[OPTIMIZATION] [MATH] Minion mass-grappling shenanigans.

[Deathtongue]

Grappling plus shoving prone is a VERY powerful tactic, especially when it doesn't come out of your pool of primary actions. When minion damage starts looking not-so-hot (not so much the base damage, but the accuracy) you kind of want to start looking for alternatives. The problem is that, well, your creatures kind of stink at it going by the raw numbers. So this doesn't occur to a lot of necromancers, including me until I read a few threads on grappling. So I think this tactic deserves another look.

So let's take the humble Animate Dead spell. Zombies grapple and shove at a meager +1; Skeletons at a +0. Bounded accuracy helps a lot in this regard; surprisingly, a lot of monsters less than huge size, including melee bruisers, don't have Athletics proficiency. The Marilith, Androsphinx, Iron Golem, Planetar, Solar, and even Pit Fiend do not have it, with their Athletics score hovering around +6-8.

Now let's take the probability of a Zombie beating, say, the Pit Fiend's +8 to Athletics on a grapple check. The first number inside of a bracket is the zombie's die roll.

{20, 12}, {20, 11}, {20, 10}, {20, 9}, {20, 8}, {20, 7}, {20, 6}, {20, 5}, {20, 4}, {20, 3}, {20, 2}, {20, 1} (12 ways a zombie can beat a +8 monster on a 20)
{19, 11}, {19, 10}, {19, 9}, {19, 8}, {19, 7}, {19, 6}, {19, 5}, {19, 4}, {19, 3}, {19, 2}, {19, 1} (11 ways)
{18, 10}, {18, 9}, {18, 8}, {18, 7}, {18, 6}, {18, 5}, {18, 4}, {18, 3}, {18, 2}, {18, 1}
{17, 9}, {17, 8}, {17, 7}, {17, 6}, {17, 5}, {17, 4}, {17, 3}, {17, 2}, {17, 1}
...
{10, 2}, {10, 1}
{9, 1}

Every other outcome (such as a 10 for the zombie and a 3 for the Pit Fiend) is a failure for the grapple check.

So out of a total possible 400 outcomes, there are 78 of them in which the zombie will beat the +8 Athletics/Acrobatics Monster for a 19.5% chance. If this is a skeleton, 66 outcomes out of 400 for a 16.5% chance.

Now let's say we're throwing 6 zombies (or skeletons) at a monster. One of them attempts to grapple, if the previous one succeeded, the second one shoves prone (or vice-versa). If the previous one failed, the next one attempts to grapple or shove. This goes down for each monster, with no zombies or skellies attempting repeat action.

This is a pretty simple binominal distribution function. 6 Zombies have a 33.4% chance of Grappling + Shoving Prone, 6 Skellies have a 25.9% chance. 6 Zombies have a 72.8% chance of at least one of grappled -OR- shoved proned, 6 Skeletons have a 66.1% chance. In other words

1 grapple or prone with zombies, 6 attempts: 72.8%
1 grapple or prone with skellies, 6 attempts: 66.1%
Grapple AND prone with zombies, 6 attempts: 33.4%
Grapple AND prone with skellies, 6 attempts: 25.9%

And remember, this is against a pit fiend! There are few large or smaller monsters with an Athletics (or Acrobatics) check that high. There are creatures with higher checks than that, but you probably can't grapple them anyway. Of course, there are plenty of complications to go along with that (like a Pit Fiend auto-succeeding on imposing the Frightened condition, which will tank their chances of grappling after the first swarm) but that's the basic idea.

So what about having your minions use the Help action to help other creatures grapple? Sadly, this doesn't increase your chances all that much, IF IT DOES. If the base chances of grappling that +8 Monster is 19.5%/16.5%, getting advantage on it (formula is 1 - (1 - p) (1 - p) = 2p - p^2) bumps that up to a hefty 35.2%/30.3% chance. However, you can only Help one creature per turn. So it reduces your actual die roll attempts by half. Again putting it through the binominal distribution formula, your final chances are:
1 grapple or prone with zombies, help action, 3 attempts: 72.8%
1 grapple or prone with skellies, help action, 3 attempts: 66.1%
Grapple AND prone with zombies, help action, 3 attempts: 28.4%
Grapple AND prone with skellies, help action, 3 attempts: 22.0%

If you want to combine grapple and shove attempts in order to minimize total dice rolling (and table annoyance), you're not hurting your final chances all that much so feel free to do it for a table efficiency / gameplay effectiveness tradeoff.

The point I want to get across is that even with minimal investment (3 3rd-level Animate Dead spell slots from someone with the basic spell, a bonus action now and then with the command 'pin so-and-so to the ground and devour/skewer them') you have a very good chance round-to-round grappling creatures that can be grappled. And it can get much better! For example, using the Hex spell to curse a foe's Strength check. Go nuts with it.

[Quoz]

Evil GMs take note, this is how a goblin dogpile works.

Not an ineffective use of the spell and certainly an interesting tactical option, turning a swarm of your own back on the big bad.

There are a few issues here that may mitigate somewhat (or balance out, depending on your point of view.)

First, I don't care what your charisma is your whole party will probably auto fail any persuasion attempts on anyone who sees this. They may get a boost to intimidate though so that's something.

Second, corpses are a finite resource. Even if you're stuffing a portable hole at the plague pit enough well placed fireballs or a spirit guardians spell will tear through your hoard like a paper sack.

Third, there is always the possibility of a bigger, badder necromancer taking control of your hoard.

[8wGremlin]

I tried something similar with giant owls (conjure animals) vs a dragon.
I had G.Owls fly in and attempt to grapple whilst other G.Owls did the help action, it worked well forcing the dragon down to the ground once grappled and prone

Have you considered the help mechanic, in your math?
Does it have a noticeable impact?

[Deathtongue]

Giant owls are a great choice, mostly because you can summon a whole peck of them, they get flyby attack (getting around the space issues of most grappling shenanigans), but mostly because they're large in size.

Crocodiles are another good choice for mass grapplers, because unlike most minion grapplers they can grapple on an OA. Meaning that they actually provide some control.

That said, my favorite choice would still be skeletons/zombies, mostly because they don't take up your precious concentration slot and you can sweeten the pot with things like nets (it might be better for someone else to use it, though), caltrops, manacles, and ball bearings.

---

The help mechanic generally makes grappling slightly less likely to succeed unless you're making a huge number of checks or the base probability is low (like 5% chance low). With zombies and skellies trying to grapple +8 Athletics/Acrobatics monsters, the break-even point is about 16 versus 32 checks, which isn't even possible in-play unless you're doing ridiculous conga-line shenanigans.

However, the help mechanic doesn't reduce your probability all that much. We're talking 3-5%. Which is really important if you're trying to speed up play, because now we're talking about for 6 zombies 6-9 total rolls (depending on if you roll both dice at once) instead of 12. If your campaign is riding on that Athletics check, I'd roll each attack out, but for the most part, combine them for the sake of peoples' sanity.

One other thing about using the Help action: while multi-shoving is mostly (but not completely; murder pinball and all) redundant, multi-grappling is not. Probably the most common way for monsters to escape grapples, especially if they have multi-attack, is just to paste your minions. If you have multiple minions grappling, their chances of escaping can drop quite a bit.

[Zanthy1]

Evil GMs take note, this is how a goblin dogpile works.

Whelp I know what I am doing the next one shot I run.

Players charge into the goblin village looking to slaughter and plunder. Then they hear it, the shrill battle cry of the goblin chief. "DOGPILE!" All the goblins, and I mean ALL the goblins (not just the men, but the women and children too) charge and tackle the PCs. Some will take the help action. My PCs won't stand a chance.

A note, I would make my PCs low level, low enough that none of those crazy AOEs are available. (so like, 3rd level tops, possibly only 2nd).

[Unoriginal]

Whelp I know what I am doing the next one shot I run.

Players charge into the goblin village looking to slaughter and plunder. Then they hear it, the shrill battle cry of the goblin chief. "DOGPILE!" All the goblins, and I mean ALL the goblins (not just the men, but the women and children too) charge and tackle the PCs. Some will take the help action. My PCs won't stand a chance.

A note, I would make my PCs low level, low enough that none of those crazy AOEs are available. (so like, 3rd level tops, possibly only 2nd).

They could also say "SHOOT THEM".

You don't charge into a goblin village at 4-6 people and expect to not die, unless you are above lvl 14.

[Potato_Priest]

If all you care about is a single grappling success and you have two animals with equal stats, there is no difference between the help action and another grappling attempt.

Either way, you roll 2d20s + the creature's strength modifier, against the same enemy average roll, resulting in what should be an about equal chance of success.

The advantage of making more checks as opposed to taking the help action is that once a single grapple has succeeded, the other animals can choose to go for more grappling, imposing more actions upon the grapplee if they want to escape, or they can switch to shoving the creature prone. It gives greater flexibility and a higher potential number of grapplers.

[strangebloke]

On the evil DM side, Chitine's are more effective than goblins at killing folks, at least for the cost in effective CR.

4 PCs vs. 8 Chitines is a deadly encounter. The Chitines each have a +4 or +5 to athletics, I can't remember which, and they each get three attacks for four damage, any of which can be exchanged for a grapple or shove. So that's roughly 6 attempts per party member, and they'll probably have better than even chances of beating them on each roll.

Have them jump out at the party from a bunch of tunnels, grab the gnome wizard, pull him off into the tunnels...