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Old 05-04-2022, 04:47 PM   #1
Plane
 
Join Date: Aug 2018
Default No Manipulators and climbing on foes (Technical + Fantastic Dungeon Grappling) LAY ON

I'm trying to figure out how TG31's "If you manage to get your opponent on the ground,you may apply CP if you manage to lay on top of him." would work if you lacked Constrictions Attack, since that (and Double Jointed) are prereq to use your torso to grapple in the traditional sense.

It seems like "Sit on Him" wouldn't be legal (as that is a case of Case Limb with Using Your Legs as a prerequisite, a No Legs creature like a Snake should not be able to do this)

TG35's Change Position "Establish a Weight Advantage" seems like another approach, but since this is "used to change facing, relative facing, or orientation while grappling" the question remains - how is grappling established in the first place?

Campaigns' python (and TG's constrictor snake template) have Constriction Attack, but venomous vermiformes like the Rattlesnake lack it, yet clearly they are able to wrestle/grapple in some limited non-constriction sense that doesn't involve mouth/bite contact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbg3DWhhyNY

This is also one of the situations where a 'weight advantage' isn't very clear at all since they're intertwined and each is on top of the other at various points.

Snakes have something called a 'pelvic spur' (the vestigial remains of a pelvis and femur) so not sure if they'd have Pelvis and Chest as separate hit locations, if you allowed grappling different portions of the torso.

In that case maybe each could establish weight advantage over the other (lay on top of) separately (snake A's chest on snake B's chest, snake B's pelvis on snake A's pelvis)

The problem remains having no actual grapple set up to do the Change Position technique though. It's possible via "Wriggling" for No Manipulators creatures to use the Break Free technique at -4 to DX (MA116 : having DJ+CA removes the -4 to Break Free) but there's no talk of establishing grapples.

It is possible for Break Free to actually establish a new grapple (TG35 paragraph 4: "reverse control") but I don't think that's a solution here because you can only apply half the excess CP of a Break Free to "one of the body parts that was formerly grappling you" which is no body parts if we lack a grapple in the first place to act upon.

- -

A possible solution I was wondering about would be adapting the "Bind" attack from Fantastic Dungeon Grappling. FDGp3 has "Weapon/Shield Bind" usable by "some weapons, and shields" though I'm not sure which weapons can/can't do it.

If we took a sort of "body parts are weapons" approach and allowed unarmed attacks to use bind rules (ie instead of wrapping my arm around an enemy's abdomen so they can't retreat, I just press my elbow against my enemy's abdomen to "bind" them, and they can escape it simply using a "Retreat from Bind".

From that perspective, since I can do slams with No Manipulators (ie body-checking enemies with my chest or pelvis, if you had to pick a sub-location) maybe you should be able to do a "bind" by pressing your torso against someone?

This wouldn't be too effective unless there was a wall behind your enemy (preventing Retreat from Bind) but against them or a Lying opponent (like the other male snake you are wrestling) it's probably like having a back to the wall (long as you're attacking downward) so there is no option to move "directly away" from the attacker to escape this way.

You could try to "step" to wriggle along the ground on the turn after a Bind but I think that just drags whoever has grappled you along for the ride (as encumbrance) until you do a Break Free.

Not sure how retreat variations would work in respect to the Retreat from Bind option... doesn't seem like a forward-slip should work, but maybe a side-slip could?

I don't know if you'd be able to do a side-slip if lying prone on your back (or with back against a wall) though because it might not just be the rear hex which is occupied but also the left/right hexes occupied by ground. It's hard to think about since perspectives shift when rotated 90 degrees like this.

I'm just figuring "Chest-Bind" could be a route into explaining how we could have a Rattlesnake vs Rattlesnake wrestling match because otherwise there doesn't seem to be a legal way to initiate it.

Last edited by Plane; 05-04-2022 at 04:52 PM.
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Old 05-05-2022, 03:04 AM   #2
sir_pudding
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Default Re: No Manipulators and climbing on foes (Technical + Fantastic Dungeon Grappling) LA

In the event you have a game where PCs are vipers and you need to wrestle other vipers ("Rattlesnake High School"?) you probably would want to have some kind if body contact holds, sure.

Otherwise this probably doesn't generally ever come up.
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Old 05-05-2022, 04:18 AM   #3
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Default Re: No Manipulators and climbing on foes (Technical + Fantastic Dungeon Grappling) LA

GURPS Furries has material on martial arts for races with various zoomorphic body traits: combat options, techniques, styles, and a half-page box on how the techniques were constructed (pp. 16-20). For torso, the combat option section says

Requires both Constriction Attack and Double-Jointed. Allows a character with a flexible torso to grapple a foe whose SM is less than or equal to the character’s. Doing so is equivalent to a two-handed grapple and allows a Constriction Attack to damage the target.
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