D&D 5E The Grappler's Manual - Grappling in 5th Edition (-ktkenshinx-)

E

Endarire

First Post
Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

~The Grappler's Manual~
Taking 5th Edition Combat to the Ground
It's hard to cast a spell when you are pinned to the ground in a zone of Silence. Good luck to those two mobile, dual-wielding assassin when they are both held in place by their collars. And even the toughest great-sword wielder might as well just be packing a dagger when he's dragged to the ground with a Grizzly Bear on top of him. The D&D 5.0 grappling mechanic lets you do all that and more, denying your opponent's their strengths, controlling the battlefield, and generally exerting your will over any enemy you meet. Both from a rules perspective (grappling acts on an axis that most enemies are unprepared for) and a flavor one (ever wanted to put a Dragon in a chokehold?), grappling is one of the most interesting and useful mechanics in the core rulebook. I have seen a lot of players knock this special attack and am here to set them straight.

For those who doubt the power of grappling, you are going to feel like everyone not named Royce Gracie at UFC 1. For those who do not, this will hopefully give you new tips and tricks on how to bring your favorite mechanic into your games. The goal of this guide is simple: To get you to love grappling, and to get your DM and his monsters to hate it.
Table of Contents

  • Why grappling (Part 1)(x)
  • Grappling rules (Part 1)(x)
  • Wrestling races (Part 1)(x)
  • Class overview: Barbarian - Druid (Part 1)(x)
    Class overview: Fighter - Sorcerer (Part 2)(x)
    Class overview: Warlock - Wizard (Part 3)(x)
  • Feats and backgrounds (Part 3)(x)
  • Magic (Part 3)(x) and (Part 4)(x)
  • The Dojo - Grappling Tactics (Part 4)(x)
  • Build 1: Herculean Wrestler (Fighter/Rogue/Wizard) (Part 4)(x)
  • Build 2: The Mage Slayer (Bard/Fighter) (Part 4)(x)
  • Build 3: Grizzlyman - (Druid/Barbarian/Rogue) (Part 4)(x)
  • Build 4: BJJ Master - Battlefield Jujitsu - (Monk/Rogue/Fighter) (Part 4)(x)


When rating different class features, races, mechanics, etc., I will use the following color coding system.


  • Gold: Mandatory. It's a rare rating that denotes something that is so good that you must take it, or you can't call yourself optimized.
  • Green: Conditional choice. In the right build, or if you build around it, it can be incredibly strong. Otherwise, best to stay away from it.
  • Sky Blue: A fantastic choice. An option you should strongly consider above most others.
  • Blue: A good choice. It definitely helps your character in the majority of cases.
  • Black: Solidly average. You're not hurting your character by taking this, and it might even help in some situations, but there are better choices.
  • Purple: A substandard choice. It might be useful in corner-case situations, but overall it's not worth the investment.
  • Red: Red is dead. A trap that you will want to avoid at all costs, either because it's ineffective or because it's thoroughly outclassed by another option that accomplishes something similar.


1. Why grappling?
Ever wanted to armlock an ogre? Drag that cowardly, dual-wielding ranger over to the cliff and chuck him over? Hold down two orcs while kicking the third? Thought so.

Why grapple? Easy; Grappling is unfair. Most enemies in the game get their strengths from unrestricted movement, free reign to cast spells, ability to target certain PCs in the party, high ACs, etc. All of that is totally shut down by a good grappler. Although it looks like an innocuous condition, being "Grappled" (and/or Prone/Restrained) is a serious hindrance for most enemies. Being able to impose it on them at will, with little or no hope of them stopping it? That's how you will dominate a battlefield.

When thinking about mechanics, I like to think about their axis of interaction. How are they interacting with an opponent? Attack rolls are opposed by AC. Spells are opposed by saving throws. High damage is opposed by high HP. Looking over what monsters we do know, all of them have something in common. They are generally well prepared to fight attack rolls/spells/damage, by virtue of high AC/hig saves/high HP. Not every monster has those traits (bless your soul, little goblin), but over the course of your travels, you will often encounter monsters that directly counter these angles of interaction.

Then there's grappling. Grappling is a skill contest based on the Athletics skill. Most monsters, even with their high strength scores, have the Athletics/Acrobatics checks of a 1st level commoner. Sure, you will fight monsters that can't get grappled (Ghosts...why did it have to be ghosts...), but the vast majority of monsters will be crying uncle against a good grappler. That lets you dictate how they move, who they attack, and how they take hits, etc. That is a degree of battlefield control most classes can't boast.

Overall, here are the pros and cons of grappling in 5.0.

[SIZE=12pt]Grappling Strengths[/SIZE]

  • Very hard to interact with. Most monsters are about as good at Athletics/Acrobatics as a first level character.
  • Negates mobility. It's amazing how many opponents rely on movement and how many can't do anything once that speed hits 0.
  • Makes monsters easier for your party to hit. Grapple them, knock them prone, don't let them stand up, don't let the run around. I hit. You punch.
  • Cripples offensive capabilities. Grappled monsters already don't get free reign to choose targets or use their weapons. Now give them disadvantage on top of that.
  • Combo potential; Grapple a spellcaster in a zone of Silence and no one will hear him tap. Hold two guys in place while your Wizard rains Fireball on their heads. Plant the badguy on the ground as your rogue stabs away. Jump of a cliff while holding your targets. The possibilities are endless!


[SIZE=12pt]Grappling Weaknesses[/SIZE]

  • Weak against large numbers of opponents. As in real life (for those martial artsts in the audience), grappling is not particularly effective against multiple attackers. You can only meaningfully engage with as many attackers as you have hands, which is often just going to be 2.
  • Relatively low damage. Most grappling builds don't deal too much damage themselves, and will have to rely on either allies for massive damage, or will have to grind down an opponent over time.
  • Low mobility. You will often find yourself in situations where you can't dart around the battlefield without releasing your grappled targets back into the fight. This can be a problem in chaotic battles.
  • When you get shut down, you get shut down HARD. Come up against a monster that's immune to shove and grapple? Have fun poking him for the rest of the encounter. Run into that one spellcaster who pre-cast Freedom of Movement? Better hope someone has Dispel Magic. Dragon won't land from the sky? Grow wings or throw insults at him.
  • Not for the faint of heart: Don't all guides have some ridiculous weakness like this? Seriously though; if you don't want to get in the face of something two size categories larger than you, a frenzied enemy with a greatsword, or a wizard casting damage-maximized evocation spells, this isn't the class for you.

2. Grappling rules
Before we can start bringing our jujitsu to the battlefield, we need to know exactly how D&D 5.0 jujitsu works. Ever since I started playing in 3rd Edition, grappling has always been regarded as one of the most complicated and unintuitive mechanics in the game. Thankfully, 5.0 has done a great job at cleaning up the old issues with the rules, while still preserving a lot of its power level.

Let's start with the basics: What exactly is a grapple? (The complete grappling rules can be found on page 195 of the PHB. Here's the rule broken down into steps, with quotes pulled out where needed. )

WHITE BELTS: GRAPPLE DEFINITIONS

  • Grappling is a "special melee attack".
  • To grapple a target, you must "use the Attack action" to make your special melee attack (the grapple).'
    NOTE: The "Multiattack" ability of monsters, RAW, cannot enable multiple grapples because it is its own action type.
  • A grapple check is an Ability check contested by a target's ability check. It is NOT an attack roll!
  • Alternately, if you have "multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them."
  • Your grapple target "must be no more than one size larger than you". It must also be within your reach.
  • You need at least one free hand to initiate a grapple.
  • Note: You CAN use and benefit from a weapon or shield in your other hand if you are grappling with the free one. Unfortunately, you will have to drop that item if you try to grapple a second creature (otherwise you won't have the second free hand).

The biggest thing to remember is that grapple checks are not attack rolls. Repeat after me: Grappling is NOT an attack roll. So stuff like True Strike or the Barbarian's Reckless Attack feature will not give you advantage on the roll (because it is not an attack roll). But it IS an ability check, so it interacts with all sorts of effects and features that function on ability checks (e.g. the Enhance Ability spell).

Enough basics. Time to start wrestling.

BLUE BELTS: INITIATING A GRAPPLE

  • Start by using your Attack action to make a grapple check. If you have "multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them."
  • Make a grapple check, a Strength (Athletics) check, as contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) OR Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. They get to choose what they contest with.
    REMEMBER: A grapple check is an ability check. It is NOT an attack roll.
  • If you fail the ability check contest, nothing happens. You have expended your action and there are no consequences for you or your target.
  • If you succeed at the ability check contest, the target is instantly subjected to the grappled condition.

The important point to remember here is that grappling replaces an attack as part of your attack action. Because it uses the attack action, you won't be able to use it as part of a reaction (at least, not without the help of a feat...). You also won't be able to use it if you used that action to do something else, like cast a spell. This shouldn't come up a lot because if you are doing stuff other than grappling, you aren't doing your job.

PURPLE BELTS: BEING IN A GRAPPLE

  • The grappled creature has the "Grappled" condition (PHB 290).
  • The grappler himself does NOT have the grappled condition.
  • While grappled, the target's movement speed drops to 0. It also "can't benefit from any bonus to its speed" during that time.
  • "A grappled creature can use its action to escape". This will require them to make a Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check as contested by your own Strength (Athletics) check.
    If they succeed, they are immediately free of the grapple, but they have used their action.
    If they fail, they are still grappled.
  • If a grappled creature does not try to escape, you automatically maintain the grapple.

This is where the 5.0 rules really start to deviate from earlier editions. The grappler isn't himself grappled. You can also move the creature with no check. Unfortunately, you can't pin the target (without a feat that we will discuss later).

As they say in the grappling arts, this style of fighting is all about position before submission. And now it's time to bring the beatdown to your foes.

BROWN BELTS: BASIC ATTACKS/OPTIONS WHILE GRAPPLING

  • Move an opponent. You can move grappled creatures without any check. When you use your movement, they will simply be dragged with you, but your speed will be halved (unless the target is 2 or more sizes smaller than you).
  • Keep an opponent in place. If you don't move, they don't move.
  • Attack with a weapon. You can make an attack roll with any weapon in your free hand. It's a normal attack roll, except your target is subjected to the grappled condition (so they couldn't use the Dodge action, amongst other penalties).
  • Attack with an unarmed strike: If you don't have a weapon in your free hand, you can punch/kick instead.
  • Cast a spell: Unlike with previous editions, you CAN cast a spell while grappling a single target. You won't be able to cast spells with somatic components, or many material components, if you have something in your free hand (whether a weapon or another grappled creature).
  • Release an opponent: At any time, you can just let go of your target.

In the 3.5 rules, the grappling section listed out all the things you could do while grappling. Because 5.0 mostly simplified the system, it doesn't explicitly list all those options out, even though they are all available to you. Depending on what feats and features you have, some of these may be better choices than others. Got the Grappler feat? All your attacks will have advantage against the target. Have Monk levels? Combine some "martial arts" features with your unarmed strikes. Although these options might seem basic (like actual grappling techniques) they are incredibly versatile depending on the situation (also like actual grappling techniques).

Now let's get to the really fun stuff.

BLACK BELTS: ADVANCED ATTACKS/OPTIONS WHILE GRAPPLING

  • Shove an opponent prone. Using the "shove" special melee attack, you can add the "Prone" condition to your enemy. Just make another Strength (Athletics) contest as opposed by their Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check. If they fail, they are now also prone and STILL grappled. That's a huge problem for most opponents because standing up from prone costs movement, and grappled sets their movement to 0.
    PRONE: While Prone (PHB 292), an opponent suffers disadvantage on attack rolls, and all attack rolls against the
    creature have advantage if the attacker is within 5 feet. All attack rolls made from further away have advantage.
    Normally, the prone creature can stand, but if they are grappled they don’t have the movement to do it.
  • Shove an opponent away: You can also use the shove option to move someoen 5 feet. Very useful if you grapple them over to an edge or some other hazard and then just push them over/in.
  • Grapple someone else! As long as you have at least one free hand, you can initiate a grapple. So go find another enemy and repeat the whole process from step 1. Note that once they are grappled, you won't be able to do actions that require a free hand. You WILL be able to knock them prone; Shoving does not require a free hand.

These are the three techniques that really make grapplers good. Shoving uses the exact same modifiers and bonuses as the grapple check, so you are already positioned to use it. Why is it so good with grappling though? Why not just shove without the grapple? For one, shoving works best when you can position the target near something they don't want to get shoved into. Grappling lets you do that. Haul them over to the window and push them out. Drag them to the skyship rail and throw them over. Remember that trap in the previous hallway? Time for your new friend to test it out.

Then there's shoving someone prone. Prone is a pretty scary condition to begin with, but it becomes a lot scarier when the opponent can't use movement to stand up. Normally, they can use half their movement to stand. But grappled sets their movement speed to 0. No more movement means no more standing, which means a permanent disadvantage to their attack rolls and a permanent advantage to attack rolls made against them.

Finally, grappling just requires one hand. Add in a second hand and you can repeat all of that on a new target. As an added bonus, shoving requires ZERO free hands. That gives you free reign to trip them with your feet, slam them down with your shoudler, or just drag them to the floor by their sleeve.

This is not an exhaustive discussion of grappling rules, and weird situations WILL come up in your sessions. You will also have ideas of your own that aren't even touched on here (Grappling + Climb/Fly speed anyone??). So keep the PHB ready to handle rules questions, and feel free to post any new ideas to the thread.
3. Wrestling races
For the most part, any race that looks good at grappling is probably pretty good at grappling. Bruiser dwarves, brutish half-orcs, and brawling humans all make tough sonofagund wrestlers. Similarly, all the races that look like they suck at grappling probably suck at grappling. The only thing that Elves grapple with is their trees.

Mechanically, grappling is all about Strength (for your ability checks), Constitution (so you don't die when 1-2 attackers focus on you exclusively), and Dexterity (you retain your dex bonus to AC while grappling). Depending on what type of grappler you are playing, other ability scores might come into play as well, but they generally aren't as important as those main ones. This makes race selection fairly easy.

There is one big exception to this, however: Grapplers that use Wild Shape or Polymorph. Because these abilities replace your physical attributes with those of the target creature, they totally change how race selection works. I will try and talk about those possibilities as they come up with the different races.

DWARVES

  • Mountain Dwarf
    When it comes to grapplers, it doesn't get any more simple or solid than the Mountain Dwarf. Bonus Str and Con are excellent because it lets you put other ability points into Dex, which gives you a really well-rounded combat ability set. That movement speed penalty still stings, but you won't notice it with the added attributes.
  • Hill Dwarf
    Some of the hardiest grapplers around, with bonus hit points on top of the inherent +2 to Con. The Wisdom increase is something you will have to build around if you are playing this class; Monk is a natural choice for the added AC from unarmored defense. The 5 foot speed reduction isn't great but again, if you are playing a Monk Hill Dwarf, you can easily offset that with Monk movement speed.

ELVES

  • High Elf
    Elves are about as good at grappling as dwarves are at playing the harp, but High Elves get a nice bonus cantrip which can give some interesting capabilities. Chill Touch is really nice here if you are playing a grappler that just grinds down a single target. If they are already prone, you will get advantage on the spell, which then shuts down healing for a whole turn. Blade Ward is also useful if you anticipate taking a lot of damage while you hold down a guy.
  • Wood Elf
    Stick to hugging trees, not trolls. The only redeeming quality of this race is the Fleet of Foot feature, which gives you a bit more dragging power. Not even good for the transformation grappler because the Dex score will just get replaced.
  • Dark Elf
    Darkness at level 5 is strong, but you can get the same bonuses (but better) in Tiefling. Between the light sensitivity and the useless base Elf bonuses, the Drow subrace is just better suited for hand-crossbow hit-and-run nonsense than to getting in an Owlbear's fat face and pinning it to the ground.

HALFLINGS

  • Lightfoot Halfling
    Remember those White Belt Grappling Rules? Your target can't be more than one size larger than you? When you're small like a Halfling, that means you can't grapple anything bigger than a human. That means you can't grapple in a fantasy world at all. Add to that a lower base speed, irrelevant ability scores, and no valuable racial features, and you have a subrace that might be the worst grappler in the PHB. Doesn't even make a good transformation grappler because of the Dex bonus.
  • Stout Halfling: To review, Small + low speed + irrelevant ability mods = Bad grappler.

HUMANS

  • Human
    No matter what grappler you play, there are a few feats you are going to need. Grappler is more or less mandatory for most builds. Tavern Brawler is quite strong. Mage Slayer really helps you crush those fancy-pants spellcasters. Humans will get you all of those earlier than other races, and with some extra Str/Con to boot. Because feats are relatively more powerful in 5.0, and relatively hard to get, that level 1 bonus can be huge.

DRAGONBORN

  • Dragonborn
    Strength bonus alone is reason to consider the Dragonborn, but it's the breath weapon that is really interesting. When using the Grappler feat, you can "restrain" a target to give them disadvantage on dexterity saves. The save against your breath weapon is itself dexterity based. That's an awesome image (holding down two guys as you breathe acid on them), but not particularly powerful from a damage perspective. But coupled with the Str bonus, it's enough to make Dragonborn a viable, interesting, and mega flavorful option.

GNOMES

  • Rock Gnome
    If you are going to be a Polymorph grappler, Gnomes aren't bad choices. They have advantage on a lot of different saves against magic (important for tanking spells), and that +2 Int makes them great Wizards. Their small size and low move speed won't matter when you transform, especially if your crafted Panacea gives you +10 move speed on top of the +10 from Longstrider.
  • Forest Gnome
    Slightly worse than Rock Gnome. Just stick with Rock Gnome if you want to go the Polymorph Wizard route.

HALF-FOLK

  • Half-Elf
    Even if you are a Bard or Sorcerer Polymorph grappler, this race isn't really doing you a lot of favors. What makes Gnome so good at the Polymorph grappler is that ridiculous advantage on saves against many spells. Half-Elves just have a bad ability score bonus and no relevant features. If you want to go the Bard/Sorcerer route, just stick with human.
  • Half-Orc
    Very solid grapplers, but generally outclassed by both Humans and Mountain Dwarves. The Human bonus feat is just so important, and the added Dwarf constitution really matters on the front lines. Looking at the racial features, the added tankiness from Relentless Endurance is nice but not often very relevant. Same with the added damage from Savage Attacksl it isn't really something you care much about.
  • Tiefling
    Just like Dark Elves (can cast Darkness), but slightly better because of the improved features. Fire resistance is decent, bonus Charisma helps out a Bard Polymorph grappler, and you don't have that ridiculous vulnerability to light.


4. Class overview: Barbarian - Druid
Just like in the real world, there is no single best way to grapple. Almost every class has their own strengths and weaknesses, and you are going to get the most mileage by multiclassing anyway. Instead of just rating classes, I’m also going to rate features within the class to help you pick and choose your different grappling styles.

Barbarian
It should come as no surprise that Barbarians make outstanding grapplers. Rage is just as good as it sounds. It's probably better than it sounds, because until you play a Barbarian grappler, you won't realize quite how often advantage lets you win grapple rolls and fights. Add to that the two best tanking features in the core (both in the Bear Totem tree), a ton of HP, extra damage, and a bunch of other useful abilities, and you have what is probably the "best" all around grappling class in the game.

  • HD - D12: Doesn't get any better than this for frontline bruising.
  • Rage: Probably the best single grappling-related ability in the PHB. Bonus damage is nice for an otherwise low-damage playstyle, and the damage resistance is excellent in most encounters. Because both Grapple and Shove are "special melee attacks", you don't need to worry about rage ending prematurely for lack of attacking. Just remember that you can't cast spells OR concentrate on them while raging.
  • Unarmored Defense: There aren't a lot of good reasons to avoid armor as a grappler, unless you are changing shapes (where Unarmored Defense won't help anyway because your game stats get replaced), or you are a Monk. If you do end up going Monk, this Unarmored variant is better than the Monk one because we prefer Wisdom to be a dump stat.
  • Reckless Attack: For most grapplers, you won't need this ability at all. The Grappler feat will give advantage without any penalties, and you will get advantage when attacking Prone opponents anyway. So why is this blue? It's a core ability of the almighty Wild Shape grappler, as we will talk about later. Just as a preview, Crocodiles automatically grapple AND restrain an opponent when they hit with their bite attack. How do you guarantee that first bite hits? Bite recklessly.
  • Danger Sense: It feels unfair that this works, RAW, while you are grappling a single enemy, let alone 2 of them. Great when you are holding badguys in place while your team rains down area spells on their/your heads.
  • Fast Movement: More speed to drag people around with? Sign me up.
  • Extra Attack: Almost mandatory for ANY build. Any way you can get extra attacks in your attack action, especially abilities that don't require concentration, is critical for optimizing your grappler. The difference between one attack and two attacks is huge if you want to grapple/shove in one turn and then start doing other stuff th turn later. Always try to pick this up no matter what build you are; thankfully, many classes give it to you, so you just need to figure out the easiest entry point.
  • Feral Instinct: If you can grapple up an enemy before their turn, you can completely lock them out of the fight. Instinct really helps with that, as well as helping you control the battlefield if your opponents get the drop on you.
  • Brutal Critical: Grapplers aren't really about damage. If they are, it's probably through a feature that isn't helped by this ability (e.g. Sneak Attack).
  • Relentless Rage: Strong ability for any frontline tank, even if it has no particular synergy with grappling.
  • Persistent Rage: Gives you more tactical options during the battle because you don't always need to be attacking. Most importantly, lets you Rage in advance of an encounter so you don't need to waste that valuable first bonus action by raging.
  • Indomitable Might: This means that your grapple check is never going to be less than 20 (which is probably what your strength score will be by level 18 anyway). It might be higher with bonuses and your roll with advantage, but this means that the LOWEST you would ever get is a 20.
  • Primal Champion:: An additional +2 to Grapple checks, and now the lowest you can get is probably a 24. And there's all the HP this gives on top of that. The only reason this isn't rated higher is that something like Barbarian 18/Rogue 2 is probably better than Barbarian 20.
  • Path of the Berserker: Not a well-designed feature period, let alone for grappling. The bonus action conflicts with other bonus actions you would rather take, and you can't even use it on the first turn. Mindless Rage is just too much of a corner case to help in most encounters, and Intimidating Presence functions off a dump stat.
    -Frenzy: There are better ways for you to use your bonus action.
    -Mindless Rage: Immunity to Frightened is nice (our saves against that effect tends to
    suck), but it's just worse than other options available in the other Barbarian Path.
    -Intimidating Presence: Even if it weren't based on Charisma, this ability would be bad.
  • Path of the Totem Warrior: Playing a Barbarian Grappler? You are playing a Totem Warrior too. These features benefit grapplers at every level, and even give you some flexibility in how you want to build your Barbarian wrestler.
    -Totem Spirit: In almost every case, you want to take the Bear totem at this level; the resistance is absolutely insane as a frontline tank.
    Eat all the AOE in the world while your two best (grappled) buddies share the pain. The Eagle option is fine, but will generally just be worse
    than Rogue's Cunning Action, not to mention Expertise gained at level 1 Rogue. Going Wolf Totem is feasible if you expect being in the thick
    of a half dozen enemies, but it won't be any better for your allies against the main two guys you are grappling; they will probably be prone
    anyway.
    -Aspect of the Beast: It's Bear or bust again for this feature; the added carrying capacity gives you some hilarious options for lifting
    characters once they are grappled. Just need a climb or a fly speed. Eagle and Wolf don't do anything at all for grappling.
    -[COLOR=#&lt]Totemic Attunement[/COLOR]: Yet again, Bear is the obvious choice here, even if it isn't particularly powerful for grappling. This is
    another example of a feature that isn't really necessary once you start knocking baddies prone. The Eagle route gives you some hilarious
    options of picking up characters, flying up at half speed, and then dropping them to the ground. Or over a cliff. You would have to build
    around that option but it's a cool one. Then there's Wolf. No-save prone condition seems nice, but it just isn't worth the feature; your
    grapple check is probably so high by level 14 that you are effectively not giving them a save.


Bard
In contrast to the Barbarian, it might come as a huge surprise that Bards are also one of the top grappling classes in the game. Aren't Bards support characters? Isn't their main stat Charisma? Don't they play flutes and harps and stuff? Like...they are Bards?! That's all true, and it doesn't mean that they can't wrestle you straight into the dirt. Think of them as gladiators or cagefightesr. Or WWE wrestling champs. Between Cutting Words, Expertise, and some excellent spells in their list, Bard is actually one of the best dips or mainclasses you can take.

  • HD - D8: Well, at least it's not a D6. That said, D8 is common enough amongst classes that it's not a big deal.
  • Bardic Inspiration: Unless you are playing some crazy summoner grappler who grapples through his minions, don't waste your bonus action to help your team. That's the Cleric's job.
  • Jack of All Trades: Seems unimportant, until you remember that Initiative is a dexterity check. Random, untyped initiative bonuses are awesome, especially when your combat style is most effective if you act first. You also get it on your way to Expertise anyway.
  • Expertise: Okay, so maybe Rage isn't the single[/i\ best grappling ability in the game. Expertise gives you big untyped bonuses to shove/grapple that you can't get anywhere else. And unlike Rage, it works with basically every possible build you might use, especially the magical ones. If you aren't going Bard 3 or Rogue 1 for that Expertise bonus, you are either playing a bad grappler, or a really weird one. There is just no reason to skip this ability because the bonus just keeps growing and easily outpaces the opposed skill checks of other creatures.
    [*]Font of Inspiration: More Cutting Words throughout the day? Works for me! On paper, the difference between short/long rest doesn't seem that bad. In session, however, it is really noticeable.
    [*]Countercharm: Why are you using your turn to sing? Stop that. If you want to be a lover, spread those hugs to your enemies.
    [*]Magical Secret: There's this thing called class balance. Wizards designs different class with certain spell lists to keep them balanced. Things stay fair that way. Magical Secret? No more class balance in the spell list. There aren't a ton of spells that are awesome for grapplers but there are enough that Bard can't otherwise access. Thanks Wizards, and thanks Spell Secret.
    [*]Superior Inspiration: Nifty ability, but you shouldn't be going straight Bard 20 as a grappler anyway.
    [*]College of Lore: First, I tell you that harp-plucking Bards make good grapplers. Now I'm telling you that a bunch of music nerds who gather in libraries and classrooms are the best wrestlers of the bunch? I guess they say that Jujitsu and Judo are the thinking man's art, and College of Lore shows that to be true. The abilities in this sublcass are completely and shamefully unfair for grapplers and you (and your DM) are going to feel like you are cheating when you are using them.
    -Bonus Proficiencies: It never hurts to have more skills under your belt!
    -Cutting Words: Let me get this straight. I can give all my enemies a -D6 penalty to their opposed grapple/shove checks? One that scales with
    levels? Multiple times per combat? Very cool, sounds like a great way to use my bonus action. Wait, what's that? It's actually a REACTION??
    The action I'm not using anyway?? Yeah. Cutting words is insane. It's one of the rare optimization featurse that is both strong and flavorful;
    it's literally a game rule for smack talking.
    -Additional Magical Secrets: As if the regular Magical Secrets weren't strong enough, College of Lore gives you two more to play with. This is
    critical for picking up Enlarge at a reasonable level, which is a big improvement over Enhance Ability.
    -Peerless Skills: Did no one notice how this sublcass interacts with grappling in testing? Read that ability again. Yes, it's not a bonus action.
    Yes, it's not even a reaction. You can just give yourself a skill bonus whenever the heck you want, both on your turn AND on an opponent's
    turn if they are trying to break free. Between this and Cutting Words, you are looking at an average effective bonus of +10 to your grapple
    check (+5 to yours, -5 to theirs) at level 14. The only reason this isn't rated higher is because you have to progress way too far into the
    class to get it, and by that time you can pick up better options in other classes.
    [*]College of Valor: Initially, I had rated this a lot lower than other players thought was fair. Looking at their cases and re-weighing the class features, it does seem a lot stronger than I initially acknowledged. This is mostly because there is no easier way for Bard to gain access to Extra Attack than through CoV. Medium Armor is also nice, although most classes can pick that up through another multiclass. But that Extra Attack is huge and, even though you get it at level 6, you are still getting it alongside Expertise, spell level advancement, and progression towards other Bard features like Magical Secrets. As one poster noted, it's one of the best straight classes for grappling, even if other multiclasses beat it out. And even for multiclassers, it's more economical to go Bard 6 to get Expertise and Extra Attack than it is to go Rogue 2/Fighter 5 to get the same (that is, if you are valuing those abilities more than others).



Cleric
What do the following spells have in common? Guardian of the Faith, Flame Strike, Blade Barrier, Fire Storm. They are all Cleric spells, and they are all Dexterity-saved based. The Grappler feat lets you restrain targets at will and, once Restrained, they will suffer disadvantage on their saves. You will too but you can negate that through smart optimization. Unfortunately, that optimization is often very resource and level intensive, and it often ends up being worse thanother options. Clerics do have a lot of AC/HP to handle the front lines, and a strong spell list to keep them alive. But other classes can just do things a bit better. The only reason this gets an average rating instead of falling lower is that unique combination of a strong spell list on top of innate tankiness.

  • HD - D8: It's not the best but it makes a big difference over that silly D6 that the other large spell-list casters get. Still worse than Druids because, unlike your wild shaping bretheren, you have to stay in your regular, low-HP form.
  • Channel Divinity - Turn Undead: Stop making the undead run away. Your job is to grab them and throw them off ledges, not make them scared. Jokes aside, the main use for this is handling ghost-style undead that you can't otherwise grapple. It's still strong against other undead (a grappled, turned undead really can't do anything), but just not a very good use of your action.
  • Destroy Undead: Useful if you are fighting large numbers of enemies where grappling two of them just doesn't help much. But not particularly helpful for grappling; just a decent ability that is relevant against the shambling hordes.
  • Divine Intervention: Depending on your DM, this feature will range from completely broken (Level 10 Cleric invoking an Antimagic Field) to underwhelming (Spirit Guardians! ...yay?) to downright harmful (EARTHQUAKE ON THE WHOLE PARTY). It has a lot of interesting interactions with grappling, because your God is casting the spell and you aren't. That means you CAN hold down two attackers when asking for intervention. It's just not a reliable ability, however, so I would be hesitant to depend on it.
  • Knowledge Domain: Why is it that the priests of knowledge are worse at skills than some random hippy who parties his way through college (see: Bard at College of Lore)? The abilities and spells in this domain are just terrible for grappling. Not even "terrible", really. Just flat out irrelevant.
  • Life Domain: Heavy Armor proficiency is nice. And...that's about it. I think I mentioned somewhere earlier that your job is to grapple things and put them in bad situations. It's not to spend your action healing the crazy Rogue who overestimated his AC. Healing isn't bad in grappling (you will often find yourself focused by at least 1-2 enemies), and it's nice to have more of it, but it just doesn't make for a very powerful wrestling build.
  • Light Domain: A very solid choice for a grappling cleric. The spell list is packed with dexterity-based saving throw spells, including Fireball and Wall of Fire which you otherwise wouldn't even get as a Cleric. Warding Flare is a strong feature both for defending yourself and, at level 6, for protecting allies while on the front lines. It's also a reaction which is excellent for your action economy. That last ability, Corona of Light, is very cool, but I struggle to see why an optimized Cleric grappler has invested 17 levels into Cleric anyway. Still a strong domain choice with a lot of potent combinations.
  • Nature Domain: Underwhelming features abound. Dampen Elements is quite decent on its own (give yourself resistance to the damage and then blow something up on you and your grappled target's heads), but everything else is pretty bad. That Heavy Armor helps too, but you have probably already multiclassed into something with the proficiency. Not even the spell list can save this domain; if it had Conjure Animals or something similar, you could at least get them to "Help" you on your grapple checks, but even that is too much for the lowly Nature domain.
  • Tempest Domain: Similar to Light Domain, but way heavier on the damage and a bit lighter on the survivability. The flavor of this domain is just electrifying (sorry) with grappling. First, you grab a guy and restrain him. Then you power up some lightning-based spell with Destructive Wrath (Note that RAW, you can use this with spells from other classes; hello Wizard/Cleric Lightning Bolt Grappler!). Then you blast the bejesus out of them and hurl them 10 feet away towards some unpleasant end. Awesome. Makes for a great dip if you are going with the dex-save-based spellcaster and don't mind sticking with zappy spells.
  • Trickery Domain: The only thing that's really interesting here is Polymorph, a spell that Clerics aren't otherwise able to use at all. Polymorph grappling is definitely a thing, although from an optimization perspective it is definitely going to lose out against Shapechange grappling that you get from high level Wizards. The only benefit to Cleric Polymorph grappling over doing it with a Wizard is that Clerics have a bunch of useful spells that don't require concentration to maintain, so they will follow you in grappled form. Unfortunately, it's hard to be a good shapechanging grappler when you are stuck on Polymorph and will never get Shapechange, and when the rest of your class features are useless.
  • War Domain: At early levels, these features can be quite strong for grapplers. Bonus action attack lets you grapple and shove a creature in one turn instead of two, which seems very strong on paper. The problem is that you really want to be using your bonus action to Dash, otherwise there is no way you are going to move fast enough to lockdown two opponents. Or you want to be using your bonus action to perform Monk martial arts, which gives you the exact same attack benefits but with a lot more combat versatility. That said, the ability isn't bad by any means, and combined with the solid buffing bonus spells, this is certainly a viable domain for grappling Clerics. It just ends up being a bit worse than other options in other classes.


Druid
Just using the monsters that appear in the PHB, Wild Shape gives you some beastly (SEE WHAT I DID THERE) grappling abilities. I expect these will only improve once the full MM is released at the end of September. Add to that some relevant class features and some downright scary spells that you can concentrate on/benefit from while in Crocodile, Bear, or Boa Constrictor form, and you have a true grappling master.

  • HD - D8: Normally would be purple but, because you are adopting the HP of your animals anyway, it actually doesn't matter!
  • Wild Shape: Anyone remember Wild Shape Druids from 3.5? Those guys were broken. I remember them both as a player AND as a DM, and I still think they are broken. 5.0 Wild Shape is a lot more balanced than the 3.5 nuttiness, but they still make powerful grapplers. The key is that you don't just gain their ability scores and general attacks. You gain all the special qualities and abilities normally associated with those attacks. You will still need to pick up Extra Attack to perform multiple shoves/grapples (Multiattack cannot be replaced with multiple attempts itself), but the stat increase, size increase, and overall damage increase is huge.
  • Timeless Body: They say that martial arts is good for the body. That must be especially true when practicing your Bear Style Wrestling.
  • Beast Spells: At least this is no longer a feat, as in 3.5, that you could get before 5th-6th level. Even at level 18, it's still very strong (especially against your dex-save-disadvantaged foes).
  • Archdruid: As I talked about earlier, most players underestimate how important short rest/long rest abilities are in a real adventure. Unlimited Wild Shape rocks, but sadly for a grappler, it's probably better to do Druid/Barbarian or Druid/Rogue or some other combination than to just do straight Druid 20.
  • Circle of the Land: We are playing a wrestler. Not a tree hugger. As with College of Valor, I'm not even going to review the options in this sublcass because there is just no reason to grapple with these features over that of the other option.
  • Circle of the Moon: Even just looking at the PHB monsters, the Wild Shape Circle of the Moon wrestler is strong. MM beasts will only make them even crazier, and Circle of the Moon is what will make those wacky transformations possible. Between increasing your action economy in battle, giving you some in-animal healing, and removing CR restrictions on transformations, this is where the all-natural grappling action is.
    -Combat Wild Shape: Action economy is critical in fights, and the difference between Wild Shaping taking 1 action vs. 1 bonus action is a
    whole turn for you. The healing is just an added bonus, especially if your party cleric is overtaxed in a battle.
    -Circle Forms: Having now seen all the MM forms, this feature is totally WILD. Avoid the monsters with prebuilt grapple checks and
    stick to those with high stats (BROWN BEAR!).
    -Primal Strike: Even though grappling isn't about big damage numbers, you don't want to be totally useless in a fight. This guarantees
    that you can dish it out as the enemies get tougher.
    -Elemental Wild Shape: Most of the stats on these forms aren't great for grappling. Except, that is, for the movement modes. The rules still
    might need a bit more clarificaiton on this, but if you can Dash as a bonus action, then fly up 90 feet as a movement action (180 feet
    normally, halved because you are holding someone), and then just drop them, that seems really strong and really fun.
    -Thousand Forms: Not really necessary with all the Wild Shape goodness, but certainly doesn't hurt. It is worth noting that the main reason
    to continue Druid advancement is to get more mileage out of Circle Forms, but there are big diminishing returns on the forms you can take.


Continued in next post -------------------------------->


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

4. Class overview: Fighter - Sorcerer
Fighter
Two words: Action Surge. Like Rogue (to be talked about later), Fighter is one of the best dips you can take for grappling. There isn't a lot of reason to progress too far into it (Bard 14 is just that strong), but those first 3 levels give you a lot of mileage. Action Surge alone would be worth it but when you add some of the Battlemaster maneuvers to that, you get a really formidable skillset to augment your wrestling with. Added reach is particularly strong, courtesy of Lunging Attack, and Commander's Strike really helps you maximize your party's damage output. And for feat, intensive builds, it's hard to beat that bonus feat for Fighter 6. Overall, this is the sort of class that most builds will take at least a 2 level dip in by the time they hit level 20. They might even be stronger than Rogues (sorry, Cunning Action) because almost every wrestling build will take 2 levels of fighter, whereas Bards won't waste levels on Rogue.

  • HD - D10: Grapplers are tough. Fighters are tough. It's a good match.
  • Fighting Style: There are only two options here that you want to consider. Defense gives you a bit more AC, which is always nice on the front lines. Dueling gives you a bit more damage, which is also always nice on the front lines. I'm partial to Dueling because it's already so hard to hit you from disadvantage, and grapplers have lower damage anyway. But Defense is totally viable if you are in heavy armor and wielding the offhand Shield while you grapple, especially if you are worried about non-grappled opponents attacking you. The other styles either give you redundant effects that are worse than the alternatives (Protection), don't match your playstyle (Archery), or just don't even work when you are grappling (GWF, TWF).
  • Second Wind: Random bonus healing never hurt anyone! We'll take it, especially on our way to...
  • Action Surge: The only reason that Fighter is not a gold-rated class is that you can only use Surge once per combat encounter. Despite that, this might hands-down be the single most broken, unfair, and cheatyface ability in D&D 5th edition. It works in any build, in any situation, against any opponent. Grapple and shove in the same turn? You're thinking too small. Silence and dash and grapple in the same turn? Much better.This feature really lets you shut down an enemy before they have a chance to do anything. The only reason that Fighter isn't gold-rated just for this ability is that, in practice, it isn't QUITE as nuts as it seems on paper. Fights tend to have multiple opponents with lots of backup plans and synergies, so that single action surge rarely ends the battle outright. But that doesn't attract from how unfair it feels, or how powerful it is when you use it.
  • Ability Score Improvement: I mention this as a class-specific bonus because Fighter gives you a feat at level 6. In feat-intensive builds with Alert, Mage Slayer, Grappler, Tavern Brawler, etc., this really helps you reach your optimized potential.
  • Extra Attack: Another place to pick up your more-or-less mandatory ability. Most optimizations will get Extra Attack through Fighter, just because they are already going to be 3 deep in the class for maneuvers.
  • Indomitable: Just like Second Wind, random bonus saves never hurt anyone! Particularly strong if you are going to be facing down a lot of spellcasters.
  • Martial Artchetype - Champion: By far the weakest of the fighter archetypes, especially for grapplers. We just don't care enough about damage for the critical ranges to matter, mostly because we don't make enough attacks with a weapon (we spend more actions grappling/shoving than actually dealing damage). The extra styles don't help much either; remember that only two of them are useful to us anyway, and not useful enough to commit more class levels to. Remarkable Athlete should be renamed Unremarkable Jack of a Few Trades, and Survivor (although strong), just isn't worth an outrageous 18 level investment in the class.
  • Martial Archetype - Eldritch Knight: Suprisingly useful as a grappler. I've heard some pretty harsh criticism of this class, but overall I think it's better than most give it credit. Eldritch Strike is brutal, even with a limited spell list. At first, Weapon Bond is the sort of feature that doesn't jump out from a min-max perspective. In session, however, you get a lot of mileage from that feature. All the other features are decent as well, and all give rise to a lot of viable grappling ideas. Part of this is a rules thing; as long as features like War Magic work for ALL class spells, the archetype becomes much better. Cast Guidance as an action and then grapple as a bonus action; extra 1d4 to grapple every time. Hit them with Eldritch Strike and then Bestow Curse on them; no more escaping grapples for them. The spell list is still weak, but as long as you can apply the abilities to spells from other classes, the archetype becomes quite viable.
  • Martial Archetype - Battle Master: Grapplers are a very flexible and versatile class even before you add the Battle Master features. Add in Maneuvers and they just become monsters of battlefield control. A measly 3 level dip into the class gives you 3 of these powerful and useful Maneuvers for use in a ton of different situations. A 7 level dip gives you 2 more, on top of that awesome feat you are getting at 6th level anyway. The maneuvers don't directly interact with your Athletics or Ability Checks, or they would definitely be gold-rated. But the indirect interactions? If you thought playing a Monk made you feel like a martial artist, wait until you try out maneuvers alongside grappling.
    -Commander's Strike: Normally, I'd tell you not to give up your action. But if you have two people prone and grappled, it might be better to
    just give the attacks to your stabby assassin friend than to save them for yourself. They will probably deal way more damage anyway. Make
    sure your party can take advantage of this before you invest in it.
    -Disarming Strike: This is the best ability on the list that is also the worst designed. On the one hand, if your opponent fails that strength
    check and drops the weapon, you can just drag them away and they will never touch it again. This is devastating for most enemies that rely
    on weapon attacks, and will completely end their contributions to the fight. On the other hand, WHY DID THIS HAVE TO BE A STRENGTH
    SAVE?? Most people that you disarm are going to have very high strength saves, so this isn't always going to work. But when it does, your
    jujitsu will feel very strong.
    -Distracting Strike: Useless. Just knock them prone and don't waste the action. If the opponent is immune to being knocked prone, you
    probably shouldn't be tangling with them anyway.
    -Evasive Footwork: Handy for darting around a battlefield, or for dragging your victims through threatend squares. Footwork requires no
    action at all (no bonus action, no reaction, no nothing) which makes it a great way to maximize your action economy.
    -Feinting Attack: Probably more useless than even Distracting Strike because your job isn't to deal damage. At least DS helps your allies
    if, for whatever reason, you can't get the badguy prone.
    -Goading Attack: Remember. If you can just knock them prone and it has the same effect, just shove them instead of taking a bad feature.
    -Lunging Attack: Depending on how you interpret the rules, this maneuver is either really good or really bad. If you drag your
    opponent/yourself into your opponent's square after you grapple them, then this added reach is scary. But if that reach ends at the end of
    the turn and you break the grapple, it's actually worthless. The rules aren't clear enough on this point, so check with your DM before
    using the maneuver.
    -Maneuvering Attack: This is a really weird ability. As its written, it looks like it just gives free movement to your allies, no matter where they
    are on the battlefield. That's a lot of utility for very little investment. It doesn't take any action on your part to execute, and it's just a reaction
    for your ally. Great way to increase your battlefield utility.
    -Menacing Attack: This is NOT a saving throw your foe wants to fail. If they do, it gets a turn of disadvantage on all ability checks. Yep.
    Ability checks. Combine that with your own Rage and the other bonuses, and there is basically no way they are making grapple/shove
    checks for a turn. The save is also Wisdom based, which is much scarier than Strength-based saves against most enemies you
    will encounter
    -Parry: More tankiness never hurt anyone! Not a top choice over others on this list, but always good if you can't decide on other options.
    -Precision Attack: Strong ability, but not particularly useful for grappling. It gets a lot better if you are Wild Shaped or otherwise dedicated
    to making one attack that must connect (Crocodile noms, for example). Otherwise, there are better ways to spend your valuable
    superiority dice.
    -Feinting Attack: This is a really monstrous push distance, and grapple puts you in a great position for making that 15 feet of push into
    something much more lethal. It's a strength-based save, which although not the best, is a lot better in this case because pushing is just as
    valuable against big dumb fighters as it is against small and smart wizards. Those guys definitely won't be making that save, which probably
    means a big fall or some other hazardous end.
    -Rally: Not a bad bonus, but unfortunately a very bad use of your valuable bonus action.
    -Riposte: RAW, you can't convert this reaction into a grapple. Grapple functions off the Attack Action and any extra attacks you can make off
    of it. Tavern Brawler only works on your turn. The only place this is going to work is if you combine it with that happy Crocodile build, but
    even then, there are better things you can be doing with your maneuvers.
    -Sweeping Attack: Another DM dependent one due to rules ambiguities. If this lets you grapple two guys with one attack, it's one of the most
    action economic features in the book. But if it doesn't, it's a waste of your superiority die. There are also more than a few reasons to believe
    they don't work together; your attack is probably made with one hand, and you can't grapple two targets with one hand. Still, I leave it to you
    and your DMs to decide whether this is sky blue or purple.
    -Trip Attack: Great if you want to get someone to the ground fast, but limited in that it's a strength-based save. You also need to hit them
    with a weapon attack roll and grapple is not a weapon attack. If you have Tavern Brawler, that isn't a problem. You can smack them down
    and lock them up in one blow (and make sure to describe just how awesome that looks). Otherwise it's probably better to just stick with the
    normal action sequence for shoving someone prone.

Monk
It might be a bit surprising that Monks (the martial art class) are not the hands-down best grapplers in the game. Or it might not be surprising at all, depending on what you expect of Wizards' design. Regardless, Monks are very solid grapplers with a ton of build flexibility, even if they don't have some of the craziest class features that you see in Bard, Barbarian, and Druid. They do have some of the best damage of any grappler, in part because they can still deal significant damage even if their hands are occupied. This versatility gives them some truly unique and very effective builds. Also, for pure flavor, it's still hard to beat a Monk. The only reason this class doesn't have an overall higher rating is their dependence on too many ability scores (Strength for athletics, Con for HP, Dex/Wis to compensate for lack of armor), and their low AC/HP. Those are the sorts of things that don't look problematic in a forum, but become big issues at the gaming table.

  • HD - D8: Of all the good grappling classes to receive a low HD, this is one of the cases where it hurts the most. Unlike Cleric, you can't compensate for it with armor. Unlike Rogue, you can't compensate for it with Uncanny Dodge. And unlike a bunch of classes, you can't compensate for it with spells.
  • Unarmored Defense: Armor is just better, but because the majority of your abilities don't work in armor, you need to rely on this to stay alive. Unfortunately, this unarmored variant depends on a stat that we would rather just dump. Consider Monk/Barbarian multiclassing so you don't need to worry about Wisdom at all.
  • Martial Arts: It's too bad that when Wizards thinks of martial arts, they only think of Bruce Lee and not Kano Jigoro. The feature is still strong, just not suited for a lot of grappling situations. The first ability is one you can completely ignore; just pretend it doesn't exist unless your DM is fine with you houseruling in some dex-based grappling. The second ability scales nicely as you level and helps Monks put out a lot of damage in tandem with their bonus attacks. Damage isn't exactly a grappling staple, but Monks are a more damage-oriented grappling class anyway. The third ability is nice if you have nothing else to do, but for the most part you will be better off sepdning Ki-points on your bonus actions.
    As an important rules note, remember that you cannot replace those bonus attacks with grapples/shoves. RAW, those can only replace attacks made as part of the Attack Action. These attacks are part of a bonus action.
  • Ki - Flurry of Blows: If you take Open Hand Technique in the Way of the Open Hand tradition, this ability becomes much stronger as you can convert both of those attacks into free, dex-save-based shove attempts. They may not be ability checks but, combined with your extra attack at level 5, it does lead to huge sequences of attacks at very low levels. At higher levels, you'd probably prefer more grappling bonuses to a few extra points of damage, but Monk will give you other options on the way to that point.
  • Ki - Patient Defense: When most people think of Dodge, they think of the disadvantage to attack rolls (which you get from shoving anyway). What they don't remember is the advantage on Dexterity saves, which is very useful if you are going for the "I hold, you cast spells" approach. But remember that this does not combo with the Grappler feat; restraining yourself will set your own move speed to 0, which will not allow you to take the Dodge action at all. Still useful if you are facing lots of area spells, or if you are being focused by numerous attackers.
  • Ki - Step of the Wind: It's Cunning Action (plus bonus jump distance)! In some senses, this ends up being worse than Cunning Action because it functions off Ki , and because it competes with so many other bonus actions that Monk needs you to take. On the other hand, the unarmored movement bonus of the Monk interacts really well with Dash, especially if you can secure other movement modes.
  • Unarmored Movement: This is a big bonus when it comes to dragging someone around the battlefield, especially if combined with Dash. Two extra squares of movement per turn (dragging someone with Dash) is a lot, and adds up fast if you also have things like Longstrider active. This would be higher rated if it worked in armor, unlike the Barbarian feature of the same name.
  • Deflect Missiles: Solid ability that adds a bit to your survivability. It's reaction-based, which makes for good action ecomony, but it's not the strongest effect in the world. Even so, it's hard to look down some extra damage mitigation.
  • Slow Fall: In most builds, this is not really a combat ability (it's more for when you screw up somewhere else in the adventure). But with grappling, one of the most viable tactics is just to go high into the air and drop your foe. Or jump off a cliff. In those situations, you don't want to be the one to take the full 20d6 damage, and this is some great flat mitigation for that pain. In fact, with humbler falling distances (say, 10d6), this is actually better, because you can sometimes prevent all the damage to you while your opponent takes the full brunt of it.
  • Movement: You can get by without it in the right build, but for the most part, the best grapplers will be those with lots of attacks.
  • Extra Attack: Yet another place to get the best all-round ability for grappling.
  • Stunning Strike: Don't think of this feature as yet another save-or-condition ability in the Monk's already extensive arsenal. Think of this as a no-action setup for other abilities in your class, because Stunned means automatic failure (automatic, 100%, guaranteed failure) on all Str/Dex saves. Open Hand Technique prone save? Fail. Way of the Four Elements spell-like abilities? They will fail all of them. And don't forget any abilities/spells you pick up from other classes along the way. This does require Ki, but it also doesn't require an action, and you can get as many as 6 attempts at this per turn (with Extra Attack).
  • Ki-Empowered Strikes: If you are playing an unarmed grappler, especially one who is grabbing two enemies, this starts to become mandatory at later levels. Grapplers might not be all about the DPS, but damage is important enough that you don't want to be the only guy not contributing to it in a fight.
  • Evasion: As awesome on Monk as it is on Rogue.
  • Stillness of the Mind: Excellent cleanse effect for a grappler; Frightened is one of the worst conditions that can befall you (aside from the more obviously bad ones, like unconscious).
  • Purity of the Body: Won't come into play often, but when it does you will be very grateful. Any disease that gives strength disadvantage is a big problem, and this guarantees that never happens.
  • Tongue of the Sun and Moon: No matter who/what your enemies are, they will understand your trashtalk as you grind them into the dirt.
  • Diamond Soul: Given your small HP pool, and your presence on the dangerous front lines, this is invaluable in a lot of situations. Particularly strong if you are using the whole restrain enemy, cast spell school of grappling.
  • Timeless Body: Just in case your parents/spouse thought that martial arts was bad for you, just point them to Monk 15.
  • Empty Body: At first glance, this looks like Invisibility that you need to wait 18 levels to cast. Then you realize that you don't have to concentrate on it, it lasts for 10 rounds, and at imparts resistance to ALL DAMAGE (but force damage...who uses force damage anyway). This gets really crazy with Silence, a spell given to you through the Way of the Shadow tradition; concentrate on Silence, keep invisiblity up, and just go to town on a pair of spellcasters. Won't be as strong with other spells because, gaining access to it at level 18, you won't have a lot of non-Monk progression.
  • Perfect Self: Terrible level 20 ability. Even in the most harrowing boss battles or gauntlet-style encounters, it would be a real feat to burn through 20 ki points without a short rest before your next fight.
  • Way of the Open Hand - Tradition: Of all the feature not directly benefit grappling or ability checks, this one is probably the most solid. That said, almost all of that derives from the level 3 feature and not the stuff gained later. Open Hand Technique is one of the most efficient ways to grapple and knock prone enemies in one turn. As early as level 5, you can grab two enemies and knock both of them prone in one turn. And unlike the Fighter tripping maneuver, this one is dex-based, a big bonus against all those clumsy, jacked monsters in D&D. The other abilities are decent and will have applications, but that prone one is the feature you get the most benefits from. Then there's the rest which, although not weak, just isn't necessarily worth the investment. Wholeness of Body isn't bad but, as with most healing spells, you probably don't need to take an entire action to just heal up 20 or so HP. As for Tranquility, even grapple will break it (it's a special attack, which definitely RAW cracks the sanctuary), so the ability isn't particularly helpful in most contexts. On the other hand, Quivering Palm is a true save or die that you can easily add into your grappling routine. It doesn't directly benefit grappling, but it's hard to say know to the save or die goodness of the feature.
  • Way of Shadows - Tradition: What it lacks in damage it more than makes up for in utility, but you have to be willing to build and play around it. Level 3 gets you access to Shadow Arts, which includes Silence and Darkness, two of the best spells for shutting down enemies in a grapple. Next, level 6 grants Shadow Step, one of the best gap closers for any non-magical class in the game. It's unfortunate that you won't be able to Silence/grapple/Shadow Step in the same turn, but you can definitely cast Darkness on yourself before the battle, Shadow Step to your opponent, and then grapple them while in Darkness. You can always Silence next turn. At will invisibility, courtesy of Cloak of Shadows, is also quite strong for ambushing enemies, and Opportunist gives you a small (if severely overvalued at level 17) boost to damage. My first suspicion is that most classes will prefer to pick up these spells elsewhere, but if you are progressing in Monk towards the Extra Attack anyway, it's definitely viable to pick them up along the way.
  • Way of the Four Elements - Tradition: The big problem with 4 Elements is that most of the spells are seriously overvalued from a progression standpoint. Fly at level 11? Cone of Cold at level 17? Even with the combo potential there (fly up to drop enemies, Cone of Cold while restraining your target), it just isn't worth it because of how much investment you have to make. This is true of most abilities in the subclass, witha few exceptions. Water Whip is very interesting with Restrained because the save will be made at disadvantage, and you can pull the target UP TO 25 feet closer. If they are next to you, just don't pull them at all and they stay grappled. If they are far away, pull them into you as a bonus action and then grab them on your attack. Fangs of the Fire Snake also has potential, depending on how you and your DM interpret the rules on dragging an opponent from reach into your square when the reach expires. But overall, all of these options are probably going to be weaker than just multiclassing or than the abilities of the other traditions.

Paladin
All things considered, there are some redeeming qualities of Paladin grapplers. For one, they can deal a ton of damage to their grappled target with all those radiant bonuses. Vow of Emnity is also significantly better than something like Reckless Attack. None of the Paladin's spells are particularly crazy with grappling, but many of them aren't bad either. Paladin's are also pretty tanky, which is another quality in their favor. So why rate it so low? The reason this class gets a substandard, purple rank instead of an average one is that this damage is mostly worse than Monk without any sizeable benefits in exchange. Clerics will do most things Paladins do, but with better spell selection. Overall, Paladins CAN grapple, but most classes can just do it a bit better.

  • Lay on Hands: Free healing is nice, but using an action to do it is not. One nice perk of this feature is that it doesn't appear to require a free hand if you are using it on yourself (the RAW is admittedly ambiguous there), which means you can do it while grappling two opponents at once.
  • Fighting Style: Of the different Fighter fighting styles, Paladin gets the only two that are good for grapplers. Seems easy enough; Defense for tanking, Dueling for a bit more damage.
  • Divine Smite: This no-action-required damage boost is nice for a low damage playstyle. If you don't mind burning your spells, you can really pour damage into multiple attack rounds (in tandem with Monk, for example). Not particularly synergistic with grappling, but always nice to have the added damage.
  • Divine Health: Grapplers are supposed to be healthy anyway, so you can't complain about an extra perk on the way to better class abilities.
  • Extra Attack: Extra Attack is not always created equally between classes. The only reason this is slightly lower rated than other Extra Attacks is that you will rarely be dipping 2-3 levels into Paladin in the first place. Most builds will probably have Fighter/Monk/Barbarian 3, so going 2 more levels is relatively painless. Not so with Paladin. Still a strong ability, just not the best entry point for it.
  • Aura of Protection: It's nice to have a bonus to all saves, even if that bonus is based on an ability you generally shouldn't be maxing. Your allies may or may not also benefit from this ability. If you are grappling something on the frontlines so they can get backstabbed or clobbered to death by your buddies, then the Aura helps everyone. But if you immediately run to the enemy's rearlines and lock down their spellcasters and crossbowmen, the Aura love won't be spread. Even so, an extra +2 to all saves is nothing to sneeze at.
  • Aura of Courage: Frightened is one of the worst conditions a grappler can get, and it is also often based on some of our lowest saving throws. Immunity to the condition goes a long way to keeping you useful in all battles, even if it comes with a 10 level investment in a class that just isn't spectacular for grappling.
  • Improved Divine Smite: Even more burst! But as we have covered before, it's not as if grapplers and grappling is uniquely suited for bursting down foes. It's not that the extra damage is bad or anything. It's just that you will be the most use to your party by focusing on the grappling/restraining/proning and not on the damaging bit. There are a few exceptions to this (see; Rogue), and Paladin is generally going to get outclassed by all those exceptions.
  • Cleansing Touch: Strong ability that can really get you back in a fight if you miss a bad save. Using your action isn't great, but if it's a choice between losing an action or getting stuck in Otiluke's Resilient Sphere for the whole battle, the choice becomes a lot easier. Also, as a side note, I am vaguely uncomfortable with all the Paladin abilities that involve touching others and touching yourself. Grapplers are all about contact but there's a difference between a pin, a grab, and a "touch".
  • Oath of Devotion: I'm a big fan of Dispel Magic, so it's nice to see that added to the class spell list. And that's where my fandom of Oath of Devotion ends. Permanent Protection from Evil and Good is cool, but not worth 15 levels and no cooler than just slamming two hostiles into the dirt to get that disadvantage. The other spells are also pretty underwhelming, not to mention what has to be the most underwhelming level 20 ability in any class I have seen.
  • Oath of the Ancients: Now THAT's a level 20 ability. For 1 minute, you become this save-or-die grappling monstrosity that can cast any of your spells in the same turn you grapple, and gives disadvantage on the saving throw for every one of those speedy spells. Aura of Warding is also nasty; permanent resistance to all spells? Including your own?? Like that Ice Storm they put on your spell list (or the Fireball your Wizard is casting on you and your two restrained pals)? The Channel Divinity options are pretty crappy, but they are more than made up for by that nasty Misty Step at level 5. Who needs Dash when you can just appear next to your enemy as the bonus action? Paladins might not be great grapplers overall, but if you want to try them out, Oath of the Ancients is a very strong way to go.
  • Oath of Vengeance: A very close contender with Oath of the Ancients. Vow of Emnity is a decent Channel Divinity option, even if Grappler will give you the same benefits in most cases. Abjure Enemy, despite being a Charisma-based save, imposes the best condition you could hope for on a grappling victim: Frightened. Normally, I urge you to not give up your action to frighten anything, but in this case it's well worth it. Abjure Enemy will freeze your target in place for 10 rounds, during which they have disadvantage on all their ability checks. "But ktkenshinx, it breaks on damage!" True, but who said you have to damage them? Just grapple them (no damage), shove them prone (no damage), and drag them around (no damage). It's like the ultimate battlefield/playground bully strategy and your DM will hate you for it. The other Vengeance features are all fine but not particularly powerful for grappling. Relentless Avenger givse you a few extra feet of movement per turn, useful for dragging, but otherwise nothing jumps out. At least, nothing except the spell list. Misty Step is still awesome, and Haste just gets crazy. Paladins still don't make the best grapplers (multiclassed Fighters or Clerics can do almost everything they do), but Vengeance grapplers seem quite solid if you are really dedicated to being a Paladin.


Ranger
There is only one build that grapples as a ranger. The Tag Team Wrestler. Working with his animal companion (using the Help action), Rangers can get advantage on every single Athletics check just like a Barbarian. But unlike the Barbarian, Rangers can cast and concentrate on spells while doing it. This is a very niche style of grappling that is totally dependent on your companion to not be outclassed by other builds. But the Tag Team Wrestler is still totally viable if executed correctly; what it loses in a bit of power it more than makes up for in versatility and awesome flavor.

  • HD-D10: If you can't be a Barbarian, it's fine to settle for second best.
  • Favored Enemy: I had to read through the ability four times before it settled in that this doesn't actually help you in combat. Well, I suppose a DM might rule that you can't use Cutting Words if you can't speak their language... otherwise, it's pure flavor and pure adventuring.
  • Natural Explorer: Between this and Favored Enemy, we aren't off to a good start for grappling skills. I can't even rarte these red because they just have nothing to do with grappling at all.
  • Fighting Style: Hey, it's our old friends Dueling and Defense! At least it's a step up from the last two class features.
  • Primeval Awareness: 1 step forward, 1 step back. Does this class actually want to grapple things, or does it just want to spend all its time finding things to grapple?
  • Extra Attack: Similar to Paladin, there are better entry points for Extra Attack, namely in classes that you already take 3 level dips in.
  • Land's Stride / Hide in Plain Sight / Vanish: Remember, team. Our job is to grapple the bad guys. Not hide from them. And really, does a Ranger honestly need that many class features to find things? Is the Wizards in-house playtest DM so sadistic that he doesn't let his players actually find any monsters to fight?
  • Feral Senses: Great synergy with Darkness, even if damage isn't your primary worry. Seeing invisibility is very strong against some monsters, although that's only because you need to find them to grapple them. Once found, grappling and shoving won't suffer from disadvantage (the aren't attack rolls).
  • Foe Slayer: It baffles me that a level 20 ability (Foe Slayer) is somehow worse than a level 1 ability (Rage) in almost all situations. And that's abstractly, not even in relation to grappling.
  • Hunter Archetype: A whole sublcass full of subpar grappling abilities. Like with Foe Slayer, I can't wrap my head around how Ranger gets Evasion at level 15 and Rogue/Monk get it at level 7. Rogues also get Uncanny Dodge at level 5 (not 15), and that's ON TOP of the Evasion they are getting a few levels later. Flavorwise, Hunter has a lot of potential. Game stats wise, this is one of the more embarassing designs in the book.
  • Beast Master Archetype: To understand how the Tag Team Wrestler Ranger works, we need to understand how the "Help" action works. Simply put, it just lets a creature use their action to give another creature advantage on an ability check. The only restriction is that the helped creature needs to make that check before the start of the helper's next turn. No, the helper doesn't have to be proficient in the check. No, the helper doesn't even RAW-wise have to be actively/physically assisting with the check. The rules just state that they need to be somehow "helping with" the check. Maybe that means words of encouragements. Maybe that means active engagement with it. I leave that to you and your DM to figure out, but those are the rules that underlie the Tag Team Wrestler Ranger (TTWR).
    How does the TTWR work?
    Step 1: Get an Animal Companion that can use some of its move to leave your backpack and the rest of its move to slither/fly/jump/crawl back in. We don't actually want our companion in harm's way, even if we will be giving the enemy disadvantage on his attack rolls. I suggest Poisonous Snake because, at least in the PHB, it's the highest damage beast that is also Tiny. You could also go with Constrictor Snake for flavor (or if your DM is giving you a hard time), but it's going to be much harder to hide the Boa than it is to hide the Viper.
    Step 2: Get to Ranger level 7. Exceptional Training lets you command the beast to help you using only your bonus action. That gives you the rest of your turn to do whatever you want, and what you want to do is intiate a grapple with advantage on the roll. Note that you can't get advantage on BOTH the check to grapple and to shove. You need to pick one.
    Step 3: Cast spells. The only other class that gives you advantage on grappling is Barbarian, and those guys can't cast spells or concentrate on spells. Worried that the Ranger spell list sucks? Just multiclass to something else; you get all you need out of Ranger by level 7 (or level 8 if you want that bonus feat/ability score increase). And some of those Ranger spells (Longstrider, Silence, Conjure Animals) are actually quite strong.
    Observant readers will note that you can do the same thing with Conjure Animals (an awesome spell I will talk about in the Spells section of the guide). The big disadvantage of that is you need to concentrate on the spell, which means you can't concentrate on something better like Haste. So how do you get that advantage on that shove action?
    Step 4: Find Familiar. Get another Snake or, if that's too creepy for you, get something more grapple oriented like a crab. Your Ranger companion will help you with one check, your familiar will help you with the other. I'll talk more about Find Familiar later in regards to other classes (because literally every other class can use it, courtesy of their own spell list or courtesy of the Magic Initiate feat), but this just gives you an idea of how nutty this can get.
    This is the sort of RAW optimization that many DMs are going to balk at, so be prepared to justify your build to your skeptical playgroup. It's not necessarily the best use of the animal companion/find familar Help Action playstyle (because remember; ANYONE can get Find Familiar), but it's a really cool and hilariously flavorful build that is sure to please and delight at least a few PCs.

Rogue
Like Fighters, Rogues are by far one of the best 2 level dip that a grappler can take. One level gives you Sneak Attack (which you can use in tandem with the Grappler feat, or just after you knock an enemy prone). Fine, but not great. But it also gives you the almighty Expertise, which doubles your proficiency bonus to athletics. The second level gives you Cunning Action, which is the real reason to take the class in the first place. CA lets you Dash/Disengage (don't worry about hiding; real grapplers don't hide) as a bonus action. Know what happens when you Dash as a bonus action while grappling? More move speed to cover distance while dragging your target. Know what happens when you Disengage as a bonus action while grappling? All those other guys surrounding you won't be able to take reactions as you back away. The vast majority of decent grappling builds, except those using Bards which already gets Expertise, are going to take a 2 level dip of Rogue on their way to maximum level. There are also some scary Sneak Attack + Shove.Grappler builds you can put together which focus on maximizing damage to opponents and taking advantage of higher level Rogue abilities (one of the few non-magic damage grappling builds that is really viable).

  • HD-D8: Not great, but not as bad as the Bard D8 HD because many builds will just take 2 levels in Rogue. For builds that go further, however, this is going to be an issue.
  • Expertise: No-action-required, scales with levels, and gives a bonus you can't get anywhere else. Yep, it's that good. And you get it at level 1, which is a min-max dream come true.
  • Sneak Attack: For most grapplers, this is just a nice little extra damage boost you can get in tandem with Grappler or after you shove your opponent prone. For the dedicated grappling Rogue, this damage can get completely out of hand as you gain levels and focus on grabbing opponents and slitting their throats. Just be aware that you need to use a finesse weapon to benefit from the damage, and RAW you can't use an unarmed strike to accomplish that. It's a little rules-ambiguious whether Monk martial arts make their unarmed strikes Finesse weapons. Strict RAW, it doesn't work, but RAI it seems to. Check with your DM. If they agree, you can combine Rogue with Monk to do some really degenerate stuff. Even if not, there's nothing wrong with headlocking someone as you pull out your dagger/short sword/rapier.
  • Thieves' Cant: Not really grappling related. In fact, not grappling related at all. I guess you can use Thieves' Cant to talk to your rogue allies while you are grappling enemies and they won't understand you?
  • Cunning Action: Another ability that makes you feel like you are cheating. Dashing as a bonus action will let you run around the battlefield at will with your dragged enemies. Just remember that your move speed is halved by virtue of the grapple, so Dash is only going to "double" your halved move speed, not your full one. Even so, being able to move the full 30+ feet in a turn makes a big difference for battlefield control. It's true that Monks get this too, courtesy of their Ki points, but they only have a limited number of uses per battle. They also don't get Expertise en-route to the feature (instead, they get a bunch of abilities that don't work in armor). Those differences are why Cunning Action gets a gold rating and the monk abilities are only sky blue.
  • Uncanny Dodge: More action economy! Really helps compensate for the low HD, and the fact that you can use it every turn makes Rogues surprisingly tanky in frontline scenarios.
  • Evasion: I hold. You cast Fireball. Everybody (but the badguys) wins! Just pin two enemies using the Grappler feat and give them both disadvantage on their dex saves. Then just sit there while Fire/ice/Lightning rains down on your heads. At worst, you take half damage. At best, you won't take any at all.
  • Reliable Talent: It's like the Barbarians Indomitable Might, but you get it 7 levels earlier and despite getting it earlier, it's actually BETTER depending on your stats. Barbarians get an automatic 20 on Indomitable Might at level 18, assuming a 20 Strength score. Rogues get to treat the roll as a 10 and then add bonuses. That would be at absolute minimum an 8 from proficiency (doubled from Expertise), and probably 4 from Strength (you should definitely have 18 strength by level 11). That's a 22 MINIMUM on any athletics check you make. Oh, and did I mention it applies to all your skills, not just those combat ones? Features like these make the straight Rogue grappler look way more viable than it does at first glance. The only rason this isn't gold is because you get it so late as a Rogue that the other drawbacks (low HP, more limited access to other features) make it a little worse.
  • Blindsense: Nice perk for handling invisible foes. Even though grappling and shoving ignore the disadvantage from invisibility, you still need to find your enemies to wrestle them.
  • Slippery Mind: More saves never hurt anyone. 15 levels in a Rogue is probably too many, but Wisdom is going to be a low save for that class anyway, so you can take all the help you can get.
  • Elusive: Useful if you are restraining enemies and worried about the advantage that is going to give other combatants. But again, 18 levels in a Rogue is just too steep of an investment for most builds.
  • Stroke of Luck: Once per encounter, you will win one grapple/shove check no matter what. I wouldn't invest 20 levels in Rogue just to get that perk (for all intents and purposes, your grappling should already be "automatically" succeeding by virtue of its score), but if you were playing in a campaign that didn't allow multiclassing, then it isn't a bad capstone to the class.
  • Thief Archetype: The power of this archetype hinges on what magical (and nonmagical) items you can use as part of the Use An Object action. Without seeing the new DMG, it's hard to know if those will be worth the class feature, but if they are good then this subclass becomes very powerful. Grappling is all about action economy (combat generally, but especially grappling because you are almost literally juggling so many enemies and actions already), and this gives you a way to intersperse some potentially powerful effects into your combat routine. Thief's Reflexes is also incredibly powerful in tandem with Sneak Attack, because the damage will reset during that second turn in the initiative order. Unfortunately, it's a level 17 feature so you can't get it alongside multiple attacks, but it still allows for a lot of different grappling options in a single initiative order.
  • Assassin Archetype: Nothing about this feature really relates to grappling. But everytime you see features that give automatic critical hits or that double damage, you should pay attention. In the right build, this can lead to some very nasty surprise rounds. Not really a grappling-specific ability, but also one that isn't anti-synergistic with a grappler's playstyle.
  • Arcane Trickster Archetype: Don't evaluate Arcane Trickster as a subpar Rogue archetype with slow spell progression. Think of it as a series of perks on the way to your best class feature at level 11 (Reliable Talent). Or to level 12 (because what's one more level if it means a bonus feat/ability score increase?). This makes the class much scarier because it gives you access to one of the best grappling spells (Enlarge/Reduce, taken at level 8) en route to one of the best grappling abilities in the game (Reliable Talent). From there, all you need to do is take 5 levels in something like Fighter or Monk, get that extra attack, and you have a really formidable frontline grappler who can also deal a ton of damage via Sneak Attack. You will still have an HP issue if you take this approach, but the rest of your abilities will be really formidable. Also, Spell Thief can lead to some serious shennanigans with your fellow party members if they are willing to spend some time casting spells on you instead of casting them themselves.

Sorcerer
D&D 5.0 did a lot to improve on the issues that Sorcerers faced in previous editions. Heightened Spell alone is an awesome feature, and sorcery points in general can be very strong. Unfortunately, if grappling is your thing, Sorcerers are generally worse versions of Wizards. That's not to say they don't have their own unique strengths. Dragon Wings is awesome with grappling, as is Quickened Spell in most brawls, and Subtle Spell if you are trying to work your magic in an area of Silence (which Sorcerers don't actually have access to on their own list). But none of those abilities are particularly powerful with grappling itself, even if they do have synergies elsewhere. And the lack of True Polymorph and Shapechange really hurt the class from just a spellcasting standpoint.

  • HD-D6: It doesn't get any worse than this. Even grapplers who are trying to do most of their work from the rearlines are going to feel the pressure of that puny HD. Shapechanging mitigates those effects, but Sorcerers don't get access to the best two spells anyway.
  • HD: Whether creating spell slots or sorcery points, this is a great ability for prolonged engagements, multiple engagements in a row, or when you are pouring points into your spells every round. Not the most useful synergy with grappling in the game, but still useful if you find yourself casting the same spells over and over again (Shield, for example).
  • Careful Spell: If this protected you, it would be excellent. But it is hard to make a convincing RAW argument that "other" creatures will include "you", so this isn't going to save you from all those spells you are exploding on your own head.
  • Distant Spell: Doubling the range of your already ranged spells is not particularly useful; you want to be in close anyway. But making a touch spell into a ranged one is a lot more helpful, especialy if you are combining it with spells from other classes that you normally wouldn't be able to cast if grappled up with someone else (healing comes to mind).
  • Empowered Spell: One of the better features in the metamagic list if for no other reason than that it can be applied on top of others. At just 1 point, it's a great way to get a little more damage out of your spells. Decent with grapling because most of your spells are damage-based anyway, at least the ones you will cast during the fight.
  • Extended Spell: Not a bad feature persay, but not one that is very helpful for most of your longer duration spells. Combat generally won't go past the duration of even the shortest-lasting spells (Enlarge, with just 10 rounds for example).
  • Heightened Spelll: It isn't cheap in terms of expended Sorcery Points, but unconditional save disadvantage is huge on many spells. Redundant if you are just using restrained anyway (at least, with dex-based saves), but very strong if you want to impose other, non-damaging conditions on opponents. Fear, for example, imposes one of the worst conditions you can have while grappled, and one of the few condition-imposing spells that doesn't get rerolls every turn. They fail once, they are stuck as frightened for the rest of the battle, and they will drop all their held items immediately. Heightened Spell helps you set up that combo.
  • Quickened Spell: Very useful if you are comitting all your other actions to the grapple itself, even if it competes with other bonus actions you might perform in a round. Remember that if you cast a spell as a bonus action, you can also cast a cantrip as a regular action in the same round; might not be the most useful pairing with grappling, but still something to consider. This gets a lot better if you can pick up Extra Attack from another class.
  • Subtle Spell: Somatic component spells require a free hand. Restraining two targets, or even just grappling them, will normally occupy both of your free hands, preventing you from casting all those awesome spells with S in the components section. Or you can just cast the Silent version of the spell and keep your hands full the entire time. This also lets you cast spells in a zone of Silence, which starts to feel really unfair if your opponent(s) are stuck with poking you with their dagger/quarterstaff. As a final note, if you pick up True Polymorph or Shapechange from another spell list, and then turn yourself into a form that can't normally cast spells, Subtle Spell will let you cast them sans the Verbal components. Definitely the best of the metamagic feats for grapplers, even if it isn't in the best grappling class.
  • Twinned Spell: There are generally better things you can do than casting single-target spells as a grappler. Besides, if you are holding two enemies, you won't have the free hands to cast most spells anyway (unless you Subtle Spell them, but then you can't spend the metamagic point to Twin them in the first place).
  • Sorcerous Restoration: Wizards must have had a lot of playtests/experience where high level characters go for hours (in and out of game) on end without a rest. If you are participating in those marathon encounter sequences, features like this become decent. But even there, if your character has the time for a short rest, in many cases he will also have time for a long rest, which makes you wonder why you would invest 20 levels into this class to get this feature.
  • Draconic Bloodline - Origin: The flavor is strong with this feature. The mechanics, at least in regards to grappling? Not so much. The max HP increase is nice but doesn't really compensate for that tiny HD. The AC bonus seems silly, given that you have access to Mage Armor from level 1 onwards, and you can just multiclass into something with real armor proficiency. Elemenetal Affinity gives you a painless resistance to some damage type, which you can set to the type you are most likely to explode on your own head, and a tiny uptick to the damage from those spells. As for a free fly speed, that's something any grappler can make use of, especially when it's just based on your regular move speed. You can also do this in any form you take, a nice bonus for the polymorphing grappler. Even so, you probably don't want to invest 14 levels just to get Dragon Wings, but it's still one of the few ways in the game to obtain a permanent fly speed. Then there's the final ability of the subclass which, although bestowing one of the best conditions for a grappler (frightened), is a charisma-based ability that you get way too late in the progression. Overall, the only real reason to take this subclass is for the Wings, and you just don't get those early enough for it to matter.
  • Wild Magic - Origin: One could write an entire optimization thread on just wild magic itself, so I'll try and stick with its relevance to grappling. The Wild Magic Surge table itself has a lot of hilarious interactions with grappling. It can Polymorph you as early as level 1, it can effectively make you a Large creature permanently through height increases (more RAI than RAW), and you can get totally wasted for all those barroom fights your wrestler is going to get involved in. Well, maybe that last one isn't necessarily the most optimal way to build a character (or maybe it is THE optimal way to do it). Regardless, the table is mostly beneficial and won't come up too much in actual battles. Tides of Chaos and Bend Luck, however, are very strong with grappling. The former gives you advantage on any ability check without any action, and you can regain it at the DMs discretion by casting a spell. The latter allows you to spend a reaction to impose a -1d4 penalty on your opponent's roll; it's not quite Cutting Words, but you can also use it to give yourself a bonus. The other features aren't bad at all, but they just don't have a lot of grapple synergy. If you had to be a Sorcerer grappler for whatever reason, Wild Magic is definitely the way to go.


Continued in next post -------------------------------->



Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

4. Class overview: Warlock - Wizard
Warlock

Warlock is not red because it's a bad class. It's red because it makes the worst grappler. The only interesting synergy in Warlock is its ability to see in magical darkness combined with the Darkness spell itself. Cast Darkness on yourself and then just pick up two enemies and stick them in with you; your allies will, almost literally, not even notice they are there. But otherwise, the spell and feature selection is just really lacking compared with other magical classes. They get Find Familiar at level 3, but so do Wizards...at level 1. They get True Polymorph at level 9 but Wizards get Shapechange. That's all too bad because Warlocks have the best level 1 spell in the game for grappling (Hex), but if you really need some Hex action, you can get it either through the Magic Initiate feat or the ridiculous Magical Secrets Bard ability. You can also pick up a 1 level dip just to get both Find Familiar and Hex, but given that this class only lets you cast Hex 1/short rest anyway, it probably won't be worth it.

  • HD - D8: They even get armor proficiency! Hardy for a caster but not hardy enough to make up for the other deficiencies with the class.
  • Mystic Arcanum: Adds to your spells-per-day, which is good. But your spells-per-day are just so low to begin with, which is bad. At least the spells are high level? Overall, Warlock has a major issue with low spell usage every combat, and that's as much a problem for grapplers as it is for anyone else.
  • Eldritch Master: If this had been a 1 action plea instead of a 1 minute one, this would make Warlocks a lot better. Well, maybe not for grapplers, but better generally. As it stands, however, the 1 minute casting time for this feature just isn't worth it. In most cases, if you have enough downtime for a 1 minute plea to your patron, you probably have enough downtime for a rest. Some adventures might prohibit this but that doesn't mean you should invest 20 levels in the class just to prepare for that contingency.
  • The Archfey: It's not the the features in this subclass are totally useless. It's that they are all much worse than other alternatives in other classes, and you can't even justify them with the Warlock's underwhemling spell selection. Most of them tangentially relate to grappling, but not in a way that is particularly powerful. Then again, I'm not sure what you expected of a patron called the Archfey.
    -Spell List: Greater Invisibility is nice. And..that's really it. This spell list would be bad even if your job was to seduce the duchess or bluff your
    way into the king's court, and it's really bad if your job is actually just to drag the two elite knights before the king as you make your
    demands. It just has too many bad enchantment and illusion spells clogging it up.
    -Fey Presence: Every time you see the "Frightened" condition, you should pay attention. But every time you see that the condition only lasts
    a turn and can't be used again until after a short rest, you should remember that you don't have to look pretty to wrestle the
    badguys into the ground. I suppose this would give them disadvantage in that first round of combat. Then again, I suppose you have to
    commit an entire action to do that, which makes grappling them pretty hard.
    -Misty Step: This feature is actually pretty decent, especially if you can bait someone into damaging you (or you damage yourself/
    get damaged by an ally). A 60 foot teleport that has you arrive with invisibility is pretty strong, especially when you can do it as
    a reaction. You have to jump through a few hoops to use it, but it's still a decent gap closer.
    -Beguiling Defenses: Well, grapplers probably have weaker saves than other classes against charm effects and similar magic. So that's
    good, I guess. Then again, any opponent who is trying to charm you when you are putting them in a headlock is probably out of real
    options anyway, so it's not like this ability is going to be turning around many fights.
    -Dark Delirium: More Frightened! This one is a little better than the Fey Presence one, but still suffers from two serious problems. For one,
    it breaks on damage, which isn't a problem if you are just dragging people around, but rapidly becomes a problem once they start
    taking damage. As a bigger issue, it also requires concentration, which means you can't have any serious buffs active on yourself
    while you are maintaining it. Okay, so maybe this isn't much better than Fey Presence after all.
  • The Fiend: A huge improvement over the Archfey abilities. Of course, that's not saying much (the abilities are still worse versions of other class features, especially for grapplers), but it's still an improvement over Archfey. All of the abilities have some relevance to grappling, and the spell list has decent synergies with the restrained condition. That's not to say any of this makes Warlocks good at grappling. Just that of the subpar Warlock grapplers, Fiend-patroned ones will be the best.
    -Spell List: There are actually a fair number of decent spells on this list, even if Wizards also get most of them with better features along
    the way. Fireball, Flame Strike, and Wall of Fire all have great synergy with the restrained condition. Fire Shield is a passable frontline
    tanking spell, although there are certainly better options out there. Solid B+ spell list; it only works with a certain style of grappling,
    but it's at least a viable style.
    -Dark One's Blessing: There are probably some hilarious optimizations with this spell and farming off hordes of Conjured Animals
    or something similar. The HP doesn't go away on any timer and there's no reason to believe the bonuses don't stack. Not really a
    grappler bonus, but still a cool one.
    -Dark One's Own Luck: It's Peerless Skill! Only usable once per short rest, but you get it at level 6 instead of level 14. Super solid ability
    when you badly need to succeed on that initial check to get things started.
    -Fiendish Resilience: True, it's no Rage or Bear Totem Rage, but as far as spellcasting tank abilities go, this one isn't half bad. Fire is
    obviously a good choice if you plan on using your spell list the way I would plan to use it (Hint: It involves a slow roast over high heat).
    -Hurl Through Hell: At first glance, this just looks like a no-save, high-damage burst ability. And maybe it's not all that good; it breaks the
    grapple, after all. Let me ask you this: Why are you using this while you are both on the ground? Fly up in the air and hurl them
    through hell. When they reappear in mid air, they will instantly take 10d10 damage plus whatever the fall is. Now THAT'S getting
    hurled through hell. It might not KO a monster in one shot, but it will be hard for them to heal up through that quick explosion of damage.
    As an added bonus, you can land below the creature (move action) and then ready an action to grapple the creature when it lands (action).
    RAW, it will be landing Prone anyway after the fall, so you just have to grab it there and start all over again. Hey, maybe Warlocks
    can grapple after all!
  • The Great Old One: Warlocks make bad grapplers. Cthulhu worshipping grapplers make the worst grapplers of the bunch, which is really too bad because that would be the coolest and most flavorful build in the PHB. The combination of completely irrelevant class features and a mediocre spell list dooms this as a viable grappling build. Bonus points for flavor and backstory, but none for mechanics. Well, maybe one bonus point for one mechanic, but it's a bit of a weird one and doesn't obviously help grappling off the bat.
    -Spell List: WHERE ARE THE SPELLS THAT FRIGHTEN THINGS?? Aren't those Great Old Ones supposed to be scary? The ones worshipped
    by these Warlocks seem more like the ET-Phone-Home variety than the eat-your-mind-and-planet one, which sucks both for flavor and
    for grappling. The only interesting spell on the list is Telekinesis, a spell which opens up grappling ideas all on its own but is still better
    used by a Wizard than a Warlock.
    -Awakened Mind: This ability is completely insane (literally - can you imagine if some random dude on the bus started talking to you
    in your head?) in a roleplaying/campaign context. Not so much in battle. There are definitely optimizations I would recommend this for,
    but those builds tend to be heavier on the words and lighter on the whole full nelson business.
    -Entropic Shield: Just too narrow as a tanking ability, even if it has strong action economy courtesy. We also don't really counter enemy
    attack rolls with attack rolls of our own, so you won't find the bonus very useful in most contexts.
    -Thought Shield: Also very strong in a roleplaying context, and also very weak in combat. Maybe if you are a full-time Mind Flayer slayer?
    -Create Thrall: On the one hand, this creates a permanent Helper for you in combat. And helper for you in whatever else you want...let
    the Cthulhu-touched imagination run wild! But on the other hand, Find Familiar and Animal Companion do the same thing (not to
    mention Conjure spells), and you don't need to invest 14 levels into those. Then again, those are animals and little Imps/Rats/Snakes.
    And it's not permanent. This works on ANY incapcitated creature. with absolutely no save. The big bad guy? Oh yeah, he's fair game.
    Some master assassin who can sneak attack your grappled bad guys? All yours - literally. The king of the whole dang kingdom? You're
    now his best buddy. With the right access to the right people, there are probably endless synergies you could work with this ability and
    grappling, but it would be something you would have to completely build the optimization around. And I'm also not convinced that, at least
    for grappling, it would be much better than any other option on the table.
  • 90% of Invocations: After evaluating the first dozen of these, and only finding 2 that were even worth looking at, I decided to just skip the invocation-by-invocation analysis and go straight to the good stuff. But before that, I have to call out the designer(s) who are responsibile for Beguiling Influence and Chains of Carceri. Influence is a level 3 class feature that simulates...a background? Really? Was This supposed to be an Expertise-style feature that some summer intern forgot to include in the final draft? And then there's Chains, a level 15 class feature that emulates a spell other classes get at level 9, but with the added restriction that it can only target 3 of the least common monster types in the game AND only once per encounter for any given target. It's like someone had a vendetta against Warlocks on the design team.
  • Ascendant Step: Levitate is no Fly, but at-will Levitate is not bad. On the one hand, you don't benefit from buffs to your move speed. On the other hand, the ascent is not affected by movement speed itself. Even if your movement speed is 0, it seems like RAW, you can still "change the target's altitude" by 20 feet. You are doing it as part of a move action, but not with your move speed. So if you can't buff your move speed through other means, this isn't a terrible substitute.
  • Devil's Sight: At last! A well-designed, unique, powerful, and relevant invocation! Just cast Darkness on yourself and barrel around the battlefield, pulling enemies into your globe of Darkness. This will cause issues for allies trying to shoot inside the sphere, but also makes it much easier for you to tank while inside.
  • Sculptor of Flesh: Polymorph is Polymorph, even if you can only cast it once per long rest. Still a strong spell and still one of the only ways to turn a bad grappling class into a decent one.
  • Thirsting Blade: The very definition of a trap feature. At first, this looks like Extra Attack, one of the best features for grapplers in the game. But then you realize that you need to attack WITH the pact weapon itself to get the second attack, and that grappling/shoving must be made with a "free hand" replacing attack actions. So RAW, this doesn't work with grappling at all.


Wizard
First Bards, now Wizards. What is with this guide anyway? It turns out that skinny, bookish Wizards, despite some serious survivability issues, make very good grapplers. First, they are some of the best mage slaying grapplers around. They say it takes one to beat one, and the Wizard grappler really drives that point home. Antimagic Field is just unbeatable for most magic-based opponents, especially if you use magic to close the gap. Second, Wizards are excellent at the restrain-target, cast-spell model of combat. They can sculpt spells around themselves to avoid making the save. Cook off a Delayed Blast Fireball for a few rounds and then drag the bad guy into it. It's just as fun as it sounds. Finally, Wizards make strong Polymorph/Shapechange grapplers, mostly because their spell list is the most extensive (no one else gets Shapechange but Druids), and because their class features have such strong synergy with those spells.

  • HD-D6: D6 HD sucks, but because Wizards get the almighty Shapechange, it's not as big a deal as with Sorcerers who are stuck on Polymorph.
  • Arcane Recovery: Useless in a battle, but quite useful over the course of a day. You get it so early anyway that it's not like you have made any investment for the solidly average feature.
  • Spell Mastery: More spell slots are always nice, especially if you are always casting a few go-to buffs anyway
  • Signature Spells: See above. Even while Shapechanged, there are a few spells you are still going to cast on yourself and your enemies no matter what. If you can cast those at-will, that's great in long engagements.
  • School of Abjuration: MAGES BEWARE. Part of the School of Abjuration curriculum is probably about protecting others. The other part? Smashing mage face. Every single ability in the class has some relevance to grapplers, and many of them are directly applicable to either tanking or ruining enemy spellcasters' days. On top of that, every single ability also functions while Shapechanged. Easily one of the best schools you can pick.
    -Arcane Ward: The first time you cast this, probably off of Shield, you get a nice bonus HP pool that will probably negate at least one attack.
    Then every other time you proc this, probably with MOAR SHIELD, you get 2 more HP back. There aren't a lot of healing or virtual
    healing spells that synergize well with grappling but this is one of them.
    -Projected Ward: You probably won't spread the Ward love to your allies, but it's nice to have that option.
    -Improved Abjuration: A great ability that helps you win any Dispel Magc or Counterspell battle. Mage-slaying grappling is all about
    Dispel Magic and Counterspell anyway (what's up, Freedom of Movement), and getting an added +3 or +4 to the check will almost
    guarantee you succeed on those contests.
    -Spell Resistance: Lol magic damage, what's that? Advantage on spells alone would be a strong ability, but flat resistance to all damage
    caused by spells is just disgsusting. You will feel bad beating up your magical kin on the battlefield when their full-power Fireball
    does about as much damage as Burning Hands. You will also feel bad when you apply this resistance/advantage to your OWN
    spells cast on yourself.
  • School of Divination: A mix of very solid grappling abilities and abilities that are useful out of grappling but not particularly relevant in the
    fight itself. Of all the schools of Wizardry in the PHB, this is probably the safest for any kind of grappling situation. Whether you are wrestling mages, dragons, hordes of zombies, or anything else, these abilities will come in handy and their sheer flexibility is what makes them so strong.
    -Portent: If you roll high, you can use these to all but guarantee success on your own grapple/shove checks. If you roll low, you can
    seal your enemy's failure. Sure, you can only use the feature twice before a rest, but you will be surprised how much mileage you
    can get out of those two uses.
    -Expert Divination: This gets you a lot of extra spells per day, especially if you start with a level 5 spell and then keep casting until
    you have regained the level 1 slot off the level 2 cast. These spells won't be useful for grappling in most cases, but that doesn't mean
    grapplers are never out of combat and never trying to divine out of combat knowledge.
    -The Third Eye: Invisibility can be a big problem for grapplers, and this is a no-concentration-required way to combat that.
    The other modes are just added perks.
    -Greater Portent: Portent is good at two uses. Portent is better at three uses.
  • School of Enchantment: In case it was unclear over the course of this guide, Charmed is really not a condition that grappling interacts well with. Especially when most charms are broken on damage or hostile action. All of the abilities in this school either charm in exactly that kind of way, or provide another benefit that is entirely unrelated to our style of combat in the first place. It's fine for Wizards to have a few useless class features though, given how strong the competition is.
  • School of Evocation: BOOM. That's really all there is to say about this feature. If you are taking this feature, you are mostly doing it for the level 14 ability which guarantees that your spells deal a LOT of serious damage when your opponents fail their saves. The other features are fine but not great, which is okay given how strong that level 14 ability is.
    -Sculpt Spells: It's too bad that this and the Sorcerer's Careful Spell don't target yourself. It's also almost definitely a deliberate design choice
    to prevent this sort of abuse. This is a little better than Careful Spell because it costs no sorcery points to use, and because it
    doesn't occupy the metamagic slot for a spell that you would rather quicken or heighten.
    -Potent Cantrip: More damage is always good, unless it's coming from cantrips. There just aren't a lot of reasons to cast these in battle as a
    spellcasting grappler. Your actions are already occupied doing other things. There will be times where you use this and it isn't bad,
    but there will more often be times where you just don't use it at all.
    -Empowered Evocation: A little more damage never hurt anyone. Except the badguys, of course.
    -Overchannel: Nuclear Launch Detected. There are really two spells you want to use with this. The first is the nuke
    itself: Fireball. Cast that for 10d6 as a level 5 spell and just deal a flat 60 damage to everyone nearby. The second, and I actually
    like this one a lot better, is Wall of Fire. Get fire resistance somehow and then cast Wall as a 5th level spell for 6d8 maximized
    damage. That's 48 damage right away and another 48 damage every single turn that you hold the bad guys in that wall. Because you
    can just cast Wall and let it cook, you can do that before you even grapple the enemy, which lets you grapple two badguys instead of
    one and then restrain them both right in front of the oven. Or just make a ring and drag them to the center, because love...is a burning
    thing...and nothing says love like dragging your friends into the circle.
  • School of Illusion: Every feature in this school is about as useful to grappling as those in the Enchantment school. Not going to waste time with them. Well, that is, except the last one. Illusory Reality is one of those features like Warlock's Create Thrall. The only limitations are your imagination, and it turns out that even wrestlers can be quite imaginative. I'm not saying you should play a School of Illusion grappler with all the other options available. But I'm also not saying it's not awesome and potentially very powerful to try. Brainstorm ways to rapidly gain altitude (illusory stairs), open up giant holes to throw people through (illusory doors in tower/castle walls), or create confined areas (illusory cage matches). You are only limited by your creativity and the parameters of the feature; the illusion can't move and can't be magical.
  • School of Necromancy: Not quite as bad as School of Enchantment but still a subpar choice. True, you can use Animate Dead to make a shambling horde of grapple/shove helpers. Then again, you don't actually need School of Necromancy to do that. The walking dead will just be a tiny bit more durable; 20 HP at absolute most, which is maybe one more hit of damage. The Animate Dead route to gaining "Help" is perfectly operable without this feature, even if it's slightly less flavorful.
  • School of Transmutation: I might be overvaluing these features a bit and, in all reality, this is probably just an average school. That's too bad really; I was expecting a lot more of the school that gives you the best grappling spell in your arsenal, Shapechange. The abilities are still very relevant and one is almost unparalleled in power (more on that in a second), which makes the school totally viable for a grappler.
    -Minor Alchemy: Focus on grappling. Not duping poor salesmen at the market.
    -Transmuter's Stone: For grapplers, the move speed increase is the best of the different options, especially if you
    stack it on top of Lonsgrider and any other natural move speed increases. Add a Fly movement mode to that and you can really soar,
    and even without flight, your battlefield control will be unmatched if your speed is at 60+ before even Dashing.
    -Shapechange: The feature with the highest-potential name has, of course, the lowest-impact benefit.
    -Master Transmuter: Power Word Heal is a 9th level spell that heals a target of all HP and removes a bunch of
    conditions. Panacea is a 14th level class feature that, for all intents and purposes, does the same thing 3 levels before you would
    ordinarily get it. Except remember, class-balance-wise, Wizards shouldn't even be able to have this ability. Because when you are a
    250 HP Adult Red Dragon, it's not very fair that you can also heal yourself to full. This concept of class balance is what makes this
    feature so crazy. Sure, you can shapechange into a giant monster as a Wizard, but good luck healing yourself and all that. Oh wait.
    You have panacea. Never mind, I guess you can do that too.

Phew! That section was a real 3 round marathon. There's a ton of information there and, looking back on it, I can say with confidence that some of my ideas and assessments changed as I was writing the guide. So if anyone sees anything that needs updating or revious, or something that contradicts or flat out makes no sense, definitely bring it up. As a quick summary of what we went over, here are some takeaway principles for picking a class:


  • Try and maximize your athletics check itself: Expertise, Reliable Talent, Rage, etc.
  • Extra Attack is good. Try and pick it up somewhere.
  • Action economy is important normally, but extra important for action-heavy grappling. Reactions and bonus actions are valuable. Wasting actions on useless abilities is not.
  • Shapechanging grappling is powerful, but will often need to be combined with other class features to be optimal.
  • Grappling/Shoving gives you advantage on attack rolls. Restrained gives them disadvantage on Dex saves. Features that abuse that are strong.

There are probably a dozen (or pages of) other tips I could give on classes, but this is a great starting point for all you aspiring All-Faerun Wrestling Champs out there.

5. Feats
You might choose to play a raging mountain-man wrestler, a tactical and technical lockdown artist, a murderous throat cutting assassin, or a hungry hungry crocodile who just "wants to play". But no matter what you play, feats are going to be an important consideration for your build. With one exception (and that exception is a really ambiguous one, as we will talk about soon), you don't actually need a lot of feats to grapple. Heck, you don't need any really; the basic combat rules let you do almost all of it without any serious feat investment. That doesn't mean you shouldn't consider the PHB feats for your character, especially given that you will be progressing well past 4th or even 8th level for a few classes. This section will review all the feats in the PHB, rating them according to how useful they are for the aspiring grappler.

(Note: If there's a feat that doesn't show up on the list, like Actor, it's not because it's bad, but rather because it is just totally irrelevant to grappling. That's not to knock gladiators performing in the ring. Just to say that Actor doesn't make for a strong min-maxed character).


  • [SIZE=9pt]Alert[/SIZE]
    Considering most characters have an initiative bonus based on their dexterity and nothing else, +5 is massive. Grappling, even more than other playstyles, really wants to go first in combat because the earlier you wrangle people to the ground, the earlier you can just shut them out of the fight. Bard grapplers should seriously consider stacking this feat on top of the Jack of All Trades bonus they are already getting.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Athlete[/SIZE]: The core of the powerbomb suplex grapple technique (see BJJ build below). Athlete lets you jump really high with your grapped target(s), throw them to the ground, and then land, stand, and re-grapple all in one turn. Without Athlete you can still do this, but you will be a lot less efficient at it.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Charger[/SIZE]
    IT'S A TRAP. When you first see this feat, you might see something that gets you a little extra damage, and lets you cover a lot more ground when initiating a grapple. When you see the feat a second time, you should now see something that doesn't work with literally any part of grappling (one exception: we'll talk about it later), whether a class feature, a feat, or the combat rules period. The first problem with this feat is that you use it as part of a bonus action. That means you can't Dash with Cunning Action, and it means you can't initiate a grapple using the Tavern Brawler feat. Okay, well can you initiate a grapple as part of the bonus action in Charger? Nope, and that's the second problem; it only lets you make a melee weapon attack, which RAW cannot be replaced with grapple or the non-Charger shove. Both of those must be done as part of the attack action; the rules are very clear in that respect. So now the feat is both wasting your bonus action and then not even allowing you to grapple. Can you at least shove prone? Nope again. The shove is restricted to a 10 foot knockback. At one point, this feat probably had a lot of potential for grapplers. Not anymore.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Crossbow Expert[/SIZE]
    Many readers are probably surprised to see this reviewed at all; shouldn't this just get ignored? Turn your attention to the second bullet point, the bullet point that RAW-wise does not actually require you to wield a crossbow to benefit from. If you are playing a spellcasting grappler, you will need this to cast your ranged attack roll-based spells. Knocking an opponent prone will cancel out the disadvantage normally, but then we wouldn't get to benefit from advantage, and that takes all the fun out of shooting Scorching Rays point-blank into some Orc's face. Niche feat but important in the right build.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Defensive Duelist[/SIZE]
    Not a great feat, but it is useable by the grappler Rogue (or Fighter) who might wield a weapon in one hand while grappling with the other. Reactions make for great action economy, and a little extra survivability quite literally never hurt anyone. Even moreso than Alert, this is more a luxury feat than anything else, but if you are swimming in feats and need some more AC, it's a workable option.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Dual Wielder[/SIZE] / [SIZE=9pt]Great Weapon Master[/SIZE] / [SIZE=9pt]Polearm Master[/SIZE]
    It's hard to wield a greatsword or two scimitars when one of your hands is grabbing someone's collar. Or two someone's.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Elemental Adept[/SIZE]
    For anyone who plans on restraining opponents using the Grappler feat, Elemental Adept is a solid way to increase your damage. I strongly recommend "fire" as your element of choice, given the power of Fireball, Wall of Fire, and Delayed Blast Fireball against restrained targets.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Grappler[/SIZE] / [SIZE=9pt]Grappler[/SIZE] / [SIZE=9pt]Grappler[/SIZE]
    The feat everyone has been waiting for. The feat that everyone probably saw before they even saw the guide. The feat that may even have brought you to the grappler's way in the first place. So why does it have not one, not two, but three different ratings? Depending on how you interpret its text, Grappler is either the most indispensible feat in the PHB for someone with wrestling aspirations, an integral piece of a niche build, or a virtually useless RAW trap. Because this is the first feature/feat most people think of when they see grappler, I am going to analyze all of its modes individually. We'll save the most controversial for last.
    Let's start with the first - "You have advantage on attack rolls against a creature you are grappling". Although this is not a bad benefit, it's mostly outclass by just shoving someone prone. Once prone, and unable to stand, the opponent will be at your mercy for the rest of the combat, and your attacks will all be at advantage anyway. There are situations where the advantage will be useful, especally if you have sneak attack, and especially if you need to start making attacks now and not wait to shove them prone. In that case, this first mode will be a big help. But most other times, you won't even notice it's there.
    The second mode is an interesting one - "You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained untilt he grapple ends". It certainly sounds cool, and at first glance, it looks like a great way to shutdown a target. Then you read it again and you realize it has some serious issues. The biggest problem is that you are also restrained, which means you can't actually benefit from either their disadvantage to attack rolls (they also have advantage because you are restrained) or advantage to your attack rolls (same problem, but you are the one also suffering disadvantage). It also means you can't move, and for anyone with real grappling experience, you know that one of the worst things you can do in fight (especially in ground combat) is to be immobile. That's as true in D&D as it is in or out of the gym, especially because grapplers derive so much strength from their ability to drag people around. As a final problem, from an RAW standpoint, you need to use your entire action to pin the opponent. Got multiple attacks? Doesn't matter because you don't pin as part of those. You pin as the entire action. I've been harping on action economy for a while now, so you should all identify this as really inefficient action usage.
    There is only one saving grace of Restrained, and that is that the target gains disadvantage on dexterity saves. Got Fireball? Got Blade Barrier? Got Meteor Swarm? Those are great spells to cast at someone who is restraned. The feat does not specify that both of your hands are occupied, so as long as you are pinning just one creature, you should be able to freely cast your spells. And if you are pinning two, just use the Sorcerer's Subtle Spell to eliminate those somatic components. It's a niche build of grappling, but it's one we have been talking about for a while and if you want to play it, this is the feat you need.
    Then there's that third mode, which is either the best grappling bonus in the game, or quite literally the only feature in the PHB that does nothing - "Creatures that are one size larger than you don't automatically succeed on checks made to escape your grapple." Awesome! So you can grapple anything now, regardless of their size! Not so fast. Remember that RAW, a prerequisite for grappling the target in the first place was that they need to be no more than one size category larger. What does that mean for the feat? It means that, strict RAW, it actually doesn't do anything because it refers to a rule that isn't in the book. So if your DM is a strict RAW kind of guy, this third mode is hands down, 100% the worst feat or feature in the book because it actually has zero function.
    Of course, this is also such an obvious and glaring editing error that many will be willing to overlook it. RAI, it's pretty clear what is happening here; the feat lets you grapple big things. Indeed, in an earlier Alpha, the rules stated that big things automatically succeeded on grapple checks against smaller ones, and this feat is clearly in dialogue with those discontinued rules. So if you want to treat this feat RAI, the better wording would be - "You can now grapple creatures two size categories larger than you.". Yes, it's RAI. No, it's not RAW. But some DMs may allow that interpretation at their tables.
    How does the feat stack up? If you reinterpret the third bullet point, it's mandatory. Every grappler takes it, the earlier the better. If you keep the third mode RAW, however, then this feat is only for grapplers who want to hold badguys down and cast spells on their own heads. For everyone else (again, if you stick with the RAW writing), the feat would be a total trap. Here's hoping for errata soon!
  • [SIZE=9pt]Heavily Armored[/SIZE]
    In many cases, multiclassing is a better way to pick up armor proficiency. Just take the highest armor proficiency class at level 1 (like Fighter) and then multiclass out at later levels (to Bard/Rogue/Wizard/etc.). But there are some instances where that heavy armor class isn't part of your build or you need to take another class at first level. In those cases, this feat becomes a lot better. It's also really easy to pick up medium armor proficiency from multiclassing (Fighter/Ranger/Cleric/Druid), which is all you need to then get this feat. Heavy Armor is just very solid on grapplers because it allows you to make Dex a 10 point dump stat and focus on stuff that actually matters. And the feat actually buffs up your most important ability score as an added bonus! So if you are a College of Valor Bard going straight Bard with only a Rogue multiclass, then pick this up right after you get that medium armor proficiency.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Lightly Armored[/SIZE]
    We could make a whole thread thinking of optimizations that need this feat and can't just multiclass into basically ANYTHING else to get the light armor proficiency. Except we would have to call it an anti-optimization thread.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Lucky[/SIZE]
    Remember the Wizard's Portent ability? Lucky is a worse version of Portent that any class can get. You generally won't use it against opponents (it only affects attack rolls which we probably don't care about), but you will frequently use it on your own Strength checks. Think of it like triple advantage on that check, usable 3 times per day in between long rests. As far as luxury feats go (stuff like Alert), this one is probably the highest on the list because it is incredibly versatile (even helps your saving throws), relevant throughout the fight, and very flexible as to when you want to use the ability (save the rolls for the big scary monster, save them for after the enemy gets Enhance Ability cast on them, etc.).
  • [SIZE=9pt]Mage Slayer[/SIZE]
    Your DM and his mages will hate you for taking this feat. Although it doesn't flat out prevent them from casting spells, it puts you in such an advantageous position against enemy spellcasters that it doesn't even matter. That reaction-based attack is a true nightmare for casters trying to concentrate on spells, because it's yet another save they have to make on their turn. Oh, and that save the are making at least 1-2 times per turn? They get disadvantage on that. Finally, don't worry about getting blasted away by some horrible save-or-die ability. You get advantage on all your saving throws against that creature, which is on top of his attack roll-based spells being made at disadvantage (thanks, prone!). As a quick word of caution, however, be aware that this is one the more niche grappling feats you can pick. If there are no spellcasters in the fight, the feat doesn't actually do anything. But when they are there, they better beware. Oh, and for those of you that are still worried about stuff like Freedom of Movement and the like, don't just think of this feat on a Fighter or Rogue. Think of it on a Wizard. He might be a traitor to his kind, but no one is going to be able to say that twice. Not through a mouthful of dirt.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Magic Initiate[/SIZE]
    You could probably write an entire optimization guide to this feat, so I'm going to try and keep it short and sweet. As a grappler, in most cases you are better off just multiclassing into a class with the spell than taking this feat. There aren't a lot of good cantrips for grappling anyway (Guidance is really it), and although there are a bunch of decent level 1 spells, casting the spell only once limits their usefulness. One solid combination is Guidance, Resistance, and Longstrider from the Druid list (Longstrider lasts an hour and doesn't require concentration). Sounds a bit underwhelming, right? Now try this: Blade Ward (meh), True Strike (sure), and Hex (....oh damn) from the Warlock list. What's Hex? Glad you asked; Hex is an abjectly terrifying, bonus-action-casttime, no-save-allowed fight ender for anyone that gets hit by it and then gets grappled. Look that thing up and tell me with a straight face that the Hex designer wasn't secretly a grappler. This pairing alone makes the feat excellent, because you absolutely do not want to dip into Warlock for any reason at all, but almost everyone wants Hex. The only reason this isn't gold rated is because raging grapplers and polymorphing/shapechanging grapplers won't be able to concentrate on it, and because it's only useable once per long rest.
    There is another spell that might push this up to gold rating - Find Familiar. Familiars can, RAW, use their action to Help you on your check for the turn, which gives you advantage on one of those grappling or shoving attempts in the turn. That's a big bonus that any class can gain, but it's also not unconditional. It only works on one check every round, and it only works until people (read: your DM) starts figuring out ways to screw with your pet. So despite the benefits of Find Familiar, there are also plenty of "what ifs" with that spell.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Martial Adept[/SIZE]
    Casting a spell once per long rest isn't a big deal because a lot of spells derive their benefits from multiple rounds of concentration. Only being able to perform a maneuver once every long rest? That's just not worth it. There are ample maneuver to choose from (Disarm is probably the best because you only need to do it once to screw over one monster), but in all cases, you would probably be better served by another feat or just taking 3 levels in Fighter to begin with.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Medium Armor Master[/SIZE]
    The whole point of armor is to eliminate a need for dexterity (unless you are a Monk). The Stealth piece is fine if you are some Fighter/Rogue hybrid (D&D Solid Snake), but there are so many ways to execute that optimizaton without taking this relatively weak feat.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Mobile[/SIZE]
    +10 to your speed? I think this feat does two other things that aren't bad, but all I see is the speed increase of 10 feet. That's two extra squares with a Dash. Or two extra vertical squares with flying. Remember that dragging creatures is one of the best parts of grappling, so any way you can buff that speed is a great way to buff your combat utility. The only criticism I have of this feat is that it doesn't directly address the grapple checks themselves or your survivability, but depending on your build or playstyle, this will still be very strong.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Moderately Armored[/SIZE]
    See Lightly Armored. It's so easy to pick up this proficiency just by virtue of multiclassing or building your character smart from level 1 onwards. Don't waste a feat on it.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Resilient[/SIZE]
    This is one of the better saving-throw-bonus feats in recent D&D editions. And...it's still just not very good. There are some optimizations that might want this if you are feeling too much like a grappling class cannon (e.g. a Fighter who is running into Charisma save issues), so I can't write it off completely. Even so, I think it is more efficient to just solve those issues with spells or items than with feats. Or with smart battlefield tactics.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Ritual Caster[/SIZE]
    Just take Magic Initiate. Although Ritual Caster lets you use spells over level 1, unlike Initiate, none of those are actually good for grappling. And that's even if you didn't need to take 10 minutes to cast them.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Savage Attacker[/SIZE]
    More damage is nice, but more grappling is better.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Senintel[/SIZE]
    If you could grapple/shove as part of that provoked reaction, this would be an easy sky blue rating. Unfortunatly, those pesky RAW don't allow you to do that.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Shield Master[/SIZE]
    Some styles of grappling are all about locking down two opponents, one in each hand, and dragging them around. And if you are doing that, you won't have a hand for your shield. But if you don't mind just holding down one enemy at a time, Shield Master is one of the strongest, scariest, and most flavorful ways you can wade into combat. The second two modes are pure tankability. Mode two gives you a +2 or more bonus to your dex saves, and mode three gives you a quasi-Evasion at reaction speed. Not bad at all! But it's mode one that really makes the feat. Normally, a lot of these bonus action attacks can't be replaced with shoves/grapples because, RAW speaking, they aren't attack actions. This bonus action, however, is explicitly a shove. No restrictions, no penalties. Just a shove to knock some poor badguy flat on his rear. And it doesn't even count against your attack action for the turn. It doesn't even have to be against the target you are grappling! Just rampage around the battlefield with the flailing enemy in one hand and your tower shield in other. Bulldoze him over then smack down someone else. It's just a bonus action so you can make your full attacks at will. All the while, you benefit from the shield's innate AC on top of the other Shield Master benefits. For tanky grapplers who don't mind sticking with one target instead of two, this is one of the best feats you can choose. Just be careful that your bonus action from Shield Master isn't interfering with your other bonus actions too much (e.g. Cunning Action).
  • [SIZE=9pt]Tavern Brawler[/SIZE]
    After Grappler, this is the second grappler feat in the book. To start, a big thanks to Wizards for putting not just one but two of these feats in the book; that's a big investment for a combat style that isn't always in the spotlight, and we grapplers appreciate it. It's a lot more straightforward than Grappler, so we don't need to go into as much depth with it. The Strength/Con bonus is a great plus, mostly because some characters would be taking this feat even if it didn't give that bonus, so we are even happier to take it with. Then there's that second benefit. It turns out everyone but Wizards and Sorcerers start out knowing how to throw a punch, which is probably Wizards way of reminding them to stay out of tavern brawls and in their library books in the first place. The third benefit is much better. A 1 damage unarmed strike is kind of lame, especially if you are critting on it. 1d4 is quite a bit better over the course of a long fight. Remember that if you are grappling two enemies at once, you won't have free hands and will have to kick and knee and headbutt things instead. That means Unarmed Strike and, unless you have this feat, that means 1 damage per round.
    Now comes the fourth mode - "When you hit a creature with an unarmed strike or an improvized waepon on your turn, you can use a bonus action to attempt to grapple the target." To start with, this is no 3rd/3.5 edition Improved Grab. You aren't grabbing as part of an attack. You are taking a bonus action after an attack to initiate the grapple. That's not necessarily bad, but it is an important distinction. The next thing to notice is that we actually need to HIT someone with an attack to proc the bonus action. We can't just swing at them. Also, not necessaril a problem, just something to be mindful of if you are more optimized for grabbing things than wacking them. The weapon qualifications are also interesting; this works both for unarmed strikes but also for improvised weapons, which adds a whole new element to the grappling arsenal. As the rules state, improvised weapons can actually share the stats of real weapons, which opens up a lot of build possibilities. A Rogue with Tavern Brawler could use a crude metal piton as a dagger (a finesse weapon) and Sneak Attack with it before initiating a grapple as a bonus action. Finally, we should notice that this only works on your turn. You can't execute this as part of an opportunity attack reaction, or through some other out-of-turn-order attack.
    With that all in mind, how does the last ability rate? It's actually pretty strong, and will be stronger depending on your build. For example, a 5th level fighter could use the attack action to attack one target and apply Trip Attack to the hit, and then grapple a second target. Then, using a bonus action, they could grapple the target they tripped. At the end of the round, one target is prone, both targets are grappled, and the prone target has already taken damage. Just note that, to get the most mileage out of this feat, you really want to be grappling two targets, forcing you to use those Unarmed Strikes (which the feat will improve to 1d4 damage). Overall, this is a solid feat that can fit into a variety of classes. Not everyone will use it because of its restrictions, but many will find it helpful.
  • [SIZE=9pt]Tough[/SIZE]
    Wizards has been trying to make these HP feats good for a while, and Tough is one of the best of the bunch. It's not the best feat ever, and the HP won't save you from more than one attack or one failed save on a spell, but sometimes that's all it takes to finish out the fight.
  • [SIZE=9pt]War Caster[/SIZE]
    If you are a spellcasting grappler, you will really want this feat. If you are a spellcasting grappler using Polymorph or Shapechange, you will NEED this feat. Both Shapechange and Polymorph are concentration-based spells. Know what happens if your Frost Giant forms breaks while you are grappling those two dragons? One moment, they got big giant fists wrapped around thier wings. Next moment, it's a little gnome swinging between them like a baby at a playground. A fire-breathing, gigantic, flying playground.
    Modes 2 and 3 serve a different sort of grappler, the kind who restrains things with Grappler and then lets them bake in a Wall of Fire or Flame Strike. That second benefit doesn't let you use somatic spells with two enemies in your hands (there are probably some weird RAW ways to try and cast a grappled creature as a weapon but I'm not buying them), so you won't be restraining two guys and then casting your spell. But if you are rocking the Shield Master, Cleric, War Caster build, that's another story entirely. As for that third benefit, if anyone is foolish enough to provoke the attack, casting a 1 action spell as a REACTION is some insane action economy.

When picking feats, just be careful that your build and grappling style fits the feats you are selecting. For example, Monks don't make good Tavern Brawlers because they have too many competing bonus actions. Also, be mindful of how you want your character to play at ALL levels, not just level 20. You might need that heavy armor at level 4. You might need that saving throw bonus at level 8 when it turns out that your entire campaign is against scary (read: bestowing Frightened condition) undead. Be flexible and critical with your feat selection and you will be guaranteed to have a powerhouse wrestler on the battelfield.

6. Magic
When I was first thinking about this guide, I had a distinction in my head about magical and nonmagical grappling. But having written most of the other sections, I realize now that this distinction is a bit artificial. Because of feats like Magic Initiate, the ease of multiclassing, and the relative availability of spells even in "nonmagical" classes, there isn' really a hard line between magical and nonmagical grapplers. Instead, it's better to think of grappling magic on a continuum. On one end, you have spells that only dedicated spellcasters can use; True Polymorph, Shapechange, Foresight, etc. In the middle, you have spells that require some commitment to spellcasting classes, but still give you a lot of flexibility in multiclassing: Wall of Fire, Polymorph, Conjure Animals, etc. And then at the other end of the spectrum, you have spells that require no more than a 3 level dip, or even just a Magic Initiate investmnt, stuff like Hex, Find Familiar, Enlarge/Reduce, Enhance Ability, and so on.

Because multiclassing is so easy, because spell lists overlap so freely in 5.0, and because I don't want the spell section to be as long as the rest of the guide, I am only going to list a few spells per level and give a quick explanation of them. This gives me more space in part 4 to discuss builds, and that's much more fun anyway. If anyone has any questions about spells, feel free to post them in the main thread.

[SIZE=11pt]Cantrips[/SIZE]

  • Guidance: Free +1d4 to grapple at the beginning of the fight, or +1d4 to resist escape attempts. Useful even outside of grappling so it's definitely a keeper.
  • Chill Touch: If you have already grappled/shoved an opponent and just want to stop them from healing every turn, recast it ad nauseam and slowly chill them to death.
  • True Strike: More like canTRAP amirite??? Remember that grappling and shoving aren't attack rolls.

[SIZE=11pt]Level 1[/SIZE]

  • Animal Friendship / Speak with Animals: This pair of spells, depending on your DM, MIGHT let you command (for 10 minutes at a time) a small Help-action-squad of squirrels/rats/snakes. Friendship makes them friendly. Speak lets you ask them to do things for you. Low intelligence means that they are probably too dumb to disobey. Think of this combo as the level 1 equivalent of Dominate Animal, although with less RAW backing.
  • Expeditious Retreat: A weaker, spell-based version of Cunning Action. There are better spells to concentrate on at this level.
  • Feather Fall: If your plan is to grab people and jump off tall structures, don't forget your level 1 spell parachute.
  • Find Familiar: Say hello to your little friend. This will get you a permanent helper to take the Help action every round and guarantee advantage on one check. No concentration required. If you aren't a Wizard or Warlock, either take Ritual Caster or, if pressed for feats, a Bard Magical Secret.
  • Healing Word: Bonus action cast time means you can still grapple in the same round you heal. 60 foot range means you can heal yourself or a needy friend. Verbal component only means you can heal even if both hands are occupied. Accept no substitutes for action economy healing.
  • Hex: Bonus action cast time. Huge range. No saving throw (!?). Bonus damage in a type that many monsters aren't resistant to. Disadvantage on an ability score of your choice. Oh, and if you kill the guy who is Hexed, you can transfer the Hex as a bonus action. Sure, monsters can just switch their grapple check from athletics to acrobatics (or vice versa), but for a lot of monsters that's an effective -3 or more debuff to their check.
  • Longstrider: Best level 1 buff in the PHB. Free 10 bonus feet to your movement, it lasts an hour, and it doesn't require concentration.
  • Mage Armor: Just multiclass and use real armor. Or polymorph yourself into something with a higher AC. Or play a Monk. Just don't use this spell.
  • Shield: +5 AC as a REACTION is nuts, especially for low AC grapplers. It's too bad this has somatic components required or it would be gold-rated.

[SIZE=10pt]Level 2[/SIZE]

  • Alter Self: Plus side - if you are going to grapple two enemies and aren't a Monk, this will give you a better damage die than Tavern Brawler. On the other hand, Enlarge also requires concentration, but then gives you a +1d4 to damage, a size increase, and advantage. Dont waste your time here.
  • Cloud of Daggers: Best level 1 AOE spells to hold people in while you grab them. 4d4 damage, no save. Unfortunately, this requires concentration and there are better things you can focus on.
  • Darkness: Cast Darkness on your armor, grab people into the Darkness, and roll your little ball of blindness around the battlefield. Note that you need the Warlock's Devil Sight feature to do this, otherwise your DM could easily rule that you can't actually see anything to grapple in the first place.
  • Enhance Ability: Unless you have Enlarge, this is your default level 2 spell. It's just hard to go wrong with flat advantage on all your strength checks. Excellent for druids early on when they can concentrate on this while Wild Shaped.
  • Enlarge/Reduce: There is nothing better to concentrate on as a low-level grappler. After casting Enlarge, your size category increases which, considering the bad wording on Grappler, is one of the only RAW ways to grapple bigger enemies. It gives you the same advantage that Enhance Ability would, while simultaneously buffing up your damage on all your weapons. Fewer classes get Enlarge than do Enhance Ability, but those that do get it will be very happy.


Continued in next post -------------------------------->



Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

6. Magic (continued)
[SIZE=10pt]Level 2[/SIZE] (continued)

  • Heat Metal: It might be surprising that a spell that threatens disadvantage to ability checks gets such a low rating. Unfortunately, the disadvantage is conditional on a failed save. Making matters worse, the save is con-based, and most opponents wearing a lot of metal probably have decent con-saves. Another problem is that this wastes your bonus action AND your concentration every round. That's terrible action economy on top of terrible base damage.
  • Mirror Image: No concentration required! Great for shapechanging/polymorphing grapplers, especially because attacks that hit your doubles don't force concentration checks.
  • Misty Step: Strong low-level gap closer once the fight actually starts. Note that this teleportation does not count against your movement for the turn.
  • Silence: When it comes to ruining spellcaster's days, there is no better spell until the level 8 Antimagic Field. And you get it at level 3. Cast Silence. Drag spellcaster into Silence. Sit there and laugh (silently) as they can't cast anything.
  • Spike Growth: Drag people through the spikes to cause 2d4 damage per 5 feet of movement. Just be careful that you avoid killing yourself as you do it; strong with builds that can stack movement speed to get ton of squares covered in a turn.

[SIZE=10pt]Level 3[/SIZE]

  • Animate Dead: THE ARMY OF THE DEAD GRAPPLER IS REAL! Here's how it works: Get a squad of 8 or so Zombies (they are hardier than Skeletons, and all you really need is durability on these dudes). Then every round, have 4 of them Help you on grapples/shovse, and have the other 4 ready an action to Help you on opposed grapples/shoves from your victims. Just remember that commanding them to Help costs your bonus action. But it doesn't cost concentration, so it's a no-concentration, non-Rage way of getting advantage on all checks. Don't forget to re-cast Animate Dead every day to reassert control. Walking Dead? More like, the WRESTLING DEAD!
  • Bestow Curse / Bestow Curse: If you have to cast this as a level 3 or 4 spell, just use Hex instead. Better to cast Hex as a bonus action with no save allowed than use Curse as an action and give them a chance to save it. But once you can cast this at level 5 and no longer need to concentrate on it, it becomes a LOT better. If they save, no big deal; action surge another attack. If they don't save, they are screwed for the fight.
  • Conjure Animals: All the Conjure spells are decent with grappling; use the monsters to Help you and to damage your grappled/proned target.
  • Counterspell: Freedom of Movement, Misty Step, Blink, and a variety of other spells are not your friends. If these are cast mid-fight, Counterspell is your out.
  • Dispel Magic: See above, but with an emphasis on spells that are already in effect at the beginning of the fight. Best in tandem with Action Surge, so you can dispel as one action and then grab in your next.
  • Fear: Most saving throw spells aren't very good for grapplers because they allow re-saves every turn, or because they just aren't much more powerful than just grappling/shoving. Fear is different. Fear is a complete fight ender for any monster that fails the save. First, they drop all their items, which you will take advantage of by grappling them and moving them away from those dangerous objects. Second, all affected creatures have flat disadvantage to ALL ability checks (Dexterity and Strength!) while you are in their line of sight. Given that you are grappling them, you aren't going anywhere anytime soon. Finally, they only get a re-save if you leave their sight. And you just want to hug them, so that's not happening either.
  • Fireball: Your level 3 spell of choice if you want to restrain targets and cast things on their head.
  • Fly: What do you do with a Fly speed? You go straight into the air carrying as many people as you can. What do you do once you are up there? Drop them. They take damage, they land Prone, they don't get a save, and if they escape on the way up, all that happens anyway.
  • Haste: Depending on your build, this will compete with Enlarge for your concentration spell of choice. But many builds either won't advance that far into their spell list, or would prefer advantage over multiple checks. Still a very strong spell worth any grappler's consideration.

[SIZE=10pt]Level 4[/SIZE]

  • Conjure Minor Elementals/Woodland Beings:
  • Fire Shield
  • Freedom of Movement
  • Giant Insect
  • Greater Invisibility
  • Mordenakainen's Faithful Hound:
  • Polymorph:
  • Wall of Fire:

[SIZE=10pt]Level 5[/SIZE]

  • Animate Objects:
  • Bigby's Hand:
  • Contagion:
  • Planar Binding:
  • Telekinesis:
  • Wall of Force

[SIZE=10pt]Level 6[/SIZE]

  • Arcane Gate
  • Blade Barrier

[SIZE=10pt]Level 7[/SIZE]

  • Delayed Blast Fireball
  • Regenerate: 1 HP/round, no concentration. Fun if you Shapechange into a Hydra and then hold your severed heads back to your body.

[SIZE=10pt]Level 8[/SIZE]

  • Antimagic Field
  • Incendiary Cloud

[SIZE=10pt]Level 9[/SIZE]

  • Foresight: No concentration required and one of the best buffs in the game. Flat advantage to all your checks alone would have made this nuts.
  • Gate: Open portal to Elemental Plane of Fire/Water/insert-nasty-environ-here. Drag creature through and shove. Close Portal.
  • Meteor Swarm: For instantaneous dex-based damage, it doesn't get much more painful than this.
  • Shapechange: The spell all Wizard grapplers have been waiting for! Cast Time Stop at the beginning of the fight. Buff yourself with any no-concentration buffs. Then Shapechange. When time resumes, you will be a Jumping, Longstriding, Mirror Imaged beast of your choice. One could write an entire guide on just this spell, so I won't go into too much detail here. Just look for big monsters with high strength scores, ideally with high Athletics checks (unless yours is somehow higher). Storm Giant (Athletics +14) is a great place to start, as are the CR 20 dragons (Ancient Brass/White).
  • Time Stop: Your setup spell as a Shapechanger. Cast Time Stop. Use rounds to place non-concentration buffs. Caste Shapechange. One moment you were a gnome. Opponent blinks and you are a Dragon.
  • True Polymorph: See Shapechange, but you can't use your features and traits in the new form. Still strong because something like a Storm Giant is a good grappler on its own, but just totally outclassed by Shapechange.


7. Build 1: Herculean Wrestler (Fighter/Rogue/Wizard)
Love grappling? Don't know what monsters to expect? Don't want to commit yourself to just one style of gameplay? The Herculean Wrestler is for you. Picture a full-plate-mailed Dwarf armed with nothing but his gauntleted hands. Or a table leg. You'll be slaying Nemean Lions in no time at all.

This is the most basic grappler optimization you can run, one with lots of survivability, respectable grappling scores, tons of options on the battlefield, and relevance at all levels of gameplay. The build also has a lot of flexibility after mid-levels, which lets you choose how you want to develop your character. This build is all about actions. Action Surge, Extra Attack, Cunning Action, Shield as a Reaction, etc. Your rounds should take as long as a Wizard's round, just because you have so many options at your disposal (don't quote me to your DM!). Because you have solid HP, above average AC, and respectable saves, the build is also fairly easy to play and won't be too punishing if you get caught in bad positions. This build isn't the strongest grappling optimization at any one point, but it is relevant at all levels and a great introduction to grappling.

Starting Race: Human or Mountain Dwarf
Human gives you a bonus feat at level 1, which you can use to get any number of awesome feats for the class. Dwarf gives you better stats.

Ability Scores: Here's your 27 point buy array assuming shameless optimization choices.
Str: 15 (Human +1 or Dwarf +2 - You want this maxed as soon as you can)
Dex 13 (Human or Dwarf - Full Plate doesn't mesh with Dexterity)
Con 13 (Human +1 or Dwarf +2 - See Strength)
Int 13 (Can't totally dump this because we need the Wizard multiclass)
Wis 10 (Fear effects are often wisdom-based. Don't totally dump this, despite how tempting it may be)
Cha 9 (Dump it - Cha saves are few and far between)


  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1[/SIZE]
    Human Feat: Tavern Brawler
    The build starts off in Fighter for Heavy Armor and Con-save proficiency, both of which are important later on. If you are a Human, get Tavern Brawler right away; it's nuts with the maneuvers you get starting at level 3. Note that this build is not going to get advantage on its grapple checks until level 8. It will make up for that with more attacks and more versatility in the interim.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 2[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    As a Human, You really start to come online at level 3. Dwarves will need to wait a level. Now you can make a Trip Attack with one action, and then grapple as a bonus action with Tavern Brawler. Or Disarm as an attack, grapple as a bonus action, and then drag them away from the weapon as a move action.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 4[/SIZE]
    Level 4 Feat: Tavern Brawler (Dwarf) or Mobile (Human)
    Dwarves will hit 18 Strength at this point and get to trip/disarm and grapple. Humans will get better move speed. Either way, this really opens up the battlefield for your class.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5[/SIZE]
    This is the first level where you will feel unfair. All that stuff you were doing at level 3 or 4? Now you can double it with Extra Attack. Or quadruple it (...wut) with Action Surge.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5 / Wizard 1[/SIZE]
    The build now switches to Wizard for two reasons. For one, you are going to start fighting larger monsters, and you need to bulk up in size category to handle that (don't count on Grappler until it gets erratad). Two, you need to start getting advantage on your Grapple rolls, or stronger monsters will outclass you. Three, you need some more utility on the battlefield, and survivability against scarier attackers. The Wizard dip will handle all of that and more. Spells to pick up here include Longstrider, False Life (which will offset your crappy HD), and Shield (massive spikes to AC on command).
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5 / Wizard 2[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5 / Wizard 3[/SIZE]
    This is the second level where you will feel unfair. Now you get to do everything you were doing before, but you are size Large, you deal an additional +1d4 damage on everything, and you have advantage on all your grapple/shove rolls. Enlarge will be your default concentration spell in most situations, if for no other reason than that it lets you grab bigger creatures.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 6 / Wizard 3[/SIZE]
    Level 6 Feat: Warcaster
    Now that you are concentrating on spells, you need to get Warcaster to reliably make that save against higher damage monsters. The other Warcaster modes aren't useless and will give you added flexibility to your combat routine.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 6 / Wizard 3 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
    We get Expertise and Sneak Attack here to keep up with the bad guys, adding damage and extra points to our ability checks.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 6 / Wizard 3 / Rogue 2[/SIZE]
    You don't actually need Cunning Action here, but I think this build is all about versatility anyway, and Cunning Action gives you a lot of options.

Starting at level 12, there are a few directions you can go with the build. You might want to keep going up in Wizard to pick up stuff like Haste (a solid competitor with Enlarge), or get some of those dex-based save spells for use with Grappler (in which case, you should get that feat at level 4 as a Human). Alternately, you could just dive into Fighter and take that all the way to level 11 to get your third attack, and then branch off for the last few levels depending on how the campaign is going. Or if you are enjoying the damage aspects of Rogue, you can pursue a Sneak Attack build instead. By level 11, you aren't super committed to one style of grappling, so you have a lot of flexibility in where you build from there.

If you go the Fighter route, you will get at least 2 more feats, which further add to your flexibility. Grab Shield Master if you don't mind single target grappling. Take Mage Slayer if you find that bullying spellcasters is your thing. Pick up Crossbow Expert if you want to use more ranged attack rolls (spell ones, likely). Versatility is the aim of this build, and these extra feats let you take your character in whatever direction you want.

Another nice feature of the build is that it scales really well with magical items. Builds like Grizzlyman and BJJ Master have a lot of item restrictions in what they can use. But your Herculean Wrestler? He can use armor, he can use magical wondrous items, he can use Wizard items, etc. He can even use weapons if you don't mind only grappling one target at a time!

8. Build 2: The Mage Slayer (Bard/Fighter/Rogue)
Some players just hate Wizards. You don't know what it is about Wizards that you hate, but boy do you hate them. Probably those pointy hats or their scrawny arms. Whatever the reason, when it comes to massacring mages at all levels of the game, accept nothing less than the Mage Slayer grappler. This is an extremely narrow build that, although useful against a variety of enemy types and classes, is at its best against those pesky magic users. There are tons of ways to build an antimage grappler (Wizard with Antimagic Field is another route), but this build will be the most relevant at all levels of the game, and is most likely to give your DMs magic practitioners a serious head/neck/throat ache.

The build functions around the almighty Silence spell, a no-save-allowed way to stop most magic cold. Your main class is College of Lore Bard, which gets you access to an arsenal of mage-murdering spells and gives you the highest possible single grapple checks of any class. It is critical to have high single grapple checks as a Mage Slayer because that initial grapple in the area of Silence is the most important. Once they are stuck there, they just can't do anything. Setting up that Silence will require a few different combinations of features, actions, and spells. As wizards scale up their power, your combos will scale with them. But because each engagement is so resource intensive, the build is heavily dependent on rests in between engagements, That play style might not suit everyone, but for those who want to give mages (and your DM) nightmares, this is the build for you.

As a final note, I emphasize this again: the build really is a single target, mage killing optimization. It's narrow, it's a nightmare for wizards, and it's a bit...strange, as far as grapplers go...

Starting Race: Human
Although you can go Mountain Dwarf in this build, Human is a better option because of how feat intensive the build is, especially at early levels.

Ability Scores: Here's your 27 point buy array assuming shameless optimization choices.
Str: 15 (Human +1 - Show those wimpy Wizards how it's done)
Dex 13 (Required for the Rogue multiclass)
Con 10 (This is a single-target, glass-cannon build. We can't afford to max out HP at the expense of other stas)
Int 8 (Int saves just aren't all that common, and those you do have to worry about shouldn't even work in an area of Silence)
Wis 10 (Never dump this; Wisdom saves tend to govern fear, and you do not want to be frightened as a grappler)
Cha 15 (Human +1 - More Charisma means more Cutting Words attempts)


  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1[/SIZE]
    Human level 1 feat: Tavern Brawler
    As with many grappling builds, start in Fighter to get the Heavy Armor Proficiency without spending a Feat. We get Warcaster both to concentrate on our spells in the fight, and to cast spells while wielding. We are also going to get the Dueling fighting style, and Tavern Brawler so we can grapple after making an attack (we will need that attack eventually to cause damage to trigger Mage Slayer).
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1 / Bard 1[/SIZE]
    With Heavy Armor acquired, we go straight for our Bard features/spells at level 3.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1 / Bard 2[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1 / Bard 3[/SIZE]
    Expertise? Check. Cutting Words? Check. Silence? Check. Enhance Ability? Check. You now have access to your most basic combo. Cast Enhance Ability on yourself before the fight. At the beginning of the fight, walk over to the target and grapple them with advantage. Next turn, cast Silence on the area. We will defnitely do better than that later, but it's only level 4.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1
    / Bard 4    [/SIZE]
    Level 4 Feat: Mage Slayer
    Here's our next piece of the combo. Starting at level 5, you will encounter more situations where enemies have preexisting concentration-based spells before you grapple them. Those often need to go away if you are to win the fight, and Mage Slayer is going to get that done.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 1    [/SIZE]
    To break concentration, we need big damage rolls on a single attack at the start of the fight. Rogue is going to get that done. Level 1 gets you Sneak Attack; you already have Expertise from Bard..
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1 / Bard 4 / Rogue 2[/SIZE]
    Cunning Action normally rocks at this level, but you generally won't use it because of Tavern Brawler. We are really going into Rogue to get the next class feature.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 1
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    Assassinate plus Mage Slayer plus surprise equals impossible concentration saves. Now that we have finished out the Mage Slayer feature tree, we can change our combo to really ruin a mage's day. For your pre-fight buff, you have two options from the Bard 2 spell list. You can either stick with Enhance Ability and use Stealth to approach a target, or you can use Invisibility. Either way, you just want to make sure your target is surprised. Walk up to them and stab them with your improvised weapon short sword; it shouldn't take too much DM convincing to improvise a short sword. The attack will automatically score a critical hit for 6d6+5 damage (2d6 short sword, 4d6 sneak attack, 3 strength, 2 dueling). That assumes no magical buffs that add damage die, and you are already at an expected DC 13 Concentration save that they must make with disadvantage. Then grapple them and hold them in place until next turn when you can Silence.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 2
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    Action Surge. What an imbalanced ability. Now you can do the same combo as above but ALSO cast Silence in the same turn you stab and grapple.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 3
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    Getting to Fighter 3 gets you Battle Master, which will almost always be a Trip Attack applied to your opening stab. It's also an added 2d8 damage (1d8 doubled) on your automatic critical hit, which ups that Con save to DC 17 with disadvantage on the roll. Now your combo looks like this: Sneak up and stab to force a concentration save. As part of that sneak, apply a trip attack to get them prone. Then take a bonus action to grapple off Tavern Brawler. Now Action Surge, drop your improvised Short Sword, and cast Silence.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 4
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    Level 4 Feat: Warcaster, Lucky, Magic Initiate
    Bunch of different feat options here. Go Warcaster to guarantee that Silence doesn't get cracked. Go Lucky for an added guarantee on the initial grapple check. Or go Magic Initiate to gain Find Familiar, which you can use to take the Help action on that initial grapple (freeing up your pre-battle spell for Invisibility).
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5
    / Bard 4 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    Extra Attack is the next evolution of your mage-murdering combo. Now that you have two attacks, you can replace one with a shove attempt, and modify the opening stab with Menacing Attack instead of Trip Attack. Stalk up to your target and take the attack action. Apply Menacing Attack to the stab and force a DC 17 (average) save with dsiadvantage. If they fail the wisdom save on the Menacing Attack, now they have disadvantage for the rest of the turn. Use shove in place of your second extra attack, and grapple with Tavern Brawler as a bonus action. Drop the sword, action surge, cast Silence, and watch your DM and his wizard cry.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5
    / Bard 5 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Fighter 5
    / Bard 6 / Rogue 3    [/SIZE]
    The big bonus here is Magical Secrets through College of Lore. And boy, there are a lot of options to pick from, so this is a great way to round out your skillset. Two standout options I want to discuss are Blinding Smite and Counterspell. Counterspell is a somatic-only spell that will work even with Silence, and it's the best way to guarantee that your caster is totally locked down. Blinding Smite is a Paladin spell that requires concentration (so no invisibility), but adds 3d8 damage to your attack roll and forces a save to avoid blindness. If you connect with Assassinate on that opening hit and auto crit, your save will be basically impossible to match: an AVERAGE save of DC 31 made with disadvantage. Even if you don't automatically crit, it's still a DC 17 average save with disadvantage. Those are just two options you can take at this level.

From Level 14 onward, I recommend that you continue progressing in Bard to get that level 10 Magical Secrets feature. Then you can paly with those last two levels wherever you want.

One key to this build is beating the scariest spell of them all: Freedom of Movement. It's actually not that hard, but it just requires a combo modification. You will still open with your massive damage spike, still grapple the target with Tavern Brawler, and still shove them with your attack. But instead of casting Silence, you will cast Dispel Magic and try to strip the buff away. The DC is 14, and your bonus will be 3 + 1/2 of your proficency bonus (thanks Jack of all Trades). If you have the presence of mind to Enhance Ability (Charisma) yourself beforehand, you will have advantage on that check. After you remove it, just have a Counterspell ready for the intervening turn to stop anything your opponent tries. Then just Silence at the beginning of your second round.

That description should give you some idea of how narrow this build is, but also how powerful it is at shutting down a single spellcasting target. Despite this narrowness, there are lots of ways to increase your flexibility; Bards have so many useful spells in that regard, and you definitely aren't a shabby grappler even your target isn't a Mage. Just figure out ways to adapt your combo and you will be ready for grappling anyone, whether scrawny-armed and pointed-hatted or not.

9. Build 3: Grizzlyman (Druid/Barbarian/Rogue)
Barbarians make scary wrestlers. You know what's even scarier? BEAR-barians. Raging, frothing, damage resistant Grizzly Bears. This grappling build is great for low to mid-level campaigns, for those players who want to tank a lot of damage and dish it all back. Although this is a Druid-based optimization, you aren't going to be casting too many spells. Concentration can be hard to maintain in a frontline situation, especially at higher levels, so this build limits magic in favor of good old bear-style bruising.

Before we get too excited about Bar-bear-ians, it is important to remember a limitation of Multiattack. RAW, this is not the Attack Action. It's a type of action that produces attacks, but not the attack action, so barring some dev clarification, you won't be able to replace individual attacks in a Multiattack with grapple/shove attempts. That's not a bad thing because you can still pick up Extra Attack from Barbarian. And that multiattack option will still give you great damage output on your grappled/shoved target.

With that rules clarification thrown in, here is how you bear wrestle. As early as level 2, you can Wild Shape into a Brown Bear, which instantly gives you access to multiattack for the best low-level damage of any other grappler. Add Rage to that for advantage on your initial grappl, Bear Totem durability while raging, and a bunch of non-concentration buffs (Longstrider, Jump, etc.), and you have yourself a very formiddable frontline wrestler. Extra Attack will come later to get those multiple grapples/shoves.

Starting Race: Human or Forest Gnome.

Human gives you a bonus feat at level 1, which you can use to snag Mobile, Lucky, Alert, or any of the other luxury feats. Forest Gnome gives you advantage on all Int/Wis/Cha saves against spells, which will help out your frontine tanking, and it helps fulfill your Rogue multiclass prereq.

Ability Scores: Here's your 27 point buy array assuming shameless optimization choices.
Str: 13 (Barbarian multiclass requirement)
Dex 12 (Human/Gnome +1 - Rogue multiclass requirement)
Con 10 (Wild Shape is all the HP you need, but if it cracks you need to survive a round)
Int 10 (+2 Gnome - Dumpable in this build; you have save advantage anyway)
Wis 15 (Human +1 - Druid requirement for multiclassing, main spellcasting ability, saves against fear, etc.)
Cha 13 (Governs a lot of other save-or-condition spells.)


  • [SIZE=10pt]Barbarian 1[/SIZE]
    Human Feat: Alert (Going first in battle is nuts as a grappler)
    We start with Barbarian 1 for the proficiency bonus in Strength and Constitution saves; if we are grappling on the front lines, those need to be high. We already have advantage on Int/Wis/Cha saves as a Rock Gnome anyway.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 1 / Barbarian 1[/SIZE]
    Start your druid progression but don't grapple until you can Wild Shape; remember that you have 8 strength in non-bear form. From this point onwards, you will always Longstrider yourself before a fight.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 1[/SIZE]
    Get Wild Shape. Get Circle of the Moon. You can now turn into CR 1 monsters, which for the next 4 levels will almost always be a Brown Bear. The Brown Bear will be your friend for many levels. There are many like it, but this one will be yours. As a raging Brown Bear, you will have two attacks per round which deal an average of about 24 damage per turn (don't forget your Rage bonus damage!) Or you can replace those attacks with grapples, which will be made at a +6 bonus with advantage. You are also size large so you can grapple almost anything your DM throws at you. At level 3 alone, this is miles better than any other grappler on the battlefield. Our goal is to keep it relevant as long as possible.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 2[/SIZE]
    We switch back to Barbarian progression here to increase your tankiness. This is an early-mid level build, so we want to keep you relevant for as long as possible before the build falls off a bit. Danger Sense gives you a targeted boost to your survivability as you make your way to the ultimate in tanky class features.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 3[/SIZE]
    BEAR WARRIORS NEED BEAR TOTEM! Pick this feature up and enjoy resistance to every damage type under the sun (save Psychic) while raging. This should give you the best ratio of tankability to grappling skills to damage of almost any 5th level character you could make.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 4[/SIZE]
    Level 4 feat: Mobile
    Continue Barbarian progression to get to Extra Attack for multiple grapple/shove attempts. Also, Mobile + Bear + Longstrider + Barbarian Move Speed = 70 move speed per turn, which gives you lots of battlefield control.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 5[/SIZE]
    Now that you can make multiple attacks as part of the Attack action, you will be able to shove/grapple in one round, and then claw/bite in the next. Tasty.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 2 / Barbarian 5/ Rogue 1[/SIZE]
    Switch over to Rogue to get a small boost to damage in Sneak Attack, and to get Expertise to make sure your grapple check is outscaling the opposed checks of enemies.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 3 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 4 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
    Swim speed grapplers just aren't very strong because of how long it takes to drown enemies in 5.0. A monster with 16 constitution can stay alive underwater for about 3 minutes, which is a marathon 30 rounds of combat. If time isn't of the essence, then it's a great way to guarantee kills against monsters that you otherwise might not be able to beat; just drag them to the bottom of a river and hold them there. But it's just not very time efficient.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 5 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 6 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
    Enter the Polar Bear. Polar Bears aren't THAT much better than Brown Bears, which is why we hold off on it for so long. You get a little extra of everything as a Polar Bear (strength, damage, HP, AC, saves, etc.), which is just enough to keep your power level on pace in a campaign.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 7 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 1[/SIZE]
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 8 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 2[/SIZE]
    Level 8 Feat: Lucky/Mage Slayer/etc.
    GIANT EAGLE TIME! Starting at Druid level 8, you can now take on a Giant Eagle form and soar the the greatest heights with your newfound pals (one in beak, one in talon). Then teach them how to fly as you drop them from those heights. In one round, you will grab two enemies as an action and then ascend 50 feet (80 base speed + 10 longstrider + 10 mobile, all halved for grappling). Next round, just take a dash action and then move straight up another 100 feet, dropping them from 150 feet for 15d6 damage. This isn't the MOST optimized damage you could achieve, but it's still better than a Fireball cast as a level 12 spell, so it's not as if you are too far behind.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Druid 8 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 2[/SIZE]
    Now that we can go Eagle, we return to Rogue and get Cunning Action. This lets us get up to 100 feet in one round (10d6 drop) or 200 feet in two rounds (20d6 drop).
  • [size=10pt]Druid 9 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 2
    [*][SIZE=10pt]Druid 10 / Barbarian 5 / Rogue 2[/SIZE]
    Fare you well, Bear forms. You served us well. But now, it's time to ROCK AND ROLL. Earth Elementals don't make much better grapplers than Polar Bears (same strength, same number of attacks). But oh man, do they make tankier ones. With 17 AC and a whopping 126 HP with Rage-resistance to every form of damage, plus advantage on Dex-saves from Danger Sense and advantage on Wis/Int/Cha saves from Gnome, you just will not die in this form. Earth Glide also lets you gap close on any enemy who stands on solid ground, or is even standing near solid ground. Oh, and your reach goes up to 10 feet from 5 feet. Get ready to rumble; literally.


From level 18 onward, you have some flexibility in how you finish out the build. You can go straight up to Druid 15 for level 7 spells. You can go back to Rogue and get up to level 7, which would give you Evasion, Uncanny Dodge, another feat, and access to level 1 and level 2 Wizard spells from Enchantment/Illusion, courtesy of Arcane Trickster. Mirror Image makes a solid no-concentration-required buff you can use while Raging. You can also go Fighter 4 for a bonus feat, action surge, and some awesome combat maneuvers to use in Elemental form.

It is worth noting that this build is strongest at around levels 3-10. At levels 3 and 4, you are making a grapple/shove attempt at +6 with advantage and able to attack with a Greatsword and Longsword each turn even if you have two opponents held. You also effectively have 64 HP. At level 7, you have 70 move speed, you are making multiple grapples, and your average damage in a round is about 28, which is some of the highest for any grappler build. You fall off a bit after that, but then get a nice proficiency/expertise bump, and an across-the-board stat increase at level 12 due to Polar Bear.

At that point, the build loses relevance at every level. Giant Eagle drops are fun and definitely hurt, but a lot of monsters will be immune to them, and there are better damage optimizations at your disposal. Similarly, although Elemental form is powerful and sturdy, it's not as powerful/sturdy as other builds might have been at that level. This tradeoff in late game power comes in exchange for some serious battlefield dominance at levels 3-6, with continued high impact through level 10.

10. Build 4: BJJ Master - Battlefield Jujitsu (Monk/Druid/Fighter)
Some players turn to grappling for the real world martial arts experience. None of this heavy armor or shield nonsense. No beast form silliness. No weapons. Just you and your black belt against the world. The BJJ Master (Battlefield Jujitsu) gives you that experience, combining the unarmed prowess of the Monk with low-level Druid spells and Fighter maneuvers. This lets you take some real world martial art moves to the extreme. If you want to choke targets, throw them around, lock some joints, and generally bring your real-world grappling experiences to the gaming table, then this is the build for you.

The BJJ Master is similar to the Mage Slayer in that it revolves around combos. But unlike the Mage Slayer, it's a lot less narrow, and you can often pick what combo you want to execute for the turn. This keeps you relevant no matter what opponent you are up against. It is a "harder" build to play than others because of its relatively low survivability (bad AC and low HP), and because of the number of options at your disposal (choosing the wrong move against the wrong monster might get you in trouble). But if you can get the play style to work for you, you will be able to control spellcasters, deal damage, lockdown enemy damage dealers, fight all types of movement modes, and much more.

Starting Race: Human or Mountain Dwarf
This build is feat greedy, especially if you want to execute your piledriving, suplex, airborne slams (more on that later). But it never hurts to have higher strength and constitution, especially in the ability score greedy Monk.

Ability Scores: Here's your 27 point buy array assuming shameless optimization choices.
Str: 15 (Dwarf +2 - Always important, always a top choice)
Dex 12 (A small boost to AC and initiatve)
Con 10 (Dwarf +2 - It's okay to have lower survivability than other grappling classes because of your higher mobility)
Int 9 (Dump it; you are too stat greedy elsewhere)
Wis 15 (Human +1 - Unarmored AC bonus, saves against Fear, improves our Monk save abilities)
Cha 8 (See Int)

Because this build revolves around different techniques that you can execute at almost all levels, I am going to pull those techniques out and explain them here. I'll highlight parts of the build where these techniques become viable and when they improve.

Technique 1: Powerbomb Suplex Shoulder Throw
My favorite move in your arsenal. In effect, you grapple a target and then make a standing high jump. At the top of your jump, you hurl them to the ground, deal damage to them from the fall, knock them prone with no save, and then just re-grapple them in the same turn. This works by using the Jump spell to triple your jump distance, Step of the Wind to double it, and then stacking move speed bonuses so you can get to maximum height even with half move speed. Here's how it works assuming a base speed of 50 (30 + Longstrider 10 + unarmored Monk 10) and assuming you have Extra Attack.

  • Start next to your opponent and grapple them with the attack action (attack #1).
  • Take the Step of the Wind bonus action to Dash and to double your jump distance. Your move speed is now 50 for the turn (50 base / 2 grappled * 2 Dash).
  • Take a 5 foot step (45 remaining) to trigger Athletic.
  • LEAP FOR THE HEAVENS. Your jump height is massive at 36 (3 base + 3 strength = 6 * 3 Jump = 18 * 2 Step = 36 feet). Carry your opponent with you as you jump straight up.
  • At the top of your arc, release the grapple. And by "release the grapple", I mean hurl that poor guy back to the ground with a mighty heave.
  • Opponent falls and takes 3d6 damage, landing prone with no save.
  • You fall and take 3d6 - 5x Monk Level damage (assuming Slow Fall at level 4).
  • If you take no damage, use your remaining attack action from Extra Attack to re-grapple the prone target (attack #2)
  • If you take damage and land prone, use 5 feet of movement to stand from Athletic, and then regrapple the prone target.
  • BONUS: If your DM lets you, just land on your target; he should take 3d6 damage again from your fall.

Technique 2: Four Corners Strike
One Attack Action, four effects. In a single turn, you deliver a flurry of fists and the opponent will have to save against a stun, a fear effect, a trip, and a disarm. No matter what happens, they will probably end the turn grappled in addition to at least one of those conditions. Although your target might make some of those saves, at least one is likely to get through, and depending on how many Ki points you have, you can keep attempting the stunning part of the attack as you progress through the Four Corners Strike. And as an added bonus, failing that stun save will guarantee that your trip, disarm, and grapple all succeed.

  • Take the attack action and get ready to spend some Ki points!
  • If you hit with your first attack, immediately spend 1 Ki point to make a Stunning Strike. On the same attack, spend 1 Superiority Die to make a Menacing Attack.
    Opponent must make a Wis save or be frightened. Opponent must then make a Con save or be stunned.
  • Now take a bonus action and spend another Ki point for Flurry of Blows.
    If your opponent isn't stunned, keep applying Stunning Strikes until they are. Always apply the stun before the maneuver
  • Flurry 1: Initiate a Disarming Attack maneuver. If the opponent is stunned, they automatically fail the Str save and drop their weapon.
    If you go Open Hand Technique, you get a prone attempt against their dex save (and do it again on the next Flurry!)
  • Flurry 2: Initiate a Trip Attack maneuver. If the opponent is stunned, they automatically fail the Str save and fall prone.
  • Extra Attack: With your second attack in the attack action, make a grapple attempt. You automatically succeed if they are stunned. They have disadvantage on the ability roll if they were just frightened.
  • Use your move to drag the stunned, prone, grappled, disarmed, frightened opponent away from their weapon. Opponent has also taken about 3d8 + 3d6 + 9 damage on top of all that.

Technique 3: Spikedragging
Grab an enemy (or two!), cast Spike Growth, and then grind his face into the thorns as you drag him in a circle around the area. Using Step of the Wind and the Mobile feat, you will deal 2d4 damage to your target for every 5 feet you travel with him; Mobile lets you ignore difficult terrain if you dash, and pumps up your mvoe speed. Step lets you dash as a bonus action. This requires concentration but you can do it as early as Druid level 3 (which is really all you should progress in that class anyway.

  • There are lots of ways you can open the Spikedrag combo, but the most efficient is just to use your Fighter Action Surge. Run up to your target (move action), cast Spike Growth exactly 20 feet away from you (action), take an action surge and make a grapple check (action surge action), and then make a Flurry of Blows for 1 Ki Point (bonus action). You can stack some maneuvers on those Flurries if you want, and/or Stuns, and/or Open Hand Techniques.
  • Round 2 starts with the target grappled at the edge of your Spike Growth. Time to start Spikedragging!
  • Take a Step of the Wind as a bonus action.
  • Take a dash action for your main action. Now you are triple dashing at 60 base speed (30 + 10 unarmored + 10 longstrider + 10 mobile). That's 180 feet in the round, halved to 90 because you are grappling.
  • Smash your enemy's face into the ground and run around the edge of the circle, or just back and forth between two squares, dragging your helpless foe along the spiky surface. With 90 feet in your move, that's 36d4 damage your opponent will take as you haul them along the ground. On average, that will be about 90 damage in the whole round.Oh, and they are grappled and/or Prone the entire time.
  • MULTIPLE ENEMY NOTE: If you have multiple enemies, you will likely have to cast the Spike Growth at your feet and then drag them to the edge. Otherwise, you won't be able to position them such that they are both in the area of the Growth (unless they started out next to each other).

As long as you are combining trips, disarms, grapples, stuns, shoves, and all manner of other moves, go forth and invent your own techniques for battlefield domination!


  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 1[/SIZE]
    Human feat: Athlete
    Grab Athlete early for the bonus Strength and the added hops.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 1 / Druid 1[/SIZE]
    Going straight into Druid gives you access to Longstrider and Jump (not to mention Guidance), so you can immediately start some lower-height powerbomb supexes.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 2 / Druid 1[/SIZE]
    Back to Monk to pick up Slow Fall, a feat, and Extra Attack.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 3 / Druid 1[/SIZE]
    Take Way of the Open Hand here. In tandem with Trip Attacks, this will give you as many as 4 prone attempts on just your flurry of bow hits alone.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 4 / Druid 1[/SIZE]
    Level 4 feat: Mobile
    Most of your combat options involve mobility, and the aptly named Mobile is second to none in that department.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 1[/SIZE]
    Extra Attack and Stunning Strike acquired. We will come back to Monk later to get a few more features.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 1 / Fighter 1[/SIZE]
    Pick up Dueling (designers said this works with unarmed strikes) for a little extra damage.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 1 / Fighter 2[/SIZE]
    ACTION SURGE! This unlocks the entire Powerbomb Suplex technique.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 1 / Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    Get Disarming Attack, Trip Attack, and Menacing Attack. This unlocks the entire Four Corners Strike technique.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 2 / Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    We move back to Druid now to get some of the level 3 spells. Go into Circle of the Land; Natural Recovery lets you use Jump/Longstrider again after just a short rest.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 5 / Druid 3 / Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    Druid 3 gets you Enhance Ability for general advantage on checks, Spike Growth to unlock the Spikedragging technique, and Circle of the Land (Coast) for the no-concentration Mirror Image and the almighty Misty Step for gap closing.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 6 / Druid 3 / Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    Return to Monk to get Wholeness of Body for emergency healing, Ki-Empowered Strikes to guarantee damage on all those nonmagical resistant monsters, and the +5 move speed.
  • [SIZE=10pt]Monk 7 / Druid 3 / Fighter 3[/SIZE]
    Add Evasion and Stillness of Mind to your survivability arsenal.

That gives you 7 more levels to round out the rest of your skillset. Going straight to Monk 14 is totally viable to get more move speed, the powerful Diamond Soul feature, a 1d8 unarmed damage die, and a larger Ki pool. You can also progress more into Druid to get additional spells, go into Fighter 4 or Druid 4 just for 1-2 more feats, or take a new class entirely!

No matter how you close out the build, the BJJ Master will give you a lot of unique, powerful, and downright cool abilities for use at the gaming table. A nice thing about this build is that you can also just stick with regular grappling/shoving with advantage if all the neat techniques aren't working out for you, stacking in some extra attacks and save-or-condition effects as needed.


Originally posted by Mistwell:

Loving this guide so far. Thank you for all your work.




Originally posted by Yunru:

The Grappler feat is such an annoying one. Of the three bullet points, the first is purple, the second pure red, traps compared to simply grappled and prone, but the third makes it a Gold. Already we see the first "feat tax". At least this one's build specific.


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

Yunru wrote:The Grappler feat is such an annoying one. Of the three bullet points, the first is purple, the second pure red, traps compared to simply grappled and prone, but the third makes it a Gold. Already we see the first "feat tax". At least this one's build specific.
Click to expand...
Yeah, Grappler is not a well-designed feat. That first ability makes it look so strong, but when you realize that the Prone condition does that anyway, it really loses a lot of value. That second ability is mostly terrible, unless you have something that can abuse the disadvantage on dexterity saves. It's really bad when you realize that Crocodile Druids can restrain an opponent without themselves being restrained. But that third ability? You nailed it; the only real gold feat in the whole optimization. Without that, you really can't effectively grapple in all situations.

The only benefit of that first Grappler ability is its value against larger opponents. You can't shove a huge or larger creature prone, so the feat at least guarantees you retain advantage on attacks. That's still very narrow, but at least more useful than nothing.

Mistwell wrote:Loving this guide so far. Thank you for all your word.
Click to expand...
Glad you're enjoying it! Let me know if you want to see anything added, or have any suggestions!


Originally posted by Yunru:

Open Hand Monks can be awesome at it. For 1 ki point you can grab and then flurry (and inflict prone doing so), come level 3. Of course come level 5 you get an extra attack so you can grab+prone and then flurry. They can also Prone targets that a Shove couldn't.


Originally posted by Jay_Ibero_911:

JuThe third point of grappler does NOTHING. There is no rule that says large creatures automatically escape grapples. It creates an exception to the rule that DOES NOT EXIST.That asside, a few additional points to add: First rage also gives you advantage on grapple checks since they are strength ability checks. Second, don't discount the battlemaster fighter with the trip manuever. No one can get a target grabbed and prone as fast as a 3rd level human fighter with the tavern brawler feat. Punch->trip maneuver->grab as bonus action.Also, it's worth emphasizing that since grab/shove aren't attack rolls, they are intelligent choices when you would otherwise have disadvantage. Grapping and proning an invisible stalker for instance would negate pretty much all of its advantages as long as you know where to grab.

Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

Jay_Ibero_911 wrote:JuThe third point of grappler does NOTHING. There is no rule that says large creatures automatically escape grapples. It creates an exception to the rule that DOES NOT EXIST. That asside, a few additional points to add: First rage also gives you advantage on grapple checks since they are strength ability checks. Second, don't discount the battlemaster fighter with the trip manuever. No one can get a target grabbed and prone as fast as a 3rd level human fighter with the tavern brawler feat. Punch->trip maneuver->grab as bonus action. Also, it's worth emphasizing that since grab/shove aren't attack rolls, they are intelligent choices when you would otherwise have disadvantage. Grapping and proning an invisible stalker for instance would negate pretty much all of its advantages as long as you know where to grab.
Click to expand...
I think it's been accepted that the third ability of Grappler is a typo or some other kind of miswriting. RAW, it doesn't do crap. But RAI, and how must DMs would probably be fine reading it, it functions as most people think it does. Because this is such a glaring error that will likely be fixed with errata, I don't have an issue including an RAI exception in the guide.

I have Rage in as one of the gold abilities. It doesn't get much better than raging.

I'll include some more stuff on fighters when I get to that section. There is definitely something to be said for the speed that fighters can tangle up a target.

Good points on Stalkers. I'll look into adding a tactics section where this can get some coverage.


Originally posted by awaken_D_M_golem:

(reads) ... hmm ... so let's say
1st part of a build is to get the 2 Grapples going at the same time
2nd part is to strike both with feet or booty/whatever = Monk but only after 1st part is guaranteed.


Since it's a Skill, you can have Advantage, if someone uses Help as their action.



Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

awaken_D_M_golem wrote:(reads) ... hmm ... so let's say
1st part of a build is to get the 2 Grapples going at the same time
2nd part is to strike both with feet or booty/whatever = Monk but only after 1st part is guaranteed.

Since it's a Skill, you can have Advantage, if someone uses Help as their action.
Click to expand...
That's a good way to play the Monk grappler. For those that don't see the steps, here it is in long form:


  • Grab Dude #1
  • Drag Dude #1 to Dude #2
  • Grab Dude #2
  • Shove Dude #1 Prone
  • Shove Dude #2 Prone
  • Beatdown Dudes #1/#2 with feet and knees.

If you have extra attack actions, you can collapse this into only a few turns.

Help is a nice option for grappling, but generally a poor use of another party member's time (Cohorts anyone?). More realistically, a Ranger of 7th level or higher can use a bonus action to get their companion to Help on the athletics check, which is an awesome synergy/optimization that I will definitely talk about in the guide.





Originally posted by Jay_Ibero_911:

You should specify what interpretation of grappler's third point you are operating on then to make it do something. Also, anyone playing in AL is stuck with the non-functioning RAW.A consideration for any caster grappler, enlarge/reduce spell can greatly shift things in a grappler's favor. Either enlarging yourself, shrinking an enemy, or both if you've got an ally caster to concentrate on the other one for you. Make yourself large and shrink a gargantuan enemy to huge and suddenly you can grapple an enemy that was 3 categories larger.

Originally posted by Yunru:

I'm assuming it's meant to counter this point:

The target of your grapple must be no more than one
size larger than you,
Click to expand...
True RAW it doesn't but...


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

Jay_Ibero_911 wrote:You should specify what interpretation of grappler's third point you are operating on then to make it do something. Also, anyone playing in AL is stuck with the non-functioning RAW. A consideration for any caster grappler, enlarge/reduce spell can greatly shift things in a grappler's favor. Either enlarging yourself, shrinking an enemy, or both if you've got an ally caster to concentrate on the other one for you. Make yourself large and shrink a gargantuan enemy to huge and suddenly you can grapple an enemy that was 3 categories larger.
Click to expand...
I'll make a clear note of that when I ge to the Feats section, and Enlarge is also on my list of spells to discuss in that area.


Originally posted by JamesT3:

Awesome guide. I've been working on a grappler for quite some time and I've been hoping someone would write this up.


Originally posted by TheGimper:

Just to clarify, if you grapple an opponent and knock him prone, wouldn't you also be prone by default? In which case, your attacks against the grappled opponent would also have disadvantage. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing as it gives your party members advantage. It's just part of the equation to consider.


Originally posted by Yunru:

TheGimper wrote:Just to clarify, if you grapple an opponent and knock him prone, wouldn't you also be prone by default? In which case, your attacks against the grappled opponent would also have disadvantage. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing as it gives your party members advantage. It's just part of the equation to consider.
Click to expand...
Do the rules say you go prone? Nope. So you don't go prone. There's no "hidden" rules to 5e. What you see is what you get.

Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

TheGimper wrote:Just to clarify, if you grapple an opponent and knock him prone, wouldn't you also be prone by default? In which case, your attacks against the grappled opponent would also have disadvantage. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing as it gives your party members advantage. It's just part of the equation to consider.
Click to expand...
You would not be prone yourself, both from an RAW and RAI standpoint.

RAW
While grappling an opponent, they have the grappled condition. As long as your hand is on them, they are considered grappled.
After shoving an opponent, they gain the prone condition. That condition coexists with the grappled condition.
When gaining the prone condition, they don't move squares or leave your reach. If they did, this would break the grapple. But the shoving rules do not say that they move if knocked prone.
In the end, as the grappler, you have neither condition. As far as the rules are concerned, you are still standing. The only hindrance is that you don't have one free hand; the hand that is grappling them.

RAI
This makes perfect sense from a martial perspective. After wrestling an opponent into your grasps, you trip them, shoulder throw them, or otherwise take them down. Then you keep your hand/knee/whatever on their body while you yourself are standing. This is an extremely common position in all grappling/wrestling martial arts and it makes sense that it is allowed in the rules.

It is rare that a weird RAW interaction also makes total sense in the RAI world. This is one such intersection, which is great for grapplers everywhere. If your DM is a rules lawyer, then just point them to the relevant PHB passages. If he tries to house rule away the PHB definitions, there are plenty of YouTube videos we could pull up that would show him how wrong they were.


Originally posted by TheGimper:

-ktkenshinx- wrote:
TheGimper wrote:Just to clarify, if you grapple an opponent and knock him prone, wouldn't you also be prone by default? In which case, your attacks against the grappled opponent would also have disadvantage. That doesn't mean it's not worth doing as it gives your party members advantage. It's just part of the equation to consider.
Click to expand...
You would not be prone yourself, both from an RAW and RAI standpoint.

RAW
While grappling an opponent, they have the grappled condition. As long as your hand is on them, they are considered grappled.
After shoving an opponent, they gain the prone condition. That condition coexists with the grappled condition.
When gaining the prone condition, they don't move squares or leave your reach. If they did, this would break the grapple. But the shoving rules do not say that they move if knocked prone.
In the end, as the grappler, you have neither condition. As far as the rules are concerned, you are still standing. The only hindrance is that you don't have one free hand; the hand that is grappling them.

RAI
This makes perfect sense from a martial perspective. After wrestling an opponent into your grasps, you trip them, shoulder throw them, or otherwise take them down. Then you keep your hand/knee/whatever on their body while you yourself are standing. This is an extremely common position in all grappling/wrestling martial arts and it makes sense that it is allowed in the rules.

It is rare that a weird RAW interaction also makes total sense in the RAI world. This is one such intersection, which is great for grapplers everywhere. If your DM is a rules lawyer, then just point them to the relevant PHB passages. If he tries to house rule away the PHB definitions, there are plenty of YouTube videos we could pull up that would show him how wrong they were.
Click to expand...
OK. I was thinking of a situation where you're both on the ground, and you have your arms and legs wrapped around the grappled person. Such as this: http://www.galvestonbjj.com/submission-grappling/



Originally posted by Yunru:

That'd be the Restrained of the Grappler feat.


Originally posted by Lawolf:

The third ability from the grapple feat used to matter in the alpha documents.

In alpha, you could grapple any creature, regardless of size, but a creature 2 sizes larger than you automatically succeeded escape attempts. The grapple rules changed for final release (can only grapple up to 1 size larger) and the removed the auto-escape language as it was no longer necessary. Sadly, the grappler feat didn't get updated.

RAW, the 3rd ability on the grappler feat does nothing.


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

Lawolf wrote:The third ability from the grapple feat used to matter in the alpha documents.

In alpha, you could grapple any creature, regardless of size, but a creature 2 sizes larger than you automatically succeeded escape attempts. The grapple rules changed for final release (can only grapple up to 1 size larger) and the removed the auto-escape language as it was no longer necessary. Sadly, the grappler feat didn't get updated.

RAW, the 3rd ability on the grappler feat does nothing.
Click to expand...
Interesting to have some background on that. I thought I remembered that from alpha. 100% agree that RAW it does nothing but it's enough of a glaring error that I am willing to write an RAI take on the feat and then just notate it as such. It will be in the feat section.


Originally posted by SpedGuy:

Bard offers a lot of spells to help grappling; which I'm sure you will explore. I like Guidance particularly... "hey Tyr, what is the best way to wrestle this here dragon?"


Originally posted by Ashrym:

SpedGuy wrote:Bard offers a lot of spells to help grappling; which I'm sure you will explore. I like Guidance particularly... "hey Tyr, what is the best way to wrestle this here dragon?"
Click to expand...
Enhance ability for advantage on the checks, or eventually foresight. If you already have high bonuses but still a chance to fail then advantage on the checks cinches things up more than guidance. It also helps more after running out of inspiration dice used for cutting words and peerless skill.

Originally posted by 1eejit:

Don't forget to mention the big downside of prone, disadvantage for ranged attacks from your allies. That's significant with a lot of party compositions. If you have an even split of melee and ranged helping you the Wolf Totem might be worthwhile. Also keep in mind armor when rating the classes. Lore Bard has poor AC if you also have to invest in Str on top of the usual Cha, Dex, Con. Though Mountain Dwarf would ameliorate that somewhat.

Originally posted by Plaguescarred1:

-ktkenshinx- wrote:The biggest thing to remember is that grapple checks are not attack rolls. Repeat after me: Grappling is NOT an attack roll. So stuff like True Strike or the Barbarian's Reckless Attack feature will not give you advantage on the roll (because it is not an attack roll). But it IS an ability check, so it interacts with all sorts of effects and features that function on ability checks (e.g. the Enhance Ability spell).
Click to expand...
Great guide! Another interesting note is that since grappling is an attack without an attack roll, it doesn't interfere with hidden, invisibility, heavily oobscured disadvantage or penalties to attack rolls, including half or three-quarter cover. It cannot be attemped with full cover though, since you cannot be targeted by an attack with full cover which a grapple is.


-ktkenshinx- wrote:You need at least one free hand to initiate a grapple.Note: You CAN use and benefit from a weapon or shield in your free hand if you are grappling.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure i understanding, are you saying that you can grab with a hand that is holding a weapon or shield? Because as a DM i wouldn't consider the hand free if wielding such things for sure and i'm sure a great deal of DM wouldn't neither.

Originally posted by 2Chlorobutanal:

I also enjoy this guide.

I think the "free hand" part is talking about the "non-grappling" hand. I.e.: If you grapple with 1 hand, you can have a weapon or shield in the other one.


Originally posted by Plaguescarred1:

Yeah wielding a weapon or shield in your other hand its fine, but i think referring it to free hand right after saying you need a free hand to grapple is confusing.


Originally posted by mellored:

Lawolf wrote:The third ability from the grapple feat used to matter in the alpha documents.

In alpha, you could grapple any creature, regardless of size, but a creature 2 sizes larger than you automatically succeeded escape attempts. The grapple rules changed for final release (can only grapple up to 1 size larger) and the removed the auto-escape language as it was no longer necessary. Sadly, the grappler feat didn't get updated.

RAW, the 3rd ability on the grappler feat does nothing.
Click to expand...
So it seems the intent would be to grappling a creature 1 size larger.

Originally posted by Jay_Ibero_911:

Also of note, even against grapple immune enemies, you aren't really shut down all that much. Fighter or barb can still bust out a heavy weapon to pound on a target, so you are at worst just slightly behind someone who invested in non grappling feats.

Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

1eejit wrote:Don't forget to mention the big downside of prone, disadvantage for ranged attacks from your allies. That's significant with a lot of party compositions. If you have an even split of melee and ranged helping you the Wolf Totem might be worthwhile. Also keep in mind armor when rating the classes. Lore Bard has poor AC if you also have to invest in Str on top of the usual Cha, Dex, Con. Though Mountain Dwarf would ameliorate that somewhat.
Click to expand...
Between this and a few other things people have discussed (not to mention the big question: What do I do against Freedom of Movement), I'm going to need to add a "Tactics" section at some point.

The trick with AC is to just take the armor proficient class at level 1, and the multiclass to the grappling stuff after that. Almost every optimization you would run has some medium or heavy armor class up front, or, as you said, can just go into a race that gets the proficiency for free. HP, however, is definitely a real concern with classes like Bard and Rogue.

Plaguescarred wrote:Yeah wielding a weapon or shield in your other hand its fine, but i think referring it to free hand right after saying you need a free hand to grapple is confusing.
Click to expand...
I agree that this is poorly worded. I'm going to change how that's phrased.
Jay_Ibero_911 wrote:Also of note, even against grapple immune enemies, you aren't really shut down all that much. Fighter or barb can still bust out a heavy weapon to pound on a target, so you are at worst just slightly behind someone who invested in non grappling feats.
Click to expand...
It's true that you aren't totally, 100% shut down in most fights. That's especially true if you are a spellcasting grappler or just really tanky. But even so, it does kind of suck when you fight those monsters who are flat out immune to the grappled condition and you have to totally change your playstyle. At least most builds can hold their own in such a situation.


Originally posted by Trader_Nerds:

I just posted your guide in my groups forum someone wanted to build a grappler and this will help him so much thank you! I have also been thinking about making a Dragonborn Barb so I might make him a grappler thanks to this too! Thanks for all the great info, I do have a question which is probably all common sense but my DM wasn't exactly sure how to handle it due the the vageness of the rules in the PHB. The grappled status doesn't say anything about the enemy who is grappled being able to do anything, i'd assume that once they are grappled thery no longer have use of there hands and can't attack or do spells, atleast spells that require hand movements. Would this be correct? So since it isn't listed should we go by the DMs ruling of they can still attack at the very least the grappler since he is in range?


Originally posted by mellored:

I think your under rate valor bards.

2 attacks (+ expertise) means an easy grab+trip in 1 turn instead of 2. Medium armor keeps them alive better too.

Lore bard's are better against hard to grab creatures. But for your run of the mill guy, valor seems better.



Originally posted by mellored:

Trader_Nerds wrote:I just posted your guide in my groups forum someone wanted to build a grappler and this will help him so much thank you! I have also been thinking about making a Dragonborn Barb so I might make him a grappler thanks to this too! Thanks for all the great info, I do have a question which is probably all common sense but my DM wasn't exactly sure how to handle it due the the vageness of the rules in the PHB. The grappled status doesn't say anything about the enemy who is grappled being able to do anything, i'd assume that once they are grappled thery no longer have use of there hands and can't attack or do spells, atleast spells that require hand movements. Would this be correct? So since it isn't listed should we go by the DMs ruling of they can still attack at the very least the grappler since he is in range?
Click to expand...
It takes 1 hand to grapple.
You can then use the other for casting spells, attacking, holding a shield, or grapple a second guy.


Originally posted by Timborama:

Also, Trader, if you were talking about the person BEING grappled (not the grappler, as it were), they can act normally. The only special thing brought about by being grappled is that their speed is 0. This is under the Grappled condition.

There are secondary drawbacks, too, but nothing special. Just remember that the enemy being grappled is (presumably) always next to the grappler. This means all of their ranged attack rolls are at disadvantage! So a mage who is grabbed better have shocking grasp, poison spray, or a well-placed fireball. Same with a ranged weapon character. He can't jump around and hide now, so hopefully he has a melee weapon! It's better for him to attack for less damage than to have disadvantage with your main attack.

There are other things, too, like Pack Attack, class features like sneak attack, and other things, but the general premise is the same: If you grapple someone, they are next to you can't move and must use their action to escape if they want to get away (unless they use Thunderwave or something to push you away).


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

Trader_Nerds wrote:I just posted your guide in my groups forum someone wanted to build a grappler and this will help him so much thank you! I have also been thinking about making a Dragonborn Barb so I might make him a grappler thanks to this too! Thanks for all the great info, I do have a question which is probably all common sense but my DM wasn't exactly sure how to handle it due the the vageness of the rules in the PHB. The grappled status doesn't say anything about the enemy who is grappled being able to do anything, i'd assume that once they are grappled thery no longer have use of there hands and can't attack or do spells, atleast spells that require hand movements. Would this be correct? So since it isn't listed should we go by the DMs ruling of they can still attack at the very least the grappler since he is in range?
Click to expand...
Glad it's helpful! Keep checking back as it keeps getting updated.

While the enemy is grappled, they have full use of their hands. They can freely cast spells, use two weapons, use two-handed weapons, etc. This is also true if they are prone or restrained, except they would have disadvantage on attack rolls in both those cases. Unlike the 3.5 grapple rules, which would have imposed some of these limitations on a grappled character, the 5th edition rules aren't as crippling.

The key is to put them in situations where they can't effectively use those hands. Prone/Restrained gives them disadvantage on all attack rolls, including spell-based ones. Grappling them while in an area of Darkness or Silence will shut down most spellcasters and ranged weapon users. Melee fighters can attack you but won't be able to move around to another target.

mellored wrote:I think your under rate valor bards.

2 attacks (+ expertise) means an easy grab+trip in 1 turn instead of 2. Medium armor keeps them alive better too.

Lore bard's are better against hard to grab creatures. But for your run of the mill guy, valor seems better.
Click to expand...
I agree that the extra attack is strong, but getting it through Bard is just so much worse than the College of Lore options. It is way, way better to just get a bunch of Lore levels and then pick up the attacks from another class. Extra attack and medium armor is something you can get from Fighter or Barbarian. But Expertise/Cutting Words/Magical Secrets? That's College of Lore only. Also, unless I'm missing a rule, you can't pick and choose features from different paths/colleges, so you wouldn't even have Expertise alongside that Extra Attack.


Originally posted by mellored:

-ktkenshinx- wrote:
mellored wrote:I think your under rate valor bards.

2 attacks (+ expertise) means an easy grab+trip in 1 turn instead of 2. Medium armor keeps them alive better too.

Lore bard's are better against hard to grab creatures. But for your run of the mill guy, valor seems better.
Click to expand...
I agree that the extra attack is strong, but getting it through Bard is just so much worse than the College of Lore options. It is way, way better to just get a bunch of Lore levels and then pick up the attacks from another class. Extra attack and medium armor is something you can get from Fighter or Barbarian. But Expertise/Cutting Words/Magical Secrets? That's College of Lore only. Also, unless I'm missing a rule, you can't pick and choose features from different paths/colleges, so you wouldn't even have Expertise alongside that Extra Attack.
Click to expand...
You need 5 levels of another class to get it. That's not cheap.
i.e. valor 17 can cast forsight and invisibly, then grab + prone people in a single round.
Lore 15 fighter 5 woudln't get forsight. (though, it would get actions surge).


Originally posted by -ktkenshinx-:

mellored wrote:You need 5 levels of another class to get it. That's not cheap.

i.e. valor 17 can cast forsight and invisibly, then grab + prone people in a single round.
Lore 15 fighter 5 woudln't get forsight. (though, it would get actions surge).
Click to expand...
That's fair. But it still seems better to just go Monk 1/College of Lore 17 in that case. Have Foresight and Invisilibty ready before the battle. Then use your single attack action to grapple them, and your bonus action to just do some martial arts. That's on top +D12 you get to your grapple check and the -D12 the opponent gets to theirs. Or, if you are worried about the lack of armor from Monk, just dip Cleric 1 (War Domain) and use the bonus action from the domain ability to get another attack in that first round. That would even give you heavy armor over medium.

The only optimization I see where CoV would beat out CoL is a Bard 17/Rog 2. Then you can use the bonus action to Dash instead of to create another attack. But that would come at the cost of the +D12/-D12 to the grapple checks, which to me is way too big of a cost.




Originally posted by kitman:

Great guide.

I feel like for the lore bard is just too squishy to be in the same league as the barbarian and druid. I know that she's great at successfully grappling and maintaining a grapple, but there is more to being a good grappler than getting and maintaining a grapple. Low hit points, light armor, and MAD means con and dex will be the 3rd and 4th attribute. What's more, not having replenishing hit points or resistance from the druid and barbarian. I suppose a 3 level dip in barbarian would help a lot, but on it's own... eh.

Also, a shout out to menacing attack which adds frightened (disadvantage on skill checks for effectively the remainder of your round, your opponents round, and your next round). Combined with potentially 4 attacks per round and great survivability, and you've got a great grappler IMO.



Originally posted by mellored:


-ktkenshinx- wrote:
mellored wrote:You need 5 levels of another class to get it. That's not cheap.

i.e. valor 17 can cast forsight and invisibly, then grab + prone people in a single round.
Lore 15 fighter 5 woudln't get forsight. (though, it would get actions surge).
Click to expand...
That's fair. But it still seems better to just go Monk 1/College of Lore 17 in that case. Have Foresight and Invisilibty ready before the battle. Then use your single attack action to grapple them, and your bonus action to just do some martial arts. That's on top +D12 you get to your grapple check and the -D12 the opponent gets to theirs. Or, if you are worried about the lack of armor from Monk, just dip Cleric 1 (War Domain) and use the bonus action from the domain ability to get another attack in that first round. That would even give you heavy armor over medium.

The only optimization I see where CoV would beat out CoL is a Bard 17/Rog 2. Then you can use the bonus action to Dash instead of to create another attack. But that would come at the cost of the +D12/-D12 to the grapple checks, which to me is way too big of a cost.
Click to expand...
Monk's can't grab + punch as a bonus action since you did not use an attack action with an "unarmed strike or monk weapon".You have to spend 1 action to grab, 1 to prone, and then you can attack on turn 3.
At level 2 you can grab + flurry, and prone+flurry, but that all your ki.
At level 5, they can grab+prone+flurry. But, again, that's 5 levels.

There's no way to grab+prone without being level 5. 6 if you want expertise (either rogue 1/something 5, or valor 6).

Calor 17/thief 3 could be fun. Forsight + Invisbily, to grab+prone+take their weapon.
 

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