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We've all been there. A froghemoth or kraken or random tentacle beast has just grabbed a PC with one of its tentacles and is pulling him in to swallow.
The player intuitively wants to slash at the tentacle to free itself and you have to tell him sorry, it doesn't really work like that (without home rules). The PC can just do damage or (futilely) attempt to break the grapple.
Its kind of a wish list request, but I hope PF2ndEd will be able to handle this common GMing scenario much better than its predecessor.
Its possible this may fall under some sort of called shot rules or such but hopefully it will be in the core rules and can be applied to PFS.
Anyone else have some common situations that you currently have trouble adjudicating as a GM?
Attacking tentacles are my #1 but a definite #2 would be PCs jumping on creatures backs and if there's a quick rules entry it would help me out a lot :)
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I do miss the D&D 2e days when you could target tentacles, eye stalks, troll limbs, etc. with their own AC/HP listings.
As someone who recently jumped onto a kraken lich to attack it because I couldn't attack the tentacles, I too would like an answer to this question
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This should definitely be included as a hard and fast rule. More experienced DMs like me will usually houserule to allow this, such as with a Sunder attempt or called shot... But less experienced DMs often won't allow it because the book doesn't say you can. And even among DMs that allow it, everyone handles / rules it differently, so a player can never know what to expect from table to table.
I'd hope one of the goals of PF2 would be to clean up common rules holes and massive table variance like this.
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I don't think individual bodyparts should have their own HP gauges. I certainly don't feel up to tracking 6 or more Health bars for every creature I throw at the party. But I do like the idea of providing rules for attacking individual body parts.
The called shot system from Ultimate Combat was a good start. It just needs a bit of tweaking (don't make it a full round commitment to a single attack) and it would greatly improve the game as a whole, especially for martial characters. It allows players to make more choices in combat. Instead of simply attacking each round, a player can choose to sacrifice accuracy, or perhaps damage potential in order to inflict statuses on the opponent.
I'm playtesting a similar system i wrote for 5e currently.
Also yes I fully agree that climbing onto a bigger creature should be a thing. It is in my 5e system and doing so negates the penalties to hit smaller body parts if you can climb to them (moving across a creature's body parts is a matter of moving through difficult terrain and travelling a distance in feet equal to the creature's space, no matter from where you are)
Yada yada! Yamete senpaï!
Sorry for the joke, could not resist. Anyway, yes, callled shot could be nice. Or less broken grapple for monsters. My players are way more terrified by any plant monster than by any dragons. Grapple is just the best way to kill a player without magic in this game.
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Also yes I fully agree that climbing onto a bigger creature should be a thing. It is in my 5e system and doing so negates the penalties to hit smaller body parts if you can climb to them (moving across a creature's body parts is a matter of moving through difficult terrain and travelling a distance in feet equal to the creature's space, no matter from where you are)
to Threeshades: climb onto them system
Does your system just use a flat difficult terrain move?I've typically required either an acrobatics or climb check to hang on so to speak.
And once they reach the head or other body part what are your specifics for the bonus they get?
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Also yes I fully agree that climbing onto a bigger creature should be a thing. It is in my 5e system and doing so negates the penalties to hit smaller body parts if you can climb to them (moving across a creature's body parts is a matter of moving through difficult terrain and travelling a distance in feet equal to the creature's space, no matter from where you are)to Threeshades: climb onto them system
Does your system just use a flat difficult terrain move?I've typically required either an acrobatics or climb check to hang on so to speak.
And once they reach the head or other body part what are your specifics for the bonus they get?
I actually use the base rules for climbing onto a bigger creature that the Dungeon Masters Guide details, I just expanded them to allow a character to climb to a specific body part and to how your reach to other body parts work.
It requires a check to get onto the target, but no check to move around once you did that. The only other time you need to make checks is when the creature uses its action to try to throw you off.
As for specific effects, it depends on what you're attacking. Going for a leg or an arm for example does not impact your attack roll, but makes you automatically deal minimum damage (i.e. all dice are counted as a natural 1; an effect that has more impact in D&D5e than in PF1e) and force a saving throw against being wounded. A wound has an effect such as disadvantage on attacks with the limbs or a movement reduction, depending on what the limb is used for. So climbing onto the specific limb doesnt do much here.
Going for the head on the other hand imposes disadvantage on the attack, deals normal damage and forces a save against being stunned for a round. So once you are hanging on a dragon's head you can attempt this every time with no penalty.
Then theres also hands, eyes and other small parts that both cause disadvantage to the attack roll and deal minimized damage but have a more devastating effect such as blinding the target temporarily or making it unable to hold weapons. Climbing onto the arm of a large creature also means that you can attack that arm's hand without penalty. Or similarly when you're on the head you can go for the eyes.
Called Shots have been around since 'Ultimate Combat', but in a game with as many strange and unique creature types as PF, hard rules for attacking specific parts of an enemy will more or less have to be handled by providing the GM with a set of guidelines - Not all tentacles, wings, etc are equal, after all..
It doesn't need to just be guidelines. You can put in a set of solid rules and then add on certain caveats. For example that a limb may functionally be both used as a leg and have a claws which are used to attack, so if that limb is affected by a called shot, it counts as both a wounded leg and a wounded arm.
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Last week in Jade Regent we fought against this funky Chinese woman creature whose neck grew to like 20 or 30 feet long, and she took bite attacks at range. Same deal as the tentacle situation: at the very least, you should be able to attack the creature even if you're not in base-to-base contact. If it's a non-vital limb (tentacle, arm) then you could rule it severed if a certain portion of the creature's total hit points were inflicted (10%? 25%?), but for a neck it seems to me you'd have to bring the total hit points to zero to slice through that gristly hell-spawned thing. So it's hard to make a general rule about such stuff.
But I agree: core rules about attacking tentacles or other body parts that reach beyond the creature's "space" should be a thing.
If you're going to apply it to big creatures, you should also apply it to small. In terms of attacking somethings limb to make it unable to grapple you, or grab a weapon.
And honestly that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go down.
What about a readied action to attack a creature with reach as it is attacking and thus (temporarily) within reach?
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for climbing on a creature's back, the Ride skill gives some rules to at least make a reasonable ruling on how that might work. Combat Maneuver checks (grapple) could also be used to do the same.
As for cutting tentacles, that's a major trope of the sci-fi/fantasy genre, and I hope it does have some sort of codified rule in PF2.
It would be really easy too:
Tentacles have AC 20 and are cut off after taking 20 HP damage. That damage is applied to the creature.
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For the players worried about rules bloat would you prefer something akin to the swallow whole rules in regards to slicing a tentacle?
For example, a Froghemoth's swallow whole entry:
swallow whole (3d6+10 damage, AC 19 (No size and Nat Arm), hp 18 (1/10th HP)
For any creatures the designers would like to include a "tentacle grab/drag/constrict" rule they could include something similar including the AC and break HP:
tentacle drag (<optional damage>, Drag 10', AC <with 1/2 natural bonus>, 1/10th HP)
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It's a hobby of mine to design house rules for magic and combat. I've always liked climbing on monsters ever since Shadow of the Colossus. And recently I fell in love with Horizon: Zero Dawn.
That game was built from the ground up so that its creatures had parts you can attack, and it was up to you whether it made more sense to dismantle a foe's armor so future attacks did more damage, knock off weapons so you could use them against the creature, hit energized components that would explode for damage, or just try to hit vital parts to kill it.
I *wish* we could do something like that for PF2, but I imagine monster variety renders that untenable. (Horizon had, I think, 16 enemy types in total.) Also, you'd have to make it play fast enough that all the added options wouldn't grind combat to a halt.
I need to brainstorm some mechanics to get you what you want.
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So here's what you need.
You don't want to bother with actually tracking 'locations.' You track statuses. Because in a video game the skill is in aiming the gun (i.e., making your thumbs move the stick to where your brain wants it to be). But in a tabletop game, the skill is in choosing what type of attack to make.
{{Aside: We could theoretically design a system where there was player skill involved in determining when you hit. You could, for instance, have a certain reserve of Attack Points that you could spend to give you a greater chance of hitting. The skill-testing would be deciding when to use those points and when to simply trust chance. But that's both too far a step from Pathfinder, and probably something more suited to a full-on tactical combat game, rather than a role-playing game. For PF you want rules to help adjudicate the narrative action, not to be the end-all of the game's fun.}}
So, if we're tracking statuses, what statuses lend to strong narrative decision-making in combat?
Lowered Armor. You do something to get a chink in their armor, lowering their AC.
Slowed. You slow them down so they can't take as many actions.
Snared. Limit where they can move. Ended by breaking free (or maybe attacking what's grabbing you). This is how tentacles work.
Entangled. Lower their Dex.
Grappled. A step up from snared, because you also limit the defender's ability to use all its limbs.
Pinned. Honestly, this is sort of the Combat Maneuver equivalent of Save or Suck and then Save or Die. Your enemy devotes a couple actions to taking you out of the fight, but then slowly (usually) can grind you into unconsciousness unless you can break free.
Burning. Ongoing damage.
Dazed. Prevent them from taking reactions.
Blinded. A variety of things that are bad.
Prone. This debuff is odd, because the enemy can usually end it on their turn, so how effective it is varies a lot based on the initiative order. If you trip someone right after their turn, the rest of the party gets to take advantage of this before they can stand up. I've got some ideas in mind for this.
Disarmed. Take a weapon away, maybe use it against them. (Could be fun if you made monsters who summon AWESOME weapons so you want to disarm them, but the weapon vanishes shortly thereafter, so no loot.)
--->Here is where we free people who are trapped in tentacles.<---
Dispelled. Some mechanism for making the enemy's magic weaker, as a parallel to disarming. Maybe you can make it harder for them to cast spells of a particular type, forcing them to change tactics, akin to making a disarmed foe draw a new weapon.
Should you be able to sunder body parts? Chop off a hydra's head? A kraken's tentacle? Your PC's hand? I think so, but what's balanced?
I'm still pondering.
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I am not a fan of the idea of chopping off limbs. But an option where successfully attacking the limb put it out of action for a round or gave you a significant bonus to escape, that would be cool.
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I agree that Strike Back should be a standard thing that anyone could do without needing any sort of feat. I could see gating a reaction to do it as a feat though.
Is there anything that prevents you from Aid Another on a grappled ally? Sure, they are getting pulled in but if you are in reach of your ally you should be able to help against the grapple.
I am not a fan of the idea of chopping off limbs. But an option where successfully attacking the limb put it out of action for a round or gave you a significant bonus to escape, that would be cool.
Oh, brilliant idea! I'm a bit embarrassed I didn't go for that earlier.
Okay, so how about this:
If you use disarm on a creature holding a weapon or using a limb to hold a creature, a success disarms them, or grants the creature being held an immediate roll to get free with a +5 bonus(?). A critical success disarms them and does damage. A failure does nothing, and a critical failure lets them attack you.
You can also use similar mechanics - let's call it cripple - to target a limb or natural attack that is not holding a weapon or a creature. A success renders the limb useless until your next turn - they use it to perform any actions or reactions. A critical success also does damage. A failure does nothing, and a critical failure lets them attack back.
You can cripple a leg, which reduces their speed, maybe lowers their AC a tad.
Every creature would need to have a default "Thrash" attack that they can make with their body, even if their limbs are damaged. So if you cripple a wolf's bite attack, it probably will just run away, but it might still attack if it has no other choice, dealing, like just Strength mod damage, and probably taking a -5 penalty to the attack roll.