After a few encounters were completely trivialized by a caster with a ring of freedom of movement, our GM nerfed freedom of movement. I am slightly sad about this, but I concede that it was Bad For The Game to have total and perfect immunity to grappling. (We now get +5 on CMD against grapples, and escape artist or CMB checks to escape grapples.)
Problem is: Now I can end up grappled, and this makes me sad. So I am looking for ways to escape a grapple.
Option #1: Gaseous form. Not as awful as you might think, I have enough arcane trickster to cast a few spells per day without v/s components, and I have eschew materials.
Option #2: Shapechanging? I can't find any forms that I can get to from spells of 6th level or lower (think Contingency) that specifically state that they are immune to grappling in any way.
... and that's what I've come up with, pretty much.
Even if you remove the components you must still make a concentration check to cast while grappled. I recommend a potion of gaseous form rather than trying to cast it.
Other options include:
Invest in escape artist and a vest of escape and have your companions memorise liberating command
Be a teleportation subschool wizard or a cleric with the domain that gives you the same ability
Don't get grappled in the first place, always be flying or invisible or have mirror image up. Run with fire shield to make grappling or attacking you hurt. If you can make it dazing.
The concentration check to cast while grappled is pretty makeable usually for me, but yes, I was planning on contingency-gaseous form or something like that. (And the thing about components was mostly in terms of "what I can do once I am in gaseous form"; I can still cast most of my spells that way.)
I have a fair bit of escape artist, but not enough, probably.
Teleportation has been a bad fit because we're starting to consistently run into people who are smart enough to have dimensional lock abilities up, and they aren't always spells so I can't spellbane them.
And yeah, flying would have helped last time, it was something with earth glide. Whoops. And because of the dimensional lock, I couldn't just use the otherworldly kinono to maze her.
Shoes of lightning leaping can get you out of a grapple once per day.
Shape change into something whit swallow whole LOL. Grease, gaseous form, etheralness, undead form III in a incorcoreal form, dimension door, plane shift, fire shield, mage grasping hand, the obvious freedom of moovement, shapeshifting to ooze or gelatinous cube, gate ( and make yourself a new friend if ever want to comeback), passwall, enter your own demi plane, elemental shape air elemental and wirlwind, Did i forgot something?
I think I would ask for my 40,000 gold back for the ring. How common is grapple really anyway that you have immunity to it breaks your game? Are you guys fighting like a race of sentient flying amphibious octopuses with class levels or something?
As for escaping from a Grapple: Liberating Command. Take it yourself and have a buddy take it too, as even though you said you are normally pretty good with making the concentration check, you may not always be: DC 10 + the grappler's CMB + the level of the spell you're casting can be a b++&*, especially against anything with any focus on grappling.
Blink and maze (on urself if need be).
Polymorphe in a rust monster and make that fighter cry
Arlow wrote: Shape change into something whit swallow whole LOL. Grease, gaseous form, etheralness, undead form III in a incorcoreal form, dimension door, plane shift, fire shield, mage grasping hand, the obvious freedom of moovement, shapeshifting to ooze or gelatinous cube, gate ( and make yourself a new friend if ever want to comeback), passwall, enter your own demi plane, elemental shape air elemental and wirlwind, Did i forgot something? You need undead anatomy IV for incorporeal types, III is still corporeal only. Dimension door, etherealness, plane shift, demiplane, gate, etcetera all require that you not be dimension locked. I don't know of any spells available to me that allow me to shapeshift into an ooze. Freedom of movement has been nerfed.
There's nothing explicit I can find stating that you can't grapple an air elemental in or out of whirlwind form, although I bet our GM would grant that a whirlwind is hard to grapple. Gaseous form seems likely.
Fire shield, I don't think it'd prevent grappling, and doesn't do enough damage to seriously bother anyone who's trying to grapple 20th level wizard.
Grapple isn't insanely common, but it's one of the few good anti-caster tactics, and that makes a complete and perfect counter to it with no downsides a pretty significant caster buff.
So far as I can tell, none of the self-polymorph abilities let you do a rust monster, because it's an aberration, and there's no aberration form spells. (This, BTW, is one of the largest nerfs in Pathfinder; shapechange used to be spectacular, now it's sort of mediocre at best, because it can only do a tiny subset of the available creatures.)
I really like the shoes of lightning leaping. And I craft wondrous items, and I know the spells, and I have existing boots with a low enough price that even paying double I can still add that feature to them. Nice find!
Boots of escape are good too, and even cheaper. Amazing, if you happen to be a gnome.
It was just out of the bat whitout books. Beside, good bunch of grappler have medium to low will save, save or loose spell do come to mind too. I will have to look for the boots, sounds nice. Tnx for the post.
I do hear you. Getting grappled can certainly ruin a castor's day. There's an alchemical grease that aids in escape artist checks. I don't remember it being too expensive. I'd have it on as last resort, when avoiding has gone terribly wrong.
If you can't avoid the grapple via changing (into rust monsters, incorporeal creatures and the like) there's always "if you can't beat em join em mentality" and go for a form that significantly boosts your CMB/CMD and or use Transformation. Huge giant form + Transformation should equal quite a boost in ones CMB/CMD.
Transformation is pretty much garbage. You can't dismiss it, you can't cast spells, you can't even use spells from items, so you can't dispel it or get rid of it by any means short of having someone else clear it for you. The bonuses it provides to stats are enhancement bonuses, meaning it's giving no bonuses to stats if you have remotely decent gear. So basically it's a bonus to BAB, proficiency with weapons, +4 natural armor, +5 to fortitude saves that doesn't stack with some other likely sources, and you give up your primary abilities completely with no way to get them back for a couple of minutes. So basically, if I do that, I've given the enemy exactly what they wanted -- take the wizard out of the fight. A tissue-paper fighter with inappropriate gear is not a credible replacement.
And as noted, so far as I can tell, rust monsters aren't available at all, and the only spell that can do incorporeal forms is Undead Anatomy IV.
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