D&D General Carrying and dragging stuff

[aco175]

Are there many judo movies where 10 year olds don’t to fully grown athletic adults? Not a push (5ft) I know kids can do that to adults - but a full momentum guiding?

If 5e wants to tell me that any halfling can be as strong as any orc or goliath since being 1/8th the mass of someone does not matter, than it is one of the things I can fight or just go with.

There are a lot of things that do not make sense when looked at with a lot of depth.

 

[bedir than]

If 5e wants to tell me that any halfling can be as strong as any orc or goliath since being 1/8th the mass of someone does not matter, than it is one of the things I can fight or just go with.

There are a lot of things that do not make sense when looked at with a lot of depth.

5e doesn't say this about goliaths

 

[touc]

Below are my DM "cheat notes" for our current 2024 D&D campaign on grappling. I don't adhere to a 2017 Twitter post by Crawford that makes no sense (claiming that moving a grappled creature only depends on the target's size, not the grappler's strength). This is congruent with the OP's concern with STR impacting grappling.

• Grappling, movable (clarification). When you drag your target in a particular direction, the target controls where it is moved within the 90-degree spectrum behind you. It cannot choose a spot that would invalidate the grapple. Courtesy Treatmonk.

• When you carry your target, you choose what square the target is deposited in when you end your movement.
• Carrying & dragging targets are subject to the Carrying Capacity rules(PHB 363), so you must be strong enough to move your target.
  • The rules specifically use drag & carry, which are Capacity terms, no matter what Jeremy Crawford on Twitter said in 2017. If I can’t carry or drag 500 pounds normally, why would I be able to do it while grappling something? Makes no sense. This should also “fix” unintended movement abuses such as Spike Growth shredding.
• (errata). Grappler can freely let go at any time.

 

[Charlaquin]

Huh. Somehow I completely missed this interaction and the apparent discourse around it. I think it’s very obvious that the designers did not intend for the lift/pull/drag rules to apply to grappling creatures, I have to admit it does make logical sense from a “simulationist” perspective, and from a “gamist” perspective it does prevent a lot of potential abuses of the grappling rules…

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I think it’s very obvious that the designers did not intend for the lift/pull/drag rules to apply to grappling creatures,

Seems obvious to me that they DID intend for Drag and Carry rules to apply to the Grappled condition, seeing as how the wording specifically states "The grappler can drag or carry you when it moves...". I highly doubt they chose those two specific words and didn't intend for them to link to the rules for dragging or carrying.

 

[Clint_L]

Huh. Somehow I completely missed this interaction and the apparent discourse around it. I think it’s very obvious that the designers did not intend for the lift/pull/drag rules to apply to grappling creatures,

No, they definitely did intend for them to apply, which is why the grappler feat specifically gives you this ability:

Fast Wrestler. You don't have to spend extra movement to move a creature Grappled by you if the creature is your size or smaller.

That only makes sense if you do normally have to spend the extra movement to move a creature grappled by you. That's one of the main reasons I took grappler on my monk.

 

[Rabulias]

I feel like moving other creatures has been seriously nerfed in 2024 and I hadn’t noticed it. My party are pretty regularly heaving another PHB onto their shoulder and pulling the out of danger but in the 2024 rules this becomes much harder. I also don’t quite get how folks are talking about dragging people though spike growths etc.

Relevant rules

• Carrying capacity for medium creatures is now Strength x 15 (150 lbs for Str 10)
• You can push, lift or drag something Str x 30 but if it’s more than Str x 15 your move drops to 5ft

So basically if you want to lift a typical human 200lb male with medium armour and 10lbs equipment (240lbs) you’re gonna need 16 strength else your speed drops to 5lbs.

You’re not gonna be moving anything large or bigger at more than 5ft speed unless you’re strength is supernaturally high.

So are the tales of Monks (not usually a huge strength class) dragging folks with the grappler feat back and forth through spike growths not a load of houey?

Dragging something should allow more than just double your max. In 3rd edition, for Str 10 the normal max of 100 lbs. You could carry double your max (200 lbs) and move 5ft/round as a full-round action. You could drag up to 5 times your max load, so 500 lbs. It is not explicitly clear, but I assumed that the 5ft/round as a full-round action still applies to dragging.

This lines up with @James Gasik 's observations above, with a 2.5ft Speed. 5e does not have full-round actions, but if you think of it like using your action to move, 2.5 + 2.5 = 5 feet moved for the round.

 

[Charlaquin]

No, they definitely did intend for them to apply, which is why the grappler feat specifically gives you this ability:

That only makes sense if you do normally have to spend the extra movement to move a creature grappled by you. That's one of the main reasons I took grappler on my monk.

You do normally have to, yes. The Grappled Condition states “The grappler can drag or carry you when it moves, but every foot of movement costs it 1 extra foot unless you are Tiny or two or more sizes smaller than it.” The grappler feat would make it so every foot costs the normal amount of movement.

The question is whether this is meant to compound with the rule about dragging something more than 15x your strength in pounds, which I think it pretty obviously isn’t (especially given that Jeremy Crawford apparently said as much at one point?). But, it would make sense to me if it did compound, and would dramatically nerf the whole dragging an enemy through a dangerous AOE exploit, so I’m cool with ruling it that way regardless of if it’s RAI.

 

[James Gasik]

Dragging someone through a zone without you yourself being in the zone is one of those technically legal things that would be very difficult to pull off, so if you don't like it, you could rule against it without invoking weight limits, lol.

It's also worth noting if you're using something like 2014's optional encumbrance rules, dragging grappled enemies becomes even more impossible.

Even if you're not dealing with a large sized foe, there's the weight of your weapons, gear, and armor, plus the weight of the opponent and their weapons, gear and armor to consider- I don't think dragging was intended to be an option only for the incredibly strong, especially since anyone can shove someone 5' no matter how heavy they are...

And Monks in 2024 were given the specific ability to use their Dex for shoving people, lol.

 

[500 Toads]

The fact that official monster stat blocks tell you absolutely nothing about their weight, says a lot about how much you're supposed to consider their weight, in terms of game mechanics. You're meant to rely on T/S/M/L/H/G sizes; and should the party propose such things as piling corpses on wagons, stuffing 'em in their backpacks, or dragging them, it's entirely up to the DM to determine their weight and bulk and whether their means of conveyance can handle it.