Grappling while flying

[Hanuman]

How does this work? I'm going to be playing a grappler PC soon and there has been lots of air combat, I have wings so this is going to get tricky....

Any help on how this works exactly? Do either of you stay flying?

[Cog]

Many always-on flight speeds come with a minimum movement needed to remain aloft. At the very least, you'd need to make a grapple check to move, as described in the grappling rules, and move at least that distance to remain airborne.

[Hanuman]

Many always-on flight speeds come with a minimum movement needed to remain aloft. At the very least, you'd need to make a grapple check to move, as described in the grappling rules, and move at least that distance to remain airborne.
In otherwords I'm going to do a lot of falling...
How would something like featherfall factor into this? Would the foe also be protected from falling damage?

[Drelua]

How would something like featherfall factor into this? Would the foe also be protected from falling damage?

Seeing as the spell reduces your speed to 60 feet per round, your enemy would have to fall at the same speed as you as long as you held onto them, so yes. Good or perfect maneuverability, or the feat hover would let you stay in place, but I guess if your enemy wanted to they could make a grapple check to hold your wings in place and make you fall, so it would definitely be a good idea to get access to feather fall. That is, unless you're flying without wings, such as by being polymorphed into an air elemental.

[Cog]

How would something like featherfall factor into this? Would the foe also be protected from falling damage?
From Feather Fall:

The spell affects one or more Medium or smaller creatures (including gear and carried objects up to each creature’s maximum load)...
Assuming your Feather Fall doesn't target the other creature as well (whether by choice or by source), there's a limit to how much excess weight you can hold. If the other creature is above your maximum load, they would pull you down despite your Feather Fall.

Leaving RAW, in the case of either creature wanting to break free of the grapple, I'd suggest that the acceleration differential caused by one creature Feather Falling and the other not would be enough to allow a reactive grapple check for the two to separate if either wanted to attempt it.

[Hanuman]

Interesting, sounds like falling means I'd have to break grapple at some point, or deal with the falling damage as a kamakazi run, anyone know a way to deal with this? My character only had DR5/mag so far and that's really only enough to block a 10' fall, hp is currently at 84 so I can technically survive 140'-840' falls but I'd rather not take 10d6 from an aerial grapple if I can avoid it.

Thoughts?

[unosarta]

The Hover feat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsterFeats.htm#hover) allows you to spend a full round action in the same round while not moving while hovering, if you began the round hovering. Beginning to hover is a move action.
Hovering is remaining in the air while flying and not moving up to the necessary speed to remain in the air while flying. Just go read the feat, I can't explain it very well.

[Greenish]

Interesting, sounds like falling means I'd have to break grapple at some point, or deal with the falling damage as a kamakazi run, anyone know a way to deal with this? My character only had DR5/mag so far and that's really only enough to block a 10' fall, hp is currently at 84 so I can technically survive 140'-840' falls but I'd rather not take 10d6 from an aerial grapple if I can avoid it.

Thoughts?Landing Boots & Armour of Falling, MIC. Get both, ignore first six die of falling damage.

[Cog]

DR doesn't block any falling damage; it only applies to attacks. Hardness helps, if you have some source of that.

[Drelua]

If you combine a few of the ways to reduce falling damage listed above with anti-impact armour (CWar), you could make a grapple check to pile-drive people and you wouldn't take very much damage, but the other guy would. this might require some house-ruling, but you could come up with something based off of the falling object rules. You might want to get a ring of feather falling just in case your victim escapes, so you don't take any damage unless they do.

[Fitz10019]

If you have ways to minimize falling damage, you might want to stop flapping and be dead weight grappling your foe. Push him over his medium carrying capacity, or over his heavy, for extra laughs. Adding the Called property (MIC, p9) to some heavy armor would make great instant ballast. (I'm assuming a haversack counts as on the same plane.)

[Hanuman]

Landing Boots & Armour of Falling, MIC. Get both, ignore first six die of falling damage.
Found it, Armor of Landing, 4,000gp 60'falling negation properties.
Boots of landing for 350g and 20' sound good too.

According to my current HP cap I should be able to survive a 240' drop with these items, according to wolfram this is a 1 round drop at 85mph that deals 24-144 to my grappled target which for level 9 looks about perfect for a 1 round KO gamble.

The items allow me to survive a 80' drop at 49MPH dealing 8-36 damage to my enemy, sounds about as good as dungeoncrasher-- it'll work thanks!


If you have ways to minimize falling damage, you might want to stop flapping and be dead weight grappling your foe. Push him over his medium carrying capacity, or over his heavy, for extra laughs. Adding the Called property (MIC, p9) to some heavy armor would make great instant ballast. (I'm assuming a haversack counts as on the same plane.)
Haversacks count as non-dimensional space if they work like bags of holding, which isn't on the same plane. You can however use a move action to produce a spell component and a suit of armor might work if you could lift it with 1 hand. My strength is 16 though.

I'm thinking instead of wearing a suit of armor, wouldn't a size increase make me both a more effective grappler and increase my effect on their carry by 8x?
Even if I'm 60lbs it'll be the same as wearing armor that weighs 400lbs, and if I can pull it off twice then it's a 2ton grappler with a pretty fat bonus to grappling.

Thoughts on how to make this happen?