, that pressure is what an air elemental feels like, its like a solid wind pushing back.
I get the idea. I was simply using an air elemental to say: here is another creature, composed of air, that can be grappled. Since gaseous form grants the same immumities as, say, elemental body IV this seemed like a reasonable jumping off point. It also invalidates any argument thay says "X cannot be grappled because you can't grapple gas"... air is gas, an air elemental is made of gas, it can be grappled.
Still, I got my answer and I am happy with it. It just doesn't automatically fall under common sense ruling, that's all. Usually when something can't manipulate objects, it cannot, in turn, be manipulated... and this seemed reasonable to me. But its always worth checking, because even though gaseous form seems like it should give incorporeal immunities, it doesn't. Sometimes balance overrides common sense.