grappling & posture and grappling & letting go

[Anaraxes]

Just read the takedown rule as "only on a foe not on the ground*" rather than "only on a standing foe", and the problem goes away.


--
* meaning lying either prone or supine, as earlier in the thread

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Just read the takedown rule as "only on a foe not on the ground*" rather than "only on a standing foe", and the problem goes away.

This. We more or less assume it in GURPS Martial Arts.

[zedlopez]

Originally Posted by Kromm

This. We more or less assume it in GURPS Martial Arts.

OK, thanks.

Given that Change Posture isn't proscribed for those who are grappled, is there any reason you couldn't stalemate someone trying to pin you by Changing Posture to Kneeling after each time you're taken down, other than the fact that a stalemate does nothing to change your being grappled and in a vulnerable situation?

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by zedlopez

Given that Change Posture isn't proscribed for those who are grappled, is there any reason you couldn't stalemate someone trying to pin you by Changing Posture to Kneeling after each time you're taken down, other than the fact that a stalemate does nothing to change your being grappled and in a vulnerable situation?

Nothing prevents that. This is one of many problems that GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling attempts to rectify. Without those rules, the puzzle is that there's no way to prevent somebody from taking a Change Posture maneuver unless you've pinned them.

Under just the rules in the Basic Set, most pins happen after somebody has suffered stun and knockdown, allowing an enemy time to grapple and pin them while they're unable to get up. Pins can also happen when someone uses multiple attacks after an earlier grapple to do something like "takedown and pin," "sweep and pin," or "Judo throw and pin." The case where somebody suffers a takedown and decides to do something that involves staying on the ground, giving their foe a chance to try a pin next turn, is pretty rare.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nothing prevents that. This is one of many problems that GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling attempts to rectify.

Since The Book has been mentioned, I'll chime in.

Takedowns are attacks. Ergo a generic "change posture" on the other guy is ALSO an attack. By extension, changing your own posture in the face of resistance is best resolved as an attack as well. So you need, per B370, an Attack or All-Out Attack maneuver; Martial Arts would usefully extend this to Committed Attacks as well.

The resolution mechanism for a Takedown is a Quick Contest: highest of ST, DX, or best grappling skill.

So keep it. If you want to change someone's posture, or change your own, you have to win that contest.

Now the question is "do you want to bother applying penalties to go from X posture to Y posture, either up or down?"

Yes to the -4 to DX for being grappled, impacting both DX and grappling skills. It *doesn't* impact ST.

I'd suggest looking at p. B551 and hitting the initiator of the move with the Attack penalty and the resistor of the move with the Defense penalty based o their current posture. If you've bought off that posture penalty with things like Ground Fighting or Low Fighting, *that should absolutely apply*. You paid points for it.

If in "roll and shout" mode (which I'm getting more and more fond of) just apply the contest broadly and say "win a contest, you can change your own, or your foe's posture if you could have done that same move in one ready maneuver."

That means no kipping up from lying down to standing, with a foe, in one move, since it takes two Ready maneuvers to do that unopposed on a vast featureless plain. It takes one move to drop to any posture from a higher one, so you can always do, well, a takedown.

For things like "I flip my foe from face-up to face-down," that can be done by rolling in one turn, so it can be done by forced posture change ("Takedown") in one turn.

Technical Grappling invokes a bunch of fairly unique penalties, because I was in my "write a special rule for everything" period of game design. Now I'm a "less is more" kind of guy in my attempts at rules design, so going with a combo of the existing posture penalties and "just win the darned contest" seems right.

[Plane]

Originally Posted by zedlopez

Given that Change Posture isn't proscribed for those who are grappled, is there any reason you couldn't stalemate someone trying to pin you by Changing Posture to Kneeling after each time you're taken down, other than the fact that a stalemate does nothing to change your being grappled and in a vulnerable situation?

Originally Posted by Kromm

Nothing prevents that. This is one of many problems that GURPS Martial Arts: Technical Grappling attempts to rectify. Without those rules, the puzzle is that there's no way to prevent somebody from taking a Change Posture maneuver unless you've pinned them.

I just thought of one possible pre-TG solution to this. B395 has the optional "Changing Posture in Armor" rule which has a broader definition than just armor:

you can let encumbrance level affect the time it takes to perform a Change Posture maneuver

If you are heavy enough to qualify as "Medium" encumbrance on your opponent, then it should take them 2 seconds to do a Change Posture maneuver, which should prevent the 'stalemate' since you'd have enough time to try a Pin at least once before they managed to complete the maneuver and upgrade to Crawling.

Where I'm stuck though is I'm not sure where to find out how much of your weight (partial to full) can qualify as encumbrance on someone without them having intentionally.

Maybe using Climbing (183/349)? It requires a "Move" maneuver to do climbs in combat, though I'm not sure which thing on the chart would be the closest match to a person. Guessing "tree" for stationary person, "rope" for moving person.