Can somebody please help me understand the grappler feat

[PitaChip]

I'm sorry if this is a re-post but I cannot for the life of me find a clear answer.

I'm so confused on how everything interacts with each other with the grappler feat and how restraining a creature using its features works.

I'm seeing:
Me: Advantage on attacks because grappling (grappler)
Me: Advantage on attacks because they're prone
Me: Advantage on attacks because they're restrained
Me: Disadvantage on attacks because I'm restrained
Outcome: I make normal attack rolls because Adv/Disadv cancel out???

Them: Disadvantage on attacks because they're restrained
Them: Disadvantage on attacks because they're prone
Them: Advantage on attacks because I'm restrained
Outcome: They also make normal attack rolls

Please somebody tell me I'm wrong somewhere because this is probably the worst decision for myself to use a whole action to restrain a creature if this is the scenario. Do any of the advantages I get override disadvantage?

[PitaChip]

To be clear, yes, I know everybody hates the grappler feat. I'm just asking how exactly it works

[Jamesps]

To be clear, yes, I know everybody hates the grappler feat. I'm just asking how exactly it works

The only real purpose to pinning an opponent with the grappler feat is if everyone in the party plans to gang up on that opponent and you have a some ranged combatants in the group. In that case you would want to pin them standing up (it doesn't require you to knock them down) so that everyone but you will have advantage to attack.

[PitaChip]

The only real purpose to pinning an opponent with the grappler feat is if everyone in the party plans to gang up on that opponent and you have a some ranged combatants in the group. In that case you would want to pin them standing up (it doesn't require you to knock them down) so that everyone but you will have advantage to attack.

That's not what I was asking, can you please tell me if what I laid out is correct or if I should be getting advantage or they sustain disadvantage or whatnot

[Millstone85]

can you please tell me if what I laid out is correctIt seems correct to me.

Except maybe one thing. While the feat says that you "pin" the creature, it doesn't explicitly mention the prone condition.

[Lunali]

What you stated is correct, but if you are only considering yourself you can either leave them standing, grapple them and get advantage or knock them prone, grapple them and get advantage while they have disadvantage. In the latter case, they can't get up until they break the grapple because grappling reduces speed to 0.

The restraining part is primarily useful for making them an easy target for your allies or could be used (with DM rulings) to take someone into custody if you're a city guard or the like.

[Chaosity]

Restrained also gives disadvantage against dex saving throws which can be fun if you have an evoker wizard

Pin down the big bad while the wizard fireballs everyone around you while the big bad rolls with disadvantage

All in all though, it's indeed not very usefull

[Maelynn]

Please somebody tell me I'm wrong somewhere

Well, there's no prone condition involved. So scratch that one.

As for the advantage/disadvantage cancelling each other out, yes you're right. But that's
a) only when you decide to use your action to pin down the target
b) a way to debuff the target for your allies to pelt them with attacks and/or DEX saving throw-inducing actions

The pinning down action is not useful for 1-on-1 combat, because of the cancelling out you already stated. That's what you use the grapple for, because then you get advantage and they don't.

[Sorinth]

Grappler is one of those feats where they created it early on adjusted some rules and then never readjusted the Grappler feat so it's almost completely useless except some edge cases.

Basically yes if you do spend the action to pin both you and the creature are attacking each other with straight rolls. The main benefit is you are creating advantage for your allies.

The Shove attack achieves much the same goals with the difference being it grants advantage only to melee attacks and disadvantage to ranged attacks. So if your party is mostly range they benefit from the pin action but are hurt by the Shove attack.