Combat Maneuvers (Grappling)?

[John Pryor]

I'm looking at Grappling, and I'm wondering if I am understanding it correctly. Let's say I am a lvl 1 Soldier, with Base Attack 1 and another +3 from Str. I wish to grapple a goblin in Second Skin. Say he has a Dex 12. that gives KAC of 13. On page 246 it says to make a Combat Maneuver I make a melee attack against KAC +8. So that means I have to hit a 21 and I have +4 to do it: I can only grapple successfully on an 17 or better? Seriously? And I have to renew that each round? Or am I getting something wrong? If I'm understanding correctly Combat Maneuvers seem pretty useless. I would be quite happy to be proven wrong. I wrestled in high school, and I guarantee you I did not need the equivalent of a 17 to succeed (Ok, so a high school wrestler isn't wearing Second Skin, but I didn't have a Str of 16 either; you get my point.) I needed about a 12, and I was not an especially good wrestler. The reason I care about all this is that traditionally grappling has been a good way to neutralize an opponent without killing and it seems pretty futile in Starfinder.

[Shinigami02]

Well for starting, NPCs (and presumably the person you're attempting to Grapple is an NPC) don't calculate AC the way PCs do. Depending on what the Goblin does, their KAC could be 11-13, based on their array (though I would personally suspect Combat, so your 13 is pretty accurate. As such you could be dealing with a Grapple DC as low as 19. And beyond that, well, there's also the Grappled condition's rules. Namely, a Grappled creature has -2 to their AC. This means, of course, that maintaining is 10% easier to do than initiating the grapple to begin with. This means a DC as low as 17 for a CR 1 Caster target, or 19 for a combat.

[gnoams]

Firstly, check out the Alien Archive. NPCS/monsters use COMPLETELY different rules for their stat blocks. Your CR 1/3rd goblin has a KAC of 12.

Secondly your high school wrestlers all have the improved combat maneuver feat for an additional +4.
So with a bab 1 +3str +4feat you have a +8 to get a 20.

So maneuvers aren't quite as bad as you think, but yes they are bad.

[Ventnor]

Also, if you want to be good at grappling, choose a Skittermander from Alien Archive to be your race. They get an inherent +2 bonus to their grapple checks, which makes them the objectively best species in the universe when it comes to hugging.

[John Pryor]

LOL A couple of you tell me NPCs are *completely* different and then come back with a KAC of 12 or 13. So maybe I was off by 1. It didn't have to be a goblin, I was just naming a likely opponent for a lvl 1 PC. So, KAC around 12-13. Add +8 due to the Combat Maneuver rules, and the target grappling DC is 20-21. I'm at +4 in the example, so I have to roll a 16 or 17. I guess I understand the rules. Of course, if I just want to shoot him, I have at least +1 and he has KAC 12 of 13, so I only need an 11 or 12, at most (assuming I have no Dex bonus). It's hard for me to see why a PC would EVER use Grapple, which is a shame. I suppose you could take the Improved Combat Maneuver feat. But, still, it seems to me Paizo has set the difficulty too high. Just my 2 cents worth.

[Matt2VK]

With Starfinder, Paizo is making a effort to do away with all the one shot success and your defeated. This is mostly in the nature of spells but also in the effectiveness of combat maneuvers.

Of which, grapple checks played a part in. Now how well these changes in the Combat maneuver rules work, have no idea.

[Shinigami02]

John Pryor wrote:

LOL A couple of you tell me NPCs are *completely* different and then come back with a KAC of 12 or 13. So maybe I was off by 1.

To be fair, all we're saying is they're using completely different rules, which is 100% true. It just happens that at CR 1 they happen to line up.