| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
So with the hellfire dispatch giving us this little beauty:
(flourish) You attempt to subdue a target with an attack and a follow-up grab. Make a melee Strike. If it hits and deals damage, you can attempt an Athletics check to Grapple the creature you hit. If you're wielding a flail or spiked chain, you can ignore Grapple's requirement that you have a hand free, and if you succeed at the Athletics check, you get a critical success instead. Both attacks count toward your multiple attack penalty, but the penalty doesn't increase until after you've made both of them.
grappling is no longer a joke at level 8+. So, what are some obscure ways to make this check more reliable, any special things that exploit restrained specifically, etc? Aside from just layering slow on top with debilitating shot or something to keep an enemy stuck with 1 action.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
"Abilities designed to enrage your GM for $200, Alex."
I'm really leery of this one. Anything that generally doesn't let the GM play the game is risky because you need those people also having fun to, you know, have a game.
Start landing this in a boss battle and it'll be a real bad time.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Restrained doesn't need exploitation to nullify most threats. Getting it on a mere success is ridiculous. I don't need to return to 3.X/PF1 days where grappling destroyed most...well everything that could be grappled. And since yes, it does stack with Slow and most other debuffs, it's particularly powerful...in an extremely dull way.
This is one of those abilities where you ask how the party will feel when the enemies use this on them. WTH, Paizo?
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Having once played a grapple character in 1e and had a miserable time because of it, I would never take this. "Coin flip on taking something out of the fight, every combat" is a great example of optimizing the fun out of the game.
So, what are some obscure ways to make this check more reliable, any special things that exploit restrained specifically, etc? Aside from just layering slow on top with debilitating shot or something to keep an enemy stuck with 1 action.
The Order of the Chain's Greater Benefit is already a strong addition:
Sturdy Bindings Your grapples are incredibly reliable. When you roll a critical failure on a check to Grapple a target, you get a failure instead. In addition, when a creature you have grabbed rolls a failure on its check to Escape, it gets a critical failure instead, and if it rolls a critical success, it gets a success instead.
An enemy either succeeds on their first Escape attempt or they can't escape at all.
And the Starfinder's Izalguun Hellknights will love this ability to go with their Multi-Armed Grab. This works as you can still use Shackles of Law to grapple with a free hand as long as you're wielding a Flail in the other. To be honest I'm not even sure if this ability works properly using the Flail or Spiked Chain for grappling directly, since Flails and Spiked Chains don't have the Grapple trait (so definitely no weapon's reach or item bonuses to the check). Kinda defeats the purpose somewhat, but the ability is a little weird.
I think the intention is that you're tying them up with the chain of your weapon, but it's not really communicated in the feat. If it ever comes up in one of my games that's how I think I'll run it; basically guaranteeing a Restrained enemy in exchange for your primary mode of attack makes sense in my head.
I know, but it's really awkward since it doesn't give those weapons the Grapple trait for this purpose. You only get to ignore the free hand requirement. So you can't use your weapon's reach nor its potency bonus for the grapple check. It's probably fine to imagine the flail just assisting in the grapple if someone uses their hand for it.
Yeah, I know just grabbing the followup benefit is good, was just wondering if there was other stuff since I'm not super aware of good grapple synergies since it was never worth it before now.
Even just in hellknight, there's also the level 14 feat that gives you a no-save fear 2 on stride to adjacent enemies which is also fantastic.