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Old 10-03-2013, 11:13 PM   #21
DouglasCole
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Default Re: grappling a flier

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mirtai View Post
To be more specific... a normal human sized flying brick type with a strength of 60 fighting a standing brick type with a strength over 200 and +2 Size Categories. The 200 strength giant sized super grapples. Can the 60 strength super just fly up and over and crash them both into the ground?
How much does ST 200 giant-sized super weigh? It matters.

The ST 60 flier has a BL of 720 lbs. If he's got the flight power to match, and his flight powers aren't hindered by the grapple, yeah, one might say he could take off with a Ready maneuver, possibly after making a penalized DX roll or something.

That being said, on further reflection, of the three ways you can do this, two come down with "hell no" and only one is a "maybe, if the GM allows it."

Here's how you can look at it:

1) Literal RAW using ST

Grappler is ST 200; Flier is ST 60. Flier cannot treat Grappler as encumbrance because he's not ST 400. So he's grappled, can't move freely, and is -4 to DX.

By strict p. B370 rules, the flier is toast, because the rules call out ST, not weight.

2) Squint hard at Backbreaker (Martial Arts)

If your victim is less than 4xBL, you can pick him up off the ground by first grappling him and then making a Backbreaker roll, which defaults right from ST. This suggests that moving the foe's weight around, as long as it's not too much, is only based on the flier's ST, which has been asserted to be high enough that the grappler is 1-2xBL for the flier, which I assume means he's about 1,000 lbs or so.

By just Basic it's a contest of ST, but ST and mass aren't always related. Martial Arts takes this a step further by actually using BL, but limiting such moves to only 4xBL, since it's a squirrely combat thing.

3) Technical Grappling - Pickup

Looking at my own rules, this will wind up being a contest of the flier's "trained" HT+1 vs the grappler's ST 200. The flier's screwed.

Doubly so, because at ST 200, the grappler will be doing something like 21d control points, imparting -36 to the flier's ST and -6 to DX. Once those CP are applied, the flier's basic lift drops to 115 lbs, which is 8.7xBL, which will be a Trained HT-9 roll.
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Last edited by DouglasCole; 10-03-2013 at 11:23 PM.
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