Call of Cthulhu Grappling Rules

[SunTzuWarmaster]

https://xkcd.com/979/

So, I'm running a CoC Christmas game and wanted to reacquaint myself with the rules. In it, Krampus-monsters will pick up the children, stuff them into their bags, and drag them to hell (or try to anyways). I figured I would acquaint myself with the grappling rules. Oh wait! It looks like there is some confusion on the subject. To the internet.

#8 Google result. Hey, this guy has the same problem as I do! http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=51130

Oh wait, its me, from six years ago.[/i]

[Username17]

CoC is not really a system. It's a hack on runequest, and the designers literally look up old 2nd edition runequest rules when deciding how combat maneuvers are supposed to work. That should be a joke but it's not. The answers to how to resolve grappling are not found in any CoC book, and what answers exist at all are in Runequest books from the early eighties.

Again: not kidding.

[Ancient History]

Looking at Call of Cthulhu 6th edition... I think those are the bulk of the relevant rules. My comments are in red.

Hand-to-Hand Fighting

Any hand-to-hand weapon can be used in Call of Cthulhu. The possibilities are so numerous and often so strange that it is pointless to write them up as skills. Although this never stops them. Everyone can perform Fist/Punch, Head Butt, Kick, and Grapple. These four personal attacks are discussed later, among the skills. Basically, everybody gets these four skills for free at their base level - that's 25% for Grapple. You can improve this by spending points, but the only occupation in the main book that starts out with Grapple is "Policeman," though others an choose it as a "personal interest" occupation skill, and anybody can spend their personal interest points on it.

Most hand-to-hand weapons can perform one attack and one parry per combat round. They seriously never specify how many Grapples, either attacks or parries, you can make during a round. I double-checked. In some places they talk about making two Grapple checks in the same round. Personal attacks have limited parries. Knives without crossguards cannot parry. See Parry in the Sport Rules For Combat on the facing page.

In attacking, a hand-to-hand weapon never does damage to itself. Add full damage bonuses to these weapons' attacks except when thrown: thrown weapons get halved damage bonuses.

The Parry

A parry is the blocking of or the diversion of a hand-to-hand attack. It does not work against firearms. The parry skill always equals the skill percentage held by the defender in the weapon or object being used for the parry. I seriously don't know why they didn't just say "Pick a skill to parry with." A parry is always defensive. A parry does no damage to the attacker.

One parry per participant can be attempted during a combat round. This suggests you're limited to one Grapple parry, but see below. The player states which potential attacker will be parried. If the defender if knocked out or stunned before the attack occurs, then the parry is foregone. If the attack does not occur, the parry is foregone.

Any object used to parry absorbs all damage from a parried blow. If the damage exceeds the object's hit points, the object breaks and the defender absorbs any damage exceeding the object's hit points. If you have no idea how this works when you're trying to parry-by-Grappling, see the second bullet below.

* Personal attacks can parry each other.

* An edged or impaling hand-to-hand weapon can be parried with most other hand-to-hand weapons and with rifles and shotguns. Personal attacks cannot parry weapon attacks without risking normal damage, but if the range is touch and the person parrying has the higher DEX, he or she could Grapple for a weapon, yielding the effect of a parry. See below. Translation: if you try to parry a sword by grappling the attacker, you need to actually be within "touch" range. Touch range is never defined, but in the "Weapons Table" p.64-65, all hand-to-hand weapons have a range of "Touch" except thrown weapons, the bullwhip (10 feet), and mace and taser. So if a sword can attack you, you can presumably parry with a Grapple.

[...]

* Two successful Grapples can in effect parry an attack, one to establish contact and the next to grab the weapon or weapon hand. The author of this bullet apparently didn't read or understand what the author of the previous bullet said, but as noted suggests it takes two successful Grapple rolls to parry an attack. I don't know if this means that if you want to parry by Grappling you make two Grapple rolls in the same round as part of the parrying, or if you have to first Grapple one round and then next round you can parry. Your guess is as good as mine.

* A character can both parry and Dodge in the same round.

* Bullets cannot be parried. This is extended below to all projectile weapons. You cannot wrestle spears, arrows, and stones out of the air.

Personal Attacks

Fist/Punch, Head Butt, Kick, and Grapple are personal attacks, meaning each can be made by a person who is otherwise unarmed. All people know these attacks. They feel the need to reiterate this. Each personal attack is used individually except when they aren't, and ability in each increases individually through experience. Each personal attack is discussed in the skills section. Grapple especially is a complex skill and deserves close study. No shit.

* With a successful Martial Arts skill roll, double the rolled damage done by a successful personal attack. Martial Arts can apply to Grapple, and Grapple can technically do damage, so I think this means Martial Arts can double Grapple damage. But they never say so.

* A knock-out attack can lessen physical damage to a target. See the spot rules for combat. Grapple can knock out opponents, but I'm not copying all that shit out.

* In general, a personal attack can be parried by any hand-to-hand weapon or personal attack. Only a Grapple can parry another Grapple. This would have been a great bullet back in the Parry section. This is also a lie, because they go ahead and tell you later that a Grapple can be parried by "other attack by the target." You can't parry a parry, I think, which is good because otherwise we'd fall down a recursive Grappling chain.

* As an option, some keepers may recognize the effect of a human Bite attack. It does not hit points of damage, but might break a human Grapple if a POW against POW Resistance Table roll favors the biter. This is just an optional rule some fucker threw in here which is never addressed anywhere else, and doesn't cover animals and monsters with a legit, damage-dealing Bite attack - presumably the intent was that Little Suzy, age 7, can bite the hand of Cultist #6 who is grappling her and slip free, but don't try to bite the tentacle that's grappling you. However, see below.

Grapple (25%)

A Grapple is a special personal attack, frequently chosen to subdue an opponent without harming him. This attack may be parried by a countering successful Grapple or other attack by the target, but only in the first round of attack. Which means: you can try to Grapple someone and they can try to fend you off with a sword/firearm/tentacle/bite whatever. In direct contravention of the first rule that only Grapple parries Grapple.

If a Grapple attack succeeds in the first round and is not neutralized (read: parried), then the attacker holds the target and may thereafter exercise one of several options:

This is where shit gets real.

* Immobilize the target by overcoming the target's STR with his or her own STR, using the Resistance Table. With a success, the target is held fast indefinitely, until the grappler attempts another action. Notably not covered: purely mental actions, biting (see above), how many STR vs STR rolls you get to make per round. The intent seems to be all you can do every round is try to break free, but the rules are written so that you could seriously just halt all action and keep rolling until you win during the same combat round.

* Knock down the target. If used, this option automatically succeeds. There are no rules for being knocked down. This isn't like D&D3.0 where being prone is a special state with particular penalties and shit. Maybe this is for sports wrestling where you have to try and throw your opponent to win.

* Knock out the target in the first or later round: see the knock-out rule, p.60. There ARE rules for knock-out, with the caveat that most Mythos critters can't be knocked out, and I am not copying them all out.

* Disarm the target. With successful Grapples in consecutive rounds, an investigator could Grapple to prevent a hand-to-hand attack in the first round and then seize the weapon or weapon hand in the second round. I suspect this is what they were going for with the "two Grapples to parry" bullshit above, but let's get this straight. Also, it's not clear if a successful disarm attempt forces them to drop the weapon, or if you the grappler end up holding it. Also, can they parry this Grapple with their own Grapple? I guess.

* Physically injure the target. The opponent already must be successfully grappled. Then the grappler must receive a second successful Grapple roll in that round (still not sure how they think this is supposed to work), or a successful Grapple in some later round. Success costs the target 1d6 hit points plus the attacker's damage bonus. (Or 2d6 + SB if you have Martial Arts! See below. Harm in subsequent rounds requires a new Grapple success in those rounds, and the amount of injury done remains the same. I suspect they mean you roll 1d6 each new round/Grapple check, but the way they word it is weird.

* Strangle the target. Beginning in the round in which the intention is stated, the target begins to asphyxiate as per the Drowning rules. I am not copying out the Drowning rules, which do not mention Grappling. This continues in subsequent rounds. The attacker needs no further Grapple rolls. Choking a bitch is effective! Sortof. This is super slow compared to actually trying to damage them, but it requires no extra rolling, and the fewer Skill rolls you make in CoC, the better.

In either injury-making Grapple, the victim can escape only by a successful STR match on the Resistance Table. No word on disarming-by-grappling. Combine STRs if two people are attacking. Presumably, this is a fellow investigator trying to help pull the tentacle off you, but I like the idea of two Deep Ones ganging up to choke the shit out of you.

Side note: due to the weird quirks of the combat resolution system, it's possible for two characters with the same DEX doing hand-to-hand combat to try and grapple each other at the same time as their attack action, and to both parry with a grapple. Or, not parry. So they could be grappling each other and you get that one scene in "Shadows of Zamboula" where Conan and the other dude are playing the Choking Game on each other.

Martial Arts (01%)

Use in combination with an attack with Fist/Punch, Head Butt, Kick, or Grapple. "Combination" is a warning sign. If the attack roll is equal to or less than the attacker's Martial Arts percentage, the attack does double damage: thus Fist/Punch would do 2d3 plus normal damage bonus. Martial Arts doubles the damage done if the attack strikes home, but do not double any damage bonus. I don't know why they felt the need to add that last sentence, but there it is. Anyway, Grapple doesn't normally do damage, but see above, it's an option and so Martial Arts can presumably improve it. No word on whether it can double choking damage, but that would be fun!

* A person with Martial Arts may choose which attack to parry just before that attack, and does not need to make a parry statement at the beginning of the round. I bet you forgot that as default you had to pick whose attack you were going to try and parry before they declare who they're attacking or how.

* Even with Martial Arts, bullets and other projectiles cannot be parried. They're really serious about this.

People develop martial arts to compensate for forcible disarmament: judo, aikijutsu, aikido, copera, karate, savat, tae kyun or tae kwon do, white crane kung fu, 7 straws praying mantis kung fu, etc. Choose one or invent a new one. In earlier days, these schools were secret and their techniques jealously guarded. Outside their cultures, martial arts are little known until the present era.

[Ancient History]

The above does not cover one-off rules in other CoC products, one-off rules for various CoC monsters, or any errata published by RuneQuest.

[SunTzuWarmaster]

I really appreciate the in-depth and thoughtful reply. My understanding is that the rules are going to leave a lot to be desired. As a side ntoe, aside from the railroading, I've really found Christmas in Kingsport to be a good and well-written session that I'll be running for my players in a few days. I've previously found that CoC is a really good "starter" game for people that are interested in RPGs but don't want to spend multiple hours creating a character. It also works well for Halloween one-shots (and a Christmas one-shot in this instance).

Thanks for the help.

[Username17]

The idea of weird fiction inspired investigations with horror elements is a good thing to use as your first experience of roleplaying or as a one-shot rpg. But I can't think of a single actual thing that Call of Cthulhu provides as a game system that is actually good at that in any way.

You give people a CoC character sheet. They look at it and see that they have Botany at 40%. They ask what that means. "Try to roll 40 or less on a d100" you say. OK... so what happens when they roll under 40? "The Keeper decides." Uh-huh. So what happens when they roll over 40? "The Keeper decides." So they are just trying to roll under 40 all the time but either way it's just the Keeper using the number 40 and the actual roll as an improv prompt? "Well, not all the time. There could be modifiers, and the actual number you're trying to beat might be more or less than 40, according to the whim of the Keeper." WTF!?

The numbers on a CoC don't fucking mean anything. And the words on the sheet don't mean anything either! You might have "Physics" or "Astro-Physics" and there's no structure or explanation to say how that's different. It's totally fuxxored.

CoC is a spiralling abyss of madness and despair. And I don't mean the adventure content, I mean the mechanics. Every fucking thing about it, and I do mean every single thing is worse than just going free-form. There is not a single rule anywhere in that fucking cavalcade of failure that is an improvement on the old "roll 2 dice and ask how the DM feels" rules from the 1970s!

-Username17

[SunTzuWarmaster]

As a serious note then: what would you recommend as a system for a good one-shot? Bonus points for a horror game that I can run 1x/year for a holiday. Needs to have just enough rules to have a surprise for the Keeper/DM, but enough rules/structure to allow for character creation->Intro->middle->end inside of 8 hours.

[Ancient History]

I've choking down a little bile to say this, but *Trail of Cthulhu* is a passable rules-lite CoC Heartbreaker.

[Username17]

As a serious note then: what would you recommend as a system for a good one-shot? Bonus points for a horror game that I can run 1x/year for a holiday. Needs to have just enough rules to have a surprise for the Keeper/DM, but enough rules/structure to allow for character creation->Intro->middle->end inside of 8 hours.

First Edition Feng Shui worked alright. FS2 is basically a bloated trainwreck.

Any of the sleeked down versions of FATE that get combat over with in 3 die rolls or less is also fine. Spirit of the Century and many similar hacks get stuck crawling on your tongue for hours of your life when combat happns.

-Username17

[DrPraetor]

As I remember from playtesting it, FS1 was too rules light to carry the premise. It was an action movie game, with a cop archetype whose primary power was a high Drive skill, but with no car chase or vehicle combat rules - which came up in the damn sample adventure. FS2 may have car chase rules if it can be said to have rules at all.

Since most of the action in CoC is actually against cultists - who may for example try to escape by car - I think FS1 is too rules light to carry the CoC premise either. The game has similar problems with other sub-engines, although oddly enough the legwork rules worked well, IIRC.

One thing about GUMSHOE - of which Trail of Cthulhu is an instance:

Robin D Laws, creator of the Dying Earth.

NO THAT'S JACK FUCKING VANCE. Robin Laws created the Dying Earth RPG, though, which... still deserves an OSSR ( http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=458185 ).

[DrPraetor]

Now, the legwork rules in Feng Shui were pretty skeletal. Every skill included arbitrary contacts, and there were availability numbers for guns, and from those you were meant to extrapolate what your roll of:
(Skill - Primary Attribute) + Charisma

would get you. This worked well in practice because it was a useful prompt for player agency to bring in contacts, and everyone could do it with reasonable competency. Feng Shui is supposed to be about simulating an action movie, and what distinguishes a good action movie from a bad action movie? A Louis CK cameo where he chews the scenery as an effeminate Cuban gun runner in a loud Hawaiian shirt.

Which gets us back to weird fiction, and one of the many reasons that CoC is terrible. The weird horror genre is not a power fantasy for the characters, but CoC prides itself on removing agency from the players. Trail of Cthulhu fixes that, but it does so by having the players make binary decisions about success and failure which are off the random number generator, and then collapsing into uselessness once they've shot their wad?

On the other hand, I don't have a better suggestion. Arkham horror boardgame?

[Username17]

Roll a number and ask your DM how they feel about it. Use that as a prompt to decide how the car chase goes.

Admittedly, that's a pretty bullshit resolution system in general. But it does work at all, and it is sufficient for one shot adventures, which is all people are asking the system to do. Which is why I would say Feng Shui 1 is sufficient for the task of playing fast and furious one shot adventures. It has lots of problems: there's a fundamental lack of consistency, the character advancement rules are a war crime, and character balance is sketchy at best. But it does the job at all, and more importantly it resolves things quickly - which is why it is in all ways a superior replacement for Call of Cthulhu.

-Username17