Be careful with this - many players won't find this state of affairs to be believable (for example, I wouldn't buy it), and you'll break verisimilitude faster than if you went for my Option C and blatantly retconned any unexpected player deaths if they happen on the fly.
There's a difference between "the PC died because he made unwise choices and overextended, placing himself in harm's way where he got cut down on the battlefield" and "oops I didn't realize grappling was a fight-ending bad touch, uh, you're dead?". Option C is intended to solve the latter, not the former. In fact, all three options are.
"Most people, most of the time, aren't
seriously trying to kill each other, even when they're swinging around deadly weapons" is easy enough to explain as a genre convention, and adequately supported by real-world research into, for example, marksmanship. Y'know how many soldiers will put bullets through a paper silhouette just fine, then get all shaky and miss under identical or easier conditions when the target more closely resembles an actual living human? Well over half, to my understanding, at least until they've been through training calculated to overcome that aversion. Then again, I suppose environment and culture also play a role. I'm curious, where you grew up, which was considered a worse offense, in the sense of heavier legal penalties: killing a pedestrian while driving an automobile, or inflicting severe yet recoverable injuries under the same conditions?
Even if it would conflict with setting lore (which I'd dispute, though that's a whole other can of worms), most combatants pulling punches is at the very least adequately supported as a mechanical option, and doing so retains the possibility of "shit just got real" escalation when some bitter enemy finally does go all-out. Fudging a roll, retconning a scene, overriding decisions and dice
entirely in favor of a preconceived outcome, doesn't really have a comparable 'undo' option. That sort of fudge is like cheeto dust, tainting everything else you touch thereafter, because it teaches the players that all the rest of the nominal system is just smoke and mirrors. Under such a precedent, the only person at the table whose opinion really matters is the one whose fudge-stained finger hovers over the invisible reset button.
Tangentially, any opinion on my houserules for grapples, an effort to disarm the 'mine' and create a subsystem worth engaging with rather than routing around it? I'll post the relevant section here for anyone who doesn't like google docs. Ideally I'd have someone deeply familiar with the larger ruleset but who doesn't know me personally test it out, identify and tear open whatever gaps or other flaws I'm blind to by virtue of having created it.
Grappling
A successful clinch attack just established contact- you've gotten a grip on someone. This does not deal any damage. If you're grabbing someone barehanded, there's little or no advantage to loads of threshold successes on the initial attack. If you're wrapping something around them, though (such as a whip, rope, chain garotte, etc) each threshold success on that entanglement counts as a "loop" that has to be removed before they can throw you off.
Threshold success on initiating a grapple with a called shot to the neck (and if you're using a garotte there's no penalty for that called shot) subtracts 30 seconds from how long the target can hold their breath. Panic, constricting blood flow to the brain rather than just blocking the windpipe, etc. If that puts "how long they can hold their breath" down to zero, suffocation-based bashing damage starts to kick in immediately, one die per action.
On their next action tick, participants have to decide whether they're going to cooperate (in which case, depending on context, it probably stops being a matter of Martial Arts skill and starts being either Ride or Performance) or fight you.
Assuming it turns into an actual wrestling match, both parties act simultaneously from that point on, until the clinch is broken. It is possible to focus entirely on the grapple, or perform a flurry, but in either case the first action has to be a speed 6 clinch. Whoever rolls more successes is considered to be controlling the clinch, and threshold success may be spent to impair your opponent's actions, to inflict damage, or to throw their opponent, ending the grapple (assuming participants are tied together in some manner). A grapple may also be ended (on any tick where the participants act) by mutual consent.
Anything two-handed or with the Reach tag can't be used while grappling without a stunt, but otherwise you can attack normally using subsequent actions in a flurry.
While involved in a grapple, your physical DVs are halved against anyone not involved, due to limited mobility. Various charms that allow you to defend normally while grappling instead negate this penalty. If you're holding somebody with one hand and trying to stab or punch or shoot a firewand or crossbow at them or whatnot with the other, their DVs are not halved against your attack.
While Controlling the Grapple
Each threshold success spent on impairment applies an internal penalty equal to your Strength to actions involving one body part, usually a limb, but applicable also to e.g. covering a sentry's mouth to stop them shouting a warning. This penalty only lasts until the next action.
Successes spent to hold on to someone's torso or center of mass apply the penalty to dodge DV and their next grapple attempt - this is how you establish an effective pin.
Successes spent to crush in a grapple are added to raw damage just like any other attack, so base damage factors in normally, along with any bonuses thereto. Clinches almost always have rate 1, so you can't apply damage to somebody multiple times on the same action.
Successes may also be spent to buy off loops. Even if you control the clinch, you cannot throw your opponent clear until this occurs.
Allies in a clinch can gang up to provide full teamwork, up to the limit of how many could attack in melee... unless the one they're trying to gang up on has some way to increase or bypass Rate and thereby grapple each of them separately.
When You Get Grappled
If whoever grabbed you isn't lightweight and/or cooperative enough to easily lift (e.g. mouse grabbing a human adult, human riding an elephant, warstrider hopping aboard a landscape-scale behemoth), your DVs get halved immediately.
On your next action tick, you find out whether they're fighting you or just holding on. If they're light enough for you to throw (e.g housecat grabbing a human adult, human riding a horse) and cooperative, no grapple is necessary, you can just carry them like a backpack. Might be taking a mobility penalty.
If they're fighting, that's when the opposed grapple checks happen. Need to declare flurries, too.
You sure about that?
Because I'm pretty darn familiar with 2e and as far as I can tell it provides absolutely no support for this playstyle.
Read the rest of that sentence you quoted, as far as the next comma, please. Second edition certainly provides
inadequate support, but at least lays a few foundation-stones and acknowledges such analysis as a valid thing to attempt,
The Codeless Code: Case 160 The Eye of the Beholder rather than dismissing it as impossible and absurd.
The Codeless Code: Case 177 The Tool-Shed What I want is, in a sense, a specific hearthstone which doesn't yet seem to exist.
The Codeless Code: Case 107 Babel By that metaphor, second edition, burning and festering in the center of a haunted battlefield, is the nearest demesne upon which some manse producing such a stone could plausibly be built. Third edition may already be set up as a fine manse, suitable for human habitation... but that manse's underlying aspect is incompatible with what I seek, and anyway the battlefield holds potentially useful scrap.
A lone, maddened exalt can build a level one manse in two centuries of grueling daily effort, given access to suitable materials. I have friends, and parts of the work have already been done, so perhaps I will be finished sooner.
