D&D (2024) PHB 2024 Is Hilariously Broken. Most OP of All Time?

[clearstream]

You normally can only drag between 240 and 480 5ft a turn. A goliath could do normal up to 480 at 16 str and 5ft between 480 and 960.

But again, your further specifying build choices to try and make this work. The point isn't that grapple drag cannot be built to work, it's that you have to basically dedicate a character to making it work well. You need to pick a specific race, take a high str, take the grapple feat, hopefully increase your movement, and then have one of your casters actually cast a damage zone spell, hope the enemy stays close enough, etc. And that's if it even works at the table to begin with due to many if not most ruling dragging must be done behind you, not beside you.

In short, even if allowed, grapple moving enemies into damage zones will usually not be worth it unless the party as a whole really builds around it.

Here's the weight to size category from the 3.5 SRD. I don't recall anything similar in the 5e core. If those sorts of weights are accepted by the group as normal then it seems a goliath should be able to drag an ogre, but wouldn't benefit from the Fast Wrestler aspect of Grappler while doing so.

Size category​	Height or Length​	Weight​	Space
Fine	6 in. or less	1/8 lb. or less	½ ft.​
Diminutive	6 in. - 1 ft.	1/8 lb. - 1 lb.	1 ft.​
Tiny	1 ft. - 2 ft.	1 lb. - 8 lb.	2½ ft.​
Small	2 ft. - 4 ft.	8 lb. - 60 lb.	5 ft.​
Medium	4 ft. - 8 ft.	60 lb. - 500 lb.	5 ft.​
Large	8 ft. - 16 ft.	500 lb. - 2 tons	10 ft.​
Huge	16 ft. - 32 ft.	2 tons - 16 tons	15 ft.​
Gargantuan	32 ft. - 64 ft.	16 tons - 125 tons	20 ft.​
Colossal	64 ft. or more	125 tons or more	30 ft.​

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

We miught be describing & imagining different things Drag on the side like this pic from here. rather than behijnd like this.

That first pic is of someone dragging something behind them. As in, the dragger moves in one direction and the dragged item follows in that direction. Just because buddy is turned partially sideways doesn't change the direction he's moving in or the direction the dragged item is moving in.

I don't know what to do at this point but refer you to Newton's Laws of Motion.

 

[clearstream]

I don't know what to do at this point but refer you to Newton's Laws of Motion.

Hence my earlier thought that any supposed dragging-or-carrying-beside you ought to let you just whirl the grappled foe around without moving, seeing as it would rely on exerting force in a direction other than that you're moving in.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Hence my earlier thought that any supposed dragging-or-carrying-beside you ought to let you just whirl the grappled foe around without moving, seeing as it would rely on exerting force in a direction other than that you're moving in.

That's definitely an option. I don't mind it, although I can imagine some pushback... that tactic could be perceived as a somewhat cartoony/unrealistic approach to combat.

@tetrasodium proposed adding an addendum to cover this scenario. I don't mind that, but I still think this is a super corner case interpretation that would only be exploited rarely, and even if it did, a group with any common sense would shut it down stat. But I get it and it can't hurt to mention it.

@Zardnaar appears to be riding this horse to the end. Not sure where or why he is going with this to be honest. There are obvious explanations and workarounds... why this fixation on 'this thing is broken'? I don't understand the motivation.

 

[Oofta]

Hence my earlier thought that any supposed dragging-or-carrying-beside you ought to let you just whirl the grappled foe around without moving, seeing as it would rely on exerting force in a direction other than that you're moving in.

If you're moving someone in a different direction than you are moving it's a shove. Which is fine, we have rules for that and anyone that's decent at grappling and dragging will probably be decent at shoving as well. It just takes another attack.

Every once in a while it may be worthwhile and it actually came up in our "intro to 2024 rules" encounter. Except in our case it was ogre battering rams grabbing PCs and attempting to toss them into a flaming PIT OF DOOM(tm). Because if it works for the PCs, it works for the monsters too.

 

[clearstream]

If you're moving someone in a different direction than you are moving it's a shove. Which is fine, we have rules for that and anyone that's decent at grappling and dragging will probably be decent at shoving as well. It just takes another attack.

My case was more a reductio ad absurdum rather than something I believe ought to be pictured in play. Shoving might not cover it exactly, because the creature has to wind up 5' further away from you (or fall prone). In my thought experiment, they move across squares that are adjacent to you... which fails to be a shove.

Which makes me wonder if one could argue that there ought to be a way to force move a creature from one square adjacent to you to another square adjacent to you, and if neither shove nor drag are it, what is?

 

[FrogReaver]

My case was more a reductio ad absurdum rather than something I believe ought to be pictured in play. Shoving might not cover it exactly, because the creature has to wind up 5' further away from you (or fall prone). In my thought experiment, they move across squares that are adjacent to you... which fails to be a shove.

Which makes me wonder if one could argue that there ought to be a way to force move a creature from one square adjacent to you to another square adjacent to you, and if neither shove nor drag are it, what is?

Carry?

 

[Oofta]

My case was more a reductio ad absurdum rather than something I believe ought to be pictured in play. Shoving might not cover it exactly, because the creature has to wind up 5' further away from you (or fall prone). In my thought experiment, they move across squares that are adjacent to you... which fails to be a shove.

Which makes me wonder if one could argue that there ought to be a way to force move a creature from one square adjacent to you to another square adjacent to you, and if neither shove nor drag are it, what is?

Why is it not shove? If you want someone to be in a hazardous space that the PC is not also in, I don't see a logical option unless you just treat PCs and creatures as pieces on a game board. In order to maintain a grapple you have to be holding onto a creature, you can't both hold on and occupy a completely different space. We say that creatures occupy their own space for convenience and because as they're fighting and maneuvering it makes sense. To me it doesn't make sense when you're grappling.

Obviously different strokes for different folks and my vision of how the game works for me isn't going to match up to everyone else's.

 

[Mistwell]

Here's the weight to size category from the 3.5 SRD. I don't recall anything similar in the 5e core.

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Here is the information in 5e:

 

[tetrasodium]

Those pics remind me of half-carrying-half-dragging a lengthy awkward object like a branch and seeing it brush the ground to one side of me. The choice of picture seems designed to prompt an intuition that i) I can picture dragging said object a few feet off to the side so that it brushes the ground in what would amount to a separate square, and if so that ii) I can picture applying the same to a living creature. Thus - hopefully - establishing a norm for "drag". For me, it's not doing that job: a stronger norm is that you "drag" things through the space you move through.

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That all said, I agree with @NotAYakk that

when you grapple and drag them, the DM determines where the enemy goes.​

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Which can apply regardless of how any given reader pictures "drag". I don't recall any text saying that the grappler chooses which square the foe is dragged into as they "drag" them.

When I first made the example I literally described how I helped a neighbor drag tree branches out of the alley. You are still missing the problem though... Where in the rules are you getting the idea that the grappled target must be dragged behind the grappler or cannot be dragged keeping the same adjacent squares arrangement? The entire premise of your support for the RAW seems to be structured atop a rules element that does not exist.

@tetrasodium proposed adding an addendum to cover this scenario. I don't mind that, but I still think this is a super corner case interpretation that would only be exploited rarely, and even if it did, a group with any common sense would shut it down stat. But I get it and it can't hurt to mention it.

Not sure where I might have done that. I believe that I explicitly & consistently said that wotc should issue an errata because the RAW is awful in ways that invite problems that the GM should not be responsible for houseruling something in such obvious need of an errata.