[TG] Confused about hit locations

[ArchonShiva]

Okay, not that confused, because searching TG as I formulated my questions answered most of them.

If I grab someone's torso with two hands and two legs, and later want to grab his arm as well, do I need to release his torso with, say, my hands or do I grab his arm and "add" it to my hold?

It seems possible to wrap your legs around someone's torso and arms at the same time, but I'm not certain how to do this within the rules.

Since all my other questions had clear and reasonable answers, I suspect I really just need to know what term I should have been searching for...

EDIT: Also, if I reverse control while breaking free, I apply CP to one of the body parts that was grappling me. For a hands and legs grapple, is that just a hand or leg, or can it be an arm or foot? Can I grab a knee or elbow? My guess is arm or leg, despite the table calling it hands.

[Gef]

Page 24, Shifting Grapples.

As I understand it, you either remove a hand from the grapple (free but gives up 1-2 control points) and use it to grapple the arm, which should be made easier than it might be because of active control on the torso from 3 limbs, or you "pass limb" (an attack), which is not a limb in this specific example, but means finding a position where you can maintain control by using your torso, head, or some hard surface while freeing up one of your hands, and then on the next turn use it to grab his arm.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Okay, not that confused, because searching TG as I formulated my questions answered most of them.

Gef beat me to some of these, so yay.

If I grab someone's torso with two hands and two legs, and later want to grab his arm as well, do I need to release his torso with, say, my hands or do I grab his arm and "add" it to my hold?

This is the sort of thing "pass limb" was designed to accomplish, as Gef notes.

It seems possible to wrap your legs around someone's torso and arms at the same time, but I'm not certain how to do this within the rules.

I'm trying to find it - might be here on the forums, might be on my blog, but we talked about attacking torso and limbs AT ONCE by summing the hit location penalties. So if you wanted to grab torso and both arms all at once, you'd roll at -1 for each arm, and -0 for the torso. If you think that's too easy, apply a flat penalty. What I don't think is reasonable is to force you to attack all three at once via Rapid Strike.

EDIT: Also, if I reverse control while breaking free, I apply CP to one of the body parts that was grappling me. For a hands and legs grapple, is that just a hand or leg, or can it be an arm or foot? Can I grab a knee or elbow? My guess is arm or leg, despite the table calling it hands.

I'd go generally. If you're grappled by hands and legs, I'd allow pretty much anything but the head. More generally, you might try "grab anything you want," since peeling off limbs one by one is one of many ways (and not the best) to do that. Torso and head, body movement, etc. are all key to this sort of escape.

[ArchonShiva]

Thanks. I suspected pass limb was the thing, but the way it's presented seemed like it was strictly for catching something between your body and the floor, and I feared I was missing out an entire area of the rules.

So it's basically GURPS all over again - whatever rule feels right to improv in this context is extremely likely to turn out to be the actual rule when you get time to check.

For the torso+arms thing, on top of summing the location penalties, if you're not afraid of extra rolls, you could also give the opponent an extra dodge for each additional bit after the first, possibly at a bonus equal to the difference in grabbing location penalty; in this case, both arms dodge at +1 to slip out before you lock your grab. This would make the move work pretty well when getting the drop on someone, but extremely hard to pull off completely in face-to-face combat, without negating the entire grab.

New question: Suppose I hold someone by the torso, with one hand, and have 4 CP. Can I use those 4 CP to help an attempt to grab their head with the same hand (letting go of their arm in the process)? Or does the fact that I'm letting go negate all CP before their take effect?

[Gef]

given the level of abstraction involved, I think that generally, you should be able to spend these cp that way.

[ArchonShiva]

By the same token, two handed grip (grip ST 12) on torso, 8 cp. I remove one hand to make a grab for the head, spending the 3 CP that disengaging a hand would waste against the hit penalty for the head. I retain a 5 CP grip on the torso.

Does that makes sense? Considering that my opponent's ST and DX already go up by 2 each by removign my hand, it seems reasonable.

BTW, it seems like Spending CP (p. 5) should scale for opponent ST as it does for DX penalties (Bigger and Stronger, p. 9), except when inflicting damage. Otherwise, the grappling giants ST50 giants can inflict crippling contest penalties using less CP than needed for -1 DX.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Does that makes sense? Considering that my opponent's ST and DX already go up by 2 each by removign my hand, it seems reasonable.

I'm considering the things you may be doing to justify the bonus, that's what I meant in the previous post about the level of abstraction. As you release your hand, maybe you're actually tugging him into a position where that other body part is easier to grab. It makes sense to me. And from a game balance stand point, you've probably picked up less of a control advantage than if you'd just tried to strengthen your grip on the spot you already had.

As for scaling, I see the point, but the hobbit versus the minotaur is already under a severe handicap and that sounds like more to think about in a turn of nominal single-second duration.

GEF

[ArchonShiva]

Thanks for the great answers, Gef!

Originally Posted by Gef

As for scaling, I see the point, but the hobbit versus the minotaur is already under a severe handicap and that sounds like more to think about in a turn of nominal single-second duration.

I'm not worried about hobbit vs minotaur, I'm worried about a pair of ST 50 giants. 9 CP is trivial to them, not even causing a DX penalty, but it can be turned into a whopping -9 to a grappling contest.

Now try Hulk vs Abomination.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Thanks for the great answers, Gef!

I'm not worried about hobbit vs minotaur, I'm worried about a pair of ST 50 giants. 9 CP is trivial to them, not even causing a DX penalty, but it can be turned into a whopping -9 to a grappling contest.

Now try Hulk vs Abomination.

Scaling DX penalties makes sense. ST not so much.

[ArchonShiva]

Okay, I may not be clear. The attribute penalties scale fine. What doesn't scale and needs to is how many CPs you must spend to achieve the three effects on p. 5 that aren't causing damage. You should need to spend more CP against a ST 50 opponent for the same effect.