So some questions came up over the spell "Create Pit" in my gaming group.
Scenario:
Initiative order
Monster A
PC B (Melee)
PC C (Caster)
Monster A is Large and has "Grab". Monster A charges PC B and successfully hits and uses "Grab" to grapple PC B.
PC B and Monster A now have the grappled condition with Monster A being the grappler.
PC B uses his turn to try and escape the grapple and fails.
PC C casts Create Pit so as to be in the back two squares of Monster A's space but not adjacent to PC A.
Original Positioning
XXXX
XAAX
XAAX
XBXX
Positioning as spell is cast
XPPX
XPPX
XAAX
XBXX
Now Monster A obviously has to save vs create pit.
Question 1:
If Monster A fails what happens to PC B?
Question 2:
If Monster A succeeds on its save and is forced to move to the position below what happens? Does it provoke?
New position
XPPX
XPPX
XXAA
XBAA
|
1) There was a big FAQ request a few months ago on whether forced movement breaks grapples. Not answered yet.
2) Nonvoluntary movement (drag, bull rush, falling) generally doesn't provoke AoO unless otherwise stated, so I'd say no.
3) Nope, it says you have to jump into the nearest open space, and the spot where B is standing isn't open.
Question 1: This gets weird and the rules don't cover it. There are tons of threads about what happens when you force one grappler to move. Here's a fairly recent one (the title doesn't mention Crate Pit but many of the posts do). The people on that thread never resolved it and there are at least 51 FAQ requests in there.
My GM response is that since A is grappling B and he is bigger, he falls into the pit and B is pulled in there with him - I think that's what would happen in real life if, say, an elephant grabs a man with its trunk then falls into a pit, the man would go with the elephant.
Scenario B: No, it doesn't provoke. There are numerous other examples where a combatant is forced to move by a spell or a combat maneuver and those rules all say that forced movement doesn't provoke. I would use them as a precedent to say that this doesn't provoke either.
Question 3: More weirdness. He's grappling and the grapple rules say they must be adjacent (which really only applies to the initial grapple check so I would make a GM-call to extend the idea to this as well), so by that GM-call I would say that the monster needs to move to the nearest free space adjacent to the enemy he's grappling or needs to release the grapple to move somewhere else. Edit: I misread that, I thought the monster was jumping to the FAR side of the pit. You wanted to know if he could move B out of the way and jump to B's space? No, you can never do this (unless you have a specific ability that lets you which would have to be written in the monster's description).