Refactor Escape Artist

[Steve]

As per the BG Wiki (https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Escape_Artist):

“With complete investment [60 modified skill points!] in escape artist bigby are unlikely to work on you. That said it's clear that this is a huge investment for not much, the DCs for escape artist should probably be lower.”

And no, I didn’t write that!!

Edit: thank you for the consideration!!

[Rhifox]

Plan is to eventually rework Bigbies to use the new grappling system, rather than any further development to its vanilla form.

[Steve]

Plan is to eventually rework Bigbies to use the new grappling system, rather than any further development to its vanilla form.

That’s cool. How would a max grapple compare to the 60 skill pts in Escape Artist needed against Bigby’s, currently?

[Rhifox]

For one: The hand would need to successfully make a touch attack against the target in order to start a grapple. Though admittedly the touch attack roll of a hand is quite high. But it's an area where Dex characters would perform better than others.

For two: If your modified Escape Artist ranks are higher than your normal grapple check mod (BAB + Str + Size modifier), then it uses that for any attempts to escape a grapple. The hand's values depend on the level of the hand, but are quite high, so you'd still probably need very high escape artist.

In either case, one can Dim Door out of a hand's grasp, use Freedom of Movement, or otherwise have more defenses than currently.

[Steve]

Thank you for the explanation/plan.

I’m just concerned Escape Artist investment will end up in the “inflated” Skills section like Spot/Listen and H/MS, where one has to go “all out” for it to be even part-time useful.

Are Escape Artist skills well proportioned on existing epic store items and the loot generator? And this is on actually useful items, not just items with high ranks for grappling, but items that have general/permanent usefulness. Cheers.

[Rhifox]

Are Escape Artist skills well proportioned on existing epic store items and the loot generator? And this is on actually useful items, not just items with high ranks for grappling, but items that have general/permanent usefulness. Cheers.

Epic stores, no, nor loot table. It can drop from RIG at the same chances as any other skill.

We could add Net items, allowing martials to functionally do an entangle effect on other characters, for which Escape Artist has a clear, low roll use. It has similar uses already against web and entangle spells. Likewise, it scales better against "normal" grappling, where it's generally just having to beat BAB+Str mod, so as long as you have 30 ranks in escape artist, and are a high dex character, you'll generally have better chances of breaking a martial's grapple with escape artist than you would without it. Escape Artist is pretty much the only way to be able to use Dex for grapple checks.

And ofc escape artist has uses in pnp events, in situations where a DM might call for a character to escape restraints or squeeze through tight spaces.

[Steve]

Would you say then that Escape Artist is a skill mainly for/benefiting high DEX builds?

I’d say a optimized-but-not-focused grappler is giving 30 (BAB) + 10 (STR 30) = 40 DC, a 30 Escape Artist skill invested build would need at least mod 29 DEX (+9) for a 39 skill based counter (+1 on die minimum, unless fails on 1).

[Rhifox]

As a Dex skill, yes it primarily benefits Dex builds. At least when countering grappling.

[Steve]

I am wanting an Escape Artist investment of 38 pts (33 ranks + 5 DEX 20 mod) to be a meaningful investment. That I wouldn’t also have to gear-shark Items in order to increase the total for any applicable use.

But if the average or likely common experience would be a grapple DC of +/- 40, and a toon with 38 pts + d20 roll…I could live with those odds.

BUT NOTHING WORSE!!

[RoseMiriel]

I had hoped they’d make use of escape artist and thanks for doing so!=^^= I was gonna ask if it could be automatic rolled at start of grapple and each round instead of triggerd against the grapple?=^^=