Grappling and Delaying Your Turn

[cooldavethrash]

Hey all, so today I ran into a ruling my DM made that I was hoping to find an official ruling on. My DM ruled that, while I was grappling an opponent, if I delayed my turn, I would automatically relinquish my hold on the grapple since I'm not taking a standard action on my initiative.

I can definitely see his reasoning, though I would like to find an official ruling one way or another.

[Firebug]

One way to look at the Delay is that it is something you can choose to do. Ie, your turn starts and you take the 'no action' Delay. But your turn had started, and you ended it (voluntarily) to take it at a lower initiative count.

The closest FAQ I could find about readying and saves/etc is a Poison FAQ... "In addition, a poisoned creature must save against poison once on his turn, but this can be at any point during the poisoned creature's turn. It cannot be delayed through readying or delaying action." So extending that logic (yeah yeah), Grapple is something you have to succeed at a check during your turn much like poison.

D&D 4e has an explicit rule about this, if you delay any start of turn effects or saves happen immediately.

[AwesomenessDog]

This only really matters if you are grappling without Greater Grapple, because once you have greater grapple, you can maintain as a move and ready as a standard. But even then, if you can't maintain as a move, what else are you going to do in the grapple after you've maintained as a standard? You can't move, you can't threaten, you can't attack any more because you don't have another standard, etc. You have no options anyway.

Basically, regardless of how you rule it, you have no reason to delay in a grapple anyway.

[Firebug]

AwesomenessDog wrote:

Basically, regardless of how you rule it, you have no reason to delay in a grapple anyway.

Besides the "I make one grapple check and delay for four rounds until the rest of party kills them without having to make more checks"?

[Diego Rossi]

AwesomenessDog wrote:

This only really matters if you are grappling without Greater Grapple, because once you have greater grapple, you can maintain as a move and ready as a standard. But even then, if you can't maintain as a move, what else are you going to do in the grapple after you've maintained as a standard? You can't move, you can't threaten, you can't attack any more because you don't have another standard, etc. You have no options anyway.

Basically, regardless of how you rule it, you have no reason to delay in a grapple anyway.

Ready is not the same thing as Delay.

cooldavethrash wrote:

Hey all, so today I ran into a ruling my DM made that I was hoping to find an official ruling on. My DM ruled that, while I was grappling an opponent, if I delayed my turn, I would automatically relinquish my hold on the grapple since I'm not taking a standard action on my initiative.

I can definitely see his reasoning, though I would like to find an official ruling one way or another.

As Firebug pointed out, if you maintain without a check by delaying, you end with a grossly unfair advantage.

Let's say that a giant octopus grabs you with reach and brings you to the square adjacent to it (automatic, by the grapple rules), underwater. Then it delays until you drown, never checking to see if it maintain the grapple.
You would feel that it is fair?

[Diego Rossi]

Rule answer:

* Delay is a special initiative action. As there is no rule that says that you can take it out of turn, you can take it only during your turn.

* The choice of releasing the grapple or maintaining it is mandatory when your turn comes.

* So, when your turn comes, you must choose to maintain or release the grapple.
* If you decide to release the grapple, you spend a free action and then can Delay.
* If you decide to maintain you spend some kind of action, and you can't delay, as the description of Delay includes "By choosing to delay, you take no action and then act normally on whatever initiative count you decide to act".

By strict RAW you can't delay even if you choose to release the grapple, as you have taken a free action.

[*Thelith]

Grapple is already cheesy enough if you focus on it.

If you want to delay I'd say the victim auto breaks out on his turn.