Is it possible to grapple an opponent and drop prone, taking them prone with you?
The Situation I was playing in a session last week in a party of first level characters. We were ambushed at night by a band of goblins led by their goblin boss. Our sentry was in a bad spot surrounded by two goblins and the boss. I decided the best option was to run over and tackle the boss. I told the DM that I wanted to grapple and I won the check, then I announced that I was moving the boss away 5ft and dropping both of us prone. At this point the rules oriented folks at the table gritted their teeth and squinted their eyes, but the DM let it happen. I consider myself a rules oriented player, and I felt guilty afterward, like maybe I had gotten away with something. So of course I went home and spent the next three days doing research to find an official ruling. I couldn't find any arguments about why this shouldn't be allowed. I found a few posts simply saying it isn't allowed without saying why. The grappling guides don't mention this move one way or the other.
So my question is this, why does grapple and drop prone feel like a taboo move?
The Relevant Rules Grapple move rule: "Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you."
Drop prone rule: "Combatants often find themselves lying on the ground, either because they are knocked down or because they throw themselves down. In the game, they are prone.You can drop prone without using any of your speed. Standing up takes more effort; doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed."
The Movement Question When you move, the opponent matches your movement. If you move across the ground, the opponent does too. Same with swim, climb, jump, and fly. The questions is, does dropping prone count as movement? The rule is listed under the section for movement and the movement cost is stated. What more would it take to qualify as movement?
I think part of the problem might be that dropping prone gets interpreted as falling. Falling is a passive movement that doesn't count as player movement. Falling doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity and doesn't have a movement cost. But the rules for dropping prone describe an active move of a character throwing themselves down. There is a difference between falling over and throwing yourself to the ground. Likewise, there is a difference between having no movement cost and having a movement cost of 0. (A restrained creature can drop prone and a paralyzed creature cannot, but both can fall.)
The Carry Question The rules explicitly state that you can carry your opponent. Carrying an opponent is different than dragging your opponent. We could look to the encumbrance rules for guidance on the difference (even though Crawford has ruled that the encumbrance rules don't apply to grappling). Carry implies that you have lifted the opponent off of the ground so that you are supporting their entire weight. Carrying requires more strength than dragging, and a character can only carry half of the weight that they can drag. If you cannot drag your opponent to the ground, can you carry them with you to the ground?
The Standing Question Flipping the question around: if the character and the opponent are both prone, and the character has the opponent grappled, when the character stands does the opponent stand as well? Standing has a movement cost and requires active effort. The grapple move rule is not optional. It says that when you move, if you want to maintain the grapple then you bring the grappled creature with you and you move at half speed.
Pressing further, it can be asked what is required to lift a prone opponent into a standing position? Imagine a situation in which a character is grappling an opponent who is being attacked at range by the character's allies. The grappled condition allows the opponent to drop prone, but the character would want the opponent to be standing. What rule does the character use to stand up the opponent? Or is it impossible to force an opponent to stand?
The Tackle Question The move of grapple and drop prone can be interpreted as a Tackle. A Tackle seems like a frequent event that would happen in an adventurer's line of work. A thief is running away: Tackle. An assassin is running toward the king: Tackle.
If we interpret the move of grapple + shove as a Trip, then we have three moves that would result in an opponent being prone: Shove, Trip, and Tackle. These are easily distinguished.
Shove: Opponent prone but not grappled. Character standing. One move.
Trip (grapple + shove): Opponent prone and grappled. Character standing. Two moves.
Tackle (grapple + drop prone): Opponent prone and grappled. Character prone. One move.
Trip is an advanced move that cannot be performed in a single round by most enemies, NPCs, and characters. It requires an extra attack or some other special feature. Both the Tackle and Shove moves can be performed by anyone. But the primary difference between Trip, Shove, and Tackle is that a Tackle makes the character prone. Dropping prone in the middle of a combat is a significant tactical decision. The question is, is the tackle a sufficiently interesting choice for the player and the DM, or is the tackle too similar to other available moves?
TLDR Questions:
Is it possible to grapple an opponent and drop prone, taking them prone with you?
Nothing in the rules explicitly disallows this move, but it seems to be frowned upon by the community. I believe that the tackle is a RAW and RAI legal move. It is an interesting tactical choice that doesn't replicate other features or abilities. I have asked four questions to help think through the relevant rules. What do you think?
Does dropping prone count as movement?
If you are carrying your opponent, would they not drop prone with you?
Can you use a grapple to force your opponent to stand?
Is the tackle an interesting tactical choice for the player and the DM?
Is it possible to grapple an opponent and drop prone, taking them prone with you?
Nothing in the rules explicitly disallows this move, but it seems to be frowned upon by the community. I believe that the tackle is a RAW and RAI legal move. It is an interesting tactical choice that doesn't replicate other features or abilities. I have asked four questions to help think through the relevant rules. What do you think?
Does dropping prone count as movement?
If you are carrying your opponent, would they not drop prone with you?
Can you use a grapple to force your opponent to stand?
Is the tackle an interesting tactical choice for the player and the DM?
No. You need to be able to move, but it does not use movement, therefore is not movement.
That is a much more interesting question. I don't think the rules cover this and would be up to DM. If your character is strong enough (and the right size) to pickup and suplex a creature, I think I would allow it.
By standing yourself, RAW seems to be no. No reason you can't lift them to standing position though (if you are strong enough).
Yes. It is definitely an interesting tactical choice.
"Nothing in the rules explicitly disallows this move" - This is not relevant; these rules are a list of things you can do, not of what you can't. If it is not mentioned as a thing you can do, then you can only do it if the DM decides you can.
You can Grapple someone then drop prone. Nothing in the rules, however, forces the enemy to go prone with you. They remain as-is unless some action is taken on them (like a shove).
There is no rules difference between "dragging" and "carrying" when it comes to grappling, they are just given as examples of how the forced movement is happening. If you Grapple a sprite you would probably be carrying rather than dragging, opposite for an ogre. All rules still function identically.
You are free to add rules for a one-attack tackle, but take care since prone+grappled is a pretty debilitating state to be in (speed 0 so unable to stabd back up, advantage to be attacked in melee).
And remember that anything you can do, the enemies can do too. Something to remember when you get tackled by 1 enemy, then beaten with advantage by 4 others.
As a DM, this is the part that I like most. I find that it is rarely worth a monster's turn to grapple. Monsters are bad at grappling compared to players, and the chances of making both a grapple and shove check are too low. But I feel like it should be the case that a horde of zombies could pile on a player. It makes them the right level of scary.
I was going to say that jumping straight up 10 feet and dropping is the way to actually do this... but high jumps are 3+Strength Modifier feet even if you get a 10 foot running start (hard to do, since moving with a grappled target cuts your speed in half), so odds are you won't be able to leap high enough to pull it off. I suppose you could always mount a horse and then choose to fall off of it while cradling your grappled target, that would do it too? Or, just use your action to make a shove attack against them while they're grappled, if you want to do it the way it's SUPPOSED to be done :p
It feels like it's a taboo move because it's not in the rules - it does not say that knocking an opponent prone is something you can do with a grapple. There's lots of things the rules don't explicitly forbid. RAW, a grapple doesn't let you choke the enemy to death, or prevent them from attacking by holding their hands, or taking their weapons to disarm them, or a half-dozen other things. Grapple, RAW, does exactly what it says it does, and no more. (The Shove action allows you to normally knock someone prone but Grapple does not.)
The reason you as a rules-oriented player feel like you "got away" with something is because you feel like you used good narration to save yourself an action - typically grappling someone AND pushing them to the ground should take a shove action AND a grapple, but you sweet-talked it down to just a grapple.
The second reason you feel like you feel like you "got away" with something was because you presented it as a fait accompli, doing the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" approach to pressure the DM into allowing it. You could have asked the DM "Hey, I'd like tackle this enemy to aground. Kind of like a grapple but also I go prone afterwards and so do they. Can I do that?" The DM probably would have said yes, but might have changed the roll requirements to account for the fact that you were doing something that was different than a standard Grapple - maybe they would have raised the DC or given you disavantage (or maybe not, if it was a running tackle!). Instead, you FIRST made the roll and THEN told the DM that you meant the roll to mean something different, you "announced" that you were pulling the boss and knocking him prone. In general in D&D it feels really bad to make a roll and THEN find out that the roll doesn't do what you meant it to, so people are pretty hesitant to tell you "no, you can't do that" after you've already made the roll. So they give you the benefit of the doubt and let you do it, since you've already rolled. But they feel pressured and not very good about it. And maybe before next time they'll look up the rule and won't let you do it again.
You're trying to, right now, feel better about it by retroactively making up rules for "Tackling". I don't think that's the right approach. The game doesn't need specific rules for "Tackle = Grapple + Shove + Go prone". Because you can always just ask the DM for any sort of improvised maneuvers you want to do. And there's many more clever improvised maneuvers you can come up with besides tackling! Just remember to ask if you can do something clever BEFORE making the roll to do it, rather than after, and you'll feel a heck of a lot less guilty.
@ftl Thanks for the reply! This is exactly what I am trying to get at. This sounds like what I would have said as a DM. Surprisingly though, not only do the rules not forbid a tackle, they seem to explicitly require it. The grapple move rule requires that you move your opponent with you when you move. Dropping prone and standing are listed as movement with movement costs. The only requirement of the grapple move rule is that speed is halved, depending on size. So standing would take a full round of movement to stand with your opponent, but dropping prone with an opponent still costs 0 movement. The grapple move rule does not say that the movement needs to move you into a different square. It only says that you need to move. Dropping prone and standing are forms of movement that don't move you into a different square, but they still change your position relative to the other combatants. If you drop prone, your opponent has to move with you.
This is the move rule itself right here: "However you're moving, you deduct the distance of each part of your move from your speed until it is used up or until you are done moving."
The simplest and most straightforward way to interpret the rules for dropping prone and standing is that they are movement. Why wouldn't they be? They have movement speed costs. What other criteria do the rules give for something to count as movement? If we wanted dropping prone and standing to not count as movement, then we would need to invent a new rule. As written, they are a form of movement. The rules for dropping prone and standing are included in the section on movement. If context is an indication of intent, then it is RAI as well as RAW.
In reply to DxJxC: "You need to be able to move, but it does not use movement, therefore is not movement." This is the difference between the Restrained and Paralyzed conditions. If dropping prone is not movement, then you don't need to be able to move and can do it while Paralyzed. (You seem to be saying that it is both movement and not movement. It is easier to say that it is movement that doesn't cost any speed. We have free actions, what is the challenge with free movement?) On the other hand the grapple move rule triggers on anything with a movement cost. As long as you can afford the movement cost, then the opponent moves with you. The grapple move rule does not include an exclusion for move costs of 0, so why should we introduce one?
As a guess, I would say that the rules for dropping prone get confused with the rules for falling. Falling is not movement and it does not have a movement cost. But dropping prone is not falling.
My feeling of guilt or getting away with something came from a conflict between my gut understanding of the rules and the common understanding of the rules. I've been DMing for a long time and just returned as a player with a DM who was giving it a first try. I was trying to be nice and not ask the DM to make hard calls, but I caught myself doing this move and wondered where the impulse came from. In curiosity I turned to the rulebooks and the forums. I was surprised to find that the rules don't support the common interpretation that dropping prone doesn't count as a form of movement. And if dropping prone counts as movement, then the opponent in the grapple is required to move with you.
Sometimes the rules are kind of ambiguous, but they are pretty clear in this case. Why the resistance to the straightforward reading?
I don't know, it sounds like you are saying how you want it to work, and that rules don't say it doesn't work, so it must be true.
That is not how the rules work. They say what is, not what isn't. The things that are specifically refered to as movement are walking, jumping, climbing, swimming, flying, and crawling. The rules don't say dropping prone or standing up are movement (just that it costs movement in the case of standing), so we have to assume they are not until WotC decides to print a rulebook with complete, consistent, and comprehensive rules and not a bunch of implied common language rules.
Even if it did count as movement, would you be able to drag a grappled target up or down with you? That rule is barely a sentence and almost certainly only intended to be able to maintain the grapple while moving and not to be able to bypass the need for a specifically described action.
Personally, I think I’d make it a separate action like a shove, for balance reasons if nothing else. I might allow advantage due to the prior grapple to make it more enticing.
It also cuts both ways. Because it’s zero movement the grappled can drop prone voluntarily. Would the grappled individual bring their attacker down automatically? There’s nothing in the rules that say the grappler moves with the grappled. If you rule it’s movement then does this break the grapple? Probably not. I’d allow the participants to be independently prone and use a contest if one wants to force the other to go prone
In real combat, just because you go prone doesn’t necessarily mean I go prone.
Personally, I think I’d make it a separate action like a shove, for balance reasons if nothing else. I might allow advantage due to the prior grapple to make it more enticing.
It also cuts both ways. Because it’s zero movement the grappled can drop prone voluntarily. Would the grappled individual bring their attacker down automatically? There’s nothing in the rules that say the grappler moves with the grappled. If you rule it’s movement then does this break the grapple? Probably not. I’d allow the participants to be independently prone and use a contest if one wants to force the other to go prone
In real combat, just because you go prone doesn’t necessarily mean I go prone.
The more I think about this, the more I think you could make grappling really fun. Maybe advantage on the next attempt to break the grapple if you attempt to take someone in a grapple prone, but fail.
Nothing in the carry or drag rules mentions going prone with creatures you might be grappled with. The rules on drag don't tell us that we can drag things prone, for example.
There are already rules for forcing a creature prone; note that the shove rules explicitly say that you can use a shove to knock a creature prone.
You can do anything with your movement that you like, but a grappled creature is only subject to the rules on grappling and the grappled condition.
The problem with this whole thing is that the Grappler feat exists:
You’ve developed the skills necessary to hold your own in close-quarters grappling. You gain the following benefits:
You have advantage on attack rolls against a creature you are grappling.
You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.
Even with a feat it takes two separate actions to just, like, tackle a guy and not let go. I mean, I can run across my office right now and tackle Sharon to the ground in the space of a couple of seconds and I'm just a regular doofus who played Kill the Carrier in his youth.
For what it's worth, inflicting prone on yourself to inflict prone on your grappled target mirrors the way that Grappler works, where you inflict restrained on yourself to inflict restrained on your target. But the grappler ability inflicts restrained on both until the grapple ends, and I would suggest that any houserule allowing grappler to drop themself and their target prone also enforce that same requirement, so that you can't just stand back up without dropping the grapple.
See the sage advice on this particular question (or at least part of it)
Say I grapple you, then I drop prone. Are we now prone together?
No. A creature you’re grappling isn’t knocked prone if you become prone. You’re now holding onto the creature from a prone position
That answer makes no sense to me mechanically, though (and Sage Advice is not necessarily something you have to abide by. "This column doesn’t replace a DM’s adjudication. Just as the rules do, the column is meant to give DMs, as well as players, tools for tuning the game according to their tastes. The column should also reveal some perspectives that help you see parts of the game in a new light and that aid you in fine-tuning your D&D experience."
That said, think through the chain of events:
PC wants to put an orc in a headlock. PC rolls an Athletics check to grapple. PC is successful, so the orc is now grappled in a headlock. PC uses their movement (Zero feet of movement) to drop prone. The PC is now prone on the ground and the orc is somehow *still grappled* and in a headlock, but NOT prone? It doesn't work.
It makes much more sense for the PC grappling the target to be able to use their movement at half speed (half of zero is still zero) to "drag the grappled creature with them" to the ground. It absolutely works by RAW, and the line that "you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you" explicitly means that yes, you can do this.
See the sage advice on this particular question (or at least part of it)
Say I grapple you, then I drop prone. Are we now prone together?
No. A creature you’re grappling isn’t knocked prone if you become prone. You’re now holding onto the creature from a prone position
That answer makes no sense to me mechanically,
How? mechanics describe one general way to use an attack to drop a hostile creature prone and no others (beyond special abilities and spells).
though (and Sage Advice is not necessarily something you have to abide by. "This column doesn’t replace a DM’s adjudication. Just as the rules do, the column is meant to give DMs, as well as players, tools for tuning the game according to their tastes. The column should also reveal some perspectives that help you see parts of the game in a new light and that aid you in fine-tuning your D&D experience."
I take anything anyone says after bashing SAC as "not rules" with a grain of salt. If they've made it into the compendium, they're written from a RAW perspective, so almost by definition if you are arguing against a SAC ruling, you're arguing against the wording of the rules.
That said, think through the chain of events:
PC wants to put an orc in a headlock. PC rolls an Athletics check to grapple.
Ok, the creature is grappled. Headlock is not a type of grapple, only a flavorful description.
PC is successful, so the orc is now grappled in a headlock. PC uses their movement (Zero feet of movement) to drop prone.
Ok, nothing in any of the relevant rules for the other creature say that he is forced prone. He didn't choose to go prone so the text about going prone as part of its movement doesn't apply to it, and nothing in the grappled condition or grapple rules or movement rules say that he is knocked prone. Dragging in a mechanical sense has limited applicability: dragging =/= dragging prone.
The PC is now prone on the ground and the orc is somehow *still grappled* and in a headlock, but NOT prone? It doesn't work.
The headlock part was flavorful to begin with. You just have to invent some new flavor to make it work. There are no mechanics for a "headlock."
It makes much more sense for the PC grappling the target to be able to use their movement at half speed (half of zero is still zero) to "drag the grappled creature with them" to the ground. It absolutely works by RAW, and the line that "you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you" explicitly means that yes, you can do this.
It makes much more sense for the PC grappling the target to use the rules that already exist for making the creature fall prone: a shove.
There's a philosophical difference here between "if the rules don't say you CAN do it, then you CAN'T" versus "if the rules don't explicitly forbid it and it can be read as consistent with the rules that are printed, then go ahead." I know which kind of games I run. :)
Also from Sage Advide: "The best DMs shape the game on the fly to bring the most delight to their players. Such DMs aim for RAF, “rules as fun.” We expect DMs to depart from the rules when running a particular campaign or when seeking the greatest happiness for a certain group of players."
Is it possible to grapple an opponent and drop prone, taking them prone with you?
The Situation
I was playing in a session last week in a party of first level characters. We were ambushed at night by a band of goblins led by their goblin boss. Our sentry was in a bad spot surrounded by two goblins and the boss. I decided the best option was to run over and tackle the boss. I told the DM that I wanted to grapple and I won the check, then I announced that I was moving the boss away 5ft and dropping both of us prone. At this point the rules oriented folks at the table gritted their teeth and squinted their eyes, but the DM let it happen. I consider myself a rules oriented player, and I felt guilty afterward, like maybe I had gotten away with something. So of course I went home and spent the next three days doing research to find an official ruling. I couldn't find any arguments about why this shouldn't be allowed. I found a few posts simply saying it isn't allowed without saying why. The grappling guides don't mention this move one way or the other.
So my question is this, why does grapple and drop prone feel like a taboo move?
The Relevant Rules
Grapple move rule:
"Moving a Grappled Creature. When you move, you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you, but your speed is halved, unless the creature is two or more sizes smaller than you."
Drop prone rule:
"Combatants often find themselves lying on the ground, either because they are knocked down or because they throw themselves down. In the game, they are prone.You can drop prone without using any of your speed. Standing up takes more effort; doing so costs an amount of movement equal to half your speed."
The Movement Question
When you move, the opponent matches your movement. If you move across the ground, the opponent does too. Same with swim, climb, jump, and fly. The questions is, does dropping prone count as movement? The rule is listed under the section for movement and the movement cost is stated. What more would it take to qualify as movement?
I think part of the problem might be that dropping prone gets interpreted as falling. Falling is a passive movement that doesn't count as player movement. Falling doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity and doesn't have a movement cost. But the rules for dropping prone describe an active move of a character throwing themselves down. There is a difference between falling over and throwing yourself to the ground. Likewise, there is a difference between having no movement cost and having a movement cost of 0. (A restrained creature can drop prone and a paralyzed creature cannot, but both can fall.)
The Carry Question
The rules explicitly state that you can carry your opponent. Carrying an opponent is different than dragging your opponent. We could look to the encumbrance rules for guidance on the difference (even though Crawford has ruled that the encumbrance rules don't apply to grappling). Carry implies that you have lifted the opponent off of the ground so that you are supporting their entire weight. Carrying requires more strength than dragging, and a character can only carry half of the weight that they can drag. If you cannot drag your opponent to the ground, can you carry them with you to the ground?
The Standing Question
Flipping the question around: if the character and the opponent are both prone, and the character has the opponent grappled, when the character stands does the opponent stand as well? Standing has a movement cost and requires active effort. The grapple move rule is not optional. It says that when you move, if you want to maintain the grapple then you bring the grappled creature with you and you move at half speed.
Pressing further, it can be asked what is required to lift a prone opponent into a standing position? Imagine a situation in which a character is grappling an opponent who is being attacked at range by the character's allies. The grappled condition allows the opponent to drop prone, but the character would want the opponent to be standing. What rule does the character use to stand up the opponent? Or is it impossible to force an opponent to stand?
The Tackle Question
The move of grapple and drop prone can be interpreted as a Tackle. A Tackle seems like a frequent event that would happen in an adventurer's line of work. A thief is running away: Tackle. An assassin is running toward the king: Tackle.
If we interpret the move of grapple + shove as a Trip, then we have three moves that would result in an opponent being prone: Shove, Trip, and Tackle. These are easily distinguished.
Trip is an advanced move that cannot be performed in a single round by most enemies, NPCs, and characters. It requires an extra attack or some other special feature. Both the Tackle and Shove moves can be performed by anyone. But the primary difference between Trip, Shove, and Tackle is that a Tackle makes the character prone. Dropping prone in the middle of a combat is a significant tactical decision. The question is, is the tackle a sufficiently interesting choice for the player and the DM, or is the tackle too similar to other available moves?
TLDR Questions:
Is it possible to grapple an opponent and drop prone, taking them prone with you?
Nothing in the rules explicitly disallows this move, but it seems to be frowned upon by the community. I believe that the tackle is a RAW and RAI legal move. It is an interesting tactical choice that doesn't replicate other features or abilities. I have asked four questions to help think through the relevant rules. What do you think?
"Nothing in the rules explicitly disallows this move" - This is not relevant; these rules are a list of things you can do, not of what you can't. If it is not mentioned as a thing you can do, then you can only do it if the DM decides you can.
You can Grapple someone then drop prone. Nothing in the rules, however, forces the enemy to go prone with you. They remain as-is unless some action is taken on them (like a shove).
There is no rules difference between "dragging" and "carrying" when it comes to grappling, they are just given as examples of how the forced movement is happening. If you Grapple a sprite you would probably be carrying rather than dragging, opposite for an ogre. All rules still function identically.
You are free to add rules for a one-attack tackle, but take care since prone+grappled is a pretty debilitating state to be in (speed 0 so unable to stabd back up, advantage to be attacked in melee).
And remember that anything you can do, the enemies can do too. Something to remember when you get tackled by 1 enemy, then beaten with advantage by 4 others.
As a DM, this is the part that I like most. I find that it is rarely worth a monster's turn to grapple. Monsters are bad at grappling compared to players, and the chances of making both a grapple and shove check are too low. But I feel like it should be the case that a horde of zombies could pile on a player. It makes them the right level of scary.
I was going to say that jumping straight up 10 feet and dropping is the way to actually do this... but high jumps are 3+Strength Modifier feet even if you get a 10 foot running start (hard to do, since moving with a grappled target cuts your speed in half), so odds are you won't be able to leap high enough to pull it off. I suppose you could always mount a horse and then choose to fall off of it while cradling your grappled target, that would do it too? Or, just use your action to make a shove attack against them while they're grappled, if you want to do it the way it's SUPPOSED to be done :p
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
It feels like it's a taboo move because it's not in the rules - it does not say that knocking an opponent prone is something you can do with a grapple. There's lots of things the rules don't explicitly forbid. RAW, a grapple doesn't let you choke the enemy to death, or prevent them from attacking by holding their hands, or taking their weapons to disarm them, or a half-dozen other things. Grapple, RAW, does exactly what it says it does, and no more. (The Shove action allows you to normally knock someone prone but Grapple does not.)
The reason you as a rules-oriented player feel like you "got away" with something is because you feel like you used good narration to save yourself an action - typically grappling someone AND pushing them to the ground should take a shove action AND a grapple, but you sweet-talked it down to just a grapple.
The second reason you feel like you feel like you "got away" with something was because you presented it as a fait accompli, doing the "ask for forgiveness instead of permission" approach to pressure the DM into allowing it. You could have asked the DM "Hey, I'd like tackle this enemy to aground. Kind of like a grapple but also I go prone afterwards and so do they. Can I do that?" The DM probably would have said yes, but might have changed the roll requirements to account for the fact that you were doing something that was different than a standard Grapple - maybe they would have raised the DC or given you disavantage (or maybe not, if it was a running tackle!). Instead, you FIRST made the roll and THEN told the DM that you meant the roll to mean something different, you "announced" that you were pulling the boss and knocking him prone. In general in D&D it feels really bad to make a roll and THEN find out that the roll doesn't do what you meant it to, so people are pretty hesitant to tell you "no, you can't do that" after you've already made the roll. So they give you the benefit of the doubt and let you do it, since you've already rolled. But they feel pressured and not very good about it. And maybe before next time they'll look up the rule and won't let you do it again.
You're trying to, right now, feel better about it by retroactively making up rules for "Tackling". I don't think that's the right approach. The game doesn't need specific rules for "Tackle = Grapple + Shove + Go prone". Because you can always just ask the DM for any sort of improvised maneuvers you want to do. And there's many more clever improvised maneuvers you can come up with besides tackling! Just remember to ask if you can do something clever BEFORE making the roll to do it, rather than after, and you'll feel a heck of a lot less guilty.
@ftl Thanks for the reply! This is exactly what I am trying to get at. This sounds like what I would have said as a DM. Surprisingly though, not only do the rules not forbid a tackle, they seem to explicitly require it. The grapple move rule requires that you move your opponent with you when you move. Dropping prone and standing are listed as movement with movement costs. The only requirement of the grapple move rule is that speed is halved, depending on size. So standing would take a full round of movement to stand with your opponent, but dropping prone with an opponent still costs 0 movement. The grapple move rule does not say that the movement needs to move you into a different square. It only says that you need to move. Dropping prone and standing are forms of movement that don't move you into a different square, but they still change your position relative to the other combatants. If you drop prone, your opponent has to move with you.
This is the move rule itself right here: "However you're moving, you deduct the distance of each part of your move from your speed until it is used up or until you are done moving."
The simplest and most straightforward way to interpret the rules for dropping prone and standing is that they are movement. Why wouldn't they be? They have movement speed costs. What other criteria do the rules give for something to count as movement? If we wanted dropping prone and standing to not count as movement, then we would need to invent a new rule. As written, they are a form of movement. The rules for dropping prone and standing are included in the section on movement. If context is an indication of intent, then it is RAI as well as RAW.
In reply to DxJxC: "You need to be able to move, but it does not use movement, therefore is not movement." This is the difference between the Restrained and Paralyzed conditions. If dropping prone is not movement, then you don't need to be able to move and can do it while Paralyzed. (You seem to be saying that it is both movement and not movement. It is easier to say that it is movement that doesn't cost any speed. We have free actions, what is the challenge with free movement?) On the other hand the grapple move rule triggers on anything with a movement cost. As long as you can afford the movement cost, then the opponent moves with you. The grapple move rule does not include an exclusion for move costs of 0, so why should we introduce one?
As a guess, I would say that the rules for dropping prone get confused with the rules for falling. Falling is not movement and it does not have a movement cost. But dropping prone is not falling.
My feeling of guilt or getting away with something came from a conflict between my gut understanding of the rules and the common understanding of the rules. I've been DMing for a long time and just returned as a player with a DM who was giving it a first try. I was trying to be nice and not ask the DM to make hard calls, but I caught myself doing this move and wondered where the impulse came from. In curiosity I turned to the rulebooks and the forums. I was surprised to find that the rules don't support the common interpretation that dropping prone doesn't count as a form of movement. And if dropping prone counts as movement, then the opponent in the grapple is required to move with you.
Sometimes the rules are kind of ambiguous, but they are pretty clear in this case. Why the resistance to the straightforward reading?
I don't know, it sounds like you are saying how you want it to work, and that rules don't say it doesn't work, so it must be true.
That is not how the rules work. They say what is, not what isn't. The things that are specifically refered to as movement are walking, jumping, climbing, swimming, flying, and crawling. The rules don't say dropping prone or standing up are movement (just that it costs movement in the case of standing), so we have to assume they are not until WotC decides to print a rulebook with complete, consistent, and comprehensive rules and not a bunch of implied common language rules.
Even if it did count as movement, would you be able to drag a grappled target up or down with you? That rule is barely a sentence and almost certainly only intended to be able to maintain the grapple while moving and not to be able to bypass the need for a specifically described action.
Personally, I think I’d make it a separate action like a shove, for balance reasons if nothing else. I might allow advantage due to the prior grapple to make it more enticing.
It also cuts both ways. Because it’s zero movement the grappled can drop prone voluntarily. Would the grappled individual bring their attacker down automatically? There’s nothing in the rules that say the grappler moves with the grappled. If you rule it’s movement then does this break the grapple? Probably not. I’d allow the participants to be independently prone and use a contest if one wants to force the other to go prone
In real combat, just because you go prone doesn’t necessarily mean I go prone.
The more I think about this, the more I think you could make grappling really fun. Maybe advantage on the next attempt to break the grapple if you attempt to take someone in a grapple prone, but fail.
See the sage advice on this particular question (or at least part of it)
Say I grapple you, then I drop prone. Are we now prone together?
No. A creature you’re grappling isn’t knocked prone if you become prone. You’re now holding onto the creature from a prone position
Obligitory sage advice reference. Ok with that out of the way,
The problem with this whole thing is that the Grappler feat exists:
You’ve developed the skills necessary to hold your own in close-quarters grappling. You gain the following benefits:
You have advantage on attack rolls against a creature you are grappling.
You can use your action to try to pin a creature grappled by you. To do so, make another grapple check. If you succeed, you and the creature are both restrained until the grapple ends.
Even with a feat it takes two separate actions to just, like, tackle a guy and not let go. I mean, I can run across my office right now and tackle Sharon to the ground in the space of a couple of seconds and I'm just a regular doofus who played Kill the Carrier in his youth.
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D&D Beyond FoundersThe Sage Advice Compendium is available for free perusal on D&D Beyond and addresses this precise situation, as noted by others above. 🙂
https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA139
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The OP’s description of Tackle seems like an great house rule. I think I’ll use it.
For what it's worth, inflicting prone on yourself to inflict prone on your grappled target mirrors the way that Grappler works, where you inflict restrained on yourself to inflict restrained on your target. But the grappler ability inflicts restrained on both until the grapple ends, and I would suggest that any houserule allowing grappler to drop themself and their target prone also enforce that same requirement, so that you can't just stand back up without dropping the grapple.
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I'm going to make this way harder than it needs to be.
That answer makes no sense to me mechanically, though (and Sage Advice is not necessarily something you have to abide by. "This column doesn’t replace a DM’s adjudication. Just as the rules do, the column is meant to give DMs, as well as players, tools for tuning the game according to their tastes. The column should also reveal some perspectives that help you see parts of the game in a new light and that aid you in fine-tuning your D&D experience."
That said, think through the chain of events:
PC wants to put an orc in a headlock. PC rolls an Athletics check to grapple. PC is successful, so the orc is now grappled in a headlock. PC uses their movement (Zero feet of movement) to drop prone. The PC is now prone on the ground and the orc is somehow *still grappled* and in a headlock, but NOT prone? It doesn't work.
It makes much more sense for the PC grappling the target to be able to use their movement at half speed (half of zero is still zero) to "drag the grappled creature with them" to the ground. It absolutely works by RAW, and the line that "you can drag or carry the grappled creature with you" explicitly means that yes, you can do this.
How? mechanics describe one general way to use an attack to drop a hostile creature prone and no others (beyond special abilities and spells).
I take anything anyone says after bashing SAC as "not rules" with a grain of salt. If they've made it into the compendium, they're written from a RAW perspective, so almost by definition if you are arguing against a SAC ruling, you're arguing against the wording of the rules.
Ok, the creature is grappled. Headlock is not a type of grapple, only a flavorful description.
Ok, nothing in any of the relevant rules for the other creature say that he is forced prone. He didn't choose to go prone so the text about going prone as part of its movement doesn't apply to it, and nothing in the grappled condition or grapple rules or movement rules say that he is knocked prone. Dragging in a mechanical sense has limited applicability: dragging =/= dragging prone.
The headlock part was flavorful to begin with. You just have to invent some new flavor to make it work. There are no mechanics for a "headlock."
It makes much more sense for the PC grappling the target to use the rules that already exist for making the creature fall prone: a shove.
There's a philosophical difference here between "if the rules don't say you CAN do it, then you CAN'T" versus "if the rules don't explicitly forbid it and it can be read as consistent with the rules that are printed, then go ahead." I know which kind of games I run. :)
Also from Sage Advide: "The best DMs shape the game on the fly to bring the most delight to their players. Such DMs aim for RAF, “rules as fun.” We expect DMs to depart from the rules when running a particular campaign or when seeking the greatest happiness for a certain group of players."