Earlier in tonight's game one of our characters was killed, and two more were temporarily knocked out by color spray. The rest of us went into full retreat mode, attempting to drag the bodies of our comrades behind us. We might have picked them up, but none of us were terribly strong.
The GM ruled that we had to, as a standard action, make drag combat maneuver checks in order to move them a few squares at a time.
I asked him why it wasn't simply a matter of encumbrance, to which he responded "the drag maneuver is the only rule that I know of that covers this kind of situation."
Therefore we would like to know what rules there might be for dragging fallen comrades. After all, there must have been something before the drag maneuver, which wasn't released until well after the Core Rulebook.
What kind of action is it to drag someone? How does it effect your speed? Do you need to make a combat maneuver check? How is it meant to be adjudicated in the RAW?
Maneuvers are for people who are actively resisting you. You're right, it should have been under the encumbrance rules which specifically cover how much you can drag. Definitely movement penalties and provoking, but not the drag maneuver.
So you say it should have been encumbrance, but how do you adjudicate that correctly in the rules?
What kind of action is it to drag someone? How does it effect your speed? Do you lose your Dexterity to AC? How is it meant to be adjudicated in the RAW?
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It's right there in the encumbrance rules, guys!
Lifting and Dragging: A character can lift as much as his maximum load over his head. A character's maximum load is the highest amount of weight listed for a character's Strength in the heavy load column of Table: Carrying Capacity.
A character can lift as much as double his maximum load off the ground, but he or she can only stagger around with it. While overloaded in this way, the character loses any Dexterity bonus to AC and can move only 5 feet per round (as a full-round action).
A character can generally push or drag along the ground as much as five times his maximum load. Favorable conditions can double these numbers, and bad circumstances can reduce them by half or more.
So add up your pals' body weights and their gear weight, and see how much you can drag at 5x your maximum load. It seems you would also count as overloaded, and be limited to 5 feet movement per round.
It would still be a move action to get to them, and then a ? Move? action to grab them by the collar to pull them.
There really isn't a rule for how exactly this works so DM's call.
If it was right to use the drag combat manouever, their CMD should have tanked with the effective dex and strength of 0. I make that a base 0, with no dodge bonuses or other active bonuses.
May well be better than adding the weight of the person and all their equipment, if that overloaded a weaker character.
I would have probably just added their weight to your encumberance after a move action to get a grip. If you were over your maximum load, but less than double I'd probably halve your speed, but there is no rules support for that.
I would make it simple. Move Action to pick up, and move action to get out of there. While being carried characters are considered to be held objects (gotta use that sunder check), to attack them. That's how we do it in our games. If you nat 1 on a reflex save, then the creature you are carrying suffers damage. The creature must be unconscious or dead though :P
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I agree with move action to pick up, then use encumbrance rules using their weight if carried, 1/5 their weight if dragged and whatever encumbrance category that puts you in. Simple and done. Objects they were holding would be left behind unless they were attached somehow or more actions spent gathering them up.
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I think when unconscious, it's fair to treat characters as no different than objects.
But what about when a PC if conscious? The PCs are standing in a nice fireball formation, the rogue is the only one not surprised, and he wants to drag the cleric behind cover.
Can the (flat-footed!) cleric make things easier for the rogue?
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Drag combat maneuver wouldn't be terrible. Unconscious means Dex 0. Strength 0 makes sense too, since they aren't able to use their strength when unconscious.
Using this, We would have CMD 10 (base) -5 (STR) -5 (DEX) so a CMD or 0 for medium creatures without special modifiers.
You get a +4 on attack rolls vs. prone creatures, which they most likely are.
So a 1st level fighter with 16 STR can drag an unconscious friend 15 feet with a 2 on the dice [1(BAB)+3(STR)+4(prone)+2(roll)=10 which beats CMD 0 by 10].
Hand waving and using object rules and encumbrance seems fine too. In the end, it shouldn't be difficult to drag an ally about your size in most situations.
