what are the best grapple builds now?

[stoutstien]

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.

Away from book ATM so no way a extensive list but boosting standing high jump:

Jump spell for any source. Warlock invocation, cast normally, magic initiative, ring of jumping (lv 10 infusion), spell wrought tattoo ( lv 2 infusion), and so on.

*Bonus option for artificer is to use the boots of winding part to do it twice a turn. Works up to a 15 ft drop. DM dependent on how teleport works with grappling. Worst case scenario you can use it to teleport back to the ground to a pie falling damage yourselves and just grapple the foe oce they land at you feet.

Lv 3 Glory paladin CD

Lv 6 beast barbarian

Monk step to wind

[sophontteks]

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.

Oh mb, it's strength mod but still a solid option for shifter barbarians. Easier methods include climbing and jumping off ledges.

[Darthnazrael]

Classically, Simic Hybrids (and to a lesser extent, loxodon) have shined as grappling races by granting extra grappling arms, freeing up hands to wield weapons, or just grapple more victims. With Tasha's, I'd like to point out two newly viable races.

Satyrs can add a d8 of feet to their leaps, have a mediocre hands-free natural weapon (ie works when your hands are full of grapple victims, and raw appears to work with Unarmed Fighting Style), and have magic resistance.

Vedalkens have "mental resistance" (advantage on int/wis/cha saves, magic or otherwise), can hold their breath underwater longer than their potential drowning victim, and most importantly, per the new racial skill proficiency rules, can gain proficiency and +1d4 in any skill, including athletics. This stacks with advantage and expertise.

[Wraith]

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

Rune Knight 3/College of Lore 3 gets you high strength, "Enlarge", Expertise (Athletics) and Cutting Words to detract even further from your enemies' ability checks, which is essentially another +d6 on top of your already considerable roll. That becomes d8 at level 5, plus buffs from Magical Secrets from various Wizard/Cleric/Druid spells at your disposal at level 6.

Hell; go nuts and be Rune Knight 3/College of Lore 15 so you then add Peerless Skill and the last tier of Bardic Inspiration dice on to your ability check again. The equivalent of +6 (STR) +12 (Prof with Expertise) +2d12 (Cutting Words and Peerless Skill) with Advantage (Rune Knight) plus extras for Guidance, Fire Shield, Contagion, etc depending whatever goodies you have picked up, and that's all without magic items or buffs from allies.

[Zaile]

Tasha's was such a boon to grappling. Now we have many great options. Partly stolen from grappling manual.

Must: Expertise (Athletics) - Skill Expert feat or Bard/Rogue dip.

Races:
Custom Linage - Everyone is a V. Human! only a +2 to 1 stat
V. Human - more versatile stat choices
Goliath - Powerful build scales if you ever have to hold up a temple (Rune knight + P. Build + Enlarge = Gargantuan for loads)
Half-Orc - Bigger boost to STR than Human, Darkvison + Relentless endurance as a "He hit me for HOW MUCH?" button.
Minotaur - Still UA, DM dependent
Duergar Dwarf - Can Enlarge(only) at CL 3/ 1/day. You do not learn it, so it cannot be cast with spell slots.
Simic Hybrid - See many posts above
Loxodon - Same

Classes:
Moon Druid - Better WS forms
Love/Valor/Swords Bard - Lore is de-buffing + buffing, latter have extra attack
Battlemaster Fighter - Grappling Strike, but tavern brawler is better b/c no resource use
Rune Knight - Single-classed powerhouse w/built in NO CONCENTRATION Enlarge, d6 damage, great runes that have CON-based DCs (much better than Int from UA). See below for why I think this is the best class.
Eldrich Knight - Enlarge at 8th level, get the party wizard to do it up to this.
Barbarian - Rage, Bear totem
Astral Monk - Gets the most attacks. Astral solves the STR problem. The first benefit applies to all arms, not just the astral ones. Really just needs Enhance/Enlarge
Paladin, Oath of Glory - Peerless Athlete channel is enhance ability w/out concentration, you also get the spell.
Special mention
War Wizard 3+ - INT to initiative and Arcane deflection ROCKS. It has saved me multiple times in Tomb of Annihilation. Suggest going 4 for the ASI.
Artificer - See quoted post below...

Unarmed fighting style - Frees up hands. That extra d4 each turn makes up for the d6 damage, even better with Giant Might (d6) or Enlarge (d4 each attack)

Feats:
Tavern Brawler - Action economy
Skill Expert - Must unless Bard/Rogue build
Warcaster - All 3 options help casting grapplers
Athlete - Suplexers/Luchadore style
Crusher - Free movement of a grappled creature with Bludgeoning damage (unarmed). Saves attacks if your DM forces you to Shove to reposition.
Alert - Go earlier more often
Mage Slayer - Caster-heavy campaign
Resilient CON/WIS - Helps with Concentration and Charm effects

Spells:
Enlarge - Still very good and stacks with Giant Might
Enhance Ability - Good, but enlarge is better
Lighting lure - Scorpion those casters
Dispel Magic - for Freedom of Movement
Shield - Always useful


Rune Knight is my favorite, here's why:
Single-class Fighter viable now

Rune Knight DCs are 8+Prof+CON mod, yes CON, that you will have high. This is now VERY easy to multi-class with. RK should be either 3 or 5 levels.

Skill Expert (athletics)

Turn 1
Bonus action - Giant's Might
Charge in
Attack 1, throw a handaxe at the enemy caster/ranged, use Fire Rune shackles (activates on hit, no action required). Now they must make a STR save every round or take 2d6 fire damage and are Restrained
Attack 2 - Grapple a melee creature w/Adv
Action Surge
Attack 3 - Grapple second creature w/Adv
Attack 4 - If you missed a grapple do it again, or if you have 2 grappled, Shove one Prone w/Adv
Enemies will move to attack you, that's GREAT!
If an ungrappled enemy ends it's turn WITHIN 30 FEET of you, activate Stone Rune as a reaction, enemy is Charmed, speed 0, and Incapacitated on a Wisdom save. Repeatable, but who cares if it's a BSF.

End of Turn 1 you have: Restrained an enemy cater or ranged, Grappled 2 creatures (one is Prone), and incapacitated a 4th creature.

Turn 2
Prone both grappled creatures. Enjoy as the party goes to town.

At level 7, you can grab Hill rune and get rage damage resistance to ALL B, S, P, not just non-magical.

[Zaile]

This is Beautiful!

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.

[Jellypants]

This is Beautiful!

Thank you ^^

[Wraith]

I wonder if you can go one slightly better with using the Naga race from Planeshift: Amonkhet? Their Natural Weapon (Constrict) means that to initiate a Grapple you only need to hit the opponent, not beat them in an opposed roll.

You do all of the above except that you swap some stats around and bump up STR instead of... let's say, DEX for the sake of argument. By the time you get to Armourer 17/Rune Knight 3 your To Hit bonus is something like +15/16 even without spell buffs, equipment buffs, Advantage for flanking/whatever... What I'm thinking is that an opponent's AC is usually static and doesn't get a roll added to it, so even the Tarrasque is hit on AC25 rather than Opposed ~DC30. Plus you're causing damage right off the bat by hitting them, rather than in the following turn.

You'd still need all the tricks above to maintain the Grapple, but initiating it is probably a bit easier - especially if you tweak the level balance to get Fighter 5 for Extra Attack and thus getting two attempts at a free Constriction? I haven't worked out the specifics but I feel like it's doable.

If nothing else, it's probably more satisfying as your opponent doesn't even get an ATTEMPT at avoiding it - you hit them with a not-entirely-unreasonable +25, with Advantage, with at least two attempts (4 if you Action Surge), and they're yours regardless of what they think about it.

[Gignere]

Why isn’t bugbear suggested as a great race for grappler it has both consider one size category larger and it can grapple at reach. I’d think that would make them at least as good as the Goliath.

[stoutstien]

Why isn’t bugbear suggested as a great race for grappler it has both consider one size category larger and it can grapple at reach. I’d think that would make them at least as good as the Goliath.

the extra reach only lasts for your turn so if you do grapple somebody at 10 ft it automatically breaks as soon as your turn ends. They also only count as one category larger for lifting and carrying capacity which is good but not vital.

[N810]

Should at least be good for grappling, lifting and then throwing enemies. :/

[Fabivs]

Although poorly designed, one of the best grapplers - and barbarians - is the Battlerager.

I have played one and it is superfunctional. The great catch is that your bonus action attack with the armor is independent.

I used Duergar for the free enlarge when I run out of rages, but Mountain Dwarf works as well.

STR15 (+1)
DEX14
CON15 (+2)
INT8
WIS10
CHA8

Your level 4 feat can either be Skill Expert (for the double proficiency in athletics) or, as I did, Dwarven Resilience. Now I can heal for 1d12+4 (or multiples of that) when I take the Dodge action, granting disadvantage on all attacks against me while still attacking normally with my Spiked Armor.

Got the grapple? 3 damage to the enemy, and then jump for an extra free 1d6 and the prone condition.

Level 8 I take the Skill Expert in Athletics with +1 STR, and since LVL 6, whenever I attack with Reckless Attack, I get 4 temporary hitpoints - sometime I'll take the Dodge action (being able to heal like above) and attack recklessly with the Spiked Armor just to get the temp HP while not granting advantage to the enemies.

Level 12 I'll go for Piercer with +1 STR, getting to an even 18 in STR, ensuring my damage stays high with the Spiked Armor and eventual War Pick and since LVL 10 now I can also Dash as a bonus action, which is the only cunning action desirable for a grappler.

All in all a solid, single-class grappler build that gets overlooked because of the poor design and escalation WotC threw at the Battlerager, and then just abandoned it there...