Grapple is quite powerful in PF2E, it's just not the Win button on its own. If they want grapple to be stronger it's one of the most supported abilities in the game, but they will have to invest in it.
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Nothing in PF2 is as good as it was in PF1. Grapple in PF1 was a dead caster button in PF1 and it's just a caster inconvenience in PF2. It helps, but not going to guarantee a win.
There are no "I win" tactics or strategies in PF2. You have to kill the monster using teamwork to hinder it. Nothing will completely put them out of action unless extremely lucky and even then for a very short duration.
PF2 is not built for easy wins no matter what you do other than the enemy being super weak on purpose.
If you're looking for PF1 style build options, PF2 won't provide them.
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What they said.
Also, one must readjust expectations from PF1 where grapple (and other options) could shut down most anybody. Much like save-or-lose spells now need a crit fail to impact at full power, a lot of insta-win martial tactics (like Disarm) require a crit success to work. This means targeting weaker defenses is a valuable tactic, and that one must suit one's tool to the foe. So even a "grapple guy" should expect to skip grappling in many instances, though as noted, it's a solid debuff, one that many martials can't access due to having full hands.
And it's about balance, much like players wouldn't like an at-level creature shutting down their caster PC w/ one maneuver (w/o some luck/unluck which can be alleviated for PCs w/ Hero Points). On the flip side, when fighting minions, PCs can destroy enemies because crits will happen.
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"If you have a clothie caster surrounded by 3 beefy dudes all grabbing him, it feels unreasonable to say 'oh well rules say you can't do anything further but mildly inconvenience him. Under no circumstances can you do more than grab his shoulders or waist no matter how big, strong, or trained you are - unless of course if you get your 5% lucky roll.'"
I remember Pathfinder 1 characters able to grapple and tie up basically anything in one round and I know this player doesn't want to go that far (and PF2 doesn't want that result), but he's feeling like grapple is unimpactful and that his supporting monk character concept doesn't feel very good as a result.
If your player's monk is so tough and beefy, and cloth caster so puny, then why didn't they critically succeed? Restrained is one of the worst conditions you can have if PF2.
Casters should be very vulnerable to grab because 1) low Fortitude saves make a crit possible even outside a nat 20 2) a caster with even lower AC that can't easily flee or cast spells isn't likely to last another round.
if the monk got to the summoner and grabbed it wouldn't the rest of the party had easy attacks on that summoner to bring it down fast?
If the other party members weren't attacking the summoner it might feel like a waste of the grab effect.
The main impact of grabbing something is making it immobile and easier to hit.
Now if the monk grabbed a melee creature that creature now either has to engage the monk or use actions to break free then move to the monks allies and then attack. Assuming it broke free the first attempt. Grabbing a caster or a ranged creature is great if your party wants to power that creature down. but less great if your party is going after other targets. The manipulate fail chance is there but its not something you can rely on.
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Monks can get Sleeper Hold at level 10 which allows them to knock out a grappled target on a crit as long as they aren't higher level.
Titan Wrestler means you can do this to a dragon.
Take the Wrestler archetype, and you can get Strangle at level 8, which gets you a DC 10 flat check for disrupting spells. Level 12 you can get Inescapable grasp and they need to get a DC 15 flat check for magic escapes.
Trip the target and you further impact their escape options. Combine with Stunning Fist at level 2 for stunned 1 (or 3 on a crit) and casters are going to be pretty near non-functional.
It's more than enough impact.
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Any thoughts on this topic?
Level 1 characters.
Even if I fully agree with what the others say, there's also the fact that your Monk has no specific specialization for Grapple. At this level, anyone Trained in Athletics with maxed out Strength (so most Strength-based martials) will be as good as your Monk. By gaining levels and grabbing supporting feats your Monk should severely increase its grappling ability and especially its critical success chances (as skills increase faster than saves).| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
How on Golarion did a single grappled caster survive 5+ rounds when surrounded by beatstick martials? Seems highly sus to me.
What in the nine hells was everyone else doing during that time???
Or did yet another 1e GM get the encounter system wrong and pit low level characters against an extreme+ encounter? That's an altogether too common occurrence with game vets coming from PF 1e or D&D 5e. It frequently leads to new PF2e players with feelsbad emotions and a skewed perspective of the game complaining on these boards.
"If you have a clothie caster surrounded by 3 beefy dudes all grabbing him, it feels unreasonable to say 'oh well rules say you can't do anything further but mildly inconvenience him. Under no circumstances can you do more than grab his shoulders or waist no matter how big, strong, or trained you are - unless of course if you get your 5% lucky roll.'"
I remember Pathfinder 1 characters able to grapple and tie up basically anything in one round and I know this player doesn't want to go that far (and PF2 doesn't want that result), but he's feeling like grapple is unimpactful and that his supporting monk character concept doesn't feel very good as a result.
Any thoughts on this topic?
In the situation you described above, it can be handled by the system if the GM consider giving players circumstance bonuses since they are all doing the same task. For instance, the first player who tries gain no bonuses, if they fail, the second might gain a +1 circumstance bonus, if they succeed they give the next +2 Circumstance instead. Or, if the caster is Grabbed already, you can give the next attempt by another character a +4 Circumstance Bonus, assuming the target is a medium and fragile spellcaster.
PF2e avoids having "feast or famine" mechanics, because it enables a more balanced tactical combat and fosters teamwork. If it were in PF1e, you would have the single-character shutting down the encounter by themselves because they have an absurdly high CMB bonus and the caster would have an abysmally low CMD, making it a trivial task that can basically boils down to the player doing the obvious: charging forward and using their guaranteed ability that they designed for well before the campaign even began.
How on Golarion did a single grappled caster survive 5+ rounds when surrounded by beatstick martials? Seems highly sus to me.
What in the nine hells was everyone else doing during that time???
Or did yet another 1e GM get the encounter system wrong and pit low level characters against an extreme+ encounter? That's an altogether too common occurrence with game vets coming from PF 1e or D&D 5e. It frequently leads to new PF2e players with feelsbad emotions and a skewed perspective of the game complaining on these boards.
The answer is always the same: Bad luck.
Sometimes, the dice just don't help, even when you're stacking things in your favor. I have been there.
Picking up Reactive Strike can help the Monk a lot in this situation: you've already got the caster grabbed so they can't get away without spending actions, and if they cast a spell while you have them grabbed you get to hit them for it on top of the existing chance to disrupt.
As others mentioned, this isn't an "I Win" button anymore the way it was in PF1. But it is quite effective as a way to ruin a casters day.
Is there any easy way to apply restrain easily as a martial outside of critically succeeding on a grapple check? I am rather curious as I am making a Wrestling Grappling Shark Instinct Animal Barbarian dual-class Exemplar for a game.
What level was the boss?
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Probably the main problem here is your players being veterans of PF1.
In PF1, grapple was an I win button, especially against a caster. It just completely shut them down. It doesn't do that now, for good reasons.
More than anything I think this is a misalignment of expectations coming from PF1 and expecting the same tactics to work.
Honestly, PF2 is a harder game for veterans of PF1 because they bring in so much baggage from how they used to play and try the same tactics to fail spectacularly. I know because I was one of those people.
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Speaking as a GM running Kingmaker with a Wrestler Monk, he has severely inconvenienced bosses and numerous enemies with his grappling capabilities, all without Restraining foes. Between his Crushing Grab dealing constant damage, forcing flat checks to cast spells, and bosses forcing their actions to deal with him instead of other foes, it is actually quite potent.
The complaint of "Grapple doesn't do much" is most likely because it is being used against foes who are as strong if not stronger than the Monk, which is just poor tactics anyway. It would be like using Rogues on Plants and Oozes, or Will Saves on Mindless foes; you're just going to have a bad time.
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Is there any easy way to apply restrain easily as a martial outside of critically succeeding on a grapple check? I am rather curious as I am making a Wrestling Grappling Shark Instinct Animal Barbarian dual-class Exemplar for a game.
Yes, by using this feat Pin to the Spot
But no GM I've ever played with has allowed it, because it's clearly borked.
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It is 100% the fact that the characters were level 1. Grappling in PF1 at level 1 was really difficult too, unless you incredibly specialized in it, which isn't easy to do at level 1 in PF2.
It sounds like 3 martials were all trying to grab the caster instead of kill it? That is just bad tactics in PF2.
Also it sounds like a 5 person party going up against a solo boss caster? I am betting either an elite template was applied or we were looking at a level +3 or 4 NPC? The players are lucky they didn't die/the caster was wasting time casting summoning spells while grabbed instead of just frying them. Like seriously, adding elite templates/increasing the level of enemies instead of the number of enemies, is one of the most common mistakes GMs make (and is warned against in the GM core, but you really have to read for it). As the GM, it is perfectly reasonable for a level 2 or level 3 tops caster boss enemy to have a couple (2 to 4) level 0 or level -1 creatures already summoned in some fashion (maybe they bound some minor elementals or other outsiders). This would have been a much more fun encounter for your party of 5 than a single level 4 or 5 caster. Don't feel bad about it, lots of GMs make the same mistake.
There is almost no reason a Monk with an 18 str should be looking at a crit chance of 5% with grapple against a caster unless the level disparity is vast, or the caster was a brute creature with a casting template applied to it, even at level 1. If the monk raises athletics and gets item bonuses for it as they level, they will be looking at 10 to 25% crit chances with grappling in the future, except against the most extreme enemies.
All that said, against a very high level single creature encounter, the party just got unlucky that the spells were never disrupted. Again, if the caster had fire balled the party, or even cast dazzling colors, it probably would have been a TPK. a 20% chance of disrupting a higher level caster's spells is actually a huge deal in PF2 because higher level casters casting powerful spells will absolutely trash a party.
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It sounds like 3 martials were all trying to grab the caster instead of kill it? That is just bad tactics in PF2.
Yeah, if that's the case, then the scenario makes more sense to me. Once the monk had the grapple, everyone else should have been piling on the damage instead of attempting to apply a non-stacking condition. The monk should have got a few hits in too.
Unless the boss was way above the party's weight class (a common mistake we see here from vet GMs from older editions where that was the norm) then there's no reason it should have lasted five rounds in that situation.
I hope you guys adapt to the new paradigm that is 2e. It really is a great system once you get a hold of the ropes.
Just to say... the best way to actually to shut down a caster is actually combine grapple with rank 4 silence, that is present on the occult and divine list, cast on ally or have an ally cast on you and then grapple. Only subtle spells can be cast under silence, and those are like at max 20 spells.
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I think basically the monk was hoping he and the champions could subdue the boss caster without actually hitting the boss caster and bringing them to 0 HP. Not necessarily in one round or anything, but I think the monk player finds hitting stuff boring. He basically wanted to basically work with the champions to say "Okay, we've grappled/pinned/tied up the boss and ended the fight" rather than inflicting (non-lethal) HP damage.
Again, he didn't expect to win round 1 or something, but once he grappled the boss and I told him "Okay, the boss is now immobilized, off-guard, and has a 20% chance to fail spells" he was like "Wait, that's it? And I can't do anything more unless I crit succeed? And I have do this every round? And the champions can't help me subdue this guy beyond a +1/+2 bonus with Aid? This doesn't make narrative sense."
It's probably better to think of grapple as you got your hand on their should, or grabbed their wrist, or something similar. They still have a wide range of motion. A full body pin, where their options are truly limited is more akin to the restrained condition. And that's justifiably hard to do, especially if your opponent has two levels on you. (And that's a good thing.)
It was a special fight where the caster literally had nothing but the ability to summon creatures and buff them. And got weakened as his summons were killed.
It's effectively a reflavored version of the monsters being there from round one and then reinforcements arrive (to avoid the fight...
That sounds like an interesting way to run a summoner NPC. So, essentially chained fights, but reflavored as summons? I guess that's one way to keep things relatively balanced. Although, an enemy that is +2 levels above the party is usually a pretty big threat all by themselves (though I recognize that this is an unusual case). Tacking on a few extra enemies on top of that can quickly overwhelm an ill-prepared party.
He had 16 str (but 18 dex). That said, a level 3 wizard would have 3 (level) + 2 (trained) + 2 (con) = 7 fortitude, and a level 1 monk with 18 str has 7 athletics (1 level + 2 trained + 4 str) so you'd still need a nat 20.
+7 modifier vs DC 17? That doesn't seem too bad to me. (The typical Fort DC for a 3rd-level threat is low 16, medium 19, or high 22.) Yeah, you would need a natural 20 to get the restrained condition on the target. But this is a team game. It's designed to facilitate teamwork. Trying to do that alone against a higher-level enemy SHOULD be really hard. You may need a natural 20 alone, but if an ally aids you, you could get another +2. If another ally casts fear or similar debuff, that could be another 1 or 2 point swing. Now you're grappling a powerful enemy only on a 6, and all but ending the encounter on a 16.
If you're targeting AC, rather than a save DC, it can be even easier to stack buffs and debuffs for bigger swings. At higher levels, it's not unheard of to get swings of 6 points or more. Even then though, most characters can't do it alone without an impractical amount of setup or opportunity cost.
You and your PCs had a couple of options
-All three players could grapple and uase aid to assist each other. At that point you might be looking at a 15 or 20% chance to restrain the caster each round, although that doesn't stop the enemy from sustaining their summoned monster, but on the other hand summoned monsters are not a threat on their own (If the NPC was using actual spells, anyway. A level 1 undead with only two actions can be aafely contained by the other two PCs).
-The monk debuffs the Caster with grappling while using fury of blows to pummel the caster to unconsciousness while the Champions support by demoralizing and their own nonlethal attacks.
-You could allow them to use, say, 2 or 3 actions to attempt to reason with the caster to convince the summoner to surrender.
In the scenario you describe, though, the summoner was acting more like a complex hazard than a conventional npc, and I might run them as such, actually.
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All three players could grapple and use aid to assist each other. At that point you might be looking at a 15 or 20% chance to restrain the caster each round...
It's important to note that multiple successful Aid attempts do not stack. You would only use the highest. An entire party aiding one person might improve the odds of success (of the Aid attempt), but usually ends up being a waste of action potential.
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Heres the thing, what your players wanted to do was skill challenge driven not combat mechanics driven. Meaning at that point when things shifted from normal combat to something else as GM you would have to decide if what they are attempting should be navigated with skill checks against a difficulty.
Three players want to dogpile on the NPC caster? Have them drop what they have in hand and commit to it, roll athletics checks against a DC you feel is an appropriate challenge, treat the summoned creatures as an environmental hazard doing damage to them every round they ignore them. This is no longer a combat encounter and instead a skill challenge with hazard elements from the summons. Staying within combat rules was no longer the right scene to use to navigate those expectations.
While the champions and the monk roll each round to subdue the caster (as a skill test) let the sorcerer and ranger pick off summons reducing the damage the melee characters take each round. In that way it becomes a race to subdue the caster fully keeping him from casting (require a success from all three melee characters to fully shut down casting for the round) and kill all the summons for the other two before the melee characters run out of HP.
All three players could grapple and use aid to assist each other. At that point you might be looking at a 15 or 20% chance to restrain the caster each round...It's important to note that multiple successful Aid attempts do not stack. You would only use the highest. An entire party aiding one person might improve the odds of success (of the Aid attempt), but usually ends up being a waste of action potential.
My idea was each player would use one action to grapple and another to ready to aid the next player. Not optimal, but if you're dead set on not doing damage, it could work.
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What the player was looking for (and might still be looking for) is the opportunity to turn grappling into some kind of victory point encounter where the number of successful grapple attempts leads eventually to the enemy’s surrender. Maybe some demoralize or other relevant skill checks could contribute to the win.
There is actually some guidance for running VP systems within a combat encounter (it’s a lot like complex trap in a combat) that could be fun to think about for the future. Especially if you are willing to create such complex creatures in the first place.
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Level matters a whole lot more than in PF1. A level 3 caster getting shut down completely by a level 1 grapple should be rare.
To put it in perspective: Should a level -1 Crawling Hand, a creature on par with a normal beaver and designed to make grapples as its whole thing, be able to 100% shut down a level 1 caster PC with one action?
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I think playing a grappler is awesome, it is a very powerful debuff - in the pf2e system. Nothing compared to the "i win" spells or moves in pf1e, your players will have to move from this mentality to a team-based approach, and granting three others a +2 to hit is massive.
It is still totally doable to feel powerful in the system, it just means that the DM has to move away from lvl+3 enemies and use a more varied approach.
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More than anything I think this is a misalignment of expectations coming from PF1 and expecting the same tactics to work.It sounds like 3 martials were all trying to grab the caster instead of kill it? That is just bad tactics in PF2.Yeah, if that's the case, then the scenario makes more sense to me. Once the monk had the grapple, everyone else should have been piling on the damage instead of attempting to apply a non-stacking condition. The monk should have got a few hits in too.I think basically the monk was hoping he and the champions could subdue the boss caster without actually hitting the boss caster and bringing them to 0 HP. Not necessarily in one round or anything, but I think the monk player finds hitting stuff boring. He basically wanted to basically work with the champions to say "Okay, we've grappled/pinned/tied up the boss and ended the fight" rather than inflicting (non-lethal) HP damage.
Again, he didn't expect to win round 1 or something, but once he grappled the boss and I told him "Okay, the boss is now immobilized, off-guard, and has a 20% chance to fail spells" he was like "Wait, that's it? And I can't do anything more unless I crit succeed? And I have do this every round? And the champions can't help me subdue this guy beyond a +1/+2 bonus with Aid? This doesn't make narrative sense."
So going back to what I said before, player expectations are a problem here.
Grapple is actually a great condition to impose on an enemy. It causes immobilized and off-guard. Off-guard reduces the enemies AC by 2 (which consequently means that they get easier to crit). Immobilized means they can't move and get away from your allies. And they also have to make a DC5 check for any action with the manipulate trait, which includes lots of spells (but I don't think all of them).
This is a powerful debuff to a caster.
The monk should have used 1 action to grapple, 1 to flurry of blows, and something else each turn. And his friends should have walked up and wailed on the caster that can't run away and has an AC penalty.
The player here simply didn't understand that grappling while good, does not put the enemy into a "I've lost" state. It doesn't allow them to avoid hitting the target, and avoid reducing their HP. Pretty much only magic can do that, but only sometimes (it's not super reliable).
I think playing a grappler is awesome, it is a very powerful debuff - in the pf2e system. Nothing compared to the "i win" spells or moves in pf1e, your players will have to move from this mentality to a team-based approach, and granting three others a +2 to hit is massive.
It is still totally doable to feel powerful in the system, it just means that the DM has to move away from lvl+3 enemies and use a more varied approach.
Coming back to this thread, I saw this commented and wanted to pile onto this sentiment.
Apply off-guard to the enemy for a -2 to their AC.
Have a buffer in the party, Bard's Courageous Anthem give a +1 bonus to attack.
Combine that with a fighter in the party, and that fighter now has a 25% higher chance to crit than compared to a non-fighter baseline character (fighters have +2 to hit compared to most other martials, except the Gunslinger [but only for certain weapons]).
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In PF2 you don't grapple an enemy in order to prevent them from doing anything (other than moving) or to tie them up and take them in alive. You grapple them so that you can stab them easier.
Use Nonlethal damage to take people alive.
I'm certain there was an ability or two for apprehending and tying people up somewhere, perhaps in an archetype, but I haven't been able to find a good example just yet.
I thought maybe Bounty Hunter at first, but nope.
There are Handcuffs that work like Manacles but for only the action cost of one or two actions with successful athletics checks. The penalties aren't any more than what you get from Grapple though - it still doesn't prevent spellcasting.
Wrestler:Strangle gives a DC 10 flat check to prevent spellcasting.
There are also feats that let you opt in to Nonlethal damage on the fly easier. Investigator:Takedown Expert, Gladiator:Stage Fighting, Lastwall Sentry:Nonlethal Takedown, and probably a few others.
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And the champions can't help me subdue this guy beyond a +1/+2 bonus with Aid?
It’s hard to mechanically subdue a foe in Pathfinder while avoiding hit point damage, for sure, but with that as a guiding principle, throwing another debuff on can be a good complement to Aid, reducing the opponent’s Fort DC and boosting the Monk’s next Athletics check. Maybe a Demoralize would have been useful.
That said, a level 3 wizard would have 3 (level) + 2 (trained) + 2 (con) = 7 fortitude, and a level 1 monk with 18 str has 7 athletics (1 level + 2 trained + 4 str) so you'd still need a nat 20.
A level 3 Wizard, on his own, with no allies is a Moderate encounter for four PCs, and the player is surprised that he can only reliably shut down the Wizard’s spell casting with a single action using a Trained skill into which he has made no additional investment, and uses an ability he hasn’t even maxed out on a nat 20?
Your Wizard has a Fort. DC of 17, and your Monk has a +6 Athletics, so the Monk will at least succeed at a grapple check 50% of the time, and imposes a 20% chance of spell failure, again, at the cost of 1 action by the Monk.
This just doesn’t seem like reasonable expectations.
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Sounds like what they wanted was a narrative victory, not a crunch enabled one.
Having two people or more pile on to subdue someone is a RL thing but even still it requires a good deal of constant effort to wear the fight out of someone like that. If they refuse to stop struggling then it can be a big issue. In PF2 the only way to wear someone down is to drop their HP to zero. So if your champion was aiding and the monk grappling you can narrate that as them piling on trying to pin, AKA restrain, the mage but most of the time they just don't have the skill to really do that against a higher level opponent who thus knows how to squirm and make those attempts difficult.
If they had proper tools for nonlethal damage you could narrate those attacks as just being them holding the target to wear them down if that's the sort of victory they want, instead of pinning someone down and clubbing them unconscious as that has a lot of bad connotations to it.
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My PF2e experiences with grappling seem to follow this formula. I am always disappointed when I plan a grappling character of my own but when I see someone else play a grappler, I am always surprised how brutal it is that Escape takes an Action and has the Attack Trait.
Having GM'd a grappling dwarf monk in the upper levels (I think approx 8 to 15) I can confirm that grappling can absolutely shut down spellcasters, but not necessarily because it renders them unable to act. Even when my bosses were the twin witches of Barstoi in a ruthless fight where minions held back part of the main fighting force, Ballarun Stonefist ripped through the room and pinned the surviving witch, consistently maintaining pace with her despite her attempts to escape. It was not realistically likely she would succeed the Escape check, so she used other tricks to get out of the grab, but when you're a fragile spellcaster, just getting stuck in one place can be a death sentence, never mind whether you lose a spell. They can choose to try to escape (and not cast one of their powerful spells for one round) or try to throw something powerful at their attackers and hope that enough of them aren't still standing by the end of turn.
I suppose in the situation where the caster is only maintaining their most powerful spells already up, it's a different story, but my witches had several minions they didn't have to sustain and still got bodied by a dedicated grapple rush. (also a different story if the spellcaster is in some way exceptionally tough, but that's another matter)
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Balkoth, P2 is the right kind of crunchy. Think of it as "sustainable" crunch. You can plan out awesome, collaborative characters and effective combos that give your team the edge. There are endless ways to do that, so the crunch options are really fun.
You can give your team the edge, but you can't press the auto-win button by spamming a tactic like P1. Grapple will rarely shut down a foe for more than 1 round, but even on a success, it gives you and your team a round to deploy more effective combos -or- it strips actions from your enemy while increasing their MAP (multi-attack penalty). In the action economy battle, that's a solid win with a big attack debuff.
Combine grapple with higher level maneuvers, and you're not only doing all of the above but inflicting damage and other debuffs as well. Deployed against a foe with weak or weakened Fortitude, it's significant.
The crunch is excellent, especially because it's not overpowered. Your players will get it if they explore the system further.