All about Big Bear Hugs. Grappling question.

[shadowseve]

Grappling in wild shape. Bears seem to be one of the best out there due to insane grappling bonuses plus improved grab, however, grappling itself seems.... underwhelming to me. From my understanding once I have them grappled I can either pin them, make horribly bad nonlethal damage, or use my bite attack, or cast a spell. My question is is it ever really worth it to grapple myself other than shutting down a spell caster, which is useful of course? Or is it better to let my summoned creatures or animal companion do that while I consume face with my normal attacks and buffs/spells?

[Kazudo]

Depending on the interpretation of the rules, I've built a few characters whose entire purpose was total battlefield control. Free bull rush attempts, able to hit every square they threaten simultaneously, grappling the last one that they hit and using their second iterative attack to essentially throw them out of the battlefield causing a varying amount of damage (since the rules are a bit sketchy on exactly how much damage a thrown object receives).

But yes, grappling is a tad underwhelming unless you have Improved Grab and Improved Grapple and are two size categories larger than your opponent.

[Rakaydos]

It can also shut down weapon users who use non-light weapons. My roman legionaire expy build models the battle line shield crush as grapple combat, where the roman short swords can be used but barbarian greatswords cant be swung. (grabbing Rogue levels for skills and sneak attack is pure gravy)

[eggynack]

You are correct on most counts. Summoning grapplers is usually going to be significantly more viable than being a grappler yourself, particularly because summoning a grappler eliminates the action cost inherent in grappling. However, as you've noted, grappling has its moments, and while you shouldn't always be grappling, you should try to keep the possibility in mind.

The style is most useful when your team has a numerical advantage against an opponent that's worse than you are at grappling, because if your party of four has one guy trading actions for actions with a strong opponent, then that's a great thing. It's a plan that fits in well against casters, though casters are tricky, because they pretty much all have excellent anti-grappling defenses.

As a final note, if you're at least level 9, and if you have book access, you may want to consider the smilodon (Frost, 118) as a bear alternative. It has a marginally lower grapple mod, but more attacks that trigger grappling, and it gets a pounce attack on top of that. It's a pretty solid melee form, if you want that sort of thing.

[Vogonjeltz]

Grappling in wild shape. Bears seem to be one of the best out there due to insane grappling bonuses plus improved grab, however, grappling itself seems.... underwhelming to me. From my understanding once I have them grappled I can either pin them, make horribly bad nonlethal damage, or use my bite attack, or cast a spell. My question is is it ever really worth it to grapple myself other than shutting down a spell caster, which is useful of course? Or is it better to let my summoned creatures or animal companion do that while I consume face with my normal attacks and buffs/spells?

Wild Shape is kind of a different story than non wild shaping because many of the best magic items that improve grappling get shut off in non humanoid forms, like the bear.

That being said, unless your target has several friends capable of targeting you while you're busy grappling, you would almost always be better off if you can grapple your opponent and or pin them.

Just grappling the enemy forces limits their options and almost always makes them waste actions.

Examples: prohibits the use of most weaponry and imposes penalties on everything else but a grapple check, imposes limitations on spell casting, imposes limits on movement and reduces the opponents defenses.

That's a lot of debuffing from what is generally a melee touch attack. Furthermore, in a grapple you can strip their valuables. Take away that spell component pouch, amulet, hat, wand, etcetera.

From the perspective of a melee attacker, if you aren't certain you can kill/cripple the enemy in one turn, than limiting what they can do on their turn is probably better.

[Gwendol]

Grappling can be useful, in the right situation. As you've already noted, damage is not why you grapple, it's to limit enemy actions. If you have a scout or a rogue in the party for example, grappling the enemy will let them attack with impunity, since grapplers no longer threaten adjacent squares.

[Zombulian]

You're mostly right. Unless your entire build is based entirely around grappling and doing damage with it, it often isn't worth it. Heck, it often isn't worth it even if you built around it because of a handy little spell called Freedom of Movement. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/freedomOfMovement.htm)
Don't get me wrong, I love grappling and the builds I use it with. It just is yet another notch on the list of things for melee that aren't great.

[Urpriest]

In general, don't grapple for damage unless you have abilities for it. That means Rake, that means Improved Grab, that means Constrict. Savage Grapple can also work if you're some sort of Druidic sneak attack gish, though that's tricky since the one class that does it RAW doesn't boost the size of your wild shapes. And of course, Black Blood Cultist is beautiful.

Beyond that, I agree that summoning grapplers is almost always going to be a better choice for a druid than being one, unless you're in a very favorable situation.