D&D 5E The Grappler's Manual (2.0) - Grappling in 5th Edition

[Sigghridh]

As I wanted to necro this thread, someone has written a post before me. Now when the Tales of the Yawning Portal are released, there is an item that can be very valuable for grapplers.

Eagle Whistle from Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan gives you flying speed equal to twice your walking speed. And it does not require attunement! The only drawback is that you have to blow it continously (no action required and Use an Object to activate) for a number of rounds equal to 5 + five times your Constitution modifier.

It's a bit worse for Grizzlymen build because some DMs might rule that a beast is physically incapable of blowing a whistle like a humanoid could, but most DMs will allow it.

 

[TheBigHouse]

Another possible option is the UA Mystic. At first level, pick Order of the Immortal, choose Master of Air for your base discipline (just for the psychic focus of not taking fall damage), and then take Brute Force and Giant Growth as your bonus Order disciplines. On a given turn (for a total of 4 psi points), you can activate Ogre Form as a bonus action, grapple as your action, and then use Mighty Leap from Brute Force to jump 40 feet straight up as part of your move. You'll take no damage from the fall, they'll take at least 4d6 (more if you can jump 40 feet to somewhere more interesting to jump off of), and they'll still be grappled next turn for you to beat the snot out of them with your Ogre Form. This grows in effectiveness as you level (Giant Form, more points to jump higher with Mighty Leap).

I'm interested in thinking about mystic grappler. Giant Growth is a great starting point. It also gets you "huge" size later on, and the air discipline has a lot of promise since it makes you immune to fall damage.

Other ideas:

Wind Step: Fly up to 70 ft and then fall with your buddy.

Or, be a flying race. Slower, but saves psi points.

What else can we do with mystic?

 

[Darlos9D]

Also, as an aside, the new Skill Feats also in UA have one called Brawny that gives +1 str, expertise in athletics, and a carrying capacity increase. Useful to note for people who don't want to dip into Rogue or Bard, especially considering the ability score issue a multiclass character has.

http://dnd.wizards.com/articles/unearthed-arcana/ranger-and-rogue

I kinda want to bring back focus on this. I've been thinking for a long while that it'd be great to have feats that grant expertise on certain skills, and here we freakin' are! Just be a barbarian and take Brawny and you're good. Like, dang. Heck, get Tavern Brawler on another level. Both give you a str increase so its not like you'd get TOO behind on ASI.

Also of note is Squat Nimbleness, in UA Racial Feats. It's for a dwarf, gnome, or halfling. It basically gives expertise the same way as Brawny if you go with the strength/athletics option. It also increases your "walking speed" by 5 feet. Does that just mean movement speed? If so, that solves one of the drawbacks of being a dwarf grappler. You don't get the carrying capacity increase that Brawny provides, but I think that's acceptable.

 

[Andrew Hacker]

Quick question. Can you use the use the charger feat by Grappling, Shoving, and then if provided with no other damaging option to use a bonus attack, use charger to drag them 10 feet and get the +5 to attack damage?

 

[Darlos9D]

Quick question. Can you use the use the charger feat by Grappling, Shoving, and then if provided with no other damaging option to use a bonus attack, use charger to drag them 10 feet and get the +5 to attack damage?

Well let's look at the wording of the feat.

"When you use your action to Dash, you can use a bonus action to make one melee weapon attack or to shove a creature. If you move at least 10 feet in a straight line immediately before taking this bonus action, (damage/shove bonuses described from here)"

So you HAVE to use your action to Dash. You then attack or shove as a bonus action. You have to do exactly those things in that order to get the damage or shove bonus. That pretty much eats up your whole round right there. So if you grappled or shoved that round, either as your action or as a bonus action, you aren't using Charger that round.

Now if you already have them grappled and prone'd from a previous round, you could spend your turn doing a Charger action. This'd let you move really far and still damage something. The way its worded, you could even attack whatever you've got grappled, though I'm having a hard time figuring out what that looks like visually. That extra 10 feet of shove distance could be a funny way to hurl somebody off of a cliff, though. Also, the way the feat is worded, you could still get that 10 feet of shove-away even while shoving somebody prone. Not really sure how that helps a grappler though.

So, yeah, Charger could be an interesting way to get a lot of speed while grappling something, and still have a way to attack. Just keep in mind you aren't doing anything else on that turn. And if you shove something prone with it, you probably won't get to take much advantage of it unless you've already got them grappled. Unless you're a fighter and use Action Surge. That could be interesting.

 

[Andrew Hacker]

Alright thanks, I was planning on using it with a Tavern Brawler, so by lvl4 I could spend my first 3 turns as Attack, Grapple -> Shove, Rage -> Drag/Dash Attack -> Repeat. If i can't use my bonus action for anything else then i figured this would be decent way to keep higher damage with a no weapons grappler, since single target, Shield Master is probably best. And the way I imagined it was essentially picking up and slamming the enemy with the force from the dash, and hope that counts as a Melee Attack by the DM. Maybe Dragging, throwing them up a bit and kicking them?

 

[BurgerKingMan]

If your DM allow's you to use some UA material you can make the herculean warrior archetype much stronger

Point buy array Variant Human (Tavern Brawler)
STR 15 +1
DEX 10
CON 13 +1
INT 15 +1
WIS 10
CHA 8

Fighter (Battlemaster)6/ Wizard (Theurgy)14

Hu: Tavern Brawler
4: Brawny (UA, Feats for skills)
6: +1 STR, +1 WIS
10: Warcaster/Res (WIS)
14: Res (WIS)/Warcaster
18: +2 INT/STR

With the Brawny Feat the multiclass into rogue/bard is not needed which means we can dump dex/cha also it doubles your carrying capacity so you get the best part of a goliath as well. The Theurgy tradition (War Domain) gives us access to spiritual weapon among other things. This gives you a concentration free melee spell attack that has scaling damage and benefits from the prone condition you apply on your opponents. Taking this all the way to 20 gives you 7th level spell casting and resistance to nonmagical weapons. Role play wise you can have your player be a follower of Tempus and his progression does not seem out of character. (Note taking the life domain gives also gives you spiritual weapon but could be hard to roleplay properly.)

 

[Eric Olson]

I just heard the July 31st, 2017 sage advice interview with Jeremy Crawford about grappling. (can't post link) Nice summary. Nothing new to this thread except at about 56:00:
Jeremy acknowledges that the grappler feat is underpowered and would “beef it up” if he were writing it today.
Greg asking about what would you do differently: “would you give advantage on grappling checks?”
Jeremy replies: “Oh, that is already built in, it also gives you advantage on grappling checks. That is why I say it is actually fine. But I like things to be better than fine.”

This (to me) implies that Jeremy is interpreting "You have advantage on Attack rolls against a creature you are Grappling." to be "You have advantage on dice rolls against a creature you are Grappling."
(especially since Jeremy has pointed out multiple times that grappling/shoving are not attack rolls and are not affected by the advantage/disadvantage granted by the prone or restrained condition - he be clear about the difference)

He also explained the “if you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them” came from play testing where replacing more than one attack became a nightmare.” So we should interpret the rule to really mean “this attack replaces one (and only one) attack”.

He also stated that fixes to tweak/balance feats would not be practical within the current edition, these things are done when creating new editions.

This has moved me to house-rule a replacement feat that I feel gives a character to better role play a variety of grappler personalities (battlefield control fighter, grab and hack rogue, jujitsu monk, etc). I feel the feat should impart flavor and abilities, rather than ability-modivated class dips. Nothing that can't be done already today, just make the feat the direct way to do these things. Something like:
* you have advantage to both attack and ability rolls against a creature you are grappling
* you have advantage on rolls when defending against a grapple attack or breaking a grapple [judoka are good at defending against throws]
* 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 until the grapple ends. [same, but out-of-combat I would allow transition to incapacitated]
* You can use your bonus action to try to shove a creature Grappled by you. This would have normal consequences, where if you succeed to shove the creature prone, the creature is both grappled and prone until the grapple is broken)
* You may add your wisdom bonus to all grapple and shove checks [technique is important, it also give the monk something special]

(the info and discussion in this thread is wonderful!)

 

[johnlent]

No, he said that for creatures with MULTIATTACK that you can either multiattack OR grab, not grab instead of each part of a multiattack. The EXTRA attack feature is a different beast altogether, and he said you grab with each of those.

 

[Eric Olson]

I may have read too much into his example:

@59:30 (Answering a question about grapple as a AoO) “… the basic grapple attack is part of the attack action. …. Actually when we wrote the rule originally, it was a little bit more open ended: and we allowed you to swap out any attack with a grapple. And we found in our play test that it was a nightmare because suddenly you were … suddenly I grab you, then I try to grab you again, then I grab you on my turn, then I grab you on your turn, … “

No, he said that for creatures with MULTIATTACK that you can either multiattack OR grab, not grab instead of each part of a multiattack. The EXTRA attack feature is a different beast altogether, and he said you grab with each of those.