Breaking Rope and Tying someone up with Combat Maneuvers?

[Andrew Wilson 353]

We can't agree on what to do in the situation where I would like to use grappling on my monk to tie an enemy up and the rulebook states that you can tie someone up with rope and unless their Combat Maneuver bonus is higher than yours then they can't break free from the restraints, my GM is thinks that all you need to do is take a Strength check and just break the rope but the book says that you tie someone up and they have to check their CMB vs 20 + your CMB and if theirs isnt high enough to beat yours THEY CANT ESCAPE, can anyone please explain on here why that makes sense because regardless of the what the book is saying he wont budge on telling me that isnt the way it works, I was thinking maybe your CMB determines how tight you tie the rope and if you tie it tighter then the creature can handle it can't escape but he doesnt think that makes any sense. I dont know if anyone could help me out i would really be grateful :)

[Combat Monster]

To my understanding "they can't escape" means they can't use the escape artist skill to do so.

If they have strength to burst the ropes or a means to cut the rope that is something else entirely.

[Diego Rossi]

@Andrew Wilson 353

PRD wrote:

Tie Up: If you have your target pinned, otherwise restrained, or unconscious, you can use rope to tie him up. This works like a pin effect, but the DC to escape the bonds is equal to 20 + your Combat Maneuver Bonus (instead of your CMD).[1] The ropes do not need to make a check every round to maintain the pin. If you are grappling the target, you can attempt to tie him up in ropes, but doing so requires a combat maneuver check at a –10 penalty. If the DC to escape from these bindings is higher than 20 + the target's CMB, the target cannot escape from the bonds, even with a natural 20 on the check.[2]

That is the rule in question. It is in the contest of the grapple/pin maneuver, not other things like using a rope to tie up someone, bursting items and so on.

What it say is all in the context of the grapple maneuver, so it is saying:
1) after you have pinned and tied up a target, when he make a grapple check to try to escape the grapple, he will have to make a grapple check against 20+your CMB instead of making it against your CMD.
2) When making that grapple check if the target can't beat the Dc of the check he can't win the grapple check even if he roll a natural 20.
I.e. you don't have a 5% chance each round of escaping from the ropes.

The rules that your GM is citing are different thins and not related to the grappling rules. so:
a) it is possible to use the escape artist, with a DC equal to the binder's Combat Maneuver Bonus +20. (Note that skills don't autosuceed on a natural 20, so if the tied up creature can't beat the DC he can't free itself)
b) it is possible to break the ropes, with a DC of: "Burst rope bonds 23".
Better ropes or multiple coils of rope can increase the DC but that is situational and a GM call.

Essentially: you can't tie up a storm giant with a string.

[Andrew Wilson 353]

I see what you are saying, that makes much more sense..
It does beg the question why did they make it impossible to escape from these rope bonds but make it so easy to just burst the ropes off with a simple strength check?
Do you have any suggestions on the modifiers of adding multiple coils of rope increasing the DC or different types of rope to use with better DC?

[Zaister]

So, this means you can't effectively use a hemp rope tie up someone with a Strength score of 16 or better (18 or better for silk rope), because they can always succeed on the Strength check to break the rope by taking 20.

[Diego Rossi]

Andrew Wilson 353 wrote:

I see what you are saying, that makes much more sense..

It does beg the question why did they make it impossible to escape from these rope bonds but make it so easy to just burst the ropes off with a simple strength check?

Conan and a lot of other heroic types in literature (in one of the novels he was capable to break free from being crucified).

Andrew Wilson 353 wrote:

Do you have any suggestions on the modifiers of adding multiple coils of rope increasing the DC or different types of rope to use with better DC?

A masterwork rope should increase the DC by 2. As a GM I would increase the burst DC by 2 for each 10' (after the first 10' that set the base DC) of rope used to bind a small or medium sized creature and require at least 1 full round action for each extra 10' of rope used to bind it.

The quantity of rope needed to tie up someone would change with the size of the creature. 20' for a large creature, 30 for a huge one and so on.

To better explain it:
- you start with a pinned creature;
- you spend your standard action making a grapple check and tie it up, the DC for bursting the bonds is now 23, you have used up to 10' of rope.
- next round you spend a full round (but you don't need to make a grapple check as the rope is keeping the enemy pinned) to tie an extra coil of rope, the DC increase to 25 and you have used another 10' of rope.
- you repeat it again, until you run out of rope or the GM feel that there is no more space to put extra rope on the creature.

Note that the extra rope would not increase the Escape artist DC. A ton of badly tied rope isn't better than a single coil against Escape artist.

As a houserule I could have the guy trying to burst the rope suffer some non lethal damage for each attempt (bruised wrists and arms). Something of the order of 1d2+the strength bonus used in the attempt. That damage could be reduced by natural or artificial armor and DR.
That way warrior types would be capable to attempt to burst the rope with little consequences, weaker characters would be best served by trying to use escape artist.