Garrotes/Strangulation (3.5)

[LOTRfan]

Sorry for the stupid question, but I recently came across the Bugbear Strangler in the 4e Monster Manual, and now I am wondering: Have garrotes (or similar weapons that are used to strangle opponents) ever been published in a 3.5e source book? If so, where?

[Greenish]

Song and Silence (3.0).

Dragon Magazine #355 has some rules, too, and there might be other issues.

[Quietus]

In 3.0, yes. They were in Song and Silence, and the rules involved grapple checks to escape. They also completely denied any spellcasting (or was it just spellcasting with verbal components?), which was pretty damn rough. They also had a locking garrote, which essentially "set" the grapple check it used when you established a hold, you lock the thing, and it remained on there until they escaped, continually doing damage. Very, VERY brutal, and broke a game I was running when I allowed someone to use it. If you're going to consider using it/allowing it in a game, be very careful.

[LOTRfan]

Very interesting.....

Any main difference between the rules in Song and Silence and Dragon #355?

Stops spellcasting, you say?
I'm actually going to be having an NPC assassin use it. Thanks for he heads up, though, I'll try to keep it out of the hands of the players.

[Quietus]

Very interesting.....

Any main difference between the rules in Song and Silence and Dragon #355?

Stops spellcasting, you say?
I'm actually going to be having an NPC assassin use it. Thanks for he heads up, though, I'll try to keep it out of the hands of the players.

I haven't seen the Dragon version, but lemme check the rules really quickly for you here -

The information is on page 86. It works similarly to grapples, except that armor is modified slightly based on neck protection - easy enough to just use normal AC here. Each grapple check does damage based on the garrote type (and I suppose size, since this is a 3.0 book), and 1.5x strength. It says that Spellcasting is "difficult", and it's right; Being garroted denies a caster the ability to use Verbal or Somatic components, and they can only use material components/focuses if they already have them in hand. And if you've got a stilled, silent, eschewed material spell? You still have to make a concentration check as per normal grappling.

Locking garrotes continue to apply this, even after being locked (and thus no longer holding up their user in the grapple). Basically they take the last grapple check applied before the lock, and every round they can attempt escape via normal grapple methods against that DC. Looking now, it simply says it "continues to maintain strangling pressure", but doesn't call out whether it continues to do damage or not. The damage is listed under the "strangling" heading, though, so I assume so - presumably the garrote attempts its own grapple check each round with that same DC to do damage? It isn't very clear on that.

The basic rundown is that a garrote on its own isn't so bad; It's a grapple, basically, and some extra boosts (namely, the no verbal components). The locking one is where it gets really silly, because it keeps all those bonuses, while you're not even grappling them any more.