So I was thinking a little about the grappling rules, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't say anything about more than one creature grappling another. So say your players are running away from the local guards. But then two guards jump a party member from an alley way and both overcome the strength check. Does that mean that the member is grappled by both guards or just one? I know that you can take the help action and that would give advantage to one guard. But if there are say 5 guards in a big dog pile on a party member, shouldn't the DC be around 30, and the party member restrained? I know a lot of it is up to the DMs digression but I'm not sure if there are actual rules about it or not.
The way the rules are written there is no harder check for multiple people attempting to grapple. Each successful grappler will have the target grappled potentially necessitating multiple athletics checks to escape.
You can have multiple instances of a condition but the effects don't get any worse. You either have the condition or you don't. When all instances of it are gone, you don't have that condition any more. Being grappled by two or more creatures isn't the same as being restrained.
Any creature can improvise an action in combat so while the rules don't provide a reliable way to restrain someone outside of taking the Grappler feat, the DM is always free to allow it when it makes sense.
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So I was thinking a little about the grappling rules, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't say anything about more than one creature grappling another. So say your players are running away from the local guards. But then two guards jump a party member from an alley way and both overcome the strength check. Does that mean that the member is grappled by both guards or just one? I know that you can take the help action and that would give advantage to one guard. But if there are say 5 guards in a big dog pile on a party member, shouldn't the DC be around 30, and the party member restrained? I know a lot of it is up to the DMs digression but I'm not sure if there are actual rules about it or not.
Tell me what you think.
The way the rules are written there is no harder check for multiple people attempting to grapple. Each successful grappler will have the target grappled potentially necessitating multiple athletics checks to escape.
If two guards grappled them, they're grappled by two guards. That's how grappling works.
The rules unfortunately don't address escaping multiple grapplers. Lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford suggests letting the grappled creature make 1 escape attempt but it has to roll higher than every escape DC or opposed check to free itself.
You can have multiple instances of a condition but the effects don't get any worse. You either have the condition or you don't. When all instances of it are gone, you don't have that condition any more. Being grappled by two or more creatures isn't the same as being restrained.
Any creature can improvise an action in combat so while the rules don't provide a reliable way to restrain someone outside of taking the Grappler feat, the DM is always free to allow it when it makes sense.
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