Clinching, grappling and fisticuffs has always been a pain in the rear with many RPGs. The rules are over-complicated to the point that require several checks to even make a clench. Even then, once the clinch is initiated, the resulting effects are overshadowed by the benefit of doing damage. In that, here is my approach in ZWEIHÄNDER: simple, easy and comparable as a usable "stunt" in combat. Meaning, you don't have to "grapple" someone to do something cool afterwards:

QuoteCHOKEHOLD
Perilous Stunt
You tighten the grip around your enemy’s neck, restricting their ability to move.

Cost: 1 Action Point
Effect: When Engaged with a foe, make an Athletics Test. If successful, your foe may attempt to Resist by making a successful Athletics Test or be made Choked.

While Choked, your foe’s Peril Condition Track immediately drops one step, and at the start of each of your Turns if you maintain the Chokehold. If the foe drops to Incapacitated!, they fall unconscious. It costs 3 Action Points to maintain a Chokehold, requiring no additional Skill Tests to do as such. Your Choked foe cannot use any Actions, but may attempt to Resist again at the beginning of their Turn to escape.

You cannot use any other Actions while you maintain a Chokehold. However, you may release a Chokehold at any time. If you are struck with a Called Shot or suffer an Injury while maintaining, you must relinquish your hold.

I happen to like the method of my own devicing (I think that I didn't read it elsewhere first, at least) the best.

Attacker can initiate a grapple (or some other maneuver) or do damage on a successful hit, the defender may attempt to nullify the maneuver, but nothing else, until his turn comes up next. Succesful damaging hit may not be nullified by the defender under any circumstances, only maneuvers.*

A houseruled Dragon Age maneuver thingy also looked good first on paper, but in practise it was shitty, for precisely the same reasons the original is.

Edit: *To see the precise thing, see my sig and the writing, "How I Made My Peace with SilCore"

I always want grappling/wrestling rules to be as simple as possible.  I tried to stick to that in both Arrows and Albion's Appendix P.

I just role-play fight scenes. Fight scenes in movies don't have characters talking about initiative and speed values and moves per turn. So I don't either.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;848558I just role-play fight scenes. Fight scenes in movies don't have characters talking about initiative and speed values and moves per turn. So I don't either.

That's a completely valid way to do it, if that's how you relate to fighting.

However, it's the opposite of how I relate to fighting. When I see or read or game a fight scene, I get really interested in what happens in a very detailed way. I watch everyone involved and think about what they perceive and how they act, and what happens as a result of their actions and circumstances, and it's really interesting to me, except when the creators don't seem to care and it doesn't make sense and/or it seems fake, or the outcome decided by what some storyteller thought would make their plot most interesting.

There are books and films and games where one of the main elements is about tactics, technique, equipment, and the details of combat situations and the experience of them, the decisions involved, etc. There are also films/books/movies and games where the combat is the main point of interest, and the rest of the plot is neglected and mostly just a context for the combat.

I can enjoy games that handwave or abstract combat details to nothing, but that tends to just remove something that could be interesting to me, so something else needs to be interesting for the game/film/book to be interesting.

There are some occasions, depending on the game and the situation of the fight, where I'll ignore the initiative rules.

I'm partial to the system in The Manor #8 Zine which distills the GURPS technical grappling rules into a fully D&D compatible version.

I haven't tried them as of yet but from a  read-thru they seem to hit the sweet spot in playablity and detail  

Also the fact that they are compatible with most any AC/HP D&D or D&D like game out there is a huge plus

My review

HERO/Champions is great at this as it is basically the default combat option that the game engine was designed around.

White Wolfs Adventure RPG for the Aberrant line was another good one for the down and dirty fist fights as it was modeled on the pulp heroes and serials.