[3.5] Flurry of blows while grappling?

[Totema]

This came up after-the-fact after a session tonight. The party monk was grappling with an ogre, and wondered later on if he could have performed a flurry of blows to kill it faster. I honestly don't know - it seems unclear on how an attack while grappling would interact with this. Please note that I am using a house rule that allows monks to FoB as a standard action (albeit with fewer attacks). How should this be ruled?

[Telonius]

From the rules for Grappling (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm#ifYoureGrappling):


Attack Your Opponent

You can make an attack with an unarmed strike, natural weapon, or light weapon against another character you are grappling. You take a -4 penalty on such attacks.

You can’t attack with two weapons while grappling, even if both are light weapons.

...

Damage Your Opponent

While grappling, you can deal damage to your opponent equivalent to an unarmed strike. Make an opposed grapple check in place of an attack. If you win, you deal nonlethal damage as normal for your unarmed strike (1d3 points for Medium attackers or 1d2 points for Small attackers, plus Strength modifiers). If you want to deal lethal damage, you take a -4 penalty on your grapple check.

Exception: Monks deal more damage on an unarmed strike than other characters, and the damage is lethal. However, they can choose to deal their damage as nonlethal damage when grappling without taking the usual -4 penalty for changing lethal damage to nonlethal damage.

You can attempt to damage your opponent two different ways, either by regular attacks (each one at -4) or by opposed Grapple checks. You can convert any of your attacks into opposed Grapple checks. If you use Flurry of Blows, you would get one extra attack, but everything would be at -2. (This would stack with the -4 if you're doing regular attacks, for a total -6).

This might or might not actually kill the opponent faster, depending on how comfortably you're beating the opponent's AC (or opposed Grapple checks).

EDIT: The houserule of Flurry being a standard action really wouldn't affect anything. You could Flurry within the Grapple as a standard action; then you'd have a move action left over. One consequence of grappling is that Movement is set to zero, unless you use a standard action to move during the Grapple. (You've already used the Standard Action to initiate the Flurry, so moving wouldn't be possible). You could still do something else that requires a Move Action to do; you just couldn't use the Move Action to move anywhere.

[Totema]

Huh, I was under the impression that a FoB was some kind of special action that didn't count as an attack while grappling. Thanks!

[Telonius]

It is, kind of. Normally (without the houserule) Flurry can only be used when making a full attack. It only changes the regular rule by allowing an extra attack when you full attack.

Normally, within a grapple, you can use any attack in your Full Attack to either attack with an unarmed strike, or get an opposed grapple check on your enemy. Even without the houserule, you'd still be using a full attack whether you flurry or not, meaning you could change any or all of the attacks into grapple checks.

One other nit-picky rule from grappling - it specifically states that you can only attack with a single weapon while grappling. So if you happen to have one of the special Monk weapons (a kama, for example), you'd have to decide whether to attack with the other weapon or with your unarmed strike, whether you flurry or not.

[Maginomicon]

Although the rules are silent on this, based on the following line in the grappling rules...
If your base attack bonus allows you multiple attacks, you can attempt one of these actions in place of each of your attacks, but at successively lower base attack bonuses....I'd allow it by having a set of clarifying house rules.

Although somewhat lengthy, these two robust house rules definitively allow you to use your extra appendages (The grapple rules were written with two-armed humanoids in mind, and were still written poorly regardless) and attacks (flurry attacks can -- and IIRC are supposed to -- be all with the same appendage) in a grapple. It also allows you to forgo use of your extra appendages to allow you to do other things better in the grapple (something sorely missing in the original grapple rules).

#1. Since you have to hold onto the creature with at least one appendage, if you have an appendage that could conceivably hold onto the creature (such as an arm or tail) that is currently either empty or a natural weapon, for each such appendage beyond the first you can give up all attacks that appendage would normally grant in a normal full-attack to grant you a +2 bonus on grapple checks for the round (this option is mostly useless if you only have 1 or 2 such appendages). These appendages (including the first) are considered "contributing to the hold" and thus can't be used for any other purposes in the grapple for that round.

#2. Since you have to hold onto the creature with at least one appendage, if you have a qualified attack (such as an unarmed strike, natural weapon, or other light weapon) whose means is not "contributing to the hold" as described above, you can use those attacks as part of the attack option for grappling (this requires a full-attack action as normal, but all against the grappled creature). Normally you take a -4 penalty on such attacks, but if the attack would be with an unarmed strike or natural weapon, you can opt to make a grapple check (instead of an attack roll) to ignore this penalty, but you deal nonlethal damage instead. If you want to deal lethal damage with this grapple check, you take the -4 penalty on the grapple check unless you're a monk making an unarmed strike.

(I'm pretty sure that I covered all of the minutia of attacking with the grapple option, but let me know if I missed something.)

[SoraWolf7]

Are you talking aesthetically, because I've seen a post somewhere in which a guy headbanged a monster to death with Unarmed Strike Headbutts (which counts since Unarmed Strike uses any part of the body in a Flurry of Blows, such as an elbow, knee, or forehead).

Quoted (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20070327a): As far as the rules are concerned, you can use just about any part of your body in an unarmed attack: a head butt, kick, elbow, knee, or forearm. This means you don't need a free hand to make an unarmed attack.