Greater Grapple and Vampires

[MeanMutton]

I have a few questions about Greater Grapple and the vampire Blood Drain ability.

Greater Grapple wrote:

Benefit: You receive a +2 bonus on checks made to grapple a foe. This bonus stacks with the bonus granted by Improved Grapple. Once you have grappled a creature, maintaining the grapple is a move action. This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round (to move, harm, or pin your opponent), but you are not required to make two checks. You only need to succeed at one of these checks to maintain the grapple.

Blood Drain wrote:

A vampire can suck blood from a grappled opponent; if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage. The vampire heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

Okay, how do these two items interact? Basically, can I use Greater Grapple to get a vampire to have more than one blood drain attacks in a round? For example:

Round 1 - Standard action to Initiate Grapple. Move action to Pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con.

Round 2 - Move action to maintain pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con. Standard action to maintain pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con.

Result, after two rounds, you're now out 3d4 Con. Is this right?

[Gwen Smith]

At my table, yes, this is correct.

Note that some GMs rule that you can't maintain a grapple on the same round that you initiate it. (The problematic text is "If you do not release the grapple, you must continue to make a check each round, as a standard action, to maintain the hold." Some GMs read that to mean that you must wait a round to make your first maintain check.)

If your GM rules this way, then your sequence is:
Round 1: Standard action to initiate grapple.
Round 2: Move action to Pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con. Standard action to maintain pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con.
And round 3+ looks exactly like round 2.

[MeanMutton]

In this case, I'm the GM trying to understand the rules. My biggest concern is this line: "This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round (to move, harm, or pin your opponent), but you are not required to make two checks. You only need to succeed at one of these checks to maintain the grapple."

That makes it sound like you're not getting two maintain grapple rolls but rather two rolls to do one of three actions and if either succeed, you maintain.

[wraithstrike]

MeanMutton wrote:

I have a few questions about Greater Grapple and the vampire Blood Drain ability.

Greater Grapple wrote:

Benefit: You receive a +2 bonus on checks made to grapple a foe. This bonus stacks with the bonus granted by Improved Grapple. Once you have grappled a creature, maintaining the grapple is a move action. This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round (to move, harm, or pin your opponent), but you are not required to make two checks. You only need to succeed at one of these checks to maintain the grapple.

Blood Drain wrote:

A vampire can suck blood from a grappled opponent; if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage. The vampire heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

Okay, how do these two items interact? Basically, can I use Greater Grapple to get a vampire to have more than one blood drain attacks in a round? For example:

Round 1 - Standard action to Initiate Grapple. Move action to Pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con.

Round 2 - Move action to maintain pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con. Standard action to maintain pin, automatically activates Blood Drain for 1d4 Con.

Result, after two rounds, you're now out 3d4 Con. Is this right?

Maintaining the pin or grapple is the check you make so they don't get away. There is only one of those a round so if you have two grapple checks a round the first one is to maintain because even if you fail the 2nd one they are not set free. That makes it "not a maintain" check so it doesn't qualify.

Now if the vampire ability said "every time you made a successful pin" or something similar that would be different.

[wraithstrike]

MeanMutton wrote:

In this case, I'm the GM trying to understand the rules. My biggest concern is this line: "This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round (to move, harm, or pin your opponent), but you are not required to make two checks. You only need to succeed at one of these checks to maintain the grapple."

That makes it sound like you're not getting two maintain grapple rolls but rather two rolls to do one of three actions and if either succeed, you maintain.

Normally the maintain check allows you to harm or move or pin them. What greater grapple does is allow you to harm them twice, move them twice and so on. This makes grappling more dangerous especially if the creature has constrict. :)

PS: I guess you could get two maintains, but since failing the "maintain" check sets them free I am not sure that is the intent. That is a good FAQ question though, since the feat does not specifically say "You can fail the 1st attempt to maintain a grapple or pin and the target is not automatically set free".

[Marko Sertic]

Specifically mentioned in the text of Greater Grapple is maintaining a pin. With the understanding that failing the maintain roll will set an opponent free, am I reading right that you could technically maintain a pin twice in a round? Normally you wouldn't need to, but in the case of the Vampire template's blood drain ability, the CON damage is inflicted on the establishment or maintenance of a pin (NOTE: not a grapple; so establishing the grapple does not trigger the damage). Thoughts?

[Pizza Lord]

I would rule you can only establish or maintain the pin once per round against the same target. It's like you can't keep tripping a prone target after you've tripped them to keep initiating bonus attacks from Greater Trip and Vicious Stomp.

I also tried to think up a way where the vampire might use its move-action to maintain the pin, deal Blood Drain, and then Ready to re-establish the Pin if the target breaks it. The Pathfinder grapple seems be proof against this tactic though. Either the target succeeds and escapes the grapple, which means you couldn't pin, or they succeed and reverse the grapple, which means you couldn't Pin them, since they'd be the grappler. In 3.5 this tactic would work if the target chose not to escape but instead perform some other action, since there was no differentiation between grappler and grappled.

I suppose if you were somehow grappling two different foes, then you might be able to eastablish/maintain a pin on them both with the two actions, which would trigger Blood Drain.

[Marko Sertic]

That doesn't make sense, though. Without Greater Grapple, you need to establish or maintain a pin each round, and that normally costs a standard action. I think the round 1 action economy is less controversial: standard action to establish a grapple and a move action to establish a pin (as Greater Grapple specifically calls out a pin on the move action grapple check). The second round action economy, however, centers around whether, with Greater Grapple, you can maintain a pin twice in a round (thus triggering the blood drain ability). Note that while maintaining a pin twice is not necessary, I'm having a problem find anything that states you can't.

[Scott Wilhelm]

Marko Sertic wrote:

I reading right that you could technically maintain a pin twice in a round?

Yes.

Once you are grappling an opponent, every successive, successful check lets you do bad stuff to your opponent and also maintain the grapple.

Core Rulebook, Grapple wrote:

Once you are grappling an opponent, a successful check allows you to continue grappling the foe, and also allows you to perform one of the following actions (as part of the standard action spent to maintain the grapple).... Move... Damage... Pin... Tie Up...

And Greater Grapple lets you do that 2X in a round, once as a Standard Action as per normal, then again as a Move Action.

Greater Grapple wrote:

This feat allows you to make two grapple checks each round (to... pin your opponent)

Rapid Grappler would let you do it a 3rd time: once more as a Swift Action.

Marko Sertic wrote:

Normally you wouldn't need to, but in the case of the Vampire

Well, if your goal was to Tie Up your opponent, or if you wanted to continue inflicting damage from a Pin instead of just a Grapple, or to inflict damage twice, all the extra checks you can get are lovely. And there are feats like Pinning Knockout and Strangler, and maybe you can be doing Sneak Attack Damage and Armor Spike Damage. Also, I have a build idea for multiple checks vs. multiple opponents.

Marko Sertic wrote:

Normally you wouldn't need to, but in the case of the Vampire template's blood drain ability, the CON damage is inflicted on the establishment or maintenance of a pin (NOTE: not a grapple; so establishing the grapple does not trigger the damage). Thoughts?

I'm still thinking about this. The description of the Vampire Blood Drain ability sort of makes me think that maybe the Drain can only happen 1/round regardless of the number of Pins executed against a victim.

Vampire wrote:

if the vampire establishes or maintains a pin, it drains blood, dealing 1d4 points of Constitution damage. The vampire heals 5 hit points or gains 5 temporary hit points for 1 hour (up to a maximum number of temporary hit points equal to its full normal hit points) each round it drains blood.

"If the vampire establishes or maintains a pin" seems different to me than "with every successful Pin attempt" or "with every successful grapple check upon a Pinned opponent, starting with the round in which it achieves the Pin."

Further, it does look to me that the Vampire cannot heal more than 5hp/round, even if it could inflict Con damage more than 1/round.

Vampire wrote:

The vampire heals 5 hit points... each round it drains blood.

This is academic, though. We are talking about a monster, not a PFS PC: the GM would adjudicate his own Grappling Vampire however he sees fit, and not even I would argue with the GM in a situation like that.

[Pizza Lord]

Marko Sertic wrote:

That doesn't make sense, though.

And yet it actually makes perfect sense in the rules.

Can you pin the same person twice? No, they're already pinned.
Can you trip the same person twice? No, they're already prone.
Even with a special ability like Greater Trip that gives you a free attack that could technically be used to Trip? No, they're still prone.
Can you maintain concentration on a spell with 'concentration' in it's duration twice in a round? No, either you did, or you didn't.

If somehow you end up grappling two different people, you can maintain two pins in a round if you are pinning two different foes, then yes it works. For this scenario, against one foe, no, you've maintained the pin, that's that. Use your action to do something else; attack with a slam for energy drain, drag them up a wall with spider climb, dominate the target or one of their allies.

[wraithstrike]

The vampire does not have the "with every successful pin" language because maintaining more than once was not even an option. As written all you have to do is maintain the grapple to activate it. As written the feat allows you more than on maintain, but the question is was it intended for you to be able to maintain on the same creature more than once. The feat does not specifically say you can.

I am going to press the FAQ button since it would also answer the question of can you maintain on the same creature more than once in the same round.

[Scott Wilhelm]

wraithstrike wrote:

the question of can you maintain on the same creature more than once in the same round.

is a different question from

Pizza Lord wrote:

Can you pin the same person twice? No, they're already pinned.

The Grappling rules specifically say that subsequent successful checks let you do bad stuff to your victim and also allow you to maintain the grapple. Greater Grapple specifically says you get to make 2 checks/round to harm or Pin your victim. But the idea that you can't Pin somebody who's already Pinned, and so you only get to Pin (or maintain the Pin) once and then the next check you have to Damage him or Tie him Up or something does seem ambiguous, if something of a corner case.