Player wants to shenanigan with a Heavy Wrist Launcher and a Barbed Bolt.

[Artemis Moonstar]

So, I've got a player wanting to do some shenanigans with a Heavy Wrist Launcher, a Barbed Bolt, and Hamatula Strike. For reference:

Wrist Launcher, Heavy:

A larger version of the wrist launcher, this device fires a single crossbow bolt instead of a featherweight dart. If you are proficient with hand crossbows, you are also proficient with heavy wrist launchers.

Barbed Bolt:

The head of a barbed arrow resembles that of a harpoon. Benefit(s) When a barbed arrow is attached to a length of silk rope and fired from a bow, the arrow’s range increment is reduced to 30 feet, but it gains the grapple special weapon quality. Barbed bolts exist for crossbows.

Hamatula Strike:

Benefit: Whenever you damage an opponent with a piercing weapon, you can immediately make a grapple check; success means the opponent is impaled on your weapon and you both gain the grappled condition. While the opponent is impaled, as an attack action you may make a grapple check on your turn at a -4 penalty to damage the opponent with your weapon, even if your weapon cannot normally be used in a grapple.

Grapple Rules:

s a standard action, you can attempt to grapple a foe, hindering his combat options. If you do not have Improved Grapple, grab, or a similar ability, attempting to grapple a foe provokes an attack of opportunity from the target of your maneuver. Humanoid creatures without two free hands attempting to grapple a foe take a –4 penalty on the combat maneuver roll. If successful, both you and the target gain the grappled condition. If you successfully grapple a creature that is not adjacent to you, move that creature to an adjacent open space (if no space is available, your grapple fails). Although both creatures have the grappled condition, you can, as the creature that initiated the grapple, release the grapple as a free action, removing the condition from both you and the target. If you do not release the grapple, you must continue to make a check each round, as a standard action, to maintain the hold. If your target does not break the grapple, you get a +5 circumstance bonus on grapple checks made against the same target in subsequent rounds. 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).

Bolded part in the grapple rules are the main point on concern here. The logic being that one can fire a grapple bolt, with 30 some odd feet of rope, at an opponent. If you hit, assuming you don't get a crit, you can utilize Hamatula Strike to initiate the grapple at range. If you succeed, the grapple rules indicate that somehow the grappled opponent is dragged right next to you, which in this case can be seen as gripping hold of the rope and pulling them in.

And yes, he plans to utilize Bushwack and probably Chokehold to play a Mortal Kombat Scorpion styled assassin.

Personally, unless I'm missing relevant rules somewhere, I'm pretty sure this work by RAW. By RoC (Rule of Cool) I'm inclined to allow it. RAI I'm not overly concerned about, in all honesty. I'm just looking around for relevant rules I might have missed in looking around.

Note that it's for a home game where I can adapt the campaign and combats to account for potential shenanigans. In this case, yeah, sure, he drags one person out of a fight, or perhaps two, but I can always adjust and make sure though he Bushwhacks a mage, there's still enough of a challenge in the fight to keep it thrilling.

Edit: Also, I suggested they Grappling Hook, which can also be used with Hamatula Strike, but they thought the heavy wrist launcher was cooler, so...

[Lady-J]

every thing seems to check out i think

[Cat-thulhu]

I like it.
I'd interpret it as the dart grappling him so there's no 30' drags for free. Especially comic when used on say, Giants. More of a "remote" grapple,
I would use the drag combat manoeuvre once a target is darted. I'd even allow an opponent to do the same if it occurs to them. This could be seen as his skill allowing him to time his drag to pull even the largest opponent in by unbalancing it.

[Diego Rossi]

"Cheliax: Empire of Devils", it would be nice to make a survey of the forum and see how many threads are generated by discussions about material in that book.

Hamatula Strike come from it. And that book was written while Pathfinder was being developed. As a GM I would take every ability or item in it with extreme caution, as it is one third 3.5, one third Pathfinder without any of the additional books and products and one third guesswork on how Pathfinder would develop.

[Garbage-Tier Waifu]

As far as rules go, you are absolutely correct in that it does indeed work. Which is AWESOME.