Quote:
Originally Posted by vierasmarius
Doug, out of curiosity, does the upcoming Technical Grappling do much with the current rules for damage inflicted by grappling techniques like throws, locks and wrenches? I'm especially interested in margin-based damage, like that inflicted by Arm Lock, which as-is feels unrealistic and extreme - especially with how "effortless" it is. And if there's anyone I'd trust to bring grappling damage down-to-earth (down-to-mat?) it would be you.
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Damage is capped by how good your grapple is, which is a quantity based on a mechanic that everyone who plays GURPS will be familiar with.
The margin-based contests are still there, but to get extreme results, you'll need to build up extreme control, which will either take one really lucky roll (like a crit) or several successive marginal ones, and your foe can fight back.
We had a fairly productive series of threads more-or-less entitled "Is the Arm Lock Reign of Terror over?" and I think we came down on the side of locks being very effective if you can set them up properly AND stay out of the other guy's range. To repost what I stuck in the Google+ GURPS group:
We pitted a 90-point Boxer against a 90-point Submission Wrestler. The first time the wrestler tried the parry/arm-lock move, it succeeded, but then the Boxer, whose OTHER arm wasn't penalized very much at all, did a punch to the face, and "walked off with the wrestler's girlfriend, while sipping on his stolen milkshake" or something like that.
In order for that move to be effective you had to parry, lock, and then use a new movement option to get into the boxer's side or rear arc, denying him the face punch. Just like the self-defense moves work in real life. The other 'what I learned' was that if you do a JP-Arm Lock and you wind up with a bad lock (there is now DEFINITELY such a thing!), you are probably better off letting go unless you can get good positioning.
Anyway, the new rules led to emergent tactics that mimicked what happens in real life. There are also cinematic switches available for those who WANT to have their heroines be Black Widow, capable of putting Happy in crippling pain through a boxing glove with a simple lock.