Medium characters grappling large creatures?

robus · Aug 21, 2018

Oofta said:
There are no official rules for penalties or bonuses for size differences that I know of. Personally I grant advantage if there are more than 2 size categories different, but that's a house rule.

Hmm - I think I would go with advantage if the grabber is a size larger and disadvantage if there's a greater size difference than that (because relatively tiny things are hard to catch

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Oofta · Aug 21, 2018

robus said:
Hmm - I think I would go with advantage if the grabber is a size larger and disadvantage if there's a greater size difference than that (because relatively tiny things are hard to catch )

I think at some point the size might be too big, but I'm thinking grappling a medium size dog vs grappling a small dog for relative sizes. Assuming they are both as fast and roughly as strong, it seems to me that the small dog is going to be easier to hold simply because you can grab a greater percentage of dog.

Of course not applying any penalty/bonus and simply following the rules works too. It rarely comes up in my games.

pming · Aug 21, 2018

Hiya!

So, Medium vs. Large? hehe... Personally, I think Disadvantage as a best scenario. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRbcNbr_mNg

^_^

Paul L. Ming

WaterRabbit · Aug 21, 2018

I think any situation involving grappling will require at least some common sense. Take for example a human grappling a brown bear. A brown bear is large vs. human that is medium. A human could grapple it in the sense of holding a limb or perhaps a choke hold. However, there is simply no way a human is going to move the bear as part of the grapple. It is more likely that the human will just be moved by the bear.

If you take a super strong human with a strength score of 20, they can push or drag 600 lbs. A small brown bear is going to be around 400 lbs, while a large one is going to be 800-1200 lbs.

As a DM, I tend to give disadvantage to a smaller grappler going against a large one in general. I definitely do not allow a grappler to move a creature beyond its own strength.

Even though most people interpret the Grappler feat to be in error, it is probably a correct ruling to allow creatures one size larger to automatically succeed on checks to escape the grapple -- at the very minimum they should have advantage on escaping the grapple or allow them to attempt to escape as a bonus action.

Yunru · Aug 21, 2018

WaterRabbit said:
I think any situation involving grappling will require at least some common sense. Take for example a human grappling a brown bear. A brown bear is large vs. human that is medium. A human could grapple it in the sense of holding a limb or perhaps a choke hold. However, there is simply no way a human is going to move the bear as part of the grapple. It is more likely that the human will just be moved by the bear.

If you take a super strong human with a strength score of 20, they can push or drag 600 lbs. A small brown bear is going to be around 400 lbs, while a large one is going to be 800-1200 lbs.

It's not about strength, it's about leverage. And strength because of course it is, D&D.

BookBarbarian · Aug 22, 2018

The 5e Grappling rules while simplistic are also very easy to use. So I use them.

If it means a PC can drag something it really shouldn't be able to, I just go with it. It doesn't break verisimilitude for me any more than a Banish spell would. It's just heroes figure out a way to do heroic things.

I'd rather spend my time coming up with a cool reason why it worked, rather than tell my player "No that doesn't work".

The Crimson Binome · Aug 22, 2018

Remember, by default, you can't even attempt to grapple a creature that's more than one size larger than you. Halflings can grapple humans, and humans can grapple ogres, but a halfling will never succeed at grappling an ogre. As long as you're only grappling a human, though, both halflings and humans are on equal footing.

It's a lot like the rules for heavy weapons. Halflings can use longswords, and humans can use greatswords, but a halfling can never use a greatsword. As long as you're only using a longsword, though, both halflings and humans are equally capable.

If nothing else, it's fairly consistent (within the context it's designed to represent).

CapnZapp · Aug 22, 2018

The secret is: any rule that bypasses hit points is inherently unbalanced (either too good or too weak; never perfectly balanced).

WaterRabbit · Aug 22, 2018

BookBarbarian said:
The 5e Grappling rules while simplistic are also very easy to use. So I use them.

If it means a PC can drag something it really shouldn't be able to, I just go with it. It doesn't break verisimilitude for me any more than a Banish spell would. It's just heroes figure out a way to do heroic things.

I'd rather spend my time coming up with a cool reason why it worked, rather than tell my player "No that doesn't work".

Sure, but the grapple rules don't override the rules on how much a person can drag.

WaterRabbit · Aug 22, 2018

Yunru said:
It's not about strength, it's about leverage. And strength because of course it is, D&D.

Totally agree here, but leverage is a bit harder to work out as it is position based and D&D doesn't have rules granular enough nor is a round granular enough to account for leverage easily. Giving large creatures advantage is a nod to that.