Well, grapple is a cool skill. Just do not understand - why orcs can initiate combat with grapple and thieves cant? I'd say sudden grapple should be even more successful then one in combat on prepared foe.

Also separate, sounds cool, but it is suppose to be used ONLY on PC. This very heavy limitation, considering you cant even practice it descently. Considering thieves poor ability to explore this could be a good addition to their skills if it worked on NPCs as well.
Any reason it is so hardly restricted? I hardly know much combat skills that are that hard to perfect. (assassinate?..)

1) You can use Grapple on NPCs, but not those significantly stronger than you. I could see relaxing this some (scaling penalty instead of a hard block), but then I'd also want to restrict it to NPCs that are also fighting you. (So you can't just hop into combat and steal the weapon of a powerful NPC while someone else does the real work.)

2) Grapple, in general, is fairly reliable for what it does. In conjunction with Hide and Blackjack in particular, it would rapidly be difficult to hold on to a weapon worth a damn if the thief didn't have to initiate and go bare-handed. Specifically, you'd probably see a lot of 'hit-and-run' usage, which gets old quickly if you're on the other side of the skill.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Actually one-round knife; remove dagger; grapple will be about the same as initiation with grapple in terms of "hit-and-run" tactic.
Actually it is no worse then strip.
I was speaking just about the nature of skill - it should be initiate skill by nature.

Also I was speaking about Separate usage on NPC. Really, it will be no more great then pull or ambush drive. Why restrict it to PCs only? I cant even practice it before trying in PK. And if I understand it right - it is the way to exploit grapple in the way we've discussed above (hit and run).

Actually one-round knife; remove dagger; grapple will be about the same as initiation with grapple in terms of "hit-and-run" tactic.

Not really. First, you have an extra round of fighting. Second, your opponent is going to get an in-combat command on you, along with a couple seconds to get it in, all while still armed.

That's very different than a thief popping straight out of Hide and grabbing your primary wield before you can do anything.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Grapple is fine the way it is. Quite honestly there's no reason to spam it, the minimum level you get it at is quite high which makes up for the fact that it is very reliable.

Two things I wanted to ask though:

Can you hard block grapple for cursed/nodisarm weapons? As it is now you take damage and probably won't figure out why without having seen the weapon before. Wouldn't it be better if you got the 'won't budge' like disarm and still got lagged while unarmed?

Something else that bugs me along the same vein is that if you can't wield the weapon for a certain reason, you shouldn't be DROPPING it. Then you're basically using a sub-par dirt/disarm. Can orcs/thieves please take things like AP weapons, anti-alignment weapons etc. into their inventory instead of dropping them on the ground?
Then you're still lagged for two rounds with no weapon.

Why does Separate require the victim to be grouped? There are situations where I want to get someone out of a certain room and realistically the skill works the same whether there are people around or not. Or is that just going to invite the Grapple initiate form Hide balance problem that was mentioned before if you are unarmed?

Is there a reason Separate can't be used in combat on the person you're targetting to get away from charmies beating on you or is that a balance issue as well? (Blindness should probably negate this and if it's done in combat the Grapple aspect should never happen.)