There is the devil's bible which is 75 kg. Scribes must be ripped to read. Then there is 2000kg book that is seems more like a block of granite than a book.
Potemkin Buster 1st edition spell with 5e rules components: high self esteem. Increase's your size by one value (e.g. medium to large). changes the grapple roll to (with a d20) have to succeed above your AC-10. (math needs to be changed, this belongs to the community now.)
@@snage-thesnakemage non-lethal. Is that all there is to it? I figured "It was temporary but the cleric made it permanent" was so straightforward that over- or under-rating wasn't much of a thing.
@@faceoctopus4571 well it does "temporary damage" thats what the joke is refering too. making a joke of "his pain was temporary but the cleric made it permanent(by finishing him off)
"Unfortunately game design was not invented until 1997." Attended a panel with some TSR writers at a con one time about the history of the game. This was a brick joke that one panelist would bring out whenever they got into the rules and it lives in my brain rent free.
I am not forgetting this one ever especially since I was born in 94 and did not start game design till I was 12:00 but actually we started playing games when I was five. That is technically after game design was invented. So I'm in the Golden age
I JUST had this exact thing happen to me as a DM, where a player purposely provoked an opportunity attack because it was funny, then the enemy rolled a nat 1 to hit and killed itself (it was at 1 HP).
"Nothing is stopping you from hitting me. That means nothing is stopping _me_ from hitting _you."_ "...That's not how that wor[thump]BLAAAAAAAARGH[crunch]"
"Let me tell ya something, brother. Grappling is all in the technique. You gotta strip down to your undies, pour lube ALL OVER yourself and then do ALL of the steroids before goin in for the Cuddle-Shuffle"
thats the newer editions (3rd and up really). AD&D basically is where you have multiple characters and go through them. Its very hard as you're not really the hero, you'll eventually be the hero. Also why I love Warhammer Fantasy
@@richmondvand147 man I really do love 2e and ad&ds set up. "Im level one! that means Im already a great fighter and everyone else is NPCs!" No, it means you have the combat experience of a town guard. it really opened the door for different kinds of character play, and didn't make players feel shoehorned into the "you're the hero of the story" role.
Reminds me of Los Tiburon, The Shark of the Land, Masked Wrestler. The player put everything into grappling, and proceeded to grapple everything. *EVERYTHING*. Including, but not limited to, a bear. At the end of the campaign dragon shows up and stays in the water, popping up to use its breath weapon. Well, Los Tiburon charges the dragon, posing in the air, shouting about the "HONOR OF THE MASK", and tackles the dragon. After dealing unarmed damage, he takes a deep breath in preparation for the underwater struggle. Dragon goes up, where he forgot they could fly. DM gives option to let go, but player refuses to keep wrestling. 200 feet in the air, wrestling a dragon and dealing unarmed damage. After taking some damage from the dragon he gets an idea to "pin the dragon". Rolls a Nat 20 and they both proceed to fall to the earth, his final statement being "I AM LOS TIBURON! And I am...a lucha!!!" He kills the dragon, and through sheer luck or GM fiat, possibly both, survives with -4 HP. He gets healed by the cleric, who holds his hand in the air, another player bangs their shield twice, and the party Bard says, "And the winner is...Los Tiburon!" Amazing story.
He’s getting on the top rope… wait is he going for? PILE DRIVER. HES GOING FOR A PILE DRIVER. Edit seeing as this is getting so popular can anyone tell me what ost he used for this?
I actually heard a first hand account of a very similar story to Tiburon when I was in college before the story blew up on the internet except he described it in less detail and specified that he "suplexed" the dragon in midair.
I managed to pull off the mid air dragon pin with a monk in 5e the first session I played him. It went perfectly, except for the ending. He was crushed to death.
On the other hand, having ADHD and grappling is really fun. It helps me clear my head, and my hyperfixations let me come up with all sorts of new setups for throws and submissions. Or sometimes I read the entire IJF rules manual because I want to know if that one technique is legal. The only downside is that I then forget about my also very important homework... Or tax returns, which I still need to do.
He's actually pretty wellread in most versions too. Yeah, he's a relentless muscle juicin' lucador, but the man reads when is isn't keepongvthat body ripped.
Just to point out: there's a reason Michelango refers to Bane as 'William Protein Shakespeare' in the crossover. It's absolutely deserved, given his speech mannerisms in that version. Mileage varies, though.
there is one in 5e. Sort of. Bigby's Hand allows you to shove enemies in the direction of your choice up to 5 feet plus a number of feet equal to five times your spellcasting ability modifier. Which means you can throw enemies up to 30 feet in the air and have them land prone. The hand moves together with the target (victim) as it flies through the air, so you can definitely flavor it as doing a super suplex.
It's honestly a running gag in lots of tabletop games. Depending how far they want to take the joke, it can be that they need an hour break and rules from five different books, to putting the session on hold because Dave is the only one in the county who understands the grapple rules and he's out of town on a job.
I think Grandline 3.5 had the best take. They made the fight between Luffy and Captain Kuro a pvp fight between Lufdy's player, an experienced munchkin, and their old DM, a DM munchkin. It's just 3 sold panels of wordbubbles of Lorem Ipsum, with the other players looking on in shock before the other Munchkin, Zoro, tells them they haven't even pulled out the advanced rules. Then Luffy realizes he has a trait that let's him headbutt and ignore literally everything they just discussed.
Honestly even in D&D5E understanding grappling just as written took me a while. It took people completely outside the dev team to make me understand why you would ever grapple at all.
@@wadespencer3623because a MAN castes his magic with MUSCLES!!! Can you even say you lived until you have double clothelined a pack of kobolds and used the survivors as cushioning for for your own megaton impact?
My mom had a character kind of like this back in the day. I'm not sure if it was 2e or very early 3e, but she was playing a Paladin character that she wasn't really fond of. She just wasn't feeling the character and kind of wanted her to die off so she could swap out characters. So she kept throwing her at every possible trap and monster, recklessly, hoping they'd kill her. Except because she was super tanky, and she was trying to do it without other players knowing, she couldn't die and everyone thought she was insanely heroic. NPCs and the other PCs thought she was reckless, sure, but "oh you're so incredibly brave diving past those crusher traps over that hidden pitfall filled with acid snakes to face the dragon alone before your party could catch up." That kind of thing. And my mom on the inside being like, "No you IDIOTS! My character isn't brave, she wants to meet the Reaper!" I think eventually, the DM (who I believe never let anyone let just... retire characters) realized what she was doing, and since they were all just a group of friends anyway, just let her retire the character because as funny as the gag was, she was long-since genuinely sick of the character.
Over 40 years ago, my 1st level wizard did that after drinking an enlarge potion and went on to pummel a 10th level fighter to death. Took a while, but he was stunned the whole time.
"I'm a coward I- I-" *brain wash* " _I'M A FOOL_ _MAYBE I'M WORTHLESS_ _BUT THIS WORLD_ _CREATED MY FAITH_ _SO ALL I CAN DO IS STAY HOPEFUL_ _AND_ *_PRAAAAAAAAAY_* "
One of the greatest joys of AD&D 1e and 2e is that stuff like this is scattered everywhere throughout the books - just totally off the wall bonkers stuff can happen all the time. A lot of people might say that it's "Bad Design" or "Broken" or "unbalanced", but when unhinged stuff like this is everywhere in the book I think it's a Feature not a Bug. Don't forget that there are plenty of monsters with Save or Die effects, so it's kind of part of the game that when a player stumbles upon something amazing like this, you gotta let it ride! Who knows what totally other bonkers thing might come up next time and totally turn the tables on you!?
I've been reading through the AD&D grapple rules after watching and I'm pretty sure it's an error that it works like this. The pummel rules, which are very similar, use the AC*10 of the DEFENDER as the base % for a successful attack, which makes way more sense, considering the default AC is 10. Assuming it should be the same for grapple also makes the % modifier table for grappling make more sense, as it adds % to the chance of success based on the defender's armor type, which would mean even though the defender's AC sets the % chance, armor doesn't count, making it an early form of touch AC. Which all makes WAY more sense.
@@Vinemaple Potemkin is a character from the fighting game "Guilty Gear". they're a grappler and have a move called Potemkin Buster which grabs the opponent and jumps up into the air in order to slam them back down into the ground for massive damage.
@@Vinemaple I think you're thinking of a) the Russian ship *Potemkin* which played a part in the October Revolution, or b) Potemkin villages, which predate the Bolsheviks and Marx and have their origins in the era of Catherine the Great, way back in the mid 18th century.
And here I didn't think there would be any most busted Grappling rules in D&D than 3.5e. I also had a great time with the grapple rules in GURPS (can't recall the version) where I discovered that they're really not balanced around using telekinesis to grapple, thus removing the target's ability to countergrapple.
The difference was that in AD&D, rules were meant to be ignored. I don't think I ever saw a character grapple in the 80's. Nobody knew that grappling+daggers was how knights killed each other (or more likely seriously armoured soldiers unlikely to provide ransoms), so we stuck with weapons. Of course, my guess is that having an ogre or giant grapple the fighter would make the encounter go very bad (bring several fighters to AD&D quests) and making it easier to reach the DM's kill quota. But we died enough without that cheese.
@@wumpusthehunted2628 I ran a Monk / Priest who's entire schtick was an optimized grapple combined with self enhancements & touch spells. "First, while walking up, I say "Omae wa mou shindeiru" then I cast harm using my grapple check instead of an attack roll."
Tangentially related, if you want to see busted grappling, look up how it works in Star Wars: Saga Edition. It's one of those funny d20 systems that popped up in the null space between 2.x and 4e/5e, with hallmarks from all three systems. All I'm going to say is, RAW, grappling completely prevents someone's ability to USE THE FORCE.
@arifhossain9751 I disagree. From my experience therapy is you and a therapist talking about your problems and setting "realistic" goals when I see "psionic manipulation" That sounds more like hypnotism or mind magic brainwashing or something. Side Note: I would 100% pay someone to use magic to force me to have better self esteem.
How dare you remind me of system shock. "Okay, your friends have gathered the materials and made the ritual to bring you back to life!" *immediately dies again*
@@Crocogator when I was younger I wanted to make an illusionist specifically to kill people via system shock, it seemed like such a brutal mechanic. Is it actually feasible?
@@kylestanley7843 Feasible? No. System Shock has such a crazy low chance of causing a death, and very few things require a system shock roll. Hilarious? Yes. It'll generally only work on people who are close to dying of natural causes, or are under the effects of some really messed up fear, or just came back from the dead. Soooo. Evil gnome illusionist who wants to become a lich, so he goes to the old folks home to charge up his phylactery. Going room to room showing old people their greatest fear.
@@kylestanley7843 does the spell actually change their bodies? The rules have been kinda hard to find but they only seem to mention magical transformations and aging (so polymorph, petrification, maybe curses and the haste spell). I'm not familiar with 2e illusions spells, so if any check one of these boxes, it is possible
Hegseth: "I'm not sure how to... ahem... _grapple..._ with this information." The Valos Sisters Gang, Handsome Burney, and two civilians: "Why? What don't you understand?"
cutting it REAL close with these weekly uploads. Almost ran out the clock with this one... im kidding, of course. Great job on creating a pseudo barbarian.
My dad once had to grapple a were-rat. The story starts in a cramped corridor down a flight of stairs, my father at the bottom was fighting two wererats, alone. He was successful in killing one of them, however the second one was a tricky little fella and kept fainting, then attacking him. This would repeat until my dad, almost dead, looked up at his DM and said, "So what's the rules for grappling again?" The DM looks at him with the most "Your joking right?" face and said, "you're gonna grapple, a were-rat?" To which my dad replies "look man I'm dying here, what else am I supposed to do?" So Dm pulls up the rules, they do the rolls, and... it was a success. So my father holds the thing as another player finale runs down the stairs and successfully kills the wererat. That is how my dad grappled a wererat.
@@Froscav121 "So that's why I came here to ask, if my dad became a wererat, does it make me a wererat?" 'I don't think that's how that works...' "So it doesn't matter how many times it bit me?"
Don't think I didn't notice the Heavenly Potemkin Buster in the thumbnail. Okay so after actually watching the video I can still confirm the Magical Wizard Buster was the absolute last thing I expected.
No no, there is a 40% chance you die when casting the spell and you need it in the first place. In ad&d spells had to be found through scrolls. There is quite a bit of challenge and risk
Zee, your take for that "100%" is so perfect that I wish it existed somewhere cleaned and isolated. The things people could do with that would be glorious.
At first I thought the title of this video was "Grappling with ADHD is *wild*" and I was excited to hear a new perspective from a creator I really enjoy lmao The video is great still
Thaco isn't complicated, its only AC with 1 additional step. That additional step makes it objectively worse than AC, but there are certainly worse systems out there
@@hoomanben8455tbh I've been reading the OD&D stuff and I really like those tables. There's zero math involved and it makes your exact weapons, armor, and even race super important. As a DM this sounds really great because I don't have to make as many notes or worry about doing a bunch of math in the middle of combat. Just a quick roll from the player and a glance at the chart.
1:10 that moment when you realize THAC0 never really left, it just used algebra to hide itself in a better system... it still takes a 10 to hit a 10AC, just more intuitively when bigger numbers are better
Having played through the end of 2 and start of 3 that was everyone's assessment. Some folks thought the switch was pointless. Other people were like "this is just easier now."
Table isn't really needed if you just understand the system. THAC0 just stands for "To Hit Armor Class 0", it's just math past that. For example, I have a THAC0 of 12 and attack someone with an AC of -4. Their AC is 4 below 0 so I need a 16 to hit. @Gemini476
@@stillsameguy2836 You had me until you said that 'm' word. You know, 'm-th'. Hate that stuff. I can just barely tolerate the existence of numbers, I definitely don't want to do anything with them.
That wizard has such an awesome character arc. Going from being horrified of battle to being so brave he’s willing die to enlarge just to body slam his opponents.
I would guess the _idea_ behind the ACx10 thing was that lighter armored characters were better at grappling? Seems about right for this day and age. In fact, it is possible they used THAC0 because stuff worked out like that. Webcomic Darths and Droids did some things on "overly complex grappling rules". Specifically Episode 233, Episode 343 and Episode 344.
I guess the idea was that the more protection between you and the enemy, the more you have to overcome to get your hands on them. Remember that in ADND Dexterity isn't a factor when calculating your AC so there is no case of "Oh, my character is very dexterous so now he's worse at grappling?" Now imagine you have an AC of 0, you're wearing full plate armor and carrying a shield, you probably aren't very great at grappling at that point, when you only have one hand free
Everyone talking about the Potemkin Buster (as they should be because its absolutely hilarious), but I just wanted to say I really appreciated the /SLASH/ winscreen at 2:17 lol Didn't take Zee for a Guilty Gear enjoyer too
Accidentally discover broken AD&D mechanic... Gosh darn it! We will never hear the end of it from Larry! And now I have to triple check my own system...Thanks Zee!
No play 1e, 2e is missing all of the cool goodies like this system under the guise of "design" (taking out the cool subsystems overconfident nerds were too busy snarking at to ever learn)
@@RunningWithRoses nobody who has run a RAW 1e campaign says this. It *looks* backwards compatible bc it matches the house rules of most people (no weapon vs ac, level limits, 1:1 time, weaponless combat system, etc)
@@joshantor ...what? no dude, Zeb Cook literally said its designed to be backwards compat. practically every class handbook starts with a preamble of either how to mix 1e and 2e class rules, or how to choose which to use.
Lets gooooo. Also Grapling and a flying monk character can be broken in 5e by dragging the grappled creature through Spike Growth, Prismatic Wall, Wall of Fire, or Incendiary Cloud. A flying pc can even pull off a suplex build with Barbarian/Monk
Reminds me of good ol' Original D&D, back before even Advanced D&D. I had a wizard who eventually for orichalcum claws and armor. Had a -4 AC and a +5 enchanted bonus to hit with the claws for like 4d4 damage. Combined with a ring of fire immunity and a rod that gave me more slots to prepare spells, combined with a ring of triple spell effect (yes, it's as bad as it sounds, and yes it was homebrew (I think))-- I'd haste, rush forward, then either shred a target with 8 attacks or 8 fireballs for an absolute nuke of a finisher. Ah, Ganji, my immortal melee wizard. Touched the power of a lvl 30 wizard.
Ok, this is one of the beauty of AD&D. Casting enlarge self can kill you, but then you can kill them by performing a grapple as a str 9 wizard All the things we take for granted in DnD are wildly thrown out the window when it is old rules time.
My first rpg game ever was an old d&d boxed version. I wanted to do magic so I took a wizard. The DM said 'are you sure' and my character had 1 hp and 1 or 2 spells, one of them which was light. He died in the first room. What was thrown out of the windows were fun and the box. I discovered sane rules a few years later with CoC.
@@flanbeau old rpgs can be fun too. Wizard has always been my class, so whenever I play old dnd I multiclass into coward and diplomat until level 3 at least. Or you know, get a fighter friend. But man, the joy of that first fireball. Oh boy. And when I got my first 4th level spell! You really become a power then. And of course, when you reach double digits level the world bends to your will... you have to survive the early levels. Keyword survive.
@@bavettesAstartes You describe a workaround around a problem that can be fixed and was fixed in every other rpg thereafter. Like someone said in a thread above "Unfortunately game design was not invented until 1997" for d&d. I have a good memory of this session, but I also saw the system was bad and if I immediatly liked the concept of RPGs, I never touched one of the old d&ds until 3e.
@@flanbeau problems are fun too. Don't get me wrong, you won't ever see me defend Thac0, but there is a reason why a buncha old school style rpgs have popped up in recent years.
I mean, it's not really complicated in 5e. You make a contested skill check and if you succeed the enemy can't move and you can drag them around at half speed. Escaping takes an action to repeat the skill check. That's all there is to a basic grapple.
@@emileo5024 You also can't grapple something bigger than you, but our playgroup houseruled that. At our table, you can grapple something bigger than you, but if you do, they can still move and drag you around.
As someone with a 13th level Necromancer in AD&D 2e I find this utterly hilarious. (My Necromancer has 10 str/con, 12 dex, 17 cha, 18 wis, and will have 19 int when he finishes reading a book. Why not generalist Wizard? I wanted to use stuff from The Complete Book of Necromancy and figured I'd be more likely to get approval from the dm to do so as a Necromancer. Hoping to be able to turn bones to steel to use them for undead!)
This reminds me of the advice one of the original (a)dnd creators said about naming. Don't give your character a stupid name or you might get stuck with a 20th level wizard named "Medium Rary".
I once had a player go "I'm going to try for a blaze of glory, I... am not gelling with this character." I say okay. It's Savage Worlds. He's got an improvised flamethrower on, he's grappled by this (horribly depressed) tall gangly undead thing... and he sets off a grenade, point blank. He rolls 3d6 for... 4 damage. I say "Okay, but... that definitely is enough to set off what's left in the flamethrower tank. d12 for each shot left. 3. 3d12 and 3 damage. I had the baddie just... *sigh*. "You can't read the expression on his distorted face, but you just -know- that it's disappointment." It wasn't enough damage to give either one a headache, let alone an injury, even combined. If I had it to do all over again? I'd have skipped the damage rolls and just... let him blow up and take the arm of the creature. It felt right then to just let the dice dictate "comedy", though.
this reminds me of a wizard barbarian multiclass I played. whenever he ran out of spell slots he would rage and go hand to hand. he actually succeeded in throwing a grey slaad through a portal into hell.
It's been a long time since I've laughed out loud, so hard, for so long, at a RU-vid video- let alone a D&D one. Bravo!!! Holy shit. Aaaah man you have no idea how excited I am to see your notification pop up in my feed
Always wanted to do this on 5e, basically if you go with a goliath bear totem barbarian, find a ring of flight or some other way to gain a flight speed, you can rage, grapple the enemy and fly up your entire movement speed, and then some, then you just let it drop, since you're raging and a bear totem, you have resistance to all forms of damage, including fall damage, and your HP is higher than your stat sheet combined, so the enemy takes max fall damage, and you take half of that, leaving you bruised but with the BBEG turned into chunky salsa.
Couldn't you just... Let go? Like maybe technically it doesn't say you can, but logically if I can drop an item for free, I should be able to stop grappling for free at will.
@@1stCallipostlethe thing about that, having used the build (monk 5 barbarian 3) the 20d6 doesn’t always kill it so it’s best to fall with it so you can do it again. Also monk is they way to go slow fall takes 25 damage off the top then rage resistance so you take half of that (usually between 60 and 80). Also the mobility buffs make double dashing pretty good, and giant barbarian double your CC so with a good str score you can haul two 300 lbs guys strait up
There's a guy whose job it was at TSR to compile Gary Gygax's "rough draft" into the AD&D 1st edition manual. He said he received a crate filled with loose notes unrelated to anything they were piled with, and no further instructions. There's a reason that book is nuts, and why Moldvay and Cook's Basic/Expert set has a wider following than 1st edition.
That'd be a great opportunity to sit down with the DM and create a homebrew class. Like the gods looks upon this wizard with favor and designates him as a champion.
"In an earnest attempt to delete my terrible wizard, I accidentally created an apex predator!" I wonder how many aberrations were created in this way, just dumb players trying to delete even dumber characters by having them Frankensteining themselves
I still remember the groans that would go around the table when Dave (it was almost always Dave, who was also the reason my group called wandering monsters "wandering weasels") would announce that he wanted to try grappling with an opponent. It always brought combat to a screeching halt, because not one of us could figure out how it was supposed to work, so it would devolve into several arguments running in parallel between people who insisted it worked THIS way and other people who insisted it worked THAT way and a third group who wasn't sure how it worked but was nevertheless absolutely certain that it didn't work the way groups 1 and 2 said.
Edit|: nope, I was wrong ... grapple does have its own base roll, and it is indeed the inverse, taking the attacker's AC. LOL. Would be less of a deal if it weren't paired with size differences. And yeah, I suppose the dragon could grapple you with its size/weight advantage offsetting it's great AC. Bleh. Mea culpa! Page 72 of the 1e DMG: " The base score on percentile dice is opponent AC value times 10 to arrive at a percentage chance to hit" -Emphasis on "opponent." The worse -*-their-*- AC is, the better your chances. Which makes sense. What does make sense is your own AC making it better, all the way to negative AC meaning you can't grapple, pummel, or perform an overbearing attack on anyone. This makes no sense: the dragon can't grapple you? Hmmmmm.- 1e is wild for sure, but reading the DMG carefully is a must.
@@webbowser8834 OH yeah for sure it makes more sense, but I'm still pretty sure that's from another "To hit" chart. "Base Score to Grapple: Multiply **attacker’s** armor class by 10, ignoring magical devices (bracers, cloaks, rings, etc.), but adding 1 for each +1 of magical armor, to find a percentage chance from 100% to 0%. Note: The attacker cannot grapple if either or both hands are holding anything. The base chance to grapple is modified as follows:" I mean we've since just moved to ADND 2E's much more sensible grappling system.
