failing to maintain while pinned

[gourry187]

Sorry if this is more of a necro but there are so many "grapple" topics in the search it just seems easier to ask the question directly rather tham sifting through potential threads ....

round 1 - A PC starts a grapple successfully beating his opponent's CMD
round 2 - He then maintains the grapple (beating opponent's CMD) and "pins" the opponent.
round 3 - He then fails his grapple check ...

Is his opponent completely free or does he just move a step down from the "pin" condition to the "grappled" condition

[Scott Wilhelm]

The opponent is completely free.

[Scott Wilhelm]

This FAQ should explain.

[MrCharisma]

Remember that you get a +5 to grapple checks when maintaining a grapple, and that a pinned creature takes a -4 to it's AC (and that penalties to AC are also penalties to CMD), so you're effectively making the check at a +9.

But yes if you do fail they're free.

(Also don't worry the grapple rules are complicated.)

[gourry187]

thanks for the faq link and the answers.

[RAWmonger]

MrCharisma wrote:

Remember that you get a +5 to grapple checks when maintaining a grapple, and that a pinned creature takes a -4 to it's AC (and that penalties to AC are also penalties to CMD), so you're effectively making the check at a +9.

But yes if you do fail they're free.

(Also don't worry the grapple rules are complicated.)

Also-also, a pinned character is denied their Dex bonus. So any dex or dodge bonus to AC and therefore CMD will also be gone. A character built or even slightly omptimized into grappling will have a very hard time failing to maintain a pin against most opponents that are grapple-able