Grappling the grappled

[Spankinstein]

Our wizard is currently being grappled by a swarm of zombies. Being a Moon Druid I’m thinking about Wild Shaping into an Earth Elemental and trying to grapple him away from the zombie swarm. Is this possible? Should this be a contested grapple check between myself and the zombies?

[JNAProductions]

Our wizard is currently being grappled by a swarm of zombies. Being a Moon Druid I’m thinking about Wild Shaping into an Earth Elemental and trying to grapple him away from the zombie swarm. Is this possible? Should this be a contested grapple check between myself and the zombies?

By RAW? I believe you can Grapple your Wizard friend and pull him out without any real trouble, provided you can reach him.

How I would rule it? I'd make it a check versus the zombies' highest Athletics, and the zombies roll with advantage (since there's a lot of them). Succeed against that roll, and you can pull him out (eating attacks of opportunity on yourself as normal), fail, and you can either move away without Wizard friend (again, with AoOs) or just stay stuck in there.

[BurgerBeast]

Yeah, in general:

If you grapple the grappler, you should just be able to move them away... which is forced movement and breaks the grapple. Works against a single grappler.

If you grapple the grapplee, oddly by RAW I think you could do the same. If you grapple him and move, you’ve applied forced movement, and the grapple should be broken... however I’m not sure how this feels to me in terms of fairness/balance... it does require the expenditure of an attack and some movement, which is something... but it also means the original grappler just loses the contest to hold on (which is true for any forced-movement situation)...

I originally thought it should be treated like a disarm attempt (skill contest), but I think I’m good with the RAW. You just grapple the wizard and use movement of drag him out.

The fact that you can only move at half speed while dragging him means you’re not usually getting out of range of the enemy’s movement, so they can move to you and attack or grapple again, generally, but with some coordination amongst the PCs, you can pull off a rescue.

I’m liking it better the more I think about it.

[JNAProductions]

Yeah, in general:

If you grapple the grappler, you should just be able to move them away... which is forced movement and breaks the grapple. Works against a single grappler.

If you grapple the grapplee, oddly by RAW I think you could do the same. If you grapple him and move, you’ve applied forced movement, and the grapple should be broken... however I’m not sure how this feels to me in terms of fairness/balance... it does require the expenditure of an attack and some movement, which is something... but it also means the original grappler just loses the contest to hold on (which is true for any forced-movement situation)...

I originally thought it should be treated like a disarm attempt (skill contest), but I think I’m good with the RAW. You just grapple the wizard and use movement of drag him out.

The fact that you can only move at half speed while dragging him means you’re not usually getting out of range of the enemy’s movement, so they can move to you and attack or grapple again, generally, but with some coordination amongst the PCs, you can pull off a rescue.

I’m liking it better the more I think about it.

How dare you rule differently than me! You must die! :P

As one might be able to guess, I prefer my ruling, but BurgerBeast's is perfectly reasonable too.

Also, a disclaimer I forgot to put in my first post: Your DM's ruling is the most important one. You can reference the rules and make your arguments, but if your DM chooses to rule a certain way and it's not how you like, you're stuck with it. Hopefully your DM will listen and be amenable to your words, but ultimately, it is their decision.

[stoutstien]

You're probably just better off shoving The wizard away which would break all the grapples at once. Could also use any spell that also has force movement like thunderwave

[Spankinstein]

Well the earth elemental has 10’ reach so I won’t provoke any OAs. The wizard is also concentrating on a Sunbeam spell, which the zombies failed their save, meaning they are blinded at the moment. Due to our locations shoving isn’t a viable option. I want to get the wizard behind me.

[HappyDaze]

We've been using Thorn Whip to pull people out of tough grapples. It's sometimes worth taking the damage to prevent some of the Restained/swallowed things associated with some grapples.

[Spankinstein]

Thought about that too. But I’m trying to have the wizard maintain concentration on sunbeam.

[sambojin]

If you grabbed Athletics (most Moon druids probably should), you might be able to do it with an Air Elemental. 90' flight will get you out of range of them pretty easily, even at half speed.

Only +2 on your strength, but with your +4'ish proficiency from athletics, you've got a good chance of getting him out.

Honestly, your Wizard has Shield doesn't he? Or a teleport? I wouldn't worry about him too much. They probably won't hit him much, or be able to make him drop concentration easily. They simply don't hit hard enough. Go for one of the fun options below :)


(If you have it prepared, cast Tidal Wave on a heap of them. You can angle it whatever way you want within 120', and make it smaller if needed. It probably won't kill them at full HP, but it'll kill some (18 damage on average, unlikely to make the 5+damage con save if you hit the 22dmg kill roll). Oh, and try and get your DM to let you upcast Tidal Wave from now on, +1d8 damage per spell level. It's really handy for stuff like this if you can scale the damage.)

(Or cast lvl5 Call Lightning if you're outside. Keep kabooming anyone that gets near the wizard. 5' radius isn't much, but you'll blast three+ zombies a turn if its a massive horde. It's not like you can't bonus action into an air elemental, then fly somewhere useful the same turn anyway)

(or you can just cast Conjure Animals and charge the bejesus out of anyone with a hand on your friend. A lvl5 cast for 16 cows or elks is scary as buggery. Or just plonk down four giant squid near him and go into grapple-war-mode. Or just summon in a couple of giant eagles and let them pick him up. Double or quadruple the chances from a lvl3 or 5 spell slot to grapple him out of there, but you didn't even have to get your hands dirty doing it. Hell, giant owls could do it, with flyby and eight of them trying it. Or four warhorses. Or four apes, one to grapple him out, three more to make a shield wall once he's back 15'. Don't worry about them getting sunbeamed, not really your problem)

(since your wizard is casting Sunbeam, and thus lvl11 or higher, cast Polymorph on him. He can be a T-rex. If he can't escape a grapple as a massive dinosaur, it's not your problem. They probably can't actually grapple huge creatures anyway, so it's an auto-break. He is a dinosaur with a really bad lazer, that can simply walk away from them, that you can turn into a not-dinosaur with a really good lazer, whenever you want. Or turn him into a Giant Ape. With +6Strmod, +9Athletics, and can't be grappled by medium creatures anyway. He can walk away, and either use his "slight less bad than Dino-lazer", or throw an enormous rock, or punch-explode two zombies from 10' away on the way out. I'm sure he'll be fine)

(or cast Sunbeam yourself, for some double-Kamehameha action. Then use your bonus action to turn into an elemental of your choosing. Then move/ fly/ earthglide. Because, dammit, he's a lvl11+ Wizard, if he don't got this, then that's his bad luck. You got this, easy :)
If there's one thing a wizard can't do, it's cast Sunbeam, and a non-concentration 90' flying speed "spell" (air elemental wildshape) with a bonus action, that gives him prone/ paralyze/ restrain/ grapple condition immunity so he can always fly, and non-magical b/p/s damage resistance (to help with concentration), along with a spare 90HP, all in one turn. Do your thing, just to show the difference between wizards and Druids in real situations)

(you're a lvl10+ Moon Druid. You've got options. Way more than I just listed. Wildshape is only half of what you do)

[Spankinstein]

I’m concentrating on a fire elemental that I’ve summoned at the moment, so I need to maintain that. Don’t know if he has shield or teleport, so I’m going with the assumption that I need to save him. We are facing two swarms of zombies and a trio of what might be vampires/ghouls. Not sure. But we’ve done a ton of damage to the zombies and they are still going strong.