Dodging While Grappling

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Gold & Appel Inc

A person grappling you doesn't count as encumbrance, unless you have more than twice their ST so they don't stop you from moving away completely and dragging them along with you (4e Basic p 370), in which case, sure the encumbrance lowers Speed which lowers Dodge, but otherwise, no.

This does raise the interesting situation in which (for example) a ST 20 person being grappled by a (slightly overweight) ST 9, 165 lb person will have a larger Dodge penalty than if grappled by a ST 10 person. 165 pounds of encumbrance puts them at Medium encumbrance for -2 Dodge, compared to the -1 Dodge for being grappled. This is something of an edge case, but it still feels counterintuitive.