So in an upcoming game I'm looking to play a Tiny race and possibly even smaller, my issue comes with realizing that while size bonus makes you hard to hit, it somehow makes you easier to grapple? How does that make sense, like a Tiny pixie flying around is hard to hit but easy to grab? In 3.5 grappling and other combat maneuvers required a melee touch attack to initiate contact before calculating what you roll vs the opponent to succeed or fail. So smaller creatures were still hard to initiate contact with, but once grabbed we're easy to hold onto and crush. Now in Pathfinder it seems like if you're fighting tiny and Smaller enemies grappling is easier to initiate and hold, but Why? Am I missing something?
It makes sense that once you can get a hold of a tiny creature that they are easy to hold on to and crush, but I don't understand why it's suddenly easier to get a hold of them. This is like the martial arts movies where the master challenges the pupil to grab the fly and he can't for the longest time, because it's not easy.
In 3.5 the rules required a melee touch attack to grab, establishing contact, then once you grabbed them, an opposed grapple check to hold them. It was essentially CMB vs CMB, it also added special size modifiers and everything. So smaller things were hard to grab but easy to hold, and larger things were easy to grab but hard to hold. Now Pathfinder's simplification doesn't really affect medium or larger creatures, they're about the same, it just skipps the grab stage and goes into the hold stage, but for smaller creatures it makes 0 sense. They're harder to touch but somehow much easier to just snatch out of the air.
The obvious solution is just to reestablish the melee touch attack being required and it's my suggestion to my GM, but I'm trying to find out if there is errata somewhere I don't know about. The combat manuever system was simplified, that's generally good, but in this case there is an obvious problem.
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I guess we could each go back and forth with examples or logic that support our own way of thinking.
Feel free to houserule whatever you feel makes the game more balanced.
Pathfinder and D&D are different enough to warrant different systems utilizing maneuvers.
Three is no errata or FAQ for which you seek. Maybe over in the Homebrew Forum you can find some ironed out suggestions to accomplish what you're looking for.
The Pathfinder rule was done more to streamline what we now know as combat maneuvers into one system. Before(in 3.5) trip and grapple had their own rules, and people seemed to have problems learning another subset of rules.
If your table had no problem using the old rules I don't see an issue with having one rule to initiate the grapple, and another way to hold onto the creature that is grappled.
Basically they chose simplification over realism. There is no errata.
Unfortunately, Pathfinder tends to get a little wonky when you are dealing with items or creatures of very small size. It should be harder to "hit" a fine creature in order to grapple it, just as it should be harder to hit a fine object like a potion than it actually is in-game; any level one character proficient in longbow with no bonus to dexterity has a 45% chance of hitting an object that is "usually no more than 1 inch wide and 2 inches high", from a hundred feet away.
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So in an upcoming game I'm looking to play a Tiny race and possibly even smaller, my issue comes with realizing that while size bonus makes you hard to hit, it somehow makes you easier to grapple? How does that make sense, like a Tiny pixie flying around is hard to hit but easy to grab? In 3.5 grappling and other combat maneuvers required a melee touch attack to initiate contact before calculating what you roll vs the opponent to succeed or fail. So smaller creatures were still hard to initiate contact with, but once grabbed we're easy to hold onto and crush. Now in Pathfinder it seems like if you're fighting tiny and Smaller enemies grappling is easier to initiate and hold, but Why? Am I missing something?
You're still the size of a chicken. It's easy for you to get places that are difficult to get to you in (requiring squeezing or being unable to reach you in many cases) but you aren't hard to actually grab.
I know from owning cats and stuff all my life that things that are "tiny" (for the purposes of this game system) you're not all that hard to catch aside from getting under things or behind things. The only thing that Cats and Chickens have going for them if you are having difficulty isn't their size, but their speed/mobility.
Cats, IMO, are supremely easy to "grapple" if you can get them and the "if you can get them" is completely dependent on the environment and if they can exploit their climbing/speed/hiding; NOT their actual difficulty to grab.
I can see the argument for "diminutive" creatures, but even then, in the last year I easily killed a mole with a shovel and caught a cornered mouse by hand no trouble; and I'm just a regular guy. Without a hiding place or an ability to really utilize your climbing/flying/hiding/speed or erratic behavior.. I mean.. there's nothing stopping a regular guy (let alone magical creatures and Elves and stuff that have enhancements for that kind of thing) from grappling much much better.