What’s more frightening than some muscled, demonic monstrosity wrapping its limbs around you and squeezing the very life out of you? Whether it’s an owlbear, minotaur or something far more wicked like the bebilith, we all dread being grabbed.
Or do we?
Fact is, the grabbed condition is quite easy to get out of in most cases. For a move action and two different options (forcing yourself out with Athletics, or wriggling free via Acrobatics), your odds of ending a grab are pretty good. And out of turn, your allies can use forced movement, dazing or stunning power, or even or bull rush you out of a grab. After all, grabbed is just a glorified version of immobilized.
More importantly, the monsters that use their grab attack to set you up for something truly more threatening and painful… simply don’t deliver in actual play. From a design standpoint, this makes such combination attacks based around grab attacks quite weak, and as such, boring and non-challenging monsters to both run and fight. That’s right, folks – grab stinks!
The Case Study: Demonic Savage Minotaur
I’m a big fan of minotaur. Who isn’t? Whether you’re Dragonlance old school and loved Kaz, just read about a few in Temple of Yellow Skulls, or simply love Greek mythology, minotaur have a fearsome reputation of being both cunning and strong. Naturals for a bear hug, right?
Indeed, as you can see here, that’s exactly what we get – the minotaur’s claws are a grab attack, which is a set-up for the real threat, the minotaur’s impale.
Does that escape DC immediately jump out at you? It should, because DC 19 is quite easy for most mid-paragon characters, which is exactly where you’ll be wrassling with gangs of unruly and overly-huggy demonic minotaur.
After running these minotaur (and similar or higher level variants) for several sessions now in my primal Frostfell campaign, and seeing their claw-impale threat consistently somewhere in the realm of laughable, I feel I owe the D&D 4e monster design universe some sharing of alternatives which put back the fear and threat into grab attacks. How? Here’s three simple re-design options you can use for your game.
Grab Alternative: Hard DCs
Monsters have an action economy to worry about too, you know, which is why I’m not that high on this change. Typically, monster grab escape DCs are moderate in difficulty, which is yawnsville for most PCs. Make it a little more frightening with one simple change – monster grabs are indeed different and scarier when you go with Hard DCs for the monster’s level.
You still have the “problem” of two actions and usually two rounds (except when they have an action point) to pull off the combo, but at least the grab might actually last once in a while for that combo to happen.
I’ve used the Hard DC approach and it’s… just okay. I like the following two alternatives better.
Grab Alternative: Restrained
Grab-like, but meaner? Check. Longer duration? Most likely. Sounds great already! Whenever you see a monster’s grab attack, simply replace it with “restrained (save ends)” or “restrained until the end of its next turn,” plus have any triggers or set-up attack work off the restrained condition instead.
A one-turn duration is more powerful than a save-based one in the sense that it nearly guarantees the combination attack, assuming there is one, such as the demonic savage minotaur’s impale. For elite or solo monsters especially, the one-turn duration is the way to go since you know it’s going to happen and scare the pants off somebody. That’s what elites and solos should do!
I like this approach, but it still suffers from poor action economy and lacks the punch of an immediate threat. So what gets us cake we can both have and eat? (I love cake!)
Grab Alternative: Secondary Attack
Combine the set-up and real threat attack into one. Move the minotaur’s impale underneath claws, turning impale into a secondary attack. Remove all mention and use of grab or even restrained, except for a bit of flavorful and frightening narrative description.
Want a hug? And to bring the pain? This is how you do it. No more waiting. No more inevitable escapes. This is what the high threat and drama of a grab or grapple plus a vicious follow-up attack should look and feel like. Guaranteed to get a wincing response of horror from your players, too.
Is this overpowered? I don’t think so. Sure, there’s a little more burst damage to deal with (big deal, it’s 4e – everyone can heal anyway!), but the monster is otherwise unchanged. In fact, you’re trading potential burst damage output for the grabbed or restrained conditions themselves – and thus a few less conditions and rules to track as an additional side benefit.
It’s an elegant solution that fits the theme of the monster, and adds to the challenge and threat level a grabbing monster presents. Why wouldn’t you replace one-two punch grab attack combinations like this?
Are You Grabby?
How often do you use grab attacks in your games? Which monsters are your favorites? Do you have any characters who like to use grab and related set-up attacks (i.e. dhampyr)? What do you think works and doesn’t work as far as threat level and action economy surrounding grabs and their combo attacks in your games? How would you improve them?
Kilsek
In my game I used to have a brawler fighter, made my monster’s lives hell. he also had a sash so that he could sustain grabs one square away so not only was he holding people still but he was also moving to engage another target.
Monster wise though, i think I like setting up the one two punch. Attack and grab and that grab has serious repercussions the next round. I use followup attacks that dont require attacks as well. It allows for the monster to punish a player for staying in the grab and still do other things.
Herrozerro, true, it’s great fun as a PC because you usually have a combination of class powers, feats and magic items to truly customize and build a stronger, faster grabber/grappler.
With monsters though, they don’t have that luxury, so the appeal and strength of their own grab and setup attacks can often go unexecuted, which really hurts the challenge level of monsters whose strength is supposed to be such attacks. That’s why I suggest using an “improved grab” through the methods above.
I agree that particularly in paragon tier, grabs can be hard to maintain. Heck my PCs have so many teleport powers (before we even get to forced movement or escape attempts) that they rarely care about being grabbed. I like the idea of the secondary attack, but I think that if you don’t reduce the damage, you should make the power a recharge, otherwise you’ll essentially be turning any monster with a grab power into an elite — at least in terms of action economy. I would; however, be interested in hearing how this has worked out in your game since I realize the secondary attack would be conditioned on the first one hitting. That may be enough to balance it, but it does still seem a bit overpowered for an at-will power on a standard — though it may be about right for an elite.
Gargs, you make a good point that perhaps these sort of grab buffs push creatures towards elite-levels. I would argue that the grab attack in general is underpowered, so buffing it these ways – and the secondary attack in particular, which is a great fit thematically – isn’t all that noticeable.
Earlier this year, I played as a revenant avenger in a heroic tier campaign with a party of three dhampyr (a feat-based vampire of sorts before Heroes of Shadow had been released), and they, too, almost never used their grab attacks because it just took too many actions and *rounds* for them to be effective.
A DC of 19 for that poor Minotaur may not work so well, but it has two hands. One solution I use is to give an immediate secondary attack for a grab with both hands. Then I add the DCs together for a 38 DC. Now you are seriously grabbed. More importantly, I allow the monster to use the PC as a shield or as a melee-basic weapon.
Welcome to Leonine Roar, Dusty and thanks for your comment!
Immediate secondary attacks are a great solution, I agree. There should be more speed and urgency involved in these sorts of attacks.
And using a grabbed PC as a prop – a shield that gives a brief, small AC bonus or even an improvised “living” weapon – is a brilliant idea! That’s creative stuff, I like it.