Why is Grappling good ?

[N810]

I see a lot of builds all about grappling... :smallconfused:

Isn't it just advantage on the next attack or something like that ?
at the cost of one of your attacks or was it actions..?

[Cespenar]

You reduce their movement to zero, which, if you follow by shoving them prone, results in them not being able to get up and suffer all the side effects of being prone.

[N810]

but isn't just hitting them with a weapon usually a better use of your turn ?

[hymer]

Grappling itself doesn't give advantage, and it also requires you have a free hand. What you can do with it is shove someone prone and then grapple them, or grapple them and then shove them prone. While grappled, a prone character cannot get back up, giving you and all you friends in melee advantage on their attack rolls against the prone character. And that may well be worth doing depending on party composition. And you obviously control that enemy, giving them disadvantage on their attack rolls, and keeping them from wandering over to your squishies, which are also nice touches.

It's generally not worth it on a kobold or goblin, but the more danagerous baddies can be quite a different story.

Edit: There's also the relative dependability of this trick with the right builds. Getting Expertise in Athletics means you'll be substantially ahead of the curve, and then you pick up advantage from a spell or ability - and now you're very likely to succeed on your shoving and grappling, more likely even than a lot of control spells (which may have other advantages, admittedly).

[Addaran]

Edit: There's also the relative dependability of this trick with the right builds. Getting Expertise in Athletics means you'll be substantially ahead of the curve, and then you pick up advantage from a spell or ability - and now you're very likely to succeed on your shoving and grappling, more likely even than a lot of control spells (which may have other advantages, admittedly).

You're kinda underselling how amazing expertise (and then advantage) is for grapples/shoves. Unless the DM makes custom monsters, they'll have at most +5 or +10 (IF 30 str). With point-buy, at lvl 5 you can already have +10. Eventually, you can have +17 (and then advantage).

That's cause monsters very really have athletic bonuses. As lvl 1 charactrer with 16 str is already on par with ogres/trolls.

[Waffle_Iron]

Grappling also plays well with terrain features.

Sure, in a 30'x30' white room, it might be better to just hit for damage, but most fights are in areas with lots of interesting things going on.
Drag your opponents into the fireplace while you beat on them with advantage. Throw them down the stairs, or off a balcony, or a cliff. If the terrain is cramped, like a narrow hallway or a boulder field Use them as an obstacle for your other opponents to work around.

It's a pretty nifty combat option.

[N810]

"Unless the DM makes custom monsters"

This might be my problem...
at lvl 16 everything seems to have free disengages,
teleports, or has legendary actions to get away.
Also we are already using flanking rules.

@Waffle iron
now those are some good ideas, I can work with some of those.

[RickAllison]

Additionally, many of the grappling builds are either built to mesh with the other players (Druids with Spike Growth, etc.) or to use it in a unique/interesting way. I ran a tall Artificer who would grab an enemy while Enlarged and hold them above him, which between being tall, having doubled height, and the 1.5X height for reach above, meant escaping his grasp was a 20 foot fall. 2d6 damage and auto-prone. Not necessarily efficient, but it comboed well with concentration spells. Others I have seen involve flyers or monk builds that would make super-jumps to suplex the enemy for higher damage and the auto-prone.

Other things to note include the ability to shut down flyers (great tactic for monks who can jump really high and climb walls) and protecting the squishies by restricting movement and shutting down actions. Remember that Multiattack cannot substitute grapples or shoves unless stated, so many creatures have to burn an entire action just to attempt to escape the grapple.

Grappling does very little by itself, but it combines well with a variety of other abilities.

[JAL_1138]

Strength-based Bards have a good trick where they can cast Cloud of Daggers on one turn and grapple on the next, holding the grappled character in the otherwise nearly-useless 5' square of the spell.

It also combos well with zone-type lasting AoEs like Spirit Guardians.

[ad_hoc]

"Unless the DM makes custom monsters"

This might be my problem...
at lvl 16 everything seems to have free disengages,
teleports, or has legendary actions to get away.
Also we are already using flanking rules.

@Waffle iron
now those are some good ideas, I can work with some of those.

Flanking breaks the game.

[Falcon X]

Grapple by itself isn't. It's what you combine it with. My party has become very reliant on it.

Grapple+Shove (to prone)= Can't move, can't stand up, has disadvantage against you and you have advantage against it. It will also be a harder DC than most spells to break free from if you are built for grappling.

Grapple/Shove+Shield Master=Same thing, but shove as a bonus action.

Grapple/Shove+Mage Slayer= Grapple keeps them beside you for Mage Slayer to have full effect.

Grapple+Move Action=throw off cliff/into fire/etc.

[tieren]

Are the "throw off cliff" comments based on a shove attack in a subsequent round? Just being grappled doesn't automatically mean you can throw the grapplee right? I know you can force movement to take them through hazards, but I don't see taking them off a cliff unless you can fly or something.

[Tanarii]

but isn't just hitting them with a weapon usually a better use of your turn ?
Depends if you think they're going to move and hit one of your allies, and you want to stop that. Or maybe you want to stop them from running away (because reasons). There's a bunch of reasons stopping movement might be appealing.

And that's before you get to moving them around yourself.

[Foxhound438]

"Unless the DM makes custom monsters"

This might be my problem...
at lvl 16 everything seems to have free disengages,
teleports, or has legendary actions to get away.
Also we are already using flanking rules.

@Waffle iron
now those are some good ideas, I can work with some of those.

there's your problem. If advantage is that easy to get, then nothing that gives advantage is actually good. Flanking in 5e is possibly the worst rule option available in the game, especially since it makes multiple weaker enemies massively more dangerous than their CR should allow.

Anyways, any grapple build I try to put together wants to have some way to get create bonfire which is a cantrip that uses concentration, and can deal damage to the thing every turn (for no action cost after the initial cast) giving you slightly better end damage even before trying to knock the thing prone.

[RickAllison]

Are the "throw off cliff" comments based on a shove attack in a subsequent round? Just being grappled doesn't automatically mean you can throw the grapplee right? I know you can force movement to take them through hazards, but I don't see taking them off a cliff unless you can fly or something.

Grapple them, walk them over to the cliff, and dangle them over by being on the edge and positioning them off the edge. Bonus points if you are Enlarged or are a bugbear from Volo's (grappling is a "special melee attack", and the bugbear's extra reach is keyed off melee attacks), as you can then dangle them far enough away that they don't even get a justified Dex save to grab the ledge.

Now I want to make a bugbear grappler...

[N810]

<--- also as you may have guessed, I play a barbarian,
so getting advantage is as easy as using reckless attack.
Ironically a lot of the grapple builds I see are using a barbarian chassis..?

I really don't find flanking game breaking,
it just makes the player and the DM more
involved in the movement part of the game.

[Tanarii]

<--- also as you may have guessed, I play a barbarian,
so getting advantage is as easy as using reckless attack.
Ironically a lot of the grapple builds I see are using a barbarian chassis..?
I thought Reckless Attack only worked with Attacks, not with Shoves or Grapples?

Raging would do it though.

[Foxhound438]

Grapple them, walk them over to the cliff, and dangle them over by being on the edge and positioning them off the edge. Bonus points if you are Enlarged or are a bugbear from Volo's (grappling is a "special melee attack", and the bugbear's extra reach is keyed off melee attacks), as you can then dangle them far enough away that they don't even get a justified Dex save to grab the ledge.

Now I want to make a bugbear grappler...

hold things too far from you for them to attack you, shield master them prone, use a spiked shield ripped off from a MM lizardfolk to slowly murder them. seems good.

[Contrast]

I thought Reckless Attack only worked with Attacks, not with Shoves or Grapples?

Raging would do it though.

You're right, though barbarians can obviously rage for advantage on athletics check.

I believe you've misunderstood his point though - why bother shoving and then grappling for advantage when you could just reckless attack. I tend to agree that grappling is a bit of a waste of time in the vast majority of situations and builds (shield master however gets all my love).

That said, I'm inclined to agree that flanking makes advantage a little too easy to come across.

[Tanarii]

I believe you've misunderstood his point though - why bother shoving and then grappling for advantage when you could just reckless attack.Oops, so I did. My bad @N810

[RickAllison]

I believe you've misunderstood his point though - why bother shoving and then grappling for advantage when you could just reckless attack. I tend to agree that grappling is a bit of a waste of time in the vast majority of situations and builds (shield master however gets all my love).

My DM is not one who seriously considers grappling when he designs his battlefields, so I think running through those is a good approximation for how it can be applied in general settings. So here are some of them:

1) A bandit and some zombies under the canopy of a misty forest. Grappling is garbage here, unless you were somehow intending to immobilize the bandit to extract information. If that was desired, grappling him up the tree and stringing him up could be beneficial, but I think this is a bad place for grappling.

2) A large castle entryway, with a staircase at the far end leading to two flanking balconies high up in the air. Zombies are pouring onto the main floor from side doors, while three archers upon each of the two balconies rain down arrows on the squishies without having to aim around the swarm. Anyone with the mobility to get up to the balconies and the ability to grapple or otherwise move the archers can force them down onto the main floor. Now they are suffering penalties for cover on top of the damage they took from the fall. The rest of the party can also now freely thwomp the archers and inflict disadvantage for being in melee. It isn't that far-fetched to me to have someone able to get up the stairs or climb the pillars and also throw the archers off. The check for climbing would be Athletics, so the grappler should be good at it.

3) A large ballroom with a swarm of zombies (it was a necromancer's lair!), with a large chandelier above. This became a brutal place for grappling in our campaign. The rogue dropped the chandelier on them for a hazard, then the druid threw down a Spike Growth to further slow them down. Grappling and moving the zombies left them perpetually stuck in the mess and suffering damage. We didn't take any damage that fight while engaging in melee. Grappling was great since we could leverage area effects.

4) Same room, but on the non-destroyed side, when the enemies were teleported in to catch us sleeping. Not good. The forces were spread out by the time we could close so the spells wouldn't help and there were no environmental hazards to take advantage of. Grappling fails here.

5) A narrow hallway with four archer-bandits in the center. Grappling up close would render the first two ineffective and gave cover against the other two. Hooray, but not game-changing. It saved hitpoints, certainly.

6) Necromancer invisibly teleports behind us in the same hallway as we prepared to breach the room he was in. Drops one high-level spell that outright kills the DMPC, knocks out the Arcane Trickster, and puts the rest of the party in critical condition. Then drops a second high-level spell to eliminate the Druid's animals, weakens the druid's bear form, and drops the paladin. Grappling would not help here, but many grappling builds would be well-suited to carrying the wounded and dead out of the hallway for healing and Revivify.

7) Re-match with the necromancer who is now down his best spell slots while we... are also heavily wounded but all alive. Has two archers and two flesh golems. Grappling would not be fantastic here. It would help to pin down the necromancer, yes, but it isn't fantastic. This is one of the times where grappling is helpful, but not game-changing.

8) 1v1 fight between a stealthed rogue and a jailer. Rogue won with little trouble. Grappling could have been useful (there was a nice fire trap nearby), but was not needed.

9) Mummies in a crypt. For anyone who didn't have a magical/non-weapon source of damage (only level 6 or something, so likely enough), grappling and rendering prone would result in more net damage than attacking.

10) Mummy lord. Nope, run like hell away from it. Grappling doesn't help, but neither did anything else.

11) Dragonlings under the castle, accessed by a narrow stairway. Grappling could have been useful for holding them in the hallway so only one was fought at a time, but we opted to use our drunk dwarf companion (the player just never came back) as bait and a distraction. Got everyone out while he became lunch. Win for grapple, though.

12) Ferrying boats down the river away from an unhappy dragon. Grappling: not useful.

More often than not, grappling was a better use than just attacking. Sometimes it was about equal. Sometimes neither are good options. Naturally this assumes someone is actually good at grappling, but odds were that being a good grappler (who should still have other options) had a positive impact. Most grappler builds are predominantly one class or another, especially Bard or Barbarian. If so, they can surely find some other way to spend their attacks or action when it is not a good option. But having grappling as an option appears to be fantastic. Maybe just one, though, as the times when grapplers are shut down it is a hard shutdown.

[Vogonjeltz]

but isn't just hitting them with a weapon usually a better use of your turn ?

Let's evaluate:

4 level 5 Fighters against an opponent, all use a Greatsword, none grapple and shove prone. For purposes of this, we won't even bother to address abilities, just basic weapon attacks and how advantage works.

Each Fighter has Strength 18 and deals 2d6+4 per attack at +7 to hit. Grappling and shoving prone an enemy would consume 2 melee attacks if both are successful immediately.

Against AC 18 enemy, the Fighters hit on a roll of 11+, or 50% of the time. 5% of that, would be a critical hit.

So a single attack averages 5.85 damage, two is thus worth 11.7 damage; and all four characters are estimated to deal 46.8 damage in a round.

If we expend the first 11.7 damage on instead imposing advantage on the attacks of the rest of the party, it improves the output to 8.9325 per attack based on the improved chance to hit and crit. That ups the damage per character to 17.865 (+6.165 damage per character) for a total of 53.595 from just 3 remaining attackers, a net gain of 6.795 on the first round.

Now, since the grappling character can't attack with a 2h weapon, we'll substitute in a longsword which they would use for future rounds, dealing 6.81375 per attack for 13.6275 damage per round, an increase of 1.9275 damage above what they would have dealt by just wielding a Greatsword against a non-prone target of that AC. Total damage for the party would be 67.2225 which is way up (+20.4225!) from the baseline of 4 characters doing attacks with Greatswords and not using status effects.

So, to summarize: It's much more powerful to use your turn improving the total damage output of the party in future rounds provided the target isn't going to die outright from being attacked. On very weak enemies, it'd probably better to just drop them outright, but the nature of 5e is that Hit points scale very quickly.

[SharkForce]

grappling can also be useful to just keep something in place.

also, it's pretty low cost for a lot of builds. it requires you to be good at one skill, which is already pretty useful apart from initiating grapples anyways.

but seriously, if you're fighting an ogre and a couple of goblins, the last thing you want is for the ogre to decide to just walk past the front line and bash the wizard's head in. for smaller groups of enemies, grapple is likely the only way most "tank" characters have of forcing enemies to deal with them instead of going after the high offense/low defense party members. a grappling fighter forces an enemy to deal with their probably higher AC and hit points (and their very slightly superior ability to self-heal without costing spells). a barbarian forces an enemy to deal with their damage resistance. without a grapple, many enemies will be able to ignore those aspects of characters with high defense, low offense (comparatively, that is... fighters aren't extremely weak offensively, but if there's one guy who can use hold person to lock down 3 guys and a second guy who can do 2d6 + 5 damage twice per round fighting against my party, i know who i'd rather have *my* party focus on. it isn't unreasonable for enemies to typically react the same way).

[Davemeddlehed]

but isn't just hitting them with a weapon usually a better use of your turn ?

That depends on how well your character can grapple. You can still attack while grappling(assuming you weren't wielding a two handed weapon, or sword and board) with a weapon. Plus, if you've managed to render them prone after grappling them, you, and everyone else who attacks the grappled foe have advantage on all attacks on it.

[metaridley18]

grappling can also be useful to just keep something in place.

also, it's pretty low cost for a lot of builds. it requires you to be good at one skill, which is already pretty useful apart from initiating grapples anyways.




Honestly this is the best argument for at least having an eye grappling. If you're building a "murder everything with my strength" barbarian, you're maxing strength regardless, you'll have advantage on strength checks in big dangerous fights, and proficiency in Athletics should be something you get from the character (because all Conan-esque barbs should be able to climb/jump/etc). So you should be really great at grappling by accident, and when it's useful you can do it!



Another interesting thought that may or may not work depending on DM: If you can lift the creature you're grappling and/or high jump, you can do some falling damage on your movement, knocking them prone without taking an action and doing a d6 or two for free.

This works VERY well with Goliaths, who are 8' tall by default and count as large for carrying capacity. So you can grapple, lift the creature over your head (if they weigh less than 60*your strength score), which happens to be 12' off the ground, and slam them down for 1d6 plus Prone condition, all in one action.

Some DMs may rule that the lift and slam should be an action/attack attempt and may require another Athletics check, but in that case it's just a Shove attempt with some damage as a rider, so it's not really much worse than the above.

As written though, I think the above works in your movement...it's not much different than throwing them off a cliff, just anywhere, and it requires some investment. Combine with high jumping throws for a pro-wrestler style barbarian.

[Waffle_Iron]

Here's one to think about.

If you grapple/prone a spellcaster, you haven't really prevented them from doing their thing.
If on subsequent turns, you Ready an Action, and define it as "When the wizard starts to cast I stab him to disrupt concentration", then you can possibly disrupt concentration during the casting. You might prevent the spell from going off at all.

I don't think there's a hard ruling on this, (but I'm always open to correction), so DM dependent maybe.
I can see ruling "You hit after the spell goes off" or "Make a dex check to hit before the spell goes off"

The GM in the game I did this ruled that since I was using my action to wait for it, and still had a (low) chance of missing, even with advantage, and had to roll damage (variable), AND the caster could still make his concentration check, that it was worth allowing it to function as I intended.

Of note, the character was a Barbarian/Rogue, so I was hitting with sneak attack damage (advantage + scimitar), but as I wasn't "attacking" during my turn, rage ended.

[Naanomi]

Hitting people mid casting doesn't do anything anymore, but holding weak casters down in silence zones is always fun

[Potato_Priest]

I have used a maximized grappler (Barbarian with a dip into Rogue for experienced, and monk so I wouldn't need weapons and could use both hands for grappling) in battle, and it is amazing. While your damage output is rather low, keep in mind that you are the barbarian. Even if you don't choose to knock your opponents down, all the ranged characters can just stand back and shoot while the enemy can only hit you. If they're a ranged opponent, they have disadvantage on all ranged attacks because you're grappling them. In general, grappling people also just reduces their tactical options immensely, as they can't move.

[RickAllison]

Hitting people mid casting doesn't do anything anymore, but holding weak casters down in silence zones is always fun

And using the DMG rule for disarming as an attack, you should be able to strip the caster of their focus or component pouch.

[pwykersotz]

Hitting people mid casting doesn't do anything anymore, but holding weak casters down in silence zones is always fun

True, but I get the feeling plenty of DM's (myself included) would roll concentration for that caster to see if they lose the spell. It feels like good gameplay.

"Expecto Pat..."
*PUNCH IN THE FACE*
"mrglrprb..."(spits blood)

[Contrast]

My DM is not one who seriously considers grappling when he designs his battlefields, so I think running through those is a good approximation for how it can be applied in general settings. So here are some of them:

Response compressed to avoid a wall of text.



1) A bandit and some zombies under the canopy of a misty forest. Grappling is garbage here, unless you were somehow intending to immobilize the bandit to extract information. If that was desired, grappling him up the tree and stringing him up could be beneficial, but I think this is a bad place for grappling.

Obviously the best part about grappling is that theres minimal investment at a base level (assuming you're a melee character and were going strength anyway) so areas where its not useful aren't a killer and areas where it is useful are a plus. Chalk one up for grappling. That said, I can't imagine my DM would ever make me take a grapple check for stringing someone up in a tree...


2) A large castle entryway, with a staircase at the far end leading to two flanking balconies high up in the air. Zombies are pouring onto the main floor from side doors, while three archers upon each of the two balconies rain down arrows on the squishies without having to aim around the swarm. Anyone with the mobility to get up to the balconies and the ability to grapple or otherwise move the archers can force them down onto the main floor. Now they are suffering penalties for cover on top of the damage they took from the fall. The rest of the party can also now freely thwomp the archers and inflict disadvantage for being in melee. It isn't that far-fetched to me to have someone able to get up the stairs or climb the pillars and also throw the archers off. The check for climbing would be Athletics, so the grappler should be good at it.

Here's where we start to diverge. So thats climbing up the balcony (possibly with a test and with readied attacks waiting for you at the top if they see you coming) plus a grapple, then probably another test to throw someone over the balcony. And you have to do that another two times? At which point the archers are still alive and well (well...maybe slightly ruffled from the fall - if the fall is high enough to do serious damage I would seriously question what your character was trying to do climbing it in the middle of combat while getting shot at). This is why you have ranged character in your party, not why you have grappling characters. Even assuming you pass all your tests it seems like you've taken longer to achieve a worse result than a spellcaster or ranged character could. Try investing in some throwing weapons if you're that desperate.


3) A large ballroom with a swarm of zombies (it was a necromancer's lair!), with a large chandelier above. This became a brutal place for grappling in our campaign. The rogue dropped the chandelier on them for a hazard, then the druid threw down a Spike Growth to further slow them down. Grappling and moving the zombies left them perpetually stuck in the mess and suffering damage. We didn't take any damage that fight while engaging in melee. Grappling was great since we could leverage area effects.

I'm can only assume grappling works very differently in our games based on what you've said here. I'm pretty sure my DM would look very askance at me trying to grapple someone into area of effect damage without suffering some myself. I'm also not clear how you were avoiding taking damage - enemies are not in any way inconvenienced in attacking you by being grappled. Unless you meant shoving rather than grappling though I'm still finding it difficult to understand how you were keeping someone stationary like that unless you were also in the AoE zone.


5) A narrow hallway with four archer-bandits in the center. Grappling up close would render the first two ineffective and gave cover against the other two. Hooray, but not game-changing. It saved hitpoints, certainly.

Are the archers in your games somehow completely useless once you close to melee range? Do they not have shortswords or daggers or anything? A archer you're holding close to you is an archer stabbing you in the face. It might not be his preferred modus operandi but he'll do it. I'm not sure how big your group is either but an encounter of 4 enemies would normally be over in a few rounds I expect. Spending a few of those rounds hugging your enemy rather than stabbing them gives them more opportunity to stab you.


6) Necromancer invisibly teleports behind us in the same hallway as we prepared to breach the room he was in. Drops one high-level spell that outright kills the DMPC, knocks out the Arcane Trickster, and puts the rest of the party in critical condition. Then drops a second high-level spell to eliminate the Druid's animals, weakens the druid's bear form, and drops the paladin. Grappling would not help here, but many grappling builds would be well-suited to carrying the wounded and dead out of the hallway for healing and Revivify.

...I don't feel like grappling gets to get any credit here.


8) 1v1 fight between a stealthed rogue and a jailer. Rogue won with little trouble. Grappling could have been useful (there was a nice fire trap nearby), but was not needed.

...would grappling have been useful? It would have prolonged the fight rather than shortened it by the sounds of it. Rogues also only get the one action so even attempting the grapple means a guarentee of no damage that turn plus no sneak attack plus no sneak attack next turn (unless you're a strength rogue and have taken grappler in which case sure - but you've invested pretty heavily in terms of expertise and a feat to do with more difficulty something that the swashbuckler can do for free). Seems the rogue would be better off trying to disengage and set up sneak attack next turn.



9) Mummies in a crypt. For anyone who didn't have a magical/non-weapon source of damage (only level 6 or something, so likely enough), grappling and rendering prone would result in more net damage than attacking.

I don't know the rules for mummies - I assume resistence to standard damage? Fair enough - I hardly see this as an argument for grappling generally though. Your point here is that you should grapple when your damage contribution is negligable. My argument is that your plan should hopefully not start with the premise that your contribution is negligable in most cases.



11) Dragonlings under the castle, accessed by a narrow stairway. Grappling could have been useful for holding them in the hallway so only one was fought at a time, but we opted to use our drunk dwarf companion (the player just never came back) as bait and a distraction. Got everyone out while he became lunch. Win for grapple, though.

Again, maybe this is just not seeing the layout and situation in the way it actually happened but I'm not seeing why grappling was useful. If the stairway was narrow could you not just have body blocked it? And if body blocking didn't work then surely grappling would only allow you to stop one and the rest would still rush past you?


I feel that some of the people arguing for grappling in this thread have DMs with a generous interpretation of the grappling rules - the only way I can see the action economy of grappling working out frequently is for a high level fighter or for peoples whose GMs let grappling mean more than the book says it does. You all also apparently fight immediately adjacent to high ledges much more often than I do :smalltongue:

This is one of the reasons I love Shield Master. Being able to shove as a bonus action is a beautiful thing and suddenly makes a lot more of these shenanigans much more viable in my mind. This does cause a little bit of a problem in that one of the common classes used to make grappling builds - rogues for the expertise - are also one of the main classes who get something useful to do with their bonus action every turn.

I've been a little dismissive of grappling but I would stress that I agree there are times when grappling can be useful. The beauty of it is that anyone strong with athletics can do it - you don't really need to specialise in it. Use it when its useful or feels cool and don't when it isn't or doesn't.

[Naanomi]

Basically grappling stops movement, and can limitedly force movement; and this makes a moderately passable system of battlefield control for physical folks who often don't have access to such things. Specializing in it is funny but not really practical for most purposes; though I will say my pet giant-crab is excellent at snatching people up on productive ways

[furby076]

Flanking breaks the game.

How so? Whats wrong with flanking

[RickAllison]

How so? Whats wrong with flanking

Flanking makes getting advantage trivial and a significant amount of abilities are designed to be good because they give advantage. Not only does it throw off CR by making swarms of lower-CR creatures even more dangerous, but it throws off the balance of classes because things like Reckless Attack and Faerie Fire become pointless. GWM and Shatpshooter become even more OP. It removes so much of the game, basically.

[Occasional Sage]

*snip*
For smaller groups of enemies, grapple is likely the only way most "tank" characters have of forcing enemies to deal with them instead of going after the high offense/low defense party members. a grappling fighter forces an enemy to deal with their probably higher AC and hit points (and their very slightly superior ability to self-heal without costing spells).


Have you looked at the new Fighter UA? There are some solid options for building a very sticky tank.

On flanking:

Flanking makes getting advantage trivial and a significant amount of abilities are designed to be good because they give advantage. Not only does it throw off CR by making swarms of lower-CR creatures even more dangerous, but it throws off the balance of classes because things like Reckless Attack and Faerie Fire become pointless. GWM and Shatpshooter become even more OP. It removes so much of the game, basically.

Very much all of this.

We have enough 3.P players that we used the flanking option right out of the gate. It lasted one session.

[DiceDiceBaby]

Well, I've seen some grapples done at our table quite impressively, but sometimes PCs take it too far: In the "How to beat Tiamat" thread (not the one on this forum, mind you), some players reading up on her stats had "Grapple her!" as their first reaction.

Of course, this entailed using Enlarge/Reduce to bring their Grappler to a rules-legal size to do so (Tiamat is gargantuan), but rendering an evil dragon goddess immobile by wrestling her Jacob-versus-Angel-style seems to be a viable tactic, and if it works in that encounter, it should work on most anything else.

[RickAllison]

Well, I've seen some grapples done at our table quite impressively, but sometimes PCs take it too far: In the "How to beat Tiamat" thread (not the one on this forum, mind you), some players reading up on her stats had "Grapple her!" as their first reaction.

Of course, this entailed using Enlarge/Reduce to bring their Grappler to a rules-legal size to do so (Tiamat is gargantuan), but rendering an evil dragon goddess immobile by wrestling her Jacob-versus-Angel-style seems to be a viable tactic, and if it works in that encounter, it should work on most anything else.

Was that person a Druid? Because the person has to be Large before being Enlarged because every growth effect besides maybe the potion from SKT has been written as using the effect of Enlarge/Reduce and spell effects don't stack.

[SharkForce]

Have you looked at the new Fighter UA? There are some solid options for building a very sticky tank.


sure have. i can't help noticing the disclaimer at the start that says it is both unofficial and probably not fully balanced though.

in the event that it ever shows up in an official form, there is no guarantee that any of those abilities will be the same. and in present form, it is only of any use at all to people who are allowed to use UA. that, right there, eliminates anyone playing in AL events, for example.

[Falcon X]

It is worth noting that Shield Master doesn't specify WHEN you do the shove action.
Thus, RAW, you can shove them prone using your bonus action and then grapple them now that they have disadvantage.

[Maxilian]

Have in mind that:

-Grappling is an special attack (so you could try it more than once if you have Extra Attack)
-Grappling is a vs check (so you don't care about the enemy AC for that)
-To Escape Grapple your enemy have to use its whole action (So no attack, no nothing and if they want to do something they can't escape)

-Grapple enemy cannot move (so no dash, no disengage, no movement)

[Foxhound438]

-To Escape Grapple your enemy have to use its whole action (So no attack, no nothing and if they want to do something they can't escape)


Note that a grapple ends if an effect forces a grapple apart- including shoving them 5 feet away, which only takes one of your attacks.

[RickAllison]

Note that a grapple ends if an effect forces a grapple apart- including shoving them 5 feet away, which only takes one of your attacks.

Further notes:

1) That would use the same ability check as the grapple, so the PC is likely fairly good at it anywah.

2) Multiattack does NOT permit switching in grapples or shoves unless specifically stated. It is a specific combination of attacks and separate from the Attack action.

3) Creatures can still use the Attack action and so use that to escape. Of course they don't usually have Extra Attack, so that would still be burning their entire action to do so (.

4) This goes out the window if they have integrated means of pushing the grappler away. That appears to be relatively rare, however.

[Zorku]

I feel that some of the people arguing for grappling in this thread have DMs with a generous interpretation of the grappling rules
Agreed. They're trying to sell it's strength though, so what you can talk your DM into allowing is fairly significant.

For any of this solo caster suppression stuff I'd point out that the grappler feat allows you to pin a target, which also reduces your movement to zero, but seems much more appropriate in terms of locking down spells. As usual some teamwork is more appropriate, as keeping a wizard in an area of silence accomplishes this without any DM fiat. Holding a beholder in magical darkness has much the same effect.


How so? Whats wrong with flanking
I played in a campaign that used it. The folks that knew faerie fire completely gave up on casting the spell and 2x deadly encounters were only able to threaten us if they included a major tactical advantage, on top of the bare stats being a big deal. Our combats eventually turned into a couple of mean creatures sneaking past the melee while a bunch of lowly skeletons overran the front line and dropped them all. None of us were quite happy without variety in the combat, but if you go near a bunch of squishy minions that fall in one hit that throws things off, having one big monster doesn't really match party performance, and settling on 3-6 enemies per combat gets really same-y fast. Because a DM sees that you can take on 1-2 big monsters way out of your league they usually try to scale the combats up, but don't realize quite how badly a bunch of kobolds that run up on the melee are gonna tear them apart, and then you end up staring down a TPK for what you thought was going to be a long fight that wouldn't actually deal that much damage.

There were lots of other problems mostly caused by flanking, but that group mostly played to have an excuse to get together and socialize, so they put up with really bad game balance for quite awhile, despite experienced GMs not being able to predict how their combats would go (I mean, like, take the normal amount of that and square it,) and really goofy behavior every time there was an obvious corner to abuse during combat. The game obviously played really differently if we had a wall of creatures that you couldn't get behind, and when you could just barely get behind them it meant the rogue was about to eat a lot of damage, but the rogue kept doing it because it was worth it, and that shouldn't make sense.

The more attention you pay to how balanced combats are, and the more you pay attention to players coming up with actually interesting ways to improvise in combat, the more you hate free sources of advantage.

[N810]

... Sounds like your players just spread out and didn't use team work.

[Tanarii]

The game obviously played really differently if we had a wall of creatures that you couldn't get behind, and when you could just barely get behind them it meant the rogue was about to eat a lot of damage, but the rogue kept doing it because it was worth it, and that shouldn't make sense.That part makes perfect sense to me. If you can get behind the enemy line, you can make your enemy a lot more vulnerable, but if you try to do it solo you're going to get creamed. Of course, players nowadays aren't used to forming combat lines, or are in such small parties they can't effectively do it anyways.

Not saying that I think the Flanking Variant is a good rule. I don't. I think it's terrible because it overlaps with all every other ability that provides advantage.

[Asmotherion]

Because some people like more to play with strategy, wile others prefear to smash everything they see that is "evil" with a greatsword. It's really up to what kind of play you want.

A PC can render himself very usefull for his allies if he is able to grapple prone a boss in a boss fight for example, as all attacks will have advantage against a prone and grappled oponent (within 5 feet). He also renders said boss unable to move as his speed becomes 0, and may prevent a Spellcaster from using somatic components, thus making him less of a threat to both the PC who is grappling and other PCs who deal with the possivle minions.

Sure, a spellcaster might use misty step. But there is no guarantee he will have access to the spell. Worst case scenarion, that's still a spell slot consumed, and unless his standard action is used on a dash action, he'll move 30 more feet, and the grapler will be able to keep up in one turn, and re-initiate the grapple on the next turn. Witch will be quite anoying for the spellcaster.

[Zorku]

... Sounds like your players just spread out and didn't use team work.
There was a lot of variety in how much they would spread out, depending on how numerous their opponents were. I wasn't keeping particular track of this during the games, but it doesn't seem different from the play I've seen under other DMs and/or without the flanking rule in play.

[GlenSmash!]

It's not always useful but when it is useful it's really useful.

When my Barbarian Grabs a foe and knocks it down it has few options and none of them are appealing. It can't move away from me because it's speed is 0, It can't stand up for the same reason. It can Attack my caster friends at disadvantage form being prone. It can attack me at disadvantage where even if it hits, will have to deal with resistance from rage, and my big bag of hitpoints. It try to escape my grapple and cost it it's entire action, and is not likely to succeed due to my having advantage on strength checks and a high Athletics score.

Oh, and Me and all my fiends wielding Melee weapons will have advantage against it.

And while it's possible to build a great grappler a Barbarian with Athletics Proficiency is a pretty good one right out of the box. it doesn't take any more investment to be good enough to grapple most things.

[MrStabby]

I haven't played a grappler yet - so I haven't had cause to dig deep in the rules but can you stand up whilst grappled? It costs you half your movement to do so, your movement is 0, so it costs you zero ft of movement to stand up? Have I got the rules wrong here?

[MasterMercury]

I haven't played a grappler yet - so I haven't had cause to dig deep in the rules but can you stand up whilst grappled? It costs you half your movement to do so, your movement is 0, so it costs you zero ft of movement to stand up? Have I got the rules wrong here?

"You can’t stand up if you don’t have enough movement left or if your speed is 0."
Straight from the PHB. If you're grappled, you have a movement speed of 0, and so you can't stand up if you're prone. Probably the best part about grappling.

[MrStabby]

"You can’t stand up if you don’t have enough movement left or if your speed is 0."
Straight from the PHB. If you're grappled, you have a movement speed of 0, and so you can't stand up if you're prone. Probably the best part about grappling.

Ah that makes sense. I assumed there was something but I was looking in the wrong bit. Thanks.

[MasterMercury]

Ah that makes sense. I assumed there was something but I was looking in the wrong bit. Thanks.

No problem. I had to explain it to my players as well. After that, I tended to put two heavy hitters in encounters, otherwise the one would get locked down and just never was a problem against the raging barbarian.
Wizards began to love shocking grasp and thunder wave as well.

[Garfunion]

If you want my opinion. The main reason many players use grapple is that it's one of the few "at-will" abilities that non-spellcaster can do instead of "i attack the creature with my weapon".
If the developers would of just added some kind of martial at-will cantrips, making combat more interesting.

[MrStabby]

If you want my opinion. The main reason many players use grapple is that it's one of the few "at-will" abilities that non-spellcaster can do instead of "i attack the creature with my weapon".
If the developers would of just added some kind of martial at-will cantrips, making combat more interesting.

I think this is true. The game needs more stuff like grapples and shoves, buy keyed off different skills.

[MasterMercury]

I think this is true. The game needs more stuff like grapples and shoves, buy keyed off different skills.

There are a few more in the DMG. Climbing on huge enemies for advantage, disarming enemies, stuff like that.
Breaking weapons and shields as an action used to be a thing.

[Garfunion]

There are a few more in the DMG. Climbing on huge enemies for advantage, disarming enemies, stuff like that.
Breaking weapons and shields as an action used to be a thing.

Unfortunately most combat oriented suggestions and additions in the DMG have a good chance at breaking the game. Which is why it is in the DMG for the DM to approve.