what are the best grapple builds now?

[Rfkannen]

Tashas gave us a lot of stuff useful for grapplers. A way for characters of all races expertise in athletics, an unarmed fighting style, a unarmed barbarian, and a fighter that can grow huge.

With all of these things, what do you think are the best grapple builds in 5e?

[DarknessEternal]

You really don't have to be that good at grappling to abuse it. Just proficiency bonus alone makes you almost always beat monsters.

Grappling isn't a full time job. Once you've got a monster grappled, it's basically over until one of you dies.

[BamBam]

You need Spike Growth and movement speed to convert grappling ability to awesome. What have you got?

[Dork_Forge]

I feel like whatever the full build looks like, the strongest base for it would be a Battle Rager Barbarian with the Unarmed style to get the most out of the actual grapple.

[BamBam]

How easy is it to get scrolls?

[Ir0ns0ul]

Although the 1d4 bonus damage for grappled creatures is just once now, I feel the Unarmed Fighting Style is better since it’s a 1d8 always-on as long as you are not wielding any weapon.

Battlemaster Fighter with Skill Expert (Athletics), Unarmed FS, Grappling Strike and Disarming Attack. You can add one single level of Barbarian if you feel bold. And you don’t need to be vHuman.

[bendking]

Although the 1d4 bonus damage for grappled creatures is just once now, I feel the Unarmed Fighting Style is better since it’s a 1d8 always-on as long as you are not wielding any weapon.

Battlemaster Fighter with Skill Expert (Athletics), Unarmed FS, Grappling Strike and Disarming Attack. You can add one single level of Barbarian if you feel bold. And you don’t need to be vHuman.

I would do something similar, only with 4 levels of Battlemaster and 6 in Beast, using Goliath/Simic Hybrid as a race.

I don't know if this is the strongest option, but it seems to be among the best to me.

[ff7hero]

I think Rune Knight would be the way to go for maximum grapple investment, just so you can eventually grapple Gargantuan or smaller creatures.

[Lunali]

Although the 1d4 bonus damage for grappled creatures is just once now, I feel the Unarmed Fighting Style is better since it’s a 1d8 always-on as long as you are not wielding any weapon.

Battlemaster Fighter with Skill Expert (Athletics), Unarmed FS, Grappling Strike and Disarming Attack. You can add one single level of Barbarian if you feel bold. And you don’t need to be vHuman.

Even with the fighting style I feel like I would still end up using a d8 weapon most of the time anyway since the d4 doesn't require that you be unarmed.

[stoutstien]

RK 7 just seems to good to pass up. Combining giant might and storm rune takes two turns to full come online but you have advantage on all grapple checks and can give disadvantage to a target with a reaction. Snag a level of peace cleric and the skill expert feat and make the DM just stop rolling against you.

As far as fighting styles, I'm not sure unarmed really is worth it. I'd be tempted to take superior tech for tripping on an attack once a SR.

[GuestEleven]

Obviously human is a must and fighter is excellent. I'd say battle master with the unarmed style. Pick up the Grappler feat and Tavern Brawler so you can grapple as a BA and you have advantage on attacks against targets grappled by you. Give people a plate gauntlet to the mouth or smash you head into theirs until they drop.

[stoutstien]

Obviously human is a must and fighter is excellent. I'd say battle master with the unarmed style. Pick up the Grappler feat and Tavern Brawler so you can grapple as a BA and you have advantage on attacks against targets grappled by you. Give people a plate gauntlet to the mouth or smash you head into theirs until they drop.

The grapple feat is borderline useless. Just shove them prone and get the same effect without restraining yourself.saves a feat and your action .

[sophontteks]

Beast barbarian has taken the crown from my totem barbarian. Previously I took totem with eagle bear eagle. The extra movement speed allowed me to get in, grab a priority target, and drag them towards the nearest hazard. But the shifter barbarian gets a ton of great grappling stuff to build around.

The bite and tail attack remove the need for tavern brawler, and increases our sustainability. We no longer sacrifice our damage to grapple two targets, and at level 6 we gain the ability to jump equal to our athletics roll. Given that we will have expertise in athletics with max strength and advantage, we are easily jumping high enough to deliver 10-20 feet of fall damage every round. The athlete feat is better then ever.

In both long and high jump we can jump equal to our movement speed now, so the totem barb's level 14 eagle option is now redundant. Mobile is looking better then ever.

[GuestEleven]

The grapple feat is borderline useless. Just shove them prone and get the same effect without restraining yourself.saves a feat and your action .

Hardly. The pin isn't the highlight, rather the advantage is. I can see niche situations where the pin would be desirable, but it can be quite common to not have an ally or other circumstance providing advantage. Not to mention a shove attempt wastes an attack or entire action if you're low level and arguably has a lower chance of success. This build honestly has more feats than necessary available, spending a feat on Grappler is hardly a set back. One from human and up to 8 from Fighter. Unless you're leaning into another gimmick this path is perfectly fine.

[stoutstien]

Hardly. The pin isn't the highlight, rather the advantage is. I can see niche situations where the pin would be desirable, but it can be quite common to not have an ally or other circumstance providing advantage. Not to mention a shove attempt wastes an attack or entire action if you're low level and arguably has a lower chance of success. This build honestly has more feats than necessary available, spending a feat on Grappler is hardly a set back. One from human and up to 8 from Fighter. Unless you're leaning into another gimmick this path is perfectly fine.

Eh. Hard sell IMO. Advantage is easy to get and delaying str progression for it seems like a bad move.

[Awrysight]

Tashas gave us a lot of stuff useful for grapplers. A way for characters of all races expertise in athletics, an unarmed fighting style, a unarmed barbarian, and a fighter that can grow huge.

With all of these things, what do you think are the best grapple builds in 5e?

I think finding 'the best build' is pretty tough, but discussing the new features is significantly simpler. My favourite right now is the expertise feat, since I never liked rogue/bard dips as they usually don't fit the theme of grappler builds, and, on top of that, it's a half feat, so we can maintain str progression while taking it.
In contrast to that, I think the unarmed fighting style is rather weak, mainly because it's mostly powerless against enemies resistant or immune to nonmagical weapons, which puts it solidly behind the unarmed barbarian. Rune Knight is pretty good though.
EDIT: spelling

[sophontteks]

Hardly. The pin isn't the highlight, rather the advantage is. I can see niche situations where the pin would be desirable, but it can be quite common to not have an ally or other circumstance providing advantage. Not to mention a shove attempt wastes an attack or entire action if you're low level and arguably has a lower chance of success. This build honestly has more feats than necessary available, spending a feat on Grappler is hardly a set back. One from human and up to 8 from Fighter. Unless you're leaning into another gimmick this path is perfectly fine.

With athletics you can just jump in the air as part of your movement and knock them prone. 18 strength is 21 feet up, they are 5 feet below you, so you lift them 16 feet. Costs 5 feet movement to get back up.

[Jellypants]

As has been stated already, you don't need to be super good at grappling to be effective at it.

However...

What if you want to be super good at it? what if you want to be consistently be grappling gargantuan creatures and pushing their ugly faces into the mud while you spit at them?
Well sir/madam, may I interest you in the artificer?

Point buy
Str: 10
Dex: 14
Con: 15 +1
Int: 15 + 2 (the only important stat for this narrow-minded build)
Wis: 8
Cha: 8

Level 1: You run around in medium armor and make the best of it. You're not gonna be grappling anything at this stage.
Level 2: You infuse your armor and make it into an Armor of Magical Strength™. Now you can add your intelligence to your strength ability checks. It's a limited use only, but it has a decent amount of charges. When you make a grapple check you now have a +3 bonus. Neat!
Level 3: You pick a subclass with extra attack. Armorer or battlemaster both work pretty well.
Level 4: You use your ASI on the feat Skill Epertise and give yourself double proficiency in athletics as well as rounding up your intelligence to 18. Your grapple check is now 2+2+3= +7. Nice!
Level 5: You prepare enlarge/reduce or enhance ability to give yourself advantage at grappling.
Level 7: You pick up the ability "flash of genius". Now, as a reaction, you can add your intelligence modifier to your check again. Again, as with the armor it's a limited amount of times per day. So now your grapple check is 3+3+4+4= +14. With advantage! Awesome!
Level 8: At this point we up our int to 20. Who wants warcaster anyway.
Level 10: You knew this was coming. You infuse a pair of gloves and turn them into Gauntlets of Ogre Power©. Now your grapple check is a hefty 4+4+4+5+5= +22. With advantage! Righteous!!
Level 11: You create a Spell Storing Item® and load it up with 10 charges of enlarge/reduce. You give this item to your homunculus/steel defender/tiny servant. Now you don't need to concentrate on being big.
Level 14: Obviously, at this point we're gonna upgrade our strength with a Belt of Hill Giant Strength℠. Now our grapple check is finally decent: 5+5+5+5+5= 25. With advantage. Mathematical!
Level 17: So for some reason you're not actually able to grapple gargantuan creatures yet. Not to worry. We're simply gonna do a quick dip into fighter. Specifically rune Knight. Then you wait for the DM to bring put the Tarrasque.

You use your bonus action to grow to large size using your rune knight feature. You use your action to cast enlarge on yourself to grow to huge size. You use action surge, run up to the Tarrasque and grapple it. You have a +27 bonus to your roll, compared to the Tarrasque's measly +10. And you have advantage. Now possibly, you'll roll a natural 1 on you roll, and the tarrasque rolls a natural 20. That's a 28 vs a 30. That sucks...

But of course, you thought this through. At level 0, before even choosing a class, you made sure your race was hobgoblin. And look at that! Your homunculus, your steel defender, your tiny servants and maybe even your teammates are looking at you expectantly. You can't fail now!

Congratulations. You just gave yourself +5 extra to your check, and with your natural 1, you managed to successfully grapple the tarrasque into submission with two points to spare. And all it took was two infusions, some cheesy multiclassing and the power of friendship.

[stoutstien]

As has been stated already, you don't need to be super good at grappling to be effective at it.

However...

What if you want to be super good at it? what if you want to be consistently be grappling gargantuan creatures and pushing their ugly faces into the mud while you spit at them?
Well sir/madam, may I interest you in the artificer?

Point buy
Str: 10
Dex: 14
Con: 15 +1
Int: 15 + 2 (the only important stat for this narrow-minded build)
Wis: 8
Cha: 8

Level 1: You run around in medium armor and make the best of it. You're not gonna be grappling anything at this stage.
Level 2: You infuse your armor and make it into an Armor of Magical Strength™. Now you can add your intelligence to your strength ability checks. It's a limited use only, but it has a decent amount of charges. When you make a grapple check you now have a +3 bonus. Neat!
Level 3: You pick a subclass with extra attack. Armorer or battlemaster both work pretty well.
Level 4: You use your ASI on the feat Skill Epertise and give yourself double proficiency in athletics as well as rounding up your intelligence to 18. Your grapple check is now 2+2+3= +7. Nice!
Level 5: You prepare enlarge/reduce or enhance ability to give yourself advantage at grappling.
Level 7: You pick up the ability "flash of genius". Now, as a reaction, you can add your intelligence modifier to your check again. Again, as with the armor it's a limited amount of times per day. So now your grapple check is 3+3+4+4= +14. With advantage! Awesome!
Level 8: At this point we up our int to 20. Who wants warcaster anyway.
Level 10: You knew this was coming. You infuse a pair of gloves and turn them into Gauntlets of Ogre Power©. Now your grapple check is a hefty 4+4+4+5+5= +22. With advantage! Righteous!!
Level 11: You create a Spell Storing Item® and load it up with 10 charges of enlarge/reduce. You give this item to your homunculus/steel defender/tiny servant. Now you don't need to concentrate on being big.
Level 14: Obviously, at this point we're gonna upgrade our strength with a Belt of Hill Giant Strength℠. Now our grapple check is finally decent: 5+5+5+5+5= 25. With advantage. Mathematical!
Level 17: So for some reason you're not actually able to grapple gargantuan creatures yet. Not to worry. We're simply gonna do a quick dip into fighter. Specifically rune Knight. Then you wait for the DM to bring put the Tarrasque.

You use your bonus action to grow to large size using your rune knight feature. You use your action to cast enlarge on yourself to grow to huge size. You use action surge, run up to the Tarrasque and grapple it. You have a +27 bonus to your roll, compared to the Tarrasque's measly +10. And you have advantage. Now possibly, you'll roll a natural 1 on you roll, and the tarrasque rolls a natural 20. That's a 28 vs a 30. That sucks...

But of course, you thought this through. At level 0, before even choosing a class, you made sure your race was hobgoblin. And look at that! Your homunculus, your steel defender, your tiny servants and maybe even your teammates are looking at you expectantly. You can't fail now!

Congratulations. You just gave yourself +5 extra to your check, and with your natural 1, you managed to successfully grapple the tarrasque into submission with two points to spare. And all it took was two infusions, some cheesy multiclassing and the power of friendship.

Nice. Battlesmith can now order the steel defender to grapple/shove as well. Something to keep in mind in the early levels to get more fun out of this.

[BoutsofInsanity]

Well for grappling you want a couple of things.

1. You must have a good GM
2. Advantage on athletics checks
3. Expertise on Athletics Checks
4. High Strength score

Once you have those things grappling and all sorts of other maneuvers open up to you. Now the most important factor is having a great GM. Many dungeon masters struggle adjudicating situations that don't fall exactly within the rules. Especially theory crafting because going by RAW is the best way forward. So lets assume you have a good GM here and go forward with the build.

To get advantage on Athletics Checks I think the Rune Knight or Barbarian Rage feature are the easiest ways to get there. They also fit thematically for grabbing people and putting them in holds.

We next want expertise. A 3 dip of rogue, Skill Expert or Prodigy feats are your best bet.

Finally we want a high strength score so going Goliath I think is the most sensible option for their carrying capacity. (Note, getting items are excellent stand ins.).

Way of the Astral Path monks can use wisdom when using their arms. In that instance do all of the following except instead use wisdom.

For me the Straight Rune Knight Goliath is the cleanest build. You have cool options as a Rune Knight, your 3rd level feature allows you to get advantage on those strength checks. And grabbing the Skill Expert feat gets that wonderful expertise needed.


Once here the game plan becomes obvious. First replacing that plethora of attacks for the Grapple and Shove combo to really stick it to the enemy. Second, if your DM is good, you can begin replacing attacks to lock down your opponent. Try the following.

• Suffocate them
• Prevent Verbal Components with throat punches
• Prevent somatic components with grabbing hands
• Eye Gouges for blind conditions

The world is your oyster. Remember though, these are opposed checks that replace actual damaging weapon swings and won't put an enemy away unless suffocation takes hold. (Which takes a long time). So outside of a few circumstances the best option is to shove prone and grapple for that sweet advantage to hit. Then put them away with massive bodily damage.

Have fun out there.

[th3g0dc0mp13x]

With athletics you can just jump in the air as part of your movement and knock them prone. 18 strength is 21 feet up, they are 5 feet below you, so you lift them 16 feet. Costs 5 feet movement to get back up.

High jump is 3+strength mod so that would only be 7 feet up.

[Hael]

A couple interesting dips are astral monk 3 for wis instead of str modifier. Star Druid 2 for almost perfect wisdom check rolls(treat a 9 or lower as 10) and relevant spells.
Rune knight for size gains.

[Jellypants]

High jump is 3+strength mod so that would only be 7 feet up.

Cast Jump for 21ft high jump?

[Ir0ns0ul]

We next want expertise. A 3 dip of rogue, Skill Expert or Prodigy feats are your best bet.

Just a small correction: you don’t need 3 levels of Rogue to get Expertise, just one single level grants you that.

Bard requires 3 levels to grab Expertise. Also giving cool spells like Enhance Ability. STR-focused Valor Bard can make surprisingly good grapplers.

[stoutstien]

Should probably bring up glory paladin for bonus action advantage on grappling. A lore bard/glory pally could be pretty darn effective

[GuestEleven]

With athletics you can just jump in the air as part of your movement and knock them prone. 18 strength is 21 feet up, they are 5 feet below you, so you lift them 16 feet. Costs 5 feet movement to get back up.

How is it that you jumping makes them fall prone? Not to mention this is conceptually ridiculous and at best a fight initiator.

[stoutstien]

How is it that you jumping makes them fall prone? Not to mention this is conceptually ridiculous and at best a fight initiator.

If you can get your jump over 10 feet the target should take falling damage which has the rider of prone unless they can reduce that damage to 0.

As I mentioned above something like the peerless athlete CD has a flat increase to a standing jump so getting the damage is pretty easy.

[sophontteks]

How is it that you jumping makes them fall prone? Not to mention this is conceptually ridiculous and at best a fight initiator.

It's RAW. There are no rules against this. Grapplers call it the suplex. Fall damage renders the person prone. Even the strictest rulings have the person dragged 5 feet below you. Barbarians take half damage on falls too.

[Rfkannen]

If you can get your jump over 10 feet the target should take falling damage which has the rider of prone unless they can reduce that damage to 0.

As I mentioned above something like the peerless athlete CD has a flat increase to a standing jump so getting the damage is pretty easy.

THIS IS AMAZING

what wags are there to be able to jump 10 feet up? Feom what i can tell the normal limit is 8 feet.

[Master O'Laughs]

THIS IS AMAZING

what wags are there to be able to jump 10 feet up? Feom what i can tell the normal limit is 8 feet.

The Path of the Beast Barbarian in Tasha's lvl 6 feature lets you make an strength (athletics) check and extend your jump a number of feet equal to the result of the roll.

So proficiency and +5 Strength gets you a minimum of 17 feet. If you grab expertise then the minimum is 20 feet at lvl 6 and that is with a roll of 1 on the d20. The biggest limiting factor is your movement so you would want to get the mobile feat and look to other possible ways to increase movement.