If a wrestler executing a Sustained Hold scores at least one Health Level of damage, he has tied up his opponent. The opponent can do nothing until she escapes from the hold. The victim is allowed one escape attempt just after the end of the combat turn, before the new turn begins. The victim must defeat the wrestler in a contested roll of Strength versus Strength.
If the victim does not break free, she loses her action next turn. The wrestler can choose to play the same Combat Card next turn and automatically gets to inflct damage on his held opponent whenever his Speed allows him to act during the turn. The wrestler may also decide to drop the hold and play a different Combat Card the following turn.
Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game, p. 140
We always played it that if a sustained hold was released by the fighter, both fighters could choose a new maneuver for the following round, and I think that's a good interpretation of the intent of the section. But there's another interpretation here, and an interesting one: that after winning the contested roll to maintain the hold, the wrestler can voluntarily choose a different attack next turn. The victim (who lost the roll to break free) cannot choose an attack because they have lost their action.
This would open up seriously interesting options for grapplers, who could use one of the faster grabs from their repertoire to snare an opponent and then switch to a more powerful attack the following round if they have succeeded in keeping the victim in the hold. This might be too powerful -- fast grapplers are already holy terrors -- but it's an interesting thing to think about.
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4 comments:
"But there's another interpretation here, and an interesting one: that after winning the contested roll to maintain the hold, the wrestler can voluntarily choose a different attack next turn. The victim (who lost the roll to break free) cannot choose an attack because they have lost their action."
That's the way we interpreted it in all the WW ST games - So if you win the opposed check as the grappler, you can give your foe a free knee to the face instead of holding the grab.
I can't believe we missed it completely for so many years. It's not like the rule book is particularly dense or complex. I can see why people still find rules from AD&D that they never used.
I like the options this opens up. I can certainly picture a wrestler grabbing someone with one grab and then switching to a knee or head butt or similar, or even shifting from one grab to another. A slow grappler like Zangief could do an Iron Claw and release to follow up with a Spinning Piledriver.
You'd have to rule that if you switch from one sustained hold to another, you don't "restart the clock" on how many consecutive rounds you can sustain a hold, but otherwise, it seems reasonable, though it is also one more tool in the high Dex grappler's already dangerous toolbox.
This rule, as you've correctly interpreted it, leads to nearly-unbeatable combos. Consider a fighter with:
(Knockdown maneuver) to Head Bite
OR, even worse...
Flying Tackle (w/ Kippup) to Head Bite
Knockdowns give you -2 Speed your next turn (unless you lose an action by being knocked-down). This means that those combos, with their Speeds, are:
(Knockdown maneuver; Speed irrelevant as its from a Sustained Hold) to Head Bite (Speed base +1, combo +2, opponent Knocked-down while you're still standing for an effective +2)
That's an effective +5 to your relative Speed with the Head Bite, which is a Sustained Hold. If your opponent has Kippup then it's still +4 relative Speed, meaning with identical DEXs (and you do have DEX 5, don't you? :p ) that the only escape is Grappling Defense and winning a tie-break.
The second combo:
Flying Tackle (w/ Kippup) to Head Bite (+1 base Speed, +2 Combo, +2 Flying Tackle, +1 relative opponent Knockdown penalty w/ Kippup)
…is an effective +5 (if you both have Kippup) or +6 (if only you have Kippup) relative Speed difference, meaning that your opponent is more-or-less totally trapped regardless of what they do.
There are a few ways to plug that gap.
1. Disengage and Grappling Defense might be able to save you through reducing opponent damage to 0.
2. House Ruling that you cannot Combo off of a Sustained Hold-derived free move.
Hi Brutalo,
Yeah, your comments match my experiences too. We get around it in part because we don't actually use Flying Tackle, and Head Bite is very rare (completely nonexistent in PCs) for thematic reasons. Our group tends to avoid certain maneuvers if they don't make sense in the fiction. That helps.
Another common escape strategy that can help (in the right conditions) is Jump based combos. Against many grab combos (though certainly not against the most egregious), we've found that simply aborting to Jump and Jumping out of range works. If you build in some combos that start with a Jump, you can potentially turn the tide. Wouldn't work with the combos you mention, of course, but otherwise a useful tool to have handy.
We've also toyed with house ruling that you can't combo off a sustained hold. Your suggested house rule that it isn't possible to combo off a sustained-hold-derived free move seems like a very good added check against unblockable loops.
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