A Fresh Look at Grappling: What's Missing in ANTOG?

A Fresh Look at Grappling: What's Missing in ANTOG?

Grappling in GURPS is beautiful. While some other systems may struggle with grappling, GURPS comes not with one, but with four different grappling systems, and each one of them is good. The systems are the following:

1. The default grappling system that was introduced in GURPS Basic Set and expanded in GURPS Martial Arts and a few other books. (I'll title it "Default" as a shorthand).

2. GURPS Technical Grappling that transforms the binary "grappled/non-grappled" state into a new resource track of Control Points that can be accumulated and spent to negate penalties and accrue bonuses. It is very detailed and if you're using it, make sure you have the latest version of the book, because the changes between 1.0 and 1.2 are significant. While the system may seem complicated, the most fiddly part is that you have to recalculate your effective ST depending on how many Control Points are applied to you. Aside from that, it's not as unplayably complex as memes might make you believe. (I'll use TG as a shorthand).

3. Fantastic Dungeon Grappling, colloquially known as FDG. This is a streamlined version of TG for DFRPG that takes the core (Control Points) and streamlines everything down to four pages.

4. A New Take on Grappling from Pyramid #3-34 (ANTOG) - something not everyone is aware of, but something that everyone should be aware of. Essentially, this article reworks the Default grappling system and streamlines it, fixes some "bugs", and expands it with some new stuff. The gist of it is that now instead of a flat -4 DX penalty or a variable penalty that depends on Control Points, every action performed during a grapple is a Quick Contest between the grappler and the grapplee, which is very GURPS. It may take some time getting used to it, however.

I've played full games with the first three systems, and tested out ANTOG in an arena environment. Lately, I've been using FDG a lot, thinking that it's the best option, but... the more I used it, the more dissatisfied I became. Due to the extreme streamlining, a lot is left up to the GM, and while people online will scream at you that it's the job of the GM to make rulings on the fly and that the book covers everything except the edge cases, these edge cases happen all the goddamn time. It's frustrating. However, what's even more frustrating is that each of the four systems has some things that none of the other systems can do, so there is no "ultimate" grappling system that can do everything.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, but it seems that ANTOG is the best one out of four. However, it suffers from the same thing FDG does - low page count didn't allow the author to cover everything. Thus, I will go through everything all four GURPS grappling systems can do and compile a list of what ANTOG can and cannot do just to see what is missing and what has to be done in the future to turn it into an "ultimate" grappling system.

Braunstein AAR: Lanosh

Braunstein AAR: Lanosh

It's time. I bit the bullet and ran my first Braunstein, and I would like to tell you how I organized it, how it went, what went well, and what could've gone better.

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells IV

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells IV

There is no end in sight - the spell chapter of this book is huge.

Drug Resistance temporarily prevents the subject from getting addicted to drugs.

Ectoplasmic Enhancement is a buff that makes a ghost or a very similar creature more difficult to injure.

Evil Weather is a divine spell that creates vile weather effects that I wrote up in a very old post of mine.

Extract Drug lets the caster create drugs from mundane materials.

Eyes of the Zombie is a very cool possession spell.

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells III

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells III

Darklight almost broke me. The phrasing in the original source is incredibly confusing, and despite the simple-looking build, it took me a long while to arrive to it. Yeah, this is a 60-point spell while the original is a 1st-level spell, but effectively this is a limited Invisibility Sphere that also negates darkness penalties in an area. Also, it can be cast on both creatures and objects, and takes only one second. What a weird spell.

Death Grimace is a rather flavorful spell that is merely a perk in GURPS.

Demon Wings is a divine spell that gives the caster demonic wings.

Demonflesh is a rather boring divine buff, but one that various demon lord cultist would appreciate.

Despoil is another divine spell that makes a huge area of land barren.

Devil's Tail is another divine spell that grants the caster a spiked tail. Again, good stuff for all those hostile cultists, not so much for your typical player characters.

Devil's Tongue gives the caster another "arm."

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells II

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells II

Call Dretch Horde summons 3d dretches in exchange for a soul.

Call Lemure Horde does the same, but with lemures.

Call Nightmare uses a soul to summon a nightmare.

Charnel Fire completely destroys a corpse. I had to come up with a new modifier because building this ability by RAW results in a point cost so high that the spell just isn't worth it. I have no shame.

Clutch of Orcus is a very cool divine spell that incapacitates or maybe even kills the target.

Consume Likeness lets you shapeshift into a creature by eating a portion of its flesh.

Crushing Fist of Spite feels like something Bigby came up with when other wizards laughed at his invented spells.

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells I

Wizardry: Book of Vile Darkness Spells I

The Book of Vile Darkness (for D&D 3.0) is a rather infamous book. I recall writing a review of it a year ago or so, pointing out its shortcomings and praising certain parts. But that aside, let's focus on the chapter with spells. The book has a surprising amount of pretty damn cool spells (and some of them aren't vile at all). However, I will say that the author was quite lazy here. There are many spells that are simply duplicates of innate abilities of fiends (for example, Dance of Ruin is based on the vrock's ability, Dancing Chain is based on the kyton's ability, etc.) Some spells wouldn't be out of place in any other book if you ignore material components, such as a heart of a dwarven child, or a bone of a small child that still lives. These components feel like something tacked on just to make the spell edgy.

    Also, the book introduces a whole bunch of new "components" for spells. There are some spells that are limited to demons, devils, fiends, or undead. There are also spells that require the caster to be suffering from a specific disease, which sounds really hard to pull off (especially when 99% of GMs ignore disease rules). Spells that can be cast only under the influence of a specific drug are easier. There are also spells that require the caster to be in a specific evil location - also fine. Certain spells require a captured soul as a component - nothing against this. Finally, there are "Corrupt" spells that deal ability score damage to the caster. In GURPS, you could represent that with the Corrupting, -20% limitation, but I'm not a big fan of that. Instead, I will use a massively extended Backlash, even though that won't be RAW.

    Now to the spells themselves:

    Absorb Mind is an interesting spell. If one were to translate it 1-to-1 from the original source (like I initially did), one would arrive at a more expensive and limited form of Speak with Dead. Thus, I had to step away and make it work slightly differently. I didn't want to skip this spell, because the fluff is cool.

    Addiction is a vile spell with a catch - the caster must be drugged too. Addiction can be either a physical or mental disadvantage, so by RAW, you can only use Mind Control to impose addictions to drugs with a psychological dependency. I decided to ignore this fact as a special feature.

    Angry Ache is a simple pain debuff.

    Befoul poisons water in a large area.

Wizardry: Races of Eberron Spells

Wizardry: Races of Eberron Spells

I've never been a big fan of Eberron. Sure, there were some interesting parts, but the setting itself just didn't grip me. However, the races that are usually associated with this setting are pretty cool. The warforged are... surprisingly difficult to stat up in GURPS (you can see the entry in the Monstrous Compendium) but also interesting in terms of flavor. Changelings, shifters, and kalashtar also are pretty neat. I appreciate the existence of the artificer class and its psionic variant, and the setting giving the deathless some extra attention.

But who cares? I'm here for the spells. Races of Eberron has a quite hefty spell chapter that is about 10 pages long, but most of the spells are either rather bland, redundant, or lame. The common gimmick is that many spells are restricted to certain races and enhance their racial abilities. I actually like that, but these specific spells just don't work that well in GURPS. There also are Mindset spells that give you a bonus as long as the spell is prepared. If we cut all that, we get only a handful of spells worth adapting.

Force Shapechange is a spell against werewolves, shifters, doppelgangers, and other shapeshifters. By RAW, I was supposed to link a Neutralize with Derange to the Affliction, but that would be wonky and expensive. Instead, I decided to introduce the Force Shapechange, +20% enhancement that feels right. Also, I arbitrarily increased the duration from 9 seconds to 10 seconds because Alternate Form and Morph take 10 seconds to use by default.

Inflict Damage is the same as Inflict Wounds, but only works against constructs. Taking into account that many constructs have very high DR, this may be useful.

Mass True Seeing is a mass version of True Seeing.

Misrepresent Alignment is a clerical spell that changes the target's alignment for the purpose of detection spells.

Scorpion Tail is another clerical spell that gives you a poisonous stinger.

Unseen Crafter is a spell that lets you set up a crafting process and go out for a week or so.