D&D 5E (2014) The Grappler's Manual (2.0) - Grappling in 5th Edition

[delph]

In manual is sometimes quoted that many enemies without move can't do "their things" what abilities, special attacks, ....can't be done without move? I know only same charge movement, but that's not much to say.

 

[EloquentApe]

This has GOT to be updated with the new UA options:

Unarmed Fighting Style
Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning
damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If
you strike with two free hands, the d6 becomes a
d8.
When you successfully start a grapple, you can
deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to the grappled
creature. Until the grapple ends, you can also
deal this damage to the creature whenever you
hit it with a melee attack.

And the combat maneuver Restraining Strike

Immediately after you hit a creature with a
melee weapon attack on your turn, you can
expend one superiority die and use a bonus
action to grapple the target (see chapter 9 in the
Player’s Handbook for rules on grappling). Add
the superiority die to your Strength (Athletics)
check. The target is also restrained while
grappled in this way.


Battlemaster fighters just became great grapplers, or picking up Martial Adept as a feat. Restrain off of one grapple check.

 

[delph]

This has GOT to be updated with the new UA options:

Unarmed Fighting Style
Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning
damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If
you strike with two free hands, the d6 becomes a
d8.
When you successfully start a grapple, you can
deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to the grappled
creature. Until the grapple ends, you can also
deal this damage to the creature whenever you
hit it with a melee attack.

And the combat maneuver Restraining Strike

Immediately after you hit a creature with a
melee weapon attack on your turn, you can
expend one superiority die and use a bonus
action to grapple the target (see chapter 9 in the
Player’s Handbook for rules on grappling). Add
the superiority die to your Strength (Athletics)
check. The target is also restrained while
grappled in this way.


Battlemaster fighters just became great grapplers, or picking up Martial Adept as a feat. Restrain off of one grapple check.

Restraining strike, get somewhere expertize on athletic and you can catch anything.

 

[lumenbeing]

There's a Kuo-toa with a grappling weapon, a pincer. While DMing and pitting these creatures against my players I was unsure how to resolve the mechanics. That pincer has a 10' reach. I wanted to swing a grappled PC into an area where they would be subjected to damage. I treated that as a shove. This guide seems to back up that resolution procedure. But I'm seeing a problem in the rules here. If the grappler can move, and move the grappled creature with them, then then why not just change your facing (I realize that facing is only an optional rule but bringing it up help to illustrate my point) or the direction of your movement? Move yourself, and thus drag the creature to the square you previously occupied. Sure, you could say, no, the grappler's orientation to the grapplee stays the same unless you use the shove action, but that would make it impossible to drag an opponent down a 5' wide passage perpendicular to the grapple vector. And it makes very little sense in the case of this pincer weapon where the grapplee is 10' away. Basically, what I'm asking is, isn't it possible to do some of the purple belt stuff with just movement, without using a shove?

 

[Gladius Legis]

Rangers are pretty solid grapplers with the new UA, too. (Canny: Athletics, Unarmed Combat FS, Enhance Ability spell.)

 

[Jibu]

1st time poster.
I read that Path of berserker and battlemaster have nice synergy. Can anyone suggest how i should go on my build if i started out as a fighter? i'm already a level 2 half-orc.

 

[RSIxidor]

This has GOT to be updated with the new UA options:

Unarmed Fighting Style
Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning
damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier. If
you strike with two free hands, the d6 becomes a
d8.
When you successfully start a grapple, you can
deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to the grappled
creature. Until the grapple ends, you can also
deal this damage to the creature whenever you
hit it with a melee attack.

And the combat maneuver Restraining Strike

Immediately after you hit a creature with a
melee weapon attack on your turn, you can
expend one superiority die and use a bonus
action to grapple the target (see chapter 9 in the
Player’s Handbook for rules on grappling). Add
the superiority die to your Strength (Athletics)
check. The target is also restrained while
grappled in this way.


Battlemaster fighters just became great grapplers, or picking up Martial Adept as a feat. Restrain off of one grapple check.

The UA before that also has the Rune Knight fighter, which also does very well at grappling with the Unarmed Fighting Style.

 

[Zakh]

The Theros compendium from WOTC offers a way for Paladins to suddenly also be good wrestlers. It has Oath of Glory, which at 5th level has Enhance Ability plus a way of using Channel Divinity that grants a 10 minute buff of advantage on all Str (Athletics) and Dex (Acrobatics), while also doubling carry+push/drag/lift. Yes, you can only use Channel Divinity every rest or so, but that's pretty massive for wrestling.

I am running that Oath on my Goliath Paladin and for our Mythic Greek game I threw a cyclops at his friends. Even though I lost the advantage due to not having the grappling feat against a massive foe, the proficiency bonus and sheer strength bonus carried the day. It also helped that I could argue that I could lift and throw weights somewhere around a ton.

Or in other words, look no further than Oath of Glory if you want to wrestle as a Paladin.

There's also some fun to be had with the Arkadia compendium and the Piety system introduced in Theros. There's a retrofit of that Piety system which fits better unto the Greek gods, which is also interesting. Lots of fun to be had in that, but these are more tangential to the purpose of this thread, so I'll let it be.

 

[DanJester]

Any thoughts on the Unarmed Fighter/Rune Knight combination?

 

[BSessio]

Unarmed Fighter/Rune Knight is, imo, Best in Class.

I still suggest you dip into Rogue for 2 levels for the peerless mobility of bonus-action Dodge, but otherwise, it's all you need.

The only critical Rune is available immediately, Frost Rune. Frost Rune gives you an entirely unique, untyped bonus of +2 to Athletics:

You can invoke the rune as a bonus action to increase your sturdiness. For 10 minutes, you gain a +2 bonus to all ability checks and saving throws that use STR or CON. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

You also gain Giant's Might, which is revolutionary, and handles our Strength Advantage needs, and also Enlarges us without sacrificing action economy much. One bonus action and you've got Advantage on athletics, and now are super-sized (initially Large, eventually Huge) and do free damage when slamming your enemy (initially d6, eventually d10).

When you become Huge, you also gain +5 reach. This means you have a Reach of 10, and can Grapple a Gargantuan character, and have no movement speed reduction (unless encumberance) when hauling Medium characters around.

(As a subtle perk, this doesn't contradict getting Enlarge cast on you, so you could actually become Gargantuan, which lets you haul around Large characters, and ... if you're using it, you can grapple Colossal size creatures now.)

As a bonus action, you magically gain the following benefits, which last for 1 minute:

• If you are smaller than Large (/ Huge), you become Large (/ Huge), along with anything you are wearing. If you lack the room to become Large (/ Huge), your size doesn’t change.
• You have advantage on Strength checks and Strength saving throws.
• Once on each of your turns, one of your attacks with a weapon or an unarmed strike can deal an extra (1d6/1d8/1d10) damage to a target on a hit.

You can use this feature (proficiency) times, and you regain all expended uses of it when you finish a long rest.

Bonus fun stuff:
1: the Fire Rune gives you the ability to gain essentially a "third grapple" by restraining:

In addition, when you hit a creature with an attack using a weapon, you can invoke the rune to summon fiery shackles: the target takes an extra 2d6 fire damage, and it must succeed on a STR saving throw (DC:18) or be restrained for 1 minute. While restrained by the shackles, the target takes 2d6 fire damage at the start of each of its turns. The target can repeat the saving throw at the end of each of its turns, banishing the shackles on a success. Once you invoke this rune, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

2: the Cloud Rune gives you the ability to redirect the enemy's attack against you to anyone else, even the other grapplee if double grappling (which is the most fun visual for me)

Once per short rest, when you or a creature you can see within 30 ft. of you is hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to choose a different creature, other than the attacker, within 30 ft of you to become the target of the attack instead, using the same roll.

TL;DR: All the things you need to Grapple, every "must have" for cross-classing, is handled by Rune Knight. Rogue is still a super-valuable dip just to hurl people off cliffs, obviously, but is no longer mandatory - I don't even know when I'd consider stopping escalating Fighter to look at Rogue, since I can just take the Skill Expert feat now to gain Expertise if I want it. In a perfect level 20 scenario, you want 18 Fighter/2 Rogue, but I genuinely think you probably just go up the Fighter tree and don't look back.

That said, if Disarm is not available per the DMG, a strong argument can be made for how wonderful Battle Master is, and I respect that. Also, flavor-wise, Battle Master will never not be good. But pure optimization, I cannot perceive a better path than a Rune Knight Goliath grappler.