Grabbo: the amazing grabbing eidolon

[BaconBastard]

I want to make a summoner who's eidolon is a grappling machine and I have several questions about the base concept of this so that I'm aware of exactly how it works so it can maximize it's grabbyness.

Question 1: If I am performing a full attack, and my first attack is with my grab weapon and I successfuly initiate a grapple, what happens to the rest of my turn?

Grab being a free action I should have a full round of actions remaining (with the exception of the attack that initiated the grab), however all the rules for grapple assume that you spent a standard action to begin grappling or a move action to maintain the grapple and only have a standard action remaing to attck with.

Question 2: Grab being a free action, I intend to use attacks of opportunity to initiate grapples to "rob" enemies of their standard action. If I choose to take the crazy penalty to my grapple check to not gain the grappled condition myself (see "grab") I would still threaten. Releasing a grapple is also a free action, so in the event that a second opponent triggers and AoO, can I release my grapple, make the AoO, and attempt to grapple the new opponent? Additionally, can I maintain the grapple with the first opponent, and add the second to the grapple as well?

I may have more questions that aren't immediately coming to mind, but right now I just want to focus on grab as part of a full attack, and grab in relation to AoOs.

[BaconBastard]

Anyone?

[deusvult]

Q1: I'd expect you should get the rest of your attacks. Some might argue that you'd have to make your grab attack last if you want to also make your other attacks, but I wouldn't agree with that paradigm personally.

Q2: So long as you have the ability to make AoOs, there should be nothing stopping you from dropping the grapple to grapple again. Having that AoO in the first place is the rub. I'm not encyclopaedic on my Eidolon knowledge and can't confirm that their evolution-granted grab is identical to the universal monster grab.

Q2a: Maintaining 2 opponents grappled is a tricky voyage through the rules. If I were you I'd assume at least 9 out of 10 GMs wouldn't allow it, and plan accordingly conservative on that.

[Mythic Evil Lincoln]

Definitely remember that your GM has a nuclear option by RAW to limit the number of free actions you can believably take. I think this is right and proper, actually, given some of the silliness that is possible with Eidolon Grab. You'll want to clear this with your GM before setting your expectations.

[BaconBastard]

deusvult wrote:

Q2: So long as you have the ability to make AoOs, there should be nothing stopping you from dropping the grapple to grapple again. Having that AoO in the first place is the rub. I'm not encyclopaedic on my Eidolon knowledge and can't confirm that their evolution-granted grab is identical to the universal monster grab.

The evolution for grab doesn't write out grab in it's entirety to reduce redundancy, but the first sentence is "An eidolon becomes adept at grappling foes, gaining the grab ability". Which, I believe, should make it identical. If not then awful things happen because the Eidolon grab entry doesn't even bother to mention that it doesn't provoke AoOs when it grabs. The only thing that is changed with the grab evolution is that they can only grab creatures a size smaller then them or smaller, where grab is normally the same size.

deusvult wrote:

Q2a: Maintaining 2 opponents grappled is a tricky voyage through the rules. If I were you I'd assume at least 9 out of 10 GMs wouldn't allow it, and plan accordingly conservative on that.

The -20 penalty on initiating grapples to avoid gaining the grappled condition and remain threatening is enough to make me not really want to continue to try threatening and adding more creatures to the grapple. In the hypothetical world in which I try these insane things, I would have the convienient grapple flow charts at the table (even though they aren't strictly an official thing).

[BaconBastard]

So I attempted to explain the madness of grapple and grab to a GM when he was attacking us with a gray ooze. I was like, "the ooze can use grab to suck others into the grapple" upon looking at rules, we only have rules for multiple people trying to grapple one opponent instead of one creature trying to grapple multiple opponents.

Thoughts on this?

[Nefreet]

Since maintaining a grapple requires a standard action (in most cases), it is only possible to maintain one grapple, no matter how many opponents you have grappled initially.

Example: Octopus grapples 8 creatures with one tentacle each. Next round it can either drop them all, and full attack again, or maintain the grapple on one of them.

It's a bit silly, actually.

[shroudb]

for your initial question:

you cannot normally grab and ungrab as part of an AoO because you can only use free actions as part of your turn.

now, there are some actions that are allowed and some not, so expect heavy table variance on that.

for my part, i would allow grab, but certainly not ungrab as part of an AoO.

also, take notice that you aren't robbing anyone an action: someone moves towards you, provoking. you attack and you grab him. He is now grappled (and automatically adjacent to you).

he can still attack you with natural weapons, light and one handed weapons. He can also simply chose to use a different standard action altoghether, like break the grapple, teleport, swift do something, etcetcetc