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The Grappler's Manual (2.0) - Grappling in 5th Edition
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<blockquote data-quote="Zene" data-source="post: 7284929" data-attributes="member: 6863496"><p>Ok I may have found a fun one in XGE. </p><p></p><p>Oath of Conquest paladin 7, hexblade 1, divine soul sorcerer x. </p><p></p><p>Be a half-elf so you can take prodigy for athletics expertise, and (eventually) elven accuracy for attacks with superadvantage. The OoC aura means enemies Frightened in your aura have speed of 0 —so basically, free grapples, and Frightened means they have disadvantage on resisting Shove checks. The sorcerer levels let you quicken cause fear, or quicken earth tremor for aoe knockdown. But you can also just Shive with your expertise in athletics. The hexblade 1 then allows you to attack those (prone, immobilized) enemies with charisma as your attack stat. </p><p></p><p>Variants:</p><p></p><p>1) Forget the expertise, and just rely on spells to fear/knockdown. I know this makes it technically not a grappling build, but still, it’s enemy lockdown via prone and 0 movement, so very similar. Also, even without expertise, if the enemy has disadvantage on athletics checks due to the Frightened condition, you can probably shove them pretty easily anyway if you wanted to. </p><p></p><p>2) Since you don’t need free hands to initiate/maintain grapples in this build —your aura is doing it for you—you can go two-handed and really smack the heck out of people with elven accuracy and great weapon master. Since hexblade 1 only lets you use a 1-handed weapon with charisma, you’d need to take hexblade to 3 for this. Or, forget the hexblade and elven accuracy, and just do it with s strength build. This is giving up superadvantage and SAD-ness, but saves you 3 levels and a feat... so it actually may be a better way to go when all is said and done. This would also free you up to go dragonborn instead of half-elf, and take the dragon fear trait, which has some nice synergy with this build.</p><p></p><p>3) An alternate route would be to just forget the sorcerer levels entirely, since an oath of conquest / hexblade has quite a few things to use its bonus action on already. This would free you up to take more hexblade levels, even getting the option to double smite at hexblade 5. It still might be worth it to take a divine soul 1 dip at some point, for access to absorb elements, guidance and earth tremor</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Zene, post: 7284929, member: 6863496"] Ok I may have found a fun one in XGE. Oath of Conquest paladin 7, hexblade 1, divine soul sorcerer x. Be a half-elf so you can take prodigy for athletics expertise, and (eventually) elven accuracy for attacks with superadvantage. The OoC aura means enemies Frightened in your aura have speed of 0 —so basically, free grapples, and Frightened means they have disadvantage on resisting Shove checks. The sorcerer levels let you quicken cause fear, or quicken earth tremor for aoe knockdown. But you can also just Shive with your expertise in athletics. The hexblade 1 then allows you to attack those (prone, immobilized) enemies with charisma as your attack stat. Variants: 1) Forget the expertise, and just rely on spells to fear/knockdown. I know this makes it technically not a grappling build, but still, it’s enemy lockdown via prone and 0 movement, so very similar. Also, even without expertise, if the enemy has disadvantage on athletics checks due to the Frightened condition, you can probably shove them pretty easily anyway if you wanted to. 2) Since you don’t need free hands to initiate/maintain grapples in this build —your aura is doing it for you—you can go two-handed and really smack the heck out of people with elven accuracy and great weapon master. Since hexblade 1 only lets you use a 1-handed weapon with charisma, you’d need to take hexblade to 3 for this. Or, forget the hexblade and elven accuracy, and just do it with s strength build. This is giving up superadvantage and SAD-ness, but saves you 3 levels and a feat... so it actually may be a better way to go when all is said and done. This would also free you up to go dragonborn instead of half-elf, and take the dragon fear trait, which has some nice synergy with this build. 3) An alternate route would be to just forget the sorcerer levels entirely, since an oath of conquest / hexblade has quite a few things to use its bonus action on already. This would free you up to take more hexblade levels, even getting the option to double smite at hexblade 5. It still might be worth it to take a divine soul 1 dip at some point, for access to absorb elements, guidance and earth tremor [/QUOTE]
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The Grappler's Manual (2.0) - Grappling in 5th Edition
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