Octopus vs starting human in HTH

[Chris Rice]

A human has 2 arms and an Octopus has 8. I doubt the rules take this into account but really a human would have little chance against a man sized octopus in HTH.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Once you pin the octopus then hitting her is a free action, right?

Only if your GM says so. The rules say a pin victim is "held helpless" but do not explain what that means.

What do you mean by "free action" anyway? To me, that would mean an action a figure can do without even using their Action for the turn, which would not make sense to me. If you just mean an automatic hit, I'd probably say also no. HTH already gives you a +4 to hit.

Pinning also requires no ready weapon.

[larsdangly]

And I would say implicitly assumes your target has a scale and number of limbs that could plausibly be pinned. It is now well established 'case law' that you need to use your brain and not intentionally try to break things if you are going to adjudicate complex situations in TFT - we have lots of technical moving parts but not billions of explicit rules that guide your hand on every exception.

More generally, I think the pinning rules are perfectly good for abstract treatment of wrestling between two humanoids in the same weight class. They are obviously not o.k. for non humanoids or combatants of significantly dissimilar strength and size. Personally, I think the most obvious house rules (so obvious it probably belongs in the errata) are to make ST difference count in the attack roll and to have the escape roll depend on relative rather than absolute strengths (i.e., when two hobbits wrestle no one pinned can ever escape; when two giants wrestle no one can fail their escape roll, assuming they get to make it).

The most parsimonious rulings I can suggest are to make the attack roll a contest where each contestant picks between ST and DX as their master stat, and to have the escape roll be a contest of ST.

Also, I think it is ludicrous to imagine a 32 point character with a dagger could defeat a properly armed and played octopus in an arena fight.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Personally, I think the most obvious house rules (so obvious it probably belongs in the errata) are to make ST difference count in the attack roll and to have the escape roll depend on relative rather than absolute strengths (i.e., when two hobbits wrestle no one pinned can ever escape; when two giants wrestle no one can fail their escape roll, assuming they get to make it).

Oh, I like the first suggestion. I'm not too clear on the second, however. Assuming the two hobbits have the same ST and the two giants have the same ST, how come the difference in outcome? In relative terms, the situations are the same, ain't they?

[larsdangly]

The issue is that your roll to escape once pinned is 4d vs. ST (assuming you are equal or greater in ST than the foe who pinned you). If your ST is 6 or so, you could play for many many years and never see this roll succeed at the table. If your ST is 25 you will only see it fail on an auto failure roll (so, success roughly 95% of the time). If this becomes a contest it becomes a competitive, and therefore interesting, roll in all roughly balanced situations.

Re the first issue (the initial attack roll), there are several ways you could bring ST into the mix, but I feel like simplicity is very important. The 'contested rolls' are now RAW and they provide an elegant way to handle this without keeping track of bunch of modifiers and creating result that are wildly off kilter once stat values move outside some narrow range.

[Shostak]

Pinning rules are totally broken. I'd advise against using them in any instance, let alone against an Octopus.

[phiwum]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

The issue is that your roll to escape once pinned is 4d vs. ST (assuming you are equal or greater in ST than the foe who pinned you). If your ST is 6 or so, you could play for many many years and never see this roll succeed at the table. If your ST is 25 you will only see it fail on an auto failure roll (so, success roughly 95% of the time). If this becomes a contest it becomes a competitive, and therefore interesting, roll in all roughly balanced situations.

Re the first issue (the initial attack roll), there are several ways you could bring ST into the mix, but I feel like simplicity is very important. The 'contested rolls' are now RAW and they provide an elegant way to handle this without keeping track of bunch of modifiers and creating result that are wildly off kilter once stat values move outside some narrow range.

Ah. I misunderstood your post and thought you were talking about the effects for hobbit/giant under your proposed rules. Got it now.

I agree that breaking free should have some relation to relative strengths. It's also a bit nutty that ST 10 can never break free from ST 11 pins.

[larsdangly]

Originally Posted by Shostak

Pinning rules are totally broken. I'd advise against using them in any instance, let alone against an Octopus.

What's wrong with them as a treatment of wrestling between humanoids with close to equal and moderate strength? Basically, you want to figure out who ends up immobilizing the other, and you want to do it with a minimum number of rolls and modifiers. What would you suggest in its place?

[phiwum]

To be honest, I haven't had an occasion yet for pinning rules to come up. I will have that occasion soon, when the (apparent) foe is a bunch of martially trained by peace loving monks. Sorta like Cain back in Kung Fu at the beginning of each episode, though by the end he just seemed to lay the hurt on all the baddies.

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

What's wrong with them as a treatment of wrestling between humanoids with close to equal and moderate strength? Basically, you want to figure out who ends up immobilizing the other, and you want to do it with a minimum number of rolls and modifiers. What would you suggest in its place?

The problem with pinning is that a pinned figure is helpless for two turns before being able to try to break the hold. This can be exploited pretty easily, especially if you have someone in the party with UC talents.

I've some house rules for HTH which include replacing pinning with grappling; PM me if interested in the details.