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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FormerlyHemlock" data-source="post: 6800969" data-attributes="member: 6787650">You're wrong about the shield, unless you've houseruled that. All you need is one free hand, and your shield can be in the other.As spectacle points out, a mid-level fighter has an excellent chance of grappling a troll, and that's before you even throw in Hex. I have a paladin/sorcerer who serves as the party tank, and even with only Str 16 he's very, very effective at grappling enemies such as trolls when he wants to be. (At level 5 he had +7 on Athletics and would have had a (1-0.43^2) = 81% chance of grappling a troll successfully with one of his two attacks, and a 0.57^2 = 32% chance of grappling the troll AND knocking it prone, since d20+7 beats d20+5 by at least 1 57% of the time. If someone Hexes the troll, 43% becomes 74%, leading to a 1-(1-0.74)^2 = 93% chance of successful grapple and 0.74^2=54% chance of grappling it AND knocking it prone in the same round. And once it's prone, the combat is basically over for the troll unless it has buddies around.Your AC 18 is simply wrong. Plate armor + defense style + shield is AC 21, and the troll has +7, so it will hit a Dodging target (7/20)^2=12.25% of the time. You're correct that the troll can give up a round of attacks to try to grapple the paladin (and many DMs including me would allow it to use grapple in a Multiattack, even though it's not RAI), which has a 38% chance of success when un-Hexed and a 22% chance of success when Hexed. Even if it works, you've already blown at least one attack on grappling, even under the most generous DM interpretation of troll grappling, and the fighter is just going to slam you to the ground next round, so you'll have disadvantage next turn, same as before.3-ish damage per round comes from plugging the troll's attacks into my DPR calculator on Github. (<a href="http://maxwilson.github.io/RollWeb/Roll/" target="_blank">http://maxwilson.github.io/RollWeb/Roll/</a>)avg.14d?2d6+4    = 1.36avg.2.14d?d6+4     = 1.85Internally what it's doing is computing the weighted average of hits, crits, and misses according to the to-hit number needed. In this case that would be 12% hits, 0.25% crits, and 87.75% misses.Your AC 18 fighter would take about twice as much damage, roughly 6 HP per round, and about twice that on the initial round if he loses initiative and the troll is already within melee range. However, I'm not responsible for the way you choose to build your fighters; I'm only responsible for the PCs I make and the ones that I see players run at my table. Therefore, I'm not using your assumptions about fighter AC and equipment, because they're suboptimal.Edit: and don't get too hung up on grappling. Grappling is one way to end a fight with a single monster efficiently, but a 1st level Wrathful Smite spell works too, and Fog Cloud + Cunning Action + Booming Blade can do basically the same thing in a different way, and so can a number of other tactics. I'm not going to argue them all with you, because the point is just this: without a certain critical mass of attackers or a very favorable (ambush) starting position, a combat doesn't force any significant resource expenditure at all. Attrition is not the answer to the 5E difficulty conundrum against a well-built party; it only works against a sloppy party relying wholly on nova tactics.</blockquote>

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