Question about Control Points

[Hide]

I have been reading the “Hall of Judgement” for DF. I noticed they have included technical grappling’s control points. I am not familiar with the subject, how do you recover control points if you spend them for bonuses or lost them in combat?

Thank you,

[Balor Patch]

HOJ includes the full rules p. 62-65.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Hide

I have been reading the “Hall of Judgement” for DF. I noticed they have included technical grappling’s control points. I am not familiar with the subject, how do you recover control points if you spend them for bonuses or lost them in combat?

Thank you,

You re-attack (grapple) to get more. TG envisions continually attacking to either get more CP or remove CP from a foe’s grapple on you, and a few other actions.

[Hide]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

You re-attack (grapple) to get more. TG envisions continually attacking to either get more CP or remove CP from a foe’s grapple on you, and a few other actions.

I see, but they also let you spend CP to pull feats during combat (e.g. enhanced defense). Do you get all of them back after combat?

[Anders]

No, it's like damage. You start with 0 CP and then you roll a Grappling skill to gain CPs.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Hide

I see, but they also let you spend CP to pull feats during combat (e.g. enhanced defense). Do you get all of them back after combat?

Originally Posted by Anders

No, it's like damage. You start with 0 CP and then you roll a Grappling skill to gain CPs.

Just so.

You make a grappling attack. If you hit, *you roll damage*. The form of that damage is represented as control points. One could also say that the damage type is control (just like some attacks have a damage type of fatigue and are tracked differently).

You keep doing grappling attacks and you keep inflicting control points on the other person. This is restraint, actively applied, which leads to restrictions in the foe's movement.

But if you want to forcefully yank that being around, you can spend them. This represents using some of that accumulated restraint/control/leverage to make them do what you want, or not do something you don't want.

Like "get injured" or "move around" in the first case. "Not stab my spleen" in the second.

But having done that, you've expended a resource, allowed space between you and your foe, relaxed your grip, or any number of things. So you have to get them back (if you want to), and to do that, you attack, they fail to defend, and you roll more damage with the control damage type.

[Hide]

I think I am starting to get this. Let’s see, the sample characters in the Hall
Of Judgement have a control maximum. I assume this is the pool of CP (Control Points) a character has.

You deal CP damage when you grapple other characters. And you can consume CP to boosts skills, defenses and so on (as character points do in traditional GURPS).

If you run out of CP, you are disabled for combat. Regardless of how you lost CP, you can recover them during combat by grappling an enemy (or an ally, maybe) or you can recover them after the fight ends.

Am I right?

[ArchonShiva]

No. Treat CP as damage. It starts at zero on everyone. When you attack (grapple), you inflict «*CP damage*», which restrains the target. If you inflict lots of CP, they become basically helpless. This is called «*having CP on them*»

If someone attacks (grapples) and inflicts CP on you, you are restricted. It’s called «*then having CP on you*»

CP is the interaction of one grappler on one target. If the bear grappling you let’s go, it goes from having 20 CP on you (you are badly grappled) yo having zero (you are nor grappled).

There is no «*recovering*» or «*healing*» process. It’s just grappling and escaping.

[Hide]

Oh, I understand! I had the idea that control points also had an effect outside grappling (e.g. enhancing my sword parry with FP or with character, hence my previous questions).

All of your comments were really useful! Thank you all!

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Hide

Oh, I understand! I had the idea that control points also had an effect outside grappling (e.g. enhancing my sword parry with FP or with character, hence my previous questions).

They CAN do this, but you have to choose to do it.

The basic purpose of control points is, as ArchonShiva notes, to restrain the foe. You build up this damage on an opponent and they are more and more restricted, as shown by the DX penalty chart (relative to the foe's Control Maximum) on HoJ, p. 64.

While hitting someone with (say) a -6 to DX is kinda nice, you can also actively do particular things. These are represented by the Actions After a Grapple.

Some require certain things. To Strangle a foe, you must be grappling the neck AND they, you know, must have a neck that can be strangled (so homogeneous demons and stuff may or may not be able to be choked out, depending on the demon).

To do a Takedown, you just need a grapple.

To injure the foe, you must have at least 3 Control Points to trade for each 1d injury you want to do.

You can also use them actively to interfere with an opponent's actions. The examples listed are "increasing chances to hit" (spend CP to add to your hit roll), "enable attack options," which is spending them to increase chances to win actions after a grapple, cancel hit location penalties, add to your own defense or subtract from the foe's.

The general guideline here is that spending 1 CP adds +1 to your skill or -1 to theirs in a Quick Contest or attack. You can also spend 2 CP to get +1 to your own defense or -1 to theirs.

These all represent, abstractly but with mechanical reinforcement, that once you have grappled someone you can *do stuff* to them. Stuff might just be sitting there making them go "urp!", but it can also be moving them around, injury, disarms, or other things that involve manipulating them somehow, restricting or guiding their movements.