One ideaHave 3-5 “stages,” once you start grappling with someone you can make contested rolls to advance the track your way or try to disengage from itAnd depending on the current stage there’s different conditions and interactions, and certain actions interact with stages, like if you successfully double leg you land straight into “stage 2”
The best grappling mechanics avoid it being a minigame and just make the target restrained.If fencing, footwork, swordsmanship is represented with a single attack roll, so can be a grapple.
problem with having complex rules with lots of stages is how much you can get done before combat ends.If combat typically lasts 2~3 turns and it takes a whole turn to progress between 1 of 5 stages then it's pretty useless unless those early stages are already strong. In which case I wonder how much more powerful the later stages must be.
>>98760204Jenga. The higher the grappling level of both, the taller the tower.To execute an action, a block must be taken from the tower, but whether said action succeeds or fails depends on if the equivalent block is successfully added back to the tower.If one action requires multiple blocks, the actor might also choose to create a 2nd tower.Every failed action = 3 spins or 1 shot of vodka before every jenga play.
>>98760204I avoid grappling unless it's one enemy because wrestling is extremely slow compared to everything else. The only fast grappling type of art is judo
>>98760204GURPS Technical Grappling (control points)
>>98760204The AD&D 1e unarmed combat system is *excellent.* Far and away the best I've ever seen.It's just a bitch to understand at first because of how it's laid out, but once it clicks it's great.The easiest way to understand it is that it's really just three charts (which is how I laid it out in my notes.) Pummeling, Grappling, and Overbearing are all meant to be used together.The first chart sets the difficulty for the "to-hit" roll. There's essentially a "Pummeling" and a "Grappling/Overbearing" column because of slight differences, but the idea stays the same.On a success, *and* only on a success, you roll the success roll and modify it by the second chart, then look up that number on a third chart and do what it tells you.If a grapple is already occurring, the person who has the current hold goes first and can roll for damage or to possibly to improve their position (failing to improve doesn't break the existing hold.) Then the grappled person goes and if it's a "better" hold takes over as the person doing the grappling with that hold and if it's not does damage based on that number.It's laid out a mess, and it suffers from Round 1 needing a bit more math since you have to calculate the target numbers the first time, but after that it's really simple and actually tells the story of the fight as it goes on.In fact, and I suggest this, once you get the hang of it you can just replace most monster attacks with "unarmed" attacks and get a better fight out of it.
>>98760204Fantastic Dungeon Grappling for Dungeon Fantasy RPG. Simple, clean, and allows you to do everything you could do in a real grapple, plus is flexible enough to be compatible with monsters that grapple.There is a version of it for D&D games (called Dungeon Grappling) so I do not comprehend why it isn't the basic grappling system for every single D&D game.
>>98761604AD&D1e is the poster child of overcomplicated and hard to understand grappling systems, and is the entire reason grappling is a meme in the RPG community.
>>98761868The RPG community is full of dumbfucks. "I want a strictly simulationist grappling system with gamist and narrativist elements that exactly models real life military hand to hand *and* combat sports *and* bar fights but also only uses a single d20(a/d) + Bonus vs Target roll that is simultaneously super crunchy and simple but also mechanically meaningful but not unbalanced compared to every other activity in the game and I want Matt Mercer to narrate it" is what most people *want* but they're not going to get it.You want a system that integrates knocking people over with punching and kicking from neutral, superior, and inferior positions while also allowing for positional improvement that acknowledges that armor and weapon accessibility are things while also nudging the game forward once it's all over but the cleanup that fits on one page if you bother to turn it into charts? AD&D 1e is it. You got something you think is better than that, post it.
>>98761927>"I want a strictly simulationist grappling system with gamist and narrativist elements that exactly models real life military hand to hand *and* combat sports *and* bar fights but also only uses a single d20(a/d) + Bonus vs Target roll that is simultaneously super crunchy and simple but also mechanically meaningful but not unbalanced compared to every other activity in the game and I want Matt Mercer to narrate it"Without the Matt Mercer part, that is exactly Fantastic Dungeon Grappling.>simulationist with gamist and narrativist elementscontrol points are exactly like that>models real life and combat sportsyup>uses the basic game mechanicYup, you just roll attack and "damage" as normal according to the usual mechanic of the system>meaningfulyup, all the shit you can do with Control Points is very useful, like joint locks, knockdown, slamming someone in a wall, etcNo charts required either!
>>98760204*Cast Hold Person*There. Everything that grappling does but in one turn
>>98762007This is a no magic campaign bucko>b-butD&D is well suited for anything. I WILL use D&D to play a luchadores campaign.
>>98760204Check out Song of Swords.
>>98760608Try not playing D&Dogshit
