Dungeon Grappling

Live to Grapple. Grapple to Live.

• Beowulf struggles with Grendel. Sinew parts, Grendel flees, dying.
• A dragon plunges from above. It’s grasping talons seize the adventurers, bearing them away.
• Mighty Ajax and Clever Odysseus struggle against each other, yet neither can throw the other, nor be thrown.
• A python lashes out, grasping its prey first by the mouth, then its coils. It struggles weakly, then not at all.

From the first story ever told, to tales on the silver screen. They all have at least one thing in common: Grappling.

Grappling is thrilling, dangerous, and drives thousands of years of epic storytelling.

Dungeon Grappling brings those thrills to the oldest fantasy RPG with rules and examples for Swords and Wizardry (and other OSR-style games), the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and 5e.

Dungeon Grappling provides:

• Simple, unified mechanics, using the same concepts as weapon strikes
• Variable outcomes – grapples can be good or bad
• Dynamic, tense stories
• Weapons, talons, magic . . . they’re all in here.

Grappling just got scary again!

What’s in the Book

First and foremost, this book contains rules based on Open Gaming Licence content from several editions of the industry’s most popular RPG – explicit examples for Swords and Wizardry, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Fifth Edition.

Let’s look inside:

Introduction: How can grappling be as epic at the tabletop as it has been in stories throughout history?

Core Concepts: Dungeon Grappling shows that the same basic concepts that you use to smite a foe with your sword are perfectly appropriate when grappling. The attack roll, target number, and effect roll are all unified in the context of grapples to minimize special cases.

Grappling Effects: Dungeon Grappling presents a variable effect roll – using both “control points” as well as conditions to make grappling exciting and unpredictable.

Grappling Techniques: This section gives you options, from simply rendering them immobile, to tossing or dragging, to takedowns, throws, choke holds, grappling with weapons, using magical spells to grapple in a way that makes all of them follow the same basic principles.

Monstrous Grappling: Let’s face it. Grappling is for monsters. A dozen examples are provided to highlight how to calculate the attack bonus, grappling target number (the equivalent of armor class for grappling), and the grappling damage roll, as well as brief discussions of how such monsters fight.

Combat Examples: An example vignette and grappling-oriented combat is provided for each of Swords and Wizardry, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and 5e.

Quick Reference Sheets: All of the key calculations, tables, and concepts are summarized in three pages in the back of the book for easy lookups and rules checks.

Art and Layout: Laid out and illustrated in full color by a great team of professionals, the interior is as beautiful as the rules are elegant.

Navigation and Layering: The PDF is hyperlinked in the Table of Contents and Index, and Bookmarks are provided. The document is also layered, allowing the background, art, or text to be turned on and off for ease of printing or readability.

Dungeon Grappling contains rules based on Open Gaming Licence content from several editions of the industry’s most popular RPG – explicit examples for Swords and Wizardry, the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, and Fifth Edition.

Dungeon Grappling shows that the same basic concepts that you use to smite a foe with your sword are perfectly appropriate when grappling. The attack roll, target number, and effect roll are all unified in the context of grapples to minimize special cases.

I have been role-playing since 1981 – starting with Holmes Red Box and AD&D, sampling many systems along the way, and started heavily playing GURPS since 1988. I’ve been an active playtester and author for both Third and Fourth Editions for a while; I started while I was in grad school at Northwestern. I’m an occasional but avid target shooter and movie-watcher, I love postponing woodworking and home improvement projects, and I’m an inveterate GURPS rules tinkerer. And now I run my own company – Gaming Ballistic, LLC. The company's first product is now on Amazon, DriveThruRPG, the Gaming Ballistic website, and soon other places. I have earned two doctorates: a real one from Northwestern University in Materials Science and Engineering, and a cool one in GURPS Ballistics from Illuminati Online University, based on an article I wrote a while back. I currently live near Minneapolis, and work for a hard-disc-drive company as my day job. All the rest of my time is spent either working on products for Gaming Ballistic, or with my family – outnumbered badly by my wife, two girls, and two kittens.