Making a Wrestler build - Barb/Fighter/Bard or Barb/Fighter/Rogue?

[Ranor95]

So following the grappler's manual here: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468737-The-Grappler-s-Manual-(2-0)-Grappling-in-5th-Edition I've found myself very interested in playing a grapple focused character. Thematically they're going to be a gladiator that focuses mostly on extravagant techniques, smack talk and making the most of their 'arena'. With one hand for a first and the other gripping a shortsword. Basically? The Centurion from For Honor, complete with showing off and playing dirty.

Race-wise, I've settled on either a minotaur, or a homebrew race my friends and I have which has the doubled carrying capacity. Currently leaning towards the latter since that would help immensely with grappling then hauling guys across the grid. It's intended to be beast races only (As a sort of 'other side of the coin' concept for the campaign).

Class-wise is where I'm getting a bit muddled though.

I've settled on Barbarian as the starting class because of the saving throws, a high hit die, proficiencies and rage. Rage would give me advantage on all strength checks and contests right out of the gate, which is pretty good. As well as damage resistance and some decent melee options if grapple fails.

Fighter is likely the secondary class, for a fighting style (Defence or dueling), action surge and later on Battlemaster for the variety of techniques.

After that though I'm tied: Do I take rogue for lv1 expertise and some d6s on a sneak attack per turn, going lv2 for cunning action? Or do I take bard and push it to level 3 giving me jack of all trades, expertise, cutting words and a handful of spells?

For the rogue, sneak attack would be fairly consistent. Especially after I can grapple>shove prone in one turn then get stabby the next. However past lv2, nothing about rogue would greatly benefit me without massively sacrificing the other two classes (Which I rather need for extra attacks for extra grapples, more HP, etc). Additionally, I'm not certain how it would fit thematically with a wrestler/gladiator.

For the bard, while what I mentioned above would be very useful (Weaponised smack talk!), there's two problems: For a start, rage negates spellcasting. Not a problem for cutting words and the like. But it does cause the build to contradict itself in a way. Second, it requires a total of three levels to really come online and be worth the investment. To make the most of it would also borderline require more investment and possibly be even more MAD (As I need STR to grapple, DEX to keep my AC high and CHA to give me more cutting words and spells). It's a shame because Bard would be hilarious and a good fit for the showman/wrestler concept.

On top of that I'm not certain when to multiclass, what levels each class should be taken to, and so on. It's something the guide above doesn't really go over. So any advice or suggestions (Even swapping out fighter if you think it'd be an idea!) would be welcome.

Overall I am not expecting to be a fantastic damage dealer, but I'd like to make the most out of grappling and shoving! I'm interested in being forced to get creative, pushing enemies off cliffs or into hazards, or dragging enemies over to my friends for them to get stabby while I hold people in place.

[nickl_2000]

My humble opinion, go with Rogue. Barbarian Rage and Bard concentration/spell casting do not go well together. So, get two levels Rogue for expertise and cunning action. One of the best things you can do as a grappler is move people around the battlefield, and rogue will help a lot with that.


Also, not sure if your DM would allow it, but I did write a homebrew wrestling class for Bards that would be a lot of fun. Feel free to check it out and steal it if it seems fun and the DM will allow it.
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HkbhwvuJQV

[Ranor95]

My humble opinion, go with Rogue. Barbarian Rage and Bard concentration/spell casting do not go well together. So, get two levels Rogue for expertise and cunning action. One of the best things you can do as a grappler is move people around the battlefield, and rogue will help a lot with that.


Also, not sure if your DM would allow it, but I did write a homebrew wrestling class for Bards that would be a lot of fun. Feel free to check it out and steal it if it seems fun and the DM will allow it.
https://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/HkbhwvuJQV

Thanks for the tips.

Unfortunately homebrew classes and subclasses are ruled out. Largely because many of us are still new, and also because homebrew classes can be a... mixed bag. We allow homebrew races so long as they fit the setting and aren't obviously busted, usually using race creation guidelines to keep their traits in check. Your homebrew looks neat though and is worth looking at if we ever open up to homebrew classes.

[Man_Over_Game]

There's a few things I'd take a look into for your build. Tavern Brawler, for example, makes an excellent addition to any grappler.

And anyone considering Barbarian + Grappling NEEDS to look at the Battlerager Barbarian in SCAG, especially if they're planning on taking Rogue levels. Battlerager heals you every time you use Reckless Attack, and Reckless Attack activates a Rogue's Sneak Attack.

Generally, though, only 1 level of Rogue is needed for any grappler build, and can be mocked up as having experience working with handlers or other shady individuals, or perhaps it's an understanding of what dirty tricks you learned out of people practicing them on you, or as something a friend taught you to get an edge.

[stoutstien]

Don't forget the prodigy feat if you wish to skip out on rouge/bard lvs.
With it a single class barbarian grappler is amazing

[nickl_2000]

Thanks for the tips.

Unfortunately homebrew classes and subclasses are ruled out. Largely because many of us are still new, and also because homebrew classes can be a... mixed bag. We allow homebrew races so long as they fit the setting and aren't obviously busted, usually using race creation guidelines to keep their traits in check. If homebrew classes were allowed I would have instantly gone for the wrestler archetype someone made lol.

That is very common, and a good idea. The only reason I mentioned it was because you mentioned the homebrew races.

Personally, I would take the defensive fighting style since you are a controller not a damage dealer. That will help mitigate the fact that you will often want two hands free to grapple two people at once. As for when to multiclass, I would expect to see 1 level Barbarian (basically for rage), 2 levels rogue (expertise and evasion), then 3 levels fighter battlemaster.

Battlemaster is really, really good for a grappler. Being able to disarm someone, then drag them away from their weapon so they can't pick it up can neuter a melee enemy to the point of being basically useless. Or, if you already have them grappled, you can prone them and hurt them at the same time with trip attack.


After that, you can get a 3rd level rogue for an archetype, or 5 levels battlemaster for 2 attacks, or 5 levels barbarian for 2 attacks and lots of other goodies.



As a side note, sneak attack on the rogue only requires a finesse weapon. You can still attack with it using strength.

[Ranor95]

That is very common, and a good idea. The only reason I mentioned it was because you mentioned the homebrew races.

Personally, I would take the defensive fighting style since you are a controller not a damage dealer. That will help mitigate the fact that you will often want two hands free to grapple two people at once. As for when to multiclass, I would expect to see 1 level Barbarian (basically for rage), 2 levels rogue (expertise and evasion), then 3 levels fighter battlemaster.

Battlemaster is really, really good for a grappler. Being able to disarm someone, then drag them away from their weapon so they can't pick it up can neuter a melee enemy to the point of being basically useless. Or, if you already have them grappled, you can prone them and hurt them at the same time with trip attack.


After that, you can get a 3rd level rogue for an archetype, or 5 levels battlemaster for 2 attacks, or 5 levels barbarian for 2 attacks and lots of other goodies.



As a side note, sneak attack on the rogue only requires a finesse weapon. You can still attack with it using strength.



Cheers! And yeah, I'm aware that you don't need to use dex for finesse weapons. Personally I'm thinking of pushing Barb straight to 4 for an ASI. My STR is starting at 17 and a single point from tavern brawler would help round that off. Then I can go rogue for expertise and more mobility. Then fighter for more combat options. Or the other way around, depends if I'm struggling much with athletics checks. Sitting at 17 STR for 7 levels would hurt. A lot! (We're using standard array)

[IIzak]

Someone had already mentioned it, but Battlerager is an option I'd highly recommend taking a look at. I played one in a oneshot and basically went with one level of rogue for expertise and the rest was barbarian. 6 level of battlerager barbarian plus 1 level of rogue is already pretty sick, especially if you're sitting on an 18 or 20 strength. At that level while raging, you make 3 attacks a round at a minimum +7 if you only have a 18-19 strength, for a minimum of 1d4+6 from your armor. And whenever you grapple someone, you deal them 3 damage. Oh and no matter what, every attack you throw has advantage. And you have advantage and expertise in your +10 Athletics check, which should be enough to win most checks. Plus the aesthetic is just awesome with all your spiked and serrated armor.

[Krobar]

My grappler/pit fighter is a straight fighter, variant human with Tavern Brawler. There's also some home brew (pit fighter archetype, and a custom feat called "choke hold"). One of my favorite things about him - the grapple and shove prone actions. I refluff shoving prone as various judo throws and reaps when I describe what I do. The mechanic is the exact same, and the result is the exact same, I just describe it differently than most other people.

Gives him flavor. Just an idea for you flavor-wise.

This guy is a lot of fun to play.

[Wuzza]

Definitely go with Rogue for Cunning Action (Dash)

Need to get that PC's elbow in there. ;)

[tmjr6]

I have done this type of build before, and I went Barbarian into Fighter into Rogue. I did Variant Human with Tavern Brawler, but another really fun race you could do is the Simic Hybrid from Guildmaster's Guide to Ravnica. https://www.dndbeyond.com/profile/tmjr6/characters/9121308

[Makorel]

My pick for a grappler would be an Eldritch Knight Fighter. You go human, half-elf or half-orc for prodigy and then at level 7 you get Enlarge which gives you advantage on all strength checks and you can grapple creatures that are huge or smaller. Haven't had the chance to try it myself though.

[Quoz]

Played a Firbolg Battlemaster with a splash of rogue for expertise. It's great fun, especially if your GM will give the occasional damaging terrain feature (high windows/cliffs, bonfires, slowly moving demonic grain harvesters, ect)

Just be sure you have tricks other than grappling in your arsenal. Against grapple proof enemies or large hoards, you want to be capable of decent damage output. I got a lot of use out of shield master. Bonus action prone is great and the higher AC and better dex saves will come up a lot. Just make sure you carry several extra backup weapons, because you will drop/throw them quite often. Daggers are great because you can throw, get in sneak attack, then have a hand free to grapple.

[Ranor95]

Played a Firbolg Battlemaster with a splash of rogue for expertise. It's great fun, especially if your GM will give the occasional damaging terrain feature (high windows/cliffs, bonfires, slowly moving demonic grain harvesters, ect)

Just be sure you have tricks other than grappling in your arsenal. Against grapple proof enemies or large hoards, you want to be capable of decent damage output. I got a lot of use out of shield master. Bonus action prone is great and the higher AC and better dex saves will come up a lot. Just make sure you carry several extra backup weapons, because you will drop/throw them quite often. Daggers are great because you can throw, get in sneak attack, then have a hand free to grapple.

Absolutely. Even if I can't grapple I'm still a Barbarian/Fighter that can swing pretty hard.

[GlenSmash!]

Barb grappler is my favorite, but it does have a big drawback, it won't be able to grapple huge creatures. Bard or EK can get you Enlarge which will also grant advantage on Strength checks, but will let you grapple them big boys.

Still straight Barbarian with Tavern Brawler and Prodigy is my favorite.

[TyGuy]

My vote is for Bardbarian for the trash talking in combat and the utility out of combat. There are a lot of out-of-combat options for spells that are still useful.


HELLO! And welcome to the newest form of awesomeness that your mind HAS EVER ENCOUNTERED BEFORE!!!

That's right... I'm about to blow your mind so much it'll have a cigarette and call me in the morning. We're talking about a smooth-talking, trash-talking, pile of rage and muscles that uses his skills and prowess to put the hurt on his enemies, without dealing a single point of damage!

Yes, my swift-minded friends, we're building a Pro-wrestler!

There's one important thing you need to understand about 5e D&D -- Athletics is a combat skill. You see, if you look close enough, you'll find Grapple right under the Attack action section in the PHB. This wonderful little action utilizes the Athletics skill to impose problems on your enemies and that's what we're going to focus on here.

Grapple is a contested skill check of Athletics (Str) versus Athletics (Str) or Acrobatics (Dex). If the target fails, we impose 0 move speed on to the target - Note: We are not ourselves also Grappled, they would have to succeed on their own Grapple check, separate from this check. We can move at half speed, taking the Grappled target along with us with no additional check.

Now, that's all well and good. But we need to succeed on an Atheltics check first. Consider a level 6 character. We've taken 3 levels of Barbarian and 3 levels of Bard - This gives us a Proficiency of +3. We've got a Str of 17 (15 +2 racial) for a +3 modifier.

Now, with Bard we've got a juicy little class feature called Expertise. This lets us double our proficiency on any two skills. We will, of course, be picking Athletics. This is an additional +3 bonus.

If you're playing along at home, you've must've concluded that we're sitting at a cozy +9 bonus for Atheltics. But you're not quite there all the way. You see, we're a smack-talking, trash-dishing Pro-Wrestler, remember? We use Lore Bard's Cutting Words to impose a -1d6 on an enemy's Attack Roll, Ability Check, or Damage Roll. Guess what just happens to be an Ability Check?

Yep. Athletics. -1d6 averages out to -3 to the enemy's check, which is equivalent to +3 to our check. So we'll count it as such. So, +12... Seems pretty good, right? FOR A PANSY WHO DOESN'T KNOW HOW TO REACH OUT AND HOLD SOMEONE! We're not even done, Son!

Barbarian, the joyous pile of meat frothing at the mouth with the fury of a thousand suns. When raging, they get Advantage on Strength based ability checks. Did we forget what was an ability check? It's Athletics! You get Advantage on Athletics while raging. Now, people far smarter than me have figured out that Advantage roughly equals a +3 bonus on the die, which is fine. I like people that are smarter than me and I like +3 bonuses. So we're taking it as what it is, roughly +3.

This means you have roughly +15 to your Athletics check, if and when you need to Rage and/or use Cutting Words. PLUS FIFTEEN.

One. Five. 15.

Do you know what the Athletics check of a Balor is? The CR 18 Demon Lord of The Pits of Hell? Fire Whip and Giant Sword? You shall not pass and all that. That guy?

His Athletics Check is +8.

You almost double his Athletics check. You beat his check more often than not, and you're 12 Levels lower than his CR. Four level 18 characters should take him on, and you get to just reach out and grab him.

You will one hundred percent die immediately afterwards, but for one brief, wondrous moment you will have a VERY confused Demon in your hands.

So, that's all well and good. You get to grab people and pick them up and carry them off.. What good is that?

You see, when enemies aren't near your friends, they aren't stabbing your friends. You've just controlled the battleground with a skill check. Vicious enemy kills friend in one hit, vicious enemy never gets to get close to friend to administer said one hit. Easy, breezy, beautiful, Cover Bugbear.

But wait. Vicious enemy can still attack YOU. Barbarian 3 gives you Resistance to ALL damage (except Psychic) while Raging. This effectively doubles your Health Point pool, which is nice already since Barbarian. But that's not all...

Oh no, I'm never just done and it's never just all there is! You see, we've got other options to our combat control. The Grappled enemy is struggling, stabbing at things wildly, and generally being a nuisance to us. So we tip them over!

That's right. We're going to reuse the Athletics check by using it with the Shove Action. Look under Grapple and you'll find our next wonderful combat trick.

Shoving an enemy imposes the Prone condition. The Prone condition imposes Disadvantage on all outgoing attacks and grants Advantage to all incoming attacks made from 5ft away. The target can remove the condition by standing up - done by spending half it's movement.

BUT WAIT JUST A MOMENT YOU FIESTY LITTLE GOBLINOIDS! The target has no move speed because Grappled takes it all away! This means your new found friend literally can not stand up. They are prone from now until you decide to let them go or they beat you in an Athletics (or Acrobatics v. Athletics) check.

So your new friend is Prone, Grappled, Attacking at Disadvantage, and being attacked at Advantage. What do you do now?

GO GET ANOTHER FRIEND! You only Grapple with one hand! That means you can control two enemies at once, remove them from combat completely and make any of their attacks against you almost meaningless... Attacking at Disadvantage, against a decent AC, Full Resistance, and a High Health Pool? Sure, go ahead and swing that dagger - it tickles.

Now you've got two friends in hand! What do? Well... You've got options. You can take your new friends and walk towards the nearest cliff. Or you can tell them to fight each other and that you'll let the winner go. See if they'll go in on that... Like a pair of Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. Or, you could just walk them over to your Rogue. Show him or her where to cut. I'm sure they'd love to unwrap the present you got them.

"But Desdomen!" you say, "How are you carrying all this?!" Questions, you're full of them... Instead of Gummy Bears...

Let's talk stats. 17 Strength from before, remember? That gives us a Carry Capacity of 255. Except, we're a race that gets a +2 Strength... Let's run down the list:

Bugbear, Dragonborn, Mountain Dwarf, Goliath, Half-Orc, Orc, Tortle

Notice how I've highlighted classes that get Powerful Build? Treats you as a Large Creature, effectively doubling how much you can carry. 255 becomes 510. That's a lot of carry capacity, and that gives us normal movement, which is half-speed while grappling someone.

But, we can take it a step further. Push/Pull/Lift is actually double your Carry Capacity. 510 becomes 1020.

Did you know an Adult Grizzly weighs about 800lbs? Imagine being able to pick up an adult grizzly bear.

Now imagine being a level 6 Barbarian, taking Aspect of the Bear and Doubling your Carrying Capacity. Please note that this does not grant Powerful Build. This is a completely different bonus...

1020 becomes 2040. Imagine being able to pick up two adult grizzly bears and making them kiss...

Or don't take a Powerful Build class... It's not wholly needed. You do you, boo. Just be sure to take the +2 Str.

Stat wise, you want Strength as high as possible. Constitution is important as it builds HP and AC from Barbarian. Dexterity is nice for AC, so that should be thought about. You'll need Charisma of 13 to multiclass, past that it's useless for you. Intelligence and Wisdom are dump-stats for pure combat, but don't be dumb.

Now, stats out the way, you need class build, right?

Barbarian 1 gives you a lot of hit points and Bard is better Multiclassed.

Bard 1, 2, 3 is next, since you want to get to Expertise as quick as possible.

From there, Barbarian 2, 3 get you to Resist All on Rage.

Barbarian 4, 5 gives you your Feat and Extra Attack, which is huge for you since you can now Grapple and Shove in one round. From here, you have some options.

Barbarian 6 gives you the extra weight, which is handy but not wholly needed. More quality of life so you never need to calculate encumbrance again. Going further in Barbarian makes your Rage even better and makes you nigh-unkillable, which is a significantly choice build option.

Bard 5 gives you a d8 for your Cutting Words and gives you your Cutting Words back on Short Rest instead of Long. Definitely lets you use them more often to secure the grapples when needed. Going further in Bard gives you amazing utility using spells, not only from the Bard list but from any list with Magical Secrets. You're not quite as resistant as a Barbarian focused Wrestler, but you bring the utility outside of combat

Okay, Feats!

There's two relevant feats, and I use that term loosely.

Grappler. Grappler seems relevant because it says "Grapple". It is not relevant. It sucks. What benefit it gives, we can gain better with equal action economy and NOT imposing problems on ourself. If your DM is nice, he'll tack on a "Can grapple Enemes of Size two larger" to it, as it was meant to be.

Tavern Brawler. Tavern Brawler seems relevant because it lets us Grapple off of an attack with an improvised weapon. It's not relevant for that reason. Attacking is bad - Skills. Tavern Brawler is relevant for a whole different reason. Improvised Weapon usage can be a wonderfully fun thing. You know what a dead goblin is sorta-kinda like? A club. Right? 1d6 weapon right there, right?

You know what is sorta-kinda like a dead goblin? A live goblin.

Yes, my friend. If your DM is willing, Tavern Brawler gives you proficiency with your enemies, literally. Because you need to beat a mother****er with another mother****er.

You've got your build, you've got your combat style, you've got your awesomeness in a fanny pack. You get to be a top-rope jumping, trash-talking, hype-machine of a wrestler. All you need is some snazzy tights and you even get to play your own intro music! - u/Desdomen