Defending Against a Grapple & Proficiency Switching

[Levyria]

First time posting, apologies if this topic belongs in a different board or has been answered elsewhere.

I am looking for clarification on defending against Grapple maneuvers, specifically in the case of a successful Grab in the first tempo and a follow-up Grapple maneuver in the second.

Grappling states that manuevers are made with the Brawling proficiency, and that the defender in a Grapple is limited specifically to the three Grappling defenses. The rules for calculating CP during a refresh also state that the proficiency chosen for that specific refresh cannot be changed mid-tempo.

Does this imply that someone using a different proficiency than Brawling who gets grabbed in the first tempo is unable to defend against the follow up Grapple maneuver in the second tempo, since they are not using the Brawling proficiency? Just looking for some clarification there.

[thirtythr33]

Welcome to the forums!

They use whatever pool remains, as normal.

If you had a pool of 10 with polearms and used 5 dice trying (and failing) to defend a grab in tempo 1, and then in tempo 2 they tried to gouge you you would still have 5 dice remaining (minus whatever you lose to impact) to defend with any grappling maneuver you like. Just because the pool was composed from polearm proficiency at the start of the round does not preclude it from being used for any other maneuver.

On the following round, you will create a new pool using the Brawling proficiency instead of polearms if you are still in the grapple then. Likewise, if you make the pool using Brawling and the grapple is broken, you could use the remaining pool for any weapon attack as normal. Maneuvers check the state (ie, grapple or not) as well as what weapons are currently in hands but do not check what proficiency the combat pool was comprised of.

[Levyria]

That clears it right up for me, thank you very much!