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Grabbing someone around the waist?


Marcus Impudite

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The standard grab allows you to pin up to two limbs, but there is no reason you have to pin any limbs.  Just because a maneuver has an element does not mean you have to use it.  If this is the case you would not be able to perform a dodge without aborting to it, or any maneuver with full move without moving your full movement. 

 

As far as it coming up in a game I think I have seen it once.  It was when a brick wanted to grab someone and the person they were grabbing could not do anything to them. 

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2 hours ago, Marcus Impudite said:

Haven't found any such rule in any of the books in my library. If this is something from 6th Ed, I don't own or use the 6th edition rules.

 In the UMA(5th) and HSMA(6th), certain maneuvers automatically hit and grab a limb.  Best example is choke hold but I would guess joint break and joint lock/throw too.

 

I don't believe that grab in general has a specific limb it has to grab though the person could always grab the "legs" rather than arms.  Squeezing also does general body damage which means specified hit locations do not matter.

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3 hours ago, Ninja-Bear said:

I thought the default was that you are grabbing 2 limbs-arms. Why else would you grab someone?

 

  • Keep them from running away if they are strong enough to carry you.
  • Carry them away from battle even if they don't wish it
  • Rescuing someone
  • Carry someone so that they can have a full movement and still attack (carrying some who is shooting at pursuers for example)
  • Maybe they don't have arms?
  • I don't know, but it's Champions/HERO.  Just about anything can come up. :)

 

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CC pg 150

 

GRAB AND MOVEMENT
When a moving character is Grabbed, and his Casual STR roll
for immediate breakout succeeds, he keeps moving; if it fails, he’s
reduced to 0m of movement and remains where he was Grabbed.
A victim cannot use any form of movement to keep moving while
Grabbed (though Teleportation allows a character to escape most
Grabs easily). The Grabber can move and bring the victim along,
subject to normal rules of transporting other characters

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7 hours ago, dsatow said:

 

  • Keep them from running away if they are strong enough to carry you.
  • Carry them away from battle even if they don't wish it
  • Rescuing someone
  • Carry someone so that they can have a full movement and still attack (carrying some who is shooting at pursuers for example)
  • Maybe they don't have arms?
  • I don't know, but it's Champions/HERO.  Just about anything can come up. :)

 

Good points. I was refereeing to grabs in combat. I thought the assumption was to grab arms as it’s better option in combat.

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11 hours ago, Beast said:

CC pg 150

 

GRAB AND MOVEMENT
When a moving character is Grabbed, and his Casual STR roll
for immediate breakout succeeds, he keeps moving; if it fails, he’s
reduced to 0m of movement and remains where he was Grabbed.
A victim cannot use any form of movement to keep moving while
Grabbed (though Teleportation allows a character to escape most
Grabs easily). The Grabber can move and bring the victim along,
subject to normal rules of transporting other characters

 

Yeah, my group kind of ignores that if it makes sense.  For instance, if Hercules grabbed Giant Man, rather than Giant Man pinned to a spot by Hercules grabbing his big toe, Giant Man still hops around trying to get Hercules off his big toe.

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Ack! Just found the reference for what we do 6e2p63

 

Quote

 

GRABBING LARGE TARGETS
     Sometimes a character wants to Grab a target that’s significantly larger than himself, such as a dwarf trying to Grab a giant in a Fantasy game, or an ultrastrong superhero trying to Grab a gargantuan rampaging monster. In many cases the rule about immediately using Casual STR to break free from a Grab (see below) resolves this situation quickly, making it impossible to keep a large, strong target Grabbed. If that’s not the case, the GM should apply some common and dramatic sense when interpreting the rules. Ordinarily a Grabbed character can’t move, but that assumes a relative equality of size between Grabber and Grabee. If a small character tries to Grab a much larger one, what may happen is that the Grabber suffers the CV penalty for a Grab and the target suffers no restrictions or penalties at all. A human-sized character probably isn’t going to be able to immobilize Godzilla by Grabbing him... he’ll just get carried along as Big Scaly smashes through downtown. In other cases, the size difference is so great that the M might rule that the smaller character simply can’t get any sort of hold on the larger character.

     But of course, just because a small character can’t always immobilized a target with a Grab doesn’t mean a Grab is pointless. For example, a
superhero might Grab Godzilla to try to trip him, or even to pick him up and Throw him. It’s a question of what the GM thinks is reasonable under the circumstances.

 

 

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The other point that's going to come up is grabbing a flyer. i.e. Hulk grabs Superman... but it's reasonable given their respective powers that Supes can fly vertically while Hulk keeps his grip. Superman would probably lose his current momentum, though, and start from speed zero.

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Not only is it reasonable it's pretty much how heroes who fly deal with being grabbed in genre (pinned so they fly them into walls, ceilings, buildings, or even straight up into the upper atmosphere or outer space).

 

Unless they have wings or a jetpack or something (restrainable / focus) or the enemy is too heavy to lift this is just how it is.

 

The closest the rules come to covering this, though, is using flight to add to strength to break free with your action.

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Tech said:

Simple Grab maneuver.

 

I don't see a Grab stopping someone who's got innate flight.

 

Depends on the Grabber. A high mass one may overload the grabee's STR/Flight and passively ground them, or one with clinging or who is otherwise connected to something immovable (maybe with the other arm, or an Extra Limb) may actively prevent them from moving. Could also come down to a Flight vs Flight tussle.

 

At the very least, the flyer needs to be spending END to cope with their unwanted passenger, same as if they were lifting a willing one. Not a problem for your actual Superman types, but many supers just buy their flght to cover themselves and aren't high STR. And if the passenger isn't too fussed about falling they can start doing Grab-related things to the flyer, like Squeezing. The Grab may not stop the flight, but getting Stunned from Grab related damage will.

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14 hours ago, mrinku said:

 

Depends on the Grabber. A high mass one may overload the grabee's STR/Flight and passively ground them, or one with clinging or who is otherwise connected to something immovable (maybe with the other arm, or an Extra Limb) may actively prevent them from moving. Could also come down to a Flight vs Flight tussle.

 

At the very least, the flyer needs to be spending END to cope with their unwanted passenger, same as if they were lifting a willing one. Not a problem for your actual Superman types, but many supers just buy their flght to cover themselves and aren't high STR. And if the passenger isn't too fussed about falling they can start doing Grab-related things to the flyer, like Squeezing. The Grab may not stop the flight, but getting Stunned from Grab related damage will.

 

There's alot of 'depends' in this. Yes, the weight might or might not. You brought up a few ways these things could happen and I can think of ways as well where it wouldn't stop the grabee. Taking any damage that stuns the character will stop them, so 'getting Stunned from Grab related damage' is just one possibility of multiple things that could happen in a combat. However, that doesn't give credibility to the carte blanche statement in CC "A victim cannot use any form of movement to keep moving while Grabbed" because right afterwards, CC gives a possible way to counter it (Teleport), and thus brings up other possible ways a grabbed person could still move. Ultimately, what happens afterwards when someone is Grabbed depends on a great deal of facets of the combatants.

 

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Ah, I think I see the confusion.  It's the "keep moving" part that needs to be focused on.  You're having a problem with movement always coming to a sudden halt upon being grabbed and failing to make the casual STR breakout roll.  By way of example, if the Hulk grabs Iron Man mid-flight, Iron Man comes to an immediate halt even though the armor is easily capable of bearing the additional weight.

 

I think the rule is a matter of 1) game balance and 2) genre emulation.  On the genre emulation front, I'm sure we can come up with plenty of examples of grabbed characters being stopped in their tracks and not, but it does seem that grabbing usually stops movement in the comics (especially for super-strong grabbers in the silver and bronze age comics that the game was originally designed to emulate).  On the game balance front, allowing movement to continue in spite of being grabbed, it invalidates one of the grab manuever's primary functions, to restrain the target, in far too cheap and easy a fashion.

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Netzilla, I agree. One of the manuever's primary functions is, indeed, to restrain a target. My point was that the description of the power in CC seems to be all-inclusive way to stop the grabee, then simultaneously describing a counter to it - teleport, which is a power that needs to have points spent on it to have. If teleport can work, why not other powers that points have been paid for?

 

As GM, I've generally found that heroes that do a Grab manuever (wow, I just can't seem to spell 'maneuver') have a good chance of success.

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Because it is resisted by half the targets strength heroes that do a Grab maneuver have a  *ridiculously* good chance of success.  If you're a superior combatant (+2 ocv over the target's DC) and have a strength of greater than half the targets it is almost always the best thing you can do with your half-phase (the 'almost always' clause mostly being if the guy has friends, who will happily pummel your now halved DCV).

 

 

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Teleport is called out as an exception because teleport ignores all barriers and obstacles.  It's just the same as teleport being a trump against Entangle and Barrier.  Other forms of movement require a way to circumvent or overcome the obstacle, thus the grab must be defeated in some way.

 

In the more detailed HS6Ev2, there is this paragraph under Grabbing a Moving Character:

 

Quote

 


Typically a Grabbed character cannot use any form of movement to keep moving while Grabbed. He may be able to use his movement to improve his STR to break free (see 6E2 25), but that’s all (though Teleportation lets a character escape from most Grabs easily). Even if the GM allows a Grabbed character to keep moving and drag his Grabber along, the Grabbed character may be subject to Encumbrance rules for carrying so much weight.
 

 

 

In this case, Champions Complete chose brevity over trying to cover all the contingencies that HS6E does.

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46 minutes ago, Ninja-Bear said:

But the bigger question though, should the mechanics be enforced over common sense? I.e. say a normal agent-15 STR rolls extremely well 6 Body and grabs Defender. Defender blows his roll -all ones =0 Body. Does it make sense that the agent holds onto Defender and stops Defenderss flight?

 

With such unlikely rolls, why shouldn't something unlikely occur in the game fiction?  It can certainly be narrated as some extremely unlikely event, perhaps one that momentarily redirected his flight resulting in him striking the ground.

 

Or maybe the heroes should never be allowed to inflict an unusual level of damage when they roll extremely well, since we don't want to enforce mechanics over common sense.

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