Technical Grappling - Stuck in the Middle of a Tug-Of-War

Kallatari · 09-17-2021, 09:56 AM

Something came up in one of my games and I was wondering how people would address it.

In a middle of a battle with giant spiders, one character fell into a spider web - effectively Binding with Sticky - and was bound to it; using the Technical Grappling rules I rolled the web's grappling for the CP of the grapple, which determined what penalties the trapped adventurer had.

The character stuck to the web (i.e, the victim), rather than trying to pull herself out, continued to attack the spiders (with the appropriate penalties based on the CP currently suffered). Another character (i.e., the rescuer), meanwhile, not wanting to risk touching the web carefully grabbed the victim on the opposite side and tried to pull her out of the web, while the victim continued to fight. [It's a game with kids; they certainly don't make the same decisions my adult players make in their games]

So how do you game this?

My first thought would have been to just add their BLs together to get effective ST and use that for rolling the CP on the Break Free attempt, but since the victim wasn't even trying to break free and had no coordination with the rescuer whatsoever, I didn't think that would apply here.

I therefore had the rescuer "grapple" the victim, and roll for CP to see how well the rescuer was holding onto the victim... and this likewise penalized the victim's abilities to continue to attack the spiders while both being pulled and stuck to the web.

Otherwise, the only thing I could think of was to allow an "indirect" attack of the grapple. By holding onto the victim which was stuck to the web, I let the rescuer attack the web-victim grapple. But should there be a limit here; maybe cannot afflict more CP than the CP the rescuer has on the victim to show how strongly he can pull her out (otherwise, the rescuer would do minimal CP so as to not hamper the victim attacking the spiders)? Should there be a penalty on the grappling attack roll since the rescuer doesn't have a direct link to the victim/web grapple? Is this just "Disarming" or its own unique technique? Any other thoughts?

The above in-game scenario of course led me to thinking how would you game a tug-of-war with a person in the middle. For example, the two orcs warriors each want the princess as their prisoner, so they each grab and arm and try to pull her out of the arm of the other orc? What would be the mechanics? Would the princess suffer any injuries in the process? And how do you determine the level of injury?

09-17-2021, 09:56 AM	#1
Kallatari Join Date: Jan 2006 Location: Ottawa, Canada	Technical Grappling - Stuck in the Middle of a Tug-Of-War Something came up in one of my games and I was wondering how people would address it. In a middle of a battle with giant spiders, one character fell into a spider web - effectively Binding with Sticky - and was bound to it; using the Technical Grappling rules I rolled the web's grappling for the CP of the grapple, which determined what penalties the trapped adventurer had. The character stuck to the web (i.e, the victim), rather than trying to pull herself out, continued to attack the spiders (with the appropriate penalties based on the CP currently suffered). Another character (i.e., the rescuer), meanwhile, not wanting to risk touching the web carefully grabbed the victim on the opposite side and tried to pull her out of the web, while the victim continued to fight. [It's a game with kids; they certainly don't make the same decisions my adult players make in their games] So how do you game this? My first thought would have been to just add their BLs together to get effective ST and use that for rolling the CP on the Break Free attempt, but since the victim wasn't even trying to break free and had no coordination with the rescuer whatsoever, I didn't think that would apply here. I therefore had the rescuer "grapple" the victim, and roll for CP to see how well the rescuer was holding onto the victim... and this likewise penalized the victim's abilities to continue to attack the spiders while both being pulled and stuck to the web. Otherwise, the only thing I could think of was to allow an "indirect" attack of the grapple. By holding onto the victim which was stuck to the web, I let the rescuer attack the web-victim grapple. But should there be a limit here; maybe cannot afflict more CP than the CP the rescuer has on the victim to show how strongly he can pull her out (otherwise, the rescuer would do minimal CP so as to not hamper the victim attacking the spiders)? Should there be a penalty on the grappling attack roll since the rescuer doesn't have a direct link to the victim/web grapple? Is this just "Disarming" or its own unique technique? Any other thoughts? The above in-game scenario of course led me to thinking how would you game a tug-of-war with a person in the middle. For example, the two orcs warriors each want the princess as their prisoner, so they each grab and arm and try to pull her out of the arm of the other orc? What would be the mechanics? Would the princess suffer any injuries in the process? And how do you determine the level of injury?