grappling a flier

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

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.

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Mirtai

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?

(the assumption that, being bigger, that bigger super would take a lot more damage when they both hit... which is actually fair, as impact damage from crashing is based on HP, of which the bigger super has quite a few more of)

I assume from the comments that you're the GM here.

What is the weight of the giant, and is his weight equal to or under the flier's BL x 2? If the flier can easily fly with that weight, then if he can make the rolls, I agree with the flier.

I don't have this officially from anything other than this thread, but I alway judge base ST by comparing weight and BL. There may be SM mods, but we haven't gotten into that yet.

[Kromm]

To quote p. B370, once you grapple someone, "He may not move away until he breaks free," with one exception: "If you grapple a foe of more than twice your ST, you do not prevent him from moving away." This rule says nothing at all about how the moving away is accomplished: walking, swimming, flying, tunneling into the ground, etc. A character's movement powers have his usual ST + Lifting ST, unless he has bought something like Lifting ST (Accessibility, Only while flying, -30%) . . . which is a really good idea, by the way. Thus, if someone with ST 200 grapples a flying foe with ST 60, the flying guy's Flight pulls up and away at ST 60 and the brute pulls down at ST 200, and this is treated as being no different at all from a ground-bound grappler pulling back and away with ST 60 while his rival pulls in the other direction using ST 200.

All of this is predicated on the fact that ST gives HP, and HP approximate mass. Thus, a being with ST 200 presumably has commensurate mass (c. 500 tons). If he has less mass than that, then he's evidently using "weird powers" – like zero-range psychokinesis, elemental earth nature, or chi – to justify it. It's up to the GM whether those powers can directly oppose other weirdness like wingless Flight and TK; by default, though, they can.

The GM is free to say that someone with ST 200 but just a ton of mass is limited to ST commensurate with mass to resist such things . . . that's about ST 25. But then he has to give out some compensatory benefit for the loss of the value of 175 levels of ST, which was priced assuming that all the ST works even against being airlifted, because the ST comes with mass. One fair benefit would be to say that such a character only counts as having HP 25 when he falls or is slammed into something, which will make such collisions much less painful; in that case, the flying character with ST 60 could lift off with him (ST 25 < ST 60/2), but wouldn't hurt him nearly as much with a body slam (1/8 the damage dice that 200 HP would suggest).

However, it would be unfair to look at the descriptive effects ("I can fly and he can't!"), ignore the You Get What You Pay For rule, and just screw the ST 200 guy out of the value of his ST without giving something in return. One of the things ST 200 does guarantee is being able to keep anyone with under ST 400 from moving away once grappled; waiving that should come with a compensatory benefit. (Starting with a look at the box on p. B352 and noting that such a character should be able to jump as if he had Basic Move 50 . . . and possibly a glance at p. B350, where it's fairly clear that gravity up to 4G wouldn't slow him at all.)

[Ack]

Just btw, the flier has the ability to increase his ST at will, at the expense of his flight speed.

Just to make sure my math is correct:

Presuming weight of (say) 2200 lbs for the grappler. That requires ST of 75 to lift in Light encumbrance mode, which the flier can easily manage. He could even manage the 104 ST to make him No encumbrance, if that would make it easier.

So, with all that ... despite the fact that he can easily lift the mass of the grappler off the ground ... he can't? Because a non-flying grappler has hold of him?

Please tell me how this makes any kind of sense.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Ack

Please tell me how this makes any kind of sense.

Please read my (long) post. Basically, someone with ST 200 normally weighs 500 tons (1,000,000 lbs.), and can claim such a weight "for free." To move at all with 500 tons, you'll need ST 708. If this ST 200 monster weighs less than 500 tons, then you'll need less ST . . . but he should get some benefit to compensate. For instance, if he weighs just a ton, he might function as only ST 25 for opposing grapples, but the GM should probably rule that since his BL 8,000 is four times his weight in 1G, he can use ST/4 instead of Basic Move for jumps, and still be at No Encumbrance in a 4G gravity field . . . and the GM should also be hitting him with falling and collision damage for HP 25, not HP 200.

[Mirtai]

Hmm. That actually makes a LOT of sense, especially paying the points for so much strength and not getting full value for it.

Letting such a character jump higher and faster (and take less damage in a crash) makes perfect sense to me.

Going to have to take a hard look at it before allowing it in a game, but it seems reasonable.

Super heroes (especially high pt value ones) are pretty hard to make logic apply to at the same time as making the rules fair for everyone.

[vicky_molokh]

First, I must apologize, because it so happens that things I say can be read as a negative assessment of TG. As occasionally said in another place I like to socialise, GURPS is realistic enough that such discussions are viable in the first place, which is a big achievement by itself.

I'm somewhat confused about what exactly TG is striving to achieve. Supposedly getting rid of ST rolls, and yet Pickup is a roll of HT vs. ST. Supposedly privileging realism over gamism (thus throwing out the 'You also get +1 to hit when you grapple per +1 SM advantage you have over your target' @B402, making SM even more of a Disadvantage unless it comes with above-average ST), and yet apparently grappling a Hot Air Balloon is sufficient to prevent it from lifting the grappler, since it doesn't have twice the ST of the grappler. (In fact, I have no idea how can a grappler realistically prevent a liftoff of anything unless he has Clinging - just how does he apply more of his ST downward than he has weight? Now, when he can anchor himself to some heavier object using prehensile toes, that's another story.)

[roguebfl]

Vicky our hot air ballon example is basd as it's lifting power would be it's ST

and by grapplers ST is the force3 you can bring to bear to counter it. if that force is grster that the lift yes you should beable stop the lift.

[Ack]

How does someone without Clinging or Flight of their own bring any force to bear to prevent something from lifting off? If you have no anchor point, it Makes. No. Sense.


Let me run a few examples past you; I want to know which way each of these ones go.

Character A can not fly, weighs a ton, and has ST 200.
Character B can fly, weighs 160 lb, and has ST 75.


1) Both characters are falling out of a plane. Character A grapples Character B.
What happens? Do they stop falling? (because once you are grappled, you cannot move)
Can Character B even activate his flight ability? (Because apparently being grappled by someone stronger renders it non-functional)


2) Both characters are in a space station, under zero G. (Character B does have Space Flight).
Character A grapples Character B. Can Character B move through the zero G with his flight power anyway, or is he nailed to thin air by Character A's l33t grappling skillz?

3) Character B is flying over the city when Character A leaps up from below and grapples him. Does Character B keep going? Can he change course? Does he fall out of the air, because he's now grappled and can no longer fly, even though he can normally carry far more than that?

4) Character A is falling off a building, and Character B catches him. Character A grapples Character B (ungrateful bugger). Character B was hovering at the time. Once he's grappled, can he even land? Because that's conscious movement. Or is he stuck in midair till Character A lets go?

5) Character B is grappled by Character A, who then leaps into the air. Can Character B now use his flight to body-slam Character A, now that A is no longer on the ground?


I will be very curious as to where this leads.

[Ack]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Vicky our hot air ballon example is basd as it's lifting power would be it's ST

and by grapplers ST is the force3 you can bring to bear to counter it. if that force is grster that the lift yes you should beable stop the lift.

So, a guy with the ability to lift 200 lbs but weighs 150 lb grabs the guy rope of a balloon with a lifting capacity of 170 lbs. He has no Clinging, no anchor point. Bare feet on asphalt. The balloon is rising. Do you honestly believe that he will be able to prevent it from rising?