Two Grapple questions

[Mike Miller]

If a monster has multiattack and lots of natural attacks, can it use them all while grappling or only one?

Also, how does forced movement work in a grapple?

[Khedrac]

These are suitable questions for the "Simple RAW Questions" thread pinned to the top of the forum.

That said, Grapple is never simple.

To answer your first question the answer is "probably not".

If You’re Grappling

When you are grappling (regardless of who started the grapple), you can perform any of the following actions. Some of these actions take the place of an attack (rather than being a standard action or a move action). 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.

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.Looking at the rules a grappling creature can make one attack per action allowed while grappling, but the number of actions is limited by the BAB, thus unless the creature has a BAB nearly 4 times their number of attacks they will not get to make all attacks.

As for the second quesiton the answer is "badly". The actual rules are:

Move: You can move half your speed (bringing all others engaged in the grapple with you) by winning an opposed grapple check. This requires a standard action, and you must beat all the other individual check results to move the grapple.

Note: You get a +4 bonus on your grapple check to move a pinned opponent, but only if no one else is involved in the grapple.
This is in the same list of actions you can take while grappling, however it has the extra text about being a standard action - which prevents you from doing most other options in the same round.
Both of you provoke AoOs from anyone not in the grapple that threatens a square you leave.

[Mike Miller]

Thanks, that clears it up. Although, now I have another question. Can you attempt to start a grapple as an Attack of Opportunity?

[bean illus]

Thanks, that clears it up. Although, now I have another question. Can you attempt to start a grapple as an Attack of Opportunity?
Oh yeah. That would probably change the initiative order.

[Fizban]

Note that creatures with Improved Grab don't need to bother trying to figure out how to use their natural weapons in a grapple, because Improved Grab already replaces the damage on their grapple checks. Instead of making a grapple check to deal unarmed damage, they make a grapple check to deal the damage of their Improved Grab natural weapon. Basically if they hold onto you until their next turn, they get to just whiplash you in their teeth.

Creatures that have Improved Grab but also have a bunch of natural weapon attacks left after grabbing someone can take -20 to hold on with just their grabber, leaving the rest of their body un-grappled and allowing them to finish their full attack. Otherwise, once you grab on you're no longer able to use natural weapon attacks normally, so your full attack ends (the ability to continue from initiating a grapple into the rest of your iterative full attack for grapple checks only applies to initiating grapples with normal attacks, not Improved Grab natural weapons). Whether a creature is better off holding on with their whole body for a better grapple check next round, or finishing their natural weapon full attack, depends on the creature.

They could also just choose to let go immediately- this could happen if they want to attack with natural weapon 1 -> improved grab ->trigger automatic constrict (or other ability)-> release hold -> attack with natural weapon 2 etc. This produces a situation where a character might want to resist the monster's attempt to let go, in order to avoid being re-grabbed and hit by another triggered ability.


While it does not completely specify, the fact that tripping is an unarmed melee attack heavily implies that initiating a grapple would also be an unarmed melee attack. Most characters do not threaten with unarmed strikes, which would make them unable to grapple as an AoO. As with tripping, there are certain weapons that would allow you to do this.