>>97490584
No one wanted to use Metzner's grecoroman larp grappling rules where you had to wrestle the gm or the gm's second (which could be any animal in the mystery cage, guy was nuts) after that incident with Ernie, the feds and all 4 hula girls.
So we're stuck with dice.

Your thread reminded me of this for some reason.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8z7bsTL74i8

>>97490596
I tried it but I miss enough sessions when my back acts up as is.

>>97490584
Why do you think they're the worst?
What "ttg battle systems" have you experienced them in, and how did they work in those systems?

>>97490599
Ah yes an artist formerly known as "Sexual Lobster"

>>97490954
His stuff is great.

>>97490584
Because in my experience they're either:
>Completely ineffective and do basically nothing
>Completely overpowered and basically lock two people out of the fight

>>97490584
I'd let her grapple me if ya know what I mean

>>97490584
Because game devs are bullied nerds and not jocks who might actually have wrestled.

They aren't. Some do it well.

>>97490584
because it isn't abstracted for shit taking you around 5 turns of total vulnerability to get to do anything, as if it is some form of formal athletic wrestling of the modern world instead of a fast and dirty grab and stab or grab and drop prone, a disarm etc

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>>97490584
Much of what >>97491107 said. This is on top of execution of grappling rules, as they have a nasty habit of being more complex than a basic combat check or, in worse cases, only being reasonably usable by characters with specific builds (e.g. requires investment in a skill players don't normally take).

Still, this is all worst-case scenario stuff. Some systems do it well or may otherwise have a more egregious failing in its combat.

>>97490584
Because any realistic grappling slows the fight to a crawl and any two combatants grappling are effectively disarmed and extremely vulnerable to third parties. In my experience, anytime I have a grappling situation it turns into a mini 1v1 single player game and even though that one player is having fun, the others can get quite bored waiting for their turn.

>>97490584
What setting?

>>97491767
Palladium

>>97490584
>Why are they the worst aspects of any ttg battle system?
>any
Stop playing shitty games and you will find out what a non-issue this is

>>97491804
name three

>>97491107
GURPS is the latter
Want to win against a grappler? Carry a knife and/or get better at wrestling. It's realistic but probably not very satisfying for most

>>97490584
>Grappling
A lot of detail involved in the fine intricacies of rassling. What's bound, what's not bound, relative freedom of movement, et cetera. Systematizing it leads to tons of detail for a system that most campaigns won't use, abstract GM interpretation is suddenly shifting from the typically more crunchy elements combat centers around to more freeform elements, which might not be the players' cup of tea.

>unarmed combat
I mean, yeah, it often sucks. But that's not consistently the case. The more weeb something gets, the more punching people is allowed to be effective. When it does suck, its because the system has relegated it to the final fallback combat option, with no allowances for it to be anything but.

>>97491816
>Non-shitty
Anything that isn't 1d20-based
>Good grappling rules
The Witcher (the Polish one), Hollow Earth Expedition, Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades.

Grappling is pretty ass and lame in general as can be seen from UFC fights where you have fags pullling guard on the floor looking like a cat in heat. The only thing protecting them from getting their heads stomped is the rules.
Now translate that into RPG scenarios where both sides always have a group to back them up it just becomes a completely silly scenario as many pointed out.

>>97492188
That's why you have your grappler yell out "YOU AND ME, ONE ON ONE!" the moment the fight breaks out.

the rest of your party can deal with the rest of his party

>>97490611
I hear that.
Remember to do your morning warmups anon.

>>97492188
>grappling wouldnt work with head stomps
>Pride, which allowed stomps and soccer kicks, had some of the greatest submission wizards in MMA history

Someone is insecure about getting grapplefucked.

As for OP, because much like in real life, grappling is more fun to do than to watch.

>>97490584
Why do you think they're the worst?
What "ttg battle systems" have you experienced them in, and how did they work in those systems?
Can you answer these simple questions?

>>97492250
based
THE CREAM RISES TO THE TOP

>>97494259
Sorry I don't like your attitude I'm not going to reply to you.

>>97490584
Generally speaking, the majority of people writing TTRPGs aren't avid followers of combat sports. This either leads to anemic rules for unarmed and grappling combat, or it leads to rules that are attempting to be "balanced" or "realistic" where some nerd writer who has never been punched in the face just reasons that hand to hand combat can't possibly be as good or worthwhile as guns or swords, so it should be weaker and not as effective. Sometimes they're nice enough to give players the option to overinvest in unarmed combat as an option, but not without overtaxing them for the ability to be almost as effective as other martials.

>>97494817

I'd say it's more a problem of grappling not really being cool in this day and age. What was the last movie you saw in which "realistic" grappling (or even bar brawling) was heavily featured, versus whatever weeb asian heavily coreographed martial art?

>>97494832
Yeah, that's certainly part of it. Even when it's two pro BJJ guys going at it, it's just two dudes writhing until one gets the other in a lock or a hold. I think the balance issue comes back into that because designers don't like the idea of someone being able to win a single grapple check and then put someone in a rear naked choke/sleeper hold that knocks them out in a round or two.

Likewise, a lot of holds and throws are kinda boring, and people shy away from the more theatrical pro wrestling stuff because it would be too corny to allow a player to powerbomb a goblin... But all the same, we're going to have anime shit anyways where the wizard waves his hands in a special way and launches a fireball, or the fighter goes into a special stance that lets him cut down half a dozen guys in 1 second. It just kinda comes down to the biases of the writers who don't think it's cool enough to be allowed and that it breaks their immersion to allow players the options to use something other than basic attacks or game breaking spells.

>>97490584
Because they are the most prone to simulationism. It is complicated enough that it could be its own combat minisystem, but niche enough that it doesn't justify the page space for that. So it baits designers into trying to cram a minisystems worth of options into a quarter of a page worth of text, which turns into a giant mess.

>>97494682
Ah, because you don't actually have any experience with what you're talking about, and you don't play games.

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>>97490584
Because most ttg's are made by nerds.

Nerds, by and large, do not do martial arts.

This is why Wizards and clerics and shit are so powerful in DnD. It's unconscious bias by designers who think "Wizards are smarter than normal, give them smart people capacities like spells to fix anything, or briefly make them on par with similar level martial characters", while simultaneously not giving marital classes anything because, half by stat use half by personal bias, they don't see that to be good at fighting, you need to be INCREDIBLY intelligent in multiple capacities.

The body has physical and biological limits. Being smart is what gets you past those.


Sure, there's the HEMA/swords crossover, but a lot of HEMA places with big nerd populations aren't exactly high grade martial arts places (fun, but not good to train in long term), and there's next to nothing physically confronting.

Now grappling and wrestling, atop being a secondary and often 'unsecure' aspect of weapon combat, is very physically confronting and demanding. I do MMA, BJJ, a little bit of Freestyle wrestling, among others, and grappling is far more of a strain on muscles, joints, tendons, and head knocks.

Not the kind of place you normally see even a MA-inclined nerd. Two VERY different scenes.

So you just don't really get any crossover between good knowledgeable grapplers, and competent game designers.

DnD surprisingly does them kinda decently, if you use ALL the rules. But even there it's mediocre and needs a full spec meme build with three different splatbooks and a specific race and mods to make it work.

If it's not underpowered and useless, it's overbloated and too extensive.
If it's not, it's clunky and flow-breaking, and not fun to use at most tables.
Even BJJ, which arguably has a flow chart for a whole engagement, has too many particulars.

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>>97497124
In other words, the "wrestler/TTRPG game designer" overlap is too narrow for there to be any serious attempt at good grappling rules? It's not exactly a condemnation of all unarmed combat (people make D&D monks work), but I can see how that could be a gap in knowledge.

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>>97491221
>You will never be stretched by a French fashion designer with a massive chest and elevated libido

The worst aspect of any system, whether battle or not, is one that doesn't establish a consistent rule and leaves it up to the arbiter, which guarantees it will never be resolved consistently.
Some people like this, sure, and I'm glad they can enjoy it, but considering there are people who enjoy getting their nuts stepped on with sharp heels, "I enjoy it" is not an argument for objective quality.

>>97497680
I would say that the worst aspect of any system is not necessarily a mechanic that is ill-defined, but rather one that just feels out of place. At least with the former, there is hopefully at least enough scaffolding that players can settle on a ruling that works for their table and still speaks to the spirit of that rule. An out-of-place mechanic, however, breaks up the flow of the game and comes across as jagged in how it stands out compared to the broader mechanics of the game, be it raw execution or how much attention it demands or similar.

People bemoan Shadowrun hacking because, at worst, it's a single-player dungeon crawl that leaves the rest of the table twiddling their thumbs while the GM and the hacker go through all these relatively esoteric actions and checks and goals, all happening on a different time signature than everyone in meatspace. Meanwhile, Genesys's dedicated hacking rules are great because it uses the same core dice mechanic as everything else in the system, the goals and actions used to achieve said goals are simpler and much more clearly defined, and the timing of it can be done in a way that doesn't leave out the rest of the party doing their own thing.

>>97497711
>there is hopefully at least enough scaffolding
It rarely ever works out that way in practice.
Take for example how DMs are expected to set DCs for "skill" checks in D&D; swinging from a chandelier at a given height, distance, material, and dryness could be passed on a roll of 7 +2 for acrobatics early in the campaign, but months later down the line, there's nothing stopping the DM from saying a roll of 14 +4 for acrobatics fails in spite of the same material and environmental conditions.
And this is benign compared to what else can happen with an inconsistent foundation.

"Game flow" on the other hand, is all about how well the players process the information. Hangups over mechanics that might seem out of place all come down to player knowledge of the game.
I agree with the notion there should never be a time when the table is sitting on their thumbs while only one or two people are doing something, though that isn't exclusive to playing a game, and often times happens when two people just want to make voices at each other or one person wants to infodump a bunch of crap barely relevant to playing the game.

Having clear rules everyone is familiar with and can be referenced quickly is more favorable than "oh just wing it" because at that point, it comes down more to guessing what the arbiter is thinking than playing the game everyone agreed on.

>>97497740
>Take for example how DMs are expected to set DCs for "skill" checks in D&D; swinging from a chandelier at a given height, distance, material, and dryness could be passed on a roll of 7 +2 for acrobatics early in the campaign, but months later down the line, there's nothing stopping the DM from saying a roll of 14 +4 for acrobatics fails in spite of the same material and environmental conditions.
That's just bad practice. At least Genesys makes it clear that when you set a flat difficulty for a check (1-5+), that measure is objective and applies to everyone. Let a player feel good if they easily clear what may have been a more difficult task earlier in the campaign.

>>97490584
because being a grappler and fighting people with actual weapons is dumb as fuck and these systems should be deliberately made shit so that no one wants to interact with them and instead plays normal fucking characters

>>97497974
>plays normal fucking characters
like wizards?

>>97491914
>Hollow Earth Expedition
Surprised by this, I cracked open my PDF and checked for "grapp". Making it a variant attack keeps it simple although the ‘add penalty then long explanation that means add a second penalty’ text makes little sense. The issue I see is that it’s not as versatile as you’d probably like it: Krakens in the bestiary are noted as drowning grappled targets, but there don’t seem to be any rules for how to adjudicate movement while grappling something even vaguely your own size (Kraken vs dinosaur, man vs frog-man). Did I miss something or is the GM supposed to make the rules up himself?

>>97492866
>had
Operative word anon

>>97490584
Because grappling and wrestling are the worst combat skills to use against non-human enemies. Even with magic powers, even with anime powers.

>>97494832
Not a movie, but Attack on Titan has great grappling when Eren fights the armored titan

>>97497643
My thoughts, as a person who's involved pretty extensively with both.

>Treat it kinda like Death Saving Throws.
>Successive saving throws as party 'in dominant position' has to move through five positions, the first being standing grapple, to pin and submit a foe so they're entirely helpless.
>Meanwhile, non-dominant foe is rolling against.
>If dominance changes (non-dom beats dom in roll off), you go back one position.
>Person in dominant position can use grapple check to attempt to disengage and return to standing and un-grappled, while non-dom remains prone.
>At position(s) 3+ out of five, instead of making a grapple roll to advance in position, the dominant fighter may elect to make an unarmed strike at +10 to hit, +1 to wound. Ki, wraps, class features, gloves or gauntlet effects do apply.
>Or, to speed things along, a melee attack at +10 to hit, +1 to wound.

Ground and pound is NO fucking joke.

>>97494832
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HT6mFjdbBAw
Probably THE greatest modern martial arts movie ever made.
Gritty, realistic, frantic, stressful, and deeply emotional.
It gets not just the feeling of fighting, but also the emotions and motivations behind everyone involved at every stage.
It's a tiny bit exaggerated for the screen, but the feels are 110% there.

And it has superb grappling material in the fights.

>>97498282
That's similar to how I've seen it done in an unarmed combat hack for Genesys. It's all about positions of advantage - two fighters start at Neutral Position and do opposing Brawl checks. Whoever wins advances to Advantageous Position; if they win again, they advance to Superior Position. In Advantageous, they get boost dice to Brawl checks, and in Superior, they upgrade Brawl checks against the opponent while the opponent on bottom has upgraded difficulty on Brawl checks. It's as you say - the better a grappler's position, the worse it gets for the opponent.

>>97490584
If you make it too elaborate, then it becomes "Why use weapons?", if you don't make it strong enough it becomes "Why use fists?", the issue is that weapons tend to just be stat sticks rather than giving access to a range of different abilities.

>>97498350
>then it becomes "Why use weapons?"
Working on a martial arts shonen RPG and had this discussion with my IRL group.
You either go unarmed focus with weapons being specialised optional choices, or focus on weapons with specialised unarmed options. You can't balance both perfectly.

>>97498350
I tend to make things on the side of "too elaborate", but I'd like to think I give proper incentive to using a style incorporating all three among unarmed strikes, melee weapons, & some form of ranged offense.
I'm not really out to impress anyone but myself, but if it comes down to whether or not something can be done, I still like to share my experiences just to possibly inspire someone.

The benefits to unarmed attacks are:
>little/no reflex penalty
>high chance to repeat if they aren't blocked/punished
>can follow up literally anything the user or their allies use (still following the rule of 1 follow up per costed action), as long as there's a target at close range or they strike the same target their ally struck
>power bonus & reflex bonus when user shares a space with the target
>build both special & magic resources quickly, due to having high "score modifiers" & high chance to move targets around
>some classes can ignore defensive traits or even deal increased damage to rock constructs/rocky armor with unarmed strikes
>grappling can tear off equipment or shells
>grappling totally forbids action of the target if they're small enough, or forbids action of a feature for larger targets
>slams end a grapple, but cause full-body damage to the target
>throws cause collision damage to the thrown enemy and possibly to another target in the destination space
>allies can be thrown to either gain a tactical edge, or for a super cool combined attack that adds the thrower's strength to the ally's attack

While the drawbacks to unarmed attacks are:
>low immediate damage
>reduced reflex against a weapon user 1 space away
>receive punishment when hitting a feature with spikes, spines, horns, claws, fangs, thorned armor, etc; can't grapple such features either
>blocking might negate unarmed damage
>grappling & slamming/throwing styles are multi-step processes; target gets an escape check with each action the grappler uses & can neuter a high-damage strategy

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Bringing up grappling is such a red flag.

"I'm too cool to be a normal adventurer with a sword, I want to run up and initiate some weird unbalanced mini-game with every opponent I encounter".

>>97499765
>Wrong
I'm playing a grappler with a pet that does melee grapple too. It's one roll, and all it basically means is that they can't run away. I don't even RP stupid shit about "how I punch." Just a game, senpai.
>Grapple and Unarmed are kino.

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>>97499765
>Nerd with no idea how to fight detected.

>>97499765
How about
>I am holding him to leave him open to easier attacks

>>97491679
Tizoc...

>>97490584
They're not.

>>97491753
Why would the other players stop taking turns?

>>97492188
No, not really.

>>97497124
Not underpowered, not bloated, not clunky.

>>97497740
swinging from a chandelier is a combat stunt, and your successes determine how effective it is, not whether you can do it at all.

>>97494817
Hand to hand combat can't possibly be as good or worthwhile as guns or swords, so it should be weaker and not as effective. Hence why we give soldiers guns and knives irl.

>>97498194
hardly.

>>97502469
The UFC could drop the US military any day as long as they aren't put at a stupid long range. Hand to Hand is superior in every way.

>>97498282
>d20
yeesh.

>>97498350
then just make it balanced. are you stupid?

>>97498458
you can balance both perfectly.

>>97499765
not weird, not unbalanced, not a minigame.

>>97502469
It's less effective than weapons, especially guns, but that doesn't mean it should be so ineffective that even attempting it in a game is treated as an afterthought or a tedious chore. Punching someone in the face might not hurt as much as a gunshot, but generally speaking, a good punch to the jaw is a lot more effective than many games pretend it is. It's not about which is objectively better, but the fact that there is so little consideration given to the option at all.

>>97502475
"A stupid long range" is across a room. In any combat situation that isn't an elevator, a weapon beats bare hands. Even there, a knife is very likely to win, and usually does.

>>97502560
equally as effective.

>>97502567
anyone who buys ranks in Strike or Martial Arts can be as deadly with their hands as any weapon.

>>97502609
Why though? That's not very realistic. It doesn't create verisimilitude.

>>97502477
Anon I made that at 2am.
You're free to port the basic principle to any d100 system you want.
>>97502469
It's good because it can tie up the other person's ability to use a gun or knife.
>Trying to wrestle a knife/gun.
It's not easy for sure, and if you mess up it's going to hurt a lot more than it would unarmed. But I've also done a heap of kali and knife combat/defense stuff in London, and there is absolutely a reasonable procedure for grappling a person with a knife or gun to negate or reduce its usefulness.

>>97502485
Not if you want unarmed to be anything but another weapon type

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>>97497643
>It's not exactly a condemnation of all unarmed combat (people make D&D monks work), but I can see how that could be a gap in knowledge.

Yes, but also no.

There's more overlap with nerds and Traditional martial arts (TMA) than there is wrestling.
Standup arts you can literally step away from and be safe, and a lot of TMA either have fantastic elements, and/or don't pressure test (see most things chinese these days).

But even there, you can see that it's implemented poorly, and not thought of very much at all.

>Monks, which are basically the fistfighter guy, is often outmatched by a guy who just sees red, or a guy who does a bit of unarmed stuff to complement his sword stuff.
>"Getting really angry and seeing red" is actually a power up in practically every comic or /tg/ media, and not an immediate precursor to jobbing like it is IRL.
>A DnD monk can throw a calculated strike to an opponent's jaw, only a certain amount of times a day. Often LESS than a WIZARD can cast a full fucking spell.
>KI points is some serious retardation.
>A fighter, or any person who does melee stuff, somehow has no greater capacity at reading the intended actions of others, than a Wizard or Priest.
>There's no charisma bonus, from either the confidence of knowing how to fight, the repeated training emphasizing bone features often found attractive in men, or the resulting build looking sexy and powerful.
>There is no Fighter's cant, Monk's cant or Barbarian's cant, despite there being a fighters cant IRL, much more then there is a thieves cant.
>Again, wizards and clerics get bonus capacities to know extra skills and abilities, while martial classes, who would have incentives and causes to know things, get nothing.

TTRPG's, all the way back to Gygax and Arneson, have always done martial shitty. If DnD had been co-invented with someone like Bill Wallace, you wouldn't have the 'martial vs caster disparity' stuff you see today.

>>97490584
Mostly due to the fact most systems don't bother with the need to add rules and abilities towards it as it's not something they spent much time on. Hell even how weapons work is limited at best and often magic is the focus of their system.

You might get some WWE moves thrown in, however like with weapons. It's less moves you use like spells and more of just describing how you are doing a "unarmed attack." So doesn't matter if you do a flicker jab, haymaker, uppercut, or swing wildly like a toddler. It's just going to be the same damage.

>>97503293
What I actually like, is that a lot of WoD actually does pretty well at representing unarmed combat.

If you have enough dice in brawl or Martial arts, you can unlock certain moves, with specific roll modifiers and damage modifiers.

It's still a bit kung fu, given the dating, but it's a solid effort for an RPG ruleset that's not altogether combat focused a lot of the time.