Close Quarters Expert - 5e Feat

[solidork]

I decided to try my hand at a feat for grapplers that is a more substantial the existing one:

Close Quarters Expert

Follow Up - When you successfully initiate a grapple or shove a creature, you may use your bonus action to make a melee attack against that creature as long as it is still within your reach.

Reversal - When you succeed on an ability check to escape from a grapple from a creature no more than one size larger than you, you may choose to automatically begin grappling that creature without making a check if it is within your reach.

Body Shield - When you are grappling a creature no more than one size category smaller than you, you have half cover from creatures that you aren't grappling if they aren't closer to you than they are to the creature you're grappling.

[JNAProductions]

Follow Up is a small bonus for grapplers/shovers. One extra attack on turns where you do that.

Reversal is pretty mediocre. If you're good at grapples, you ain't being grappled much yourself-and nothing stops you from grappling them before escaping.

Body Shield is decent, I guess, but also how the rules work anyway. Most DMs (myself included) just tend to forget to apply Cover.

Overall, I don't see myself ever taking this feat. Maybe if the DM gave a bunch of extra feats (say, one extra feat for every ASI) and I was playing a grappler, I might take it. But then again...

4-Skill Expert (Athletics)
8-Lucky
12-Resilient (Bad Save)
16-Tough
19-Maybe this feat

Yeah, this feat needs to be reworked to be more potent to be worth taking.

[solidork]

Fair enough! I decided to be pretty cautious, when it comes to power level. I think you're underestimating the first feature, it seems especially nice for a Rogue - getting to grapple as a bonus action would obviously be very strong (I think) and this is kind of like that. Maybe you get the attack for even attempting, and you don't have to succeed?

You're right that most things don't try to grapple you, though there are quite a few creatures that only need to hit you to grapple without a contested check. How many of them are in the size range for you to grapple back? At least some of them? It's mostly meant to be a flavorful ribbon, though its important to note that escaping from a grapple takes your whole action so you'd have to wait until next turn if you wanted to grapple them back. Also, it combines with Follow Up to allow you to attack the same turn you escape from a grapple. One thing I don't like is that if you're bothering to escape from a grapple then you probably don't want to be in melee range of the thing that's holding you. Maybe a feature that makes it so you don't provoke attacks of opportunity from someone you've escaped? Automatically knock them prone? Things to consider.

I agree with you that in a lot of cases you should automatically be getting half cover but at a lot of tables you don't. What if this feature upgraded it to 3/4 cover? That seems a little extreme though.

[JNAProductions]

You replace an attack to escape a grapple.

That’s only your entire action if you lack Extra Attack.

And it’s good on Rogues, but only Grapple Rogues, who are already MAD.

I’d buff this significantly.

[Old Harry MTX]

First of all, you could maybe add a +1 strength?

[solidork]

First of all, you could maybe add a +1 strength?

That would be a simple way to increase the power! Might be an over-correction though.