Yep, Grapple feat is just awful. Since a character building for grapple will usually have a good Strength-Athletics skill, the common strategy as others have noted, is to simply knock them prone first, then grapple with advantage and make all future attacks with advantage as well. Prone has the advantage over the Grapple feat of not only giving the player advantage on attack rolls but every other melee attacker next to them AND imposing disadvantage on the prone guy's attack rolls. With the exception of ranged attackers having disadvantage, the "knock prone then grapple" combo gives all the advantages the Grapple feat does and doesn't impose the "restrained" condition on your own character. The Grapple feat is so bad that it originally had a 3rd bulletpoint that read "Creatures that are one size larger than you don't automatically succeed on checks to escape your grapple" and they removed it (since it did nothing because there's no such rule about larger creatures auto-escaping grapple) but didn't think to replace it with something helpful for an otherwise, completely useless feat.
It's difficult to imagine a worse feat although there are several which are, arguably, equally as bad.
Yep, Grapple feat is just awful. Since a character building for grapple will usually have a good Strength-Athletics skill, the common strategy as others have noted, is to simply knock them prone first, then grapple with advantage and make all future attacks with advantage as well. . . .
Just a minor correction, attempting to grapple a target is an opposed skill check, not an attack roll. So the target being Prone doesn't give you advantage of the grapple attempt.
Yep, Grapple feat is just awful. Since a character building for grapple will usually have a good Strength-Athletics skill, the common strategy as others have noted, is to simply knock them prone first, then grapple with advantage and make all future attacks with advantage as well. . . .
Just a minor correction, attempting to grapple a target is an opposed skill check, not an attack roll. So the target being Prone doesn't give you advantage of the grapple attempt.
Correcting your correction
Grappling
When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
Yep, Grapple feat is just awful. Since a character building for grapple will usually have a good Strength-Athletics skill, the common strategy as others have noted, is to simply knock them prone first, then grapple with advantage and make all future attacks with advantage as well. . . .
Just a minor correction, attempting to grapple a target is an opposed skill check, not an attack roll. So the target being Prone doesn't give you advantage of the grapple attempt.
Correcting your correction
Grappling
When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
Fangeye is correct.
Grappling is an attack action and replaces a single attack (if you have multiple). However a grapple check is not an attack roll. The prone condition only grants advantage for attack rolls.
Grappling
Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use).
Prone
An attack roll against the creature has advantage if the attacker is within 5 feet of the creature. Otherwise, the attack roll has disadvantage.
You all seem to be ignoring this very fundamental part:
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. "
This explicitly states that the person who initiated the grapple is also restrained and therefore suffers all of the effects of being restrained, IE movement speed is 0, all attacks by the person have disadvantage.
The advantage provided to attack the target is countered by having disadvantage on their own attack so it becomes a standard attack by the grappler, not to mention that the enemies that aren’t grappled all get advantage to hit the grappler. The feat - and the whole idea of being a grappler is massively flawed.
You all seem to be ignoring this very fundamental part:
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. "
This explicitly states that the person who initiated the grapple is also restrained and therefore suffers all of the effects of being restrained, IE movement speed is 0, all attacks by the person have disadvantage.
The advantage provided to attack the target is countered by having disadvantage on their own attack so it becomes a standard attack by the grappler, not to mention that the enemies that aren’t grappled all get advantage to hit the grappler. The feat - and the whole idea of being a grappler is massively flawed.
I believe we're all acknowledging the Grappler feat is flawed, but the idea of being a grappler isn't flawed. The common strategy is to take an action to shove them prone, then grapple them. While they're grappled they have 0 movement and while they're prone they require movement to get up, so they're stuck with the "Prone" condition, which gives most of the issues being restrained does to the enemy but none of the problems to the grappler.
Grappling and shoving can be powerful because it can bypass the defenses of many villians and leave them more vulnerable with less options. Even if the villain manages to escape the grapple, that would have cost them an action (not just an attack) and half their movement must be used to simply get up. In the mean time, the grappler is free to drag them around the battle field, away from defences and fellow villians and into a better position for allies to shoot, or simply to a cliff edge followed by a release of the grapple and a shove over the edge. Heck, if you have flight then fly straight up with them and release the grapple to watch them suffer fall damage without a save.
Don't get me wrong, it's not an unstoppable strategy or overpowered game mechanic, but the idea of grappling (outside the feat) is anything but flawed.
Grappling and shoving (and anything else that can knock an opponent prone) can be good, but it is very niche. A perfect example is LMoP. The very first combat 4 goblins, and with a party of 4 players:
Fighter wins initiative, runs forward and grapples a goblin. The other 3 goblins walk passed and ignore the fighter. 2 rounds later the wizard is dead, the rogue is running round trying to kite 2 goblins and the bard is trying to vicious mockery everything to death. It’s pointless, the fighter doing his grapple accomplished absolutely nothing.
In the very rare situation where there are multiple players and only a single enemy then of course grappling is good. But a single grapple is useless against multiple bad guys.
The beauty of most grappler builds is they don't have to be exclusive to grappling. There's nothing stopping a grappler fighter or barbarian from carrying a weapon, drawing it and simply running up and making a regular attack instead. They're simply built and ready for the grapple opportunities.
LMoP is actually a poor example for several reasons but foremost you're talking about level 1, Grappler builds can still operate as regular melee combatants in the early levels until their further up and their grapple prowess becomes much more viable thanks to action surge and/or multiple attacks per round. Many (if not most) theme or style builds start off operating in the regular way until later levels. They also, frequently, build to still remain relevant outside their target uses, such as mage slayer builds that will frequently have other abilities or spells for encounters that don't involve a magic user.
It's well known that a DM can spoil the grappler strategy by throwing mobs of weaklings against them or creatures somehow immune or less vulnerable to it. Again, thats still a perfectly reasonable situation where most grapple builds are still able to operate as a regular melee combatant, smashing things instead of trying to shove or wrestle them. There's also more than enough times that a fighter comes against something with a high AC and spends most of their time swinging and missing, or something with resistance or even invulnerability to the attacks available to them. Heck, sometimes it's just something smart that will disengage from the fighter and move to attack the squishy members. This is where the fighter/barbarian can regain their usefulness by ignoring AC, resistances and vulnerabilities by shoving and grappling to add value or keep the enemy pinned away from squishy members.
But none of that stops the grappler build from coming into it's own when there's one or two nastier creatures in a battle that can be held prone while the rest of the party take care of the others or wail on the nasties while they're more vulnerable. I've personally played the build a few times and had plenty of use for it's style. Once again, it's not some crazy, game breaking uber build, but it is effective and quite fun for the cinematics.
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Yep, Grapple feat is just awful. Since a character building for grapple will usually have a good Strength-Athletics skill, the common strategy as others have noted, is to simply knock them prone first, then grapple with advantage and make all future attacks with advantage as well. Prone has the advantage over the Grapple feat of not only giving the player advantage on attack rolls but every other melee attacker next to them AND imposing disadvantage on the prone guy's attack rolls. With the exception of ranged attackers having disadvantage, the "knock prone then grapple" combo gives all the advantages the Grapple feat does and doesn't impose the "restrained" condition on your own character. The Grapple feat is so bad that it originally had a 3rd bulletpoint that read "Creatures that are one size larger than you don't automatically succeed on checks to escape your grapple" and they removed it (since it did nothing because there's no such rule about larger creatures auto-escaping grapple) but didn't think to replace it with something helpful for an otherwise, completely useless feat.
It's difficult to imagine a worse feat although there are several which are, arguably, equally as bad.
Just a minor correction, attempting to grapple a target is an opposed skill check, not an attack roll. So the target being Prone doesn't give you advantage of the grapple attempt.
Correcting your correction
Grappling
When you want to grab a creature or wrestle with it, you can use the Attack action to make a special melee attack, a grapple. If you’re able to make multiple attacks with the Attack action, this attack replaces one of them.
Fangeye is correct.
Grappling is an attack action and replaces a single attack (if you have multiple). However a grapple check is not
an attack roll. The prone condition only grants advantage for attack rolls.Grappling
Using at least one free hand, you try to seize the target by making a grapple check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use).
Prone
You all seem to be ignoring this very fundamental part:
This explicitly states that the person who initiated the grapple is also restrained and therefore suffers all of the effects of being restrained, IE movement speed is 0, all attacks by the person have disadvantage.
The advantage provided to attack the target is countered by having disadvantage on their own attack so it becomes a standard attack by the grappler, not to mention that the enemies that aren’t grappled all get advantage to hit the grappler. The feat - and the whole idea of being a grappler is massively flawed.
I believe we're all acknowledging the Grappler feat is flawed, but the idea of being a grappler isn't flawed. The common strategy is to take an action to shove them prone, then grapple them. While they're grappled they have 0 movement and while they're prone they require movement to get up, so they're stuck with the "Prone" condition, which gives most of the issues being restrained does to the enemy but none of the problems to the grappler.
Grappling and shoving can be powerful because it can bypass the defenses of many villians and leave them more vulnerable with less options. Even if the villain manages to escape the grapple, that would have cost them an action (not just an attack) and half their movement must be used to simply get up. In the mean time, the grappler is free to drag them around the battle field, away from defences and fellow villians and into a better position for allies to shoot, or simply to a cliff edge followed by a release of the grapple and a shove over the edge. Heck, if you have flight then fly straight up with them and release the grapple to watch them suffer fall damage without a save.
Don't get me wrong, it's not an unstoppable strategy or overpowered game mechanic, but the idea of grappling (outside the feat) is anything but flawed.
NOTE: My correction stands corrected by Voras. I have been going on a sage tweet that previously said it had advantage but this was later corrected elsewhere and is in the published sage advice https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/sac/sage-advice-compendium#SA104
Grappling and shoving (and anything else that can knock an opponent prone) can be good, but it is very niche. A perfect example is LMoP. The very first combat 4 goblins, and with a party of 4 players:
Fighter wins initiative, runs forward and grapples a goblin. The other 3 goblins walk passed and ignore the fighter. 2 rounds later the wizard is dead, the rogue is running round trying to kite 2 goblins and the bard is trying to vicious mockery everything to death. It’s pointless, the fighter doing his grapple accomplished absolutely nothing.
In the very rare situation where there are multiple players and only a single enemy then of course grappling is good. But a single grapple is useless against multiple bad guys.
The beauty of most grappler builds is they don't have to be exclusive to grappling. There's nothing stopping a grappler fighter or barbarian from carrying a weapon, drawing it and simply running up and making a regular attack instead. They're simply built and ready for the grapple opportunities.
LMoP is actually a poor example for several reasons but foremost you're talking about level 1, Grappler builds can still operate as regular melee combatants in the early levels until their further up and their grapple prowess becomes much more viable thanks to action surge and/or multiple attacks per round. Many (if not most) theme or style builds start off operating in the regular way until later levels. They also, frequently, build to still remain relevant outside their target uses, such as mage slayer builds that will frequently have other abilities or spells for encounters that don't involve a magic user.
It's well known that a DM can spoil the grappler strategy by throwing mobs of weaklings against them or creatures somehow immune or less vulnerable to it. Again, thats still a perfectly reasonable situation where most grapple builds are still able to operate as a regular melee combatant, smashing things instead of trying to shove or wrestle them. There's also more than enough times that a fighter comes against something with a high AC and spends most of their time swinging and missing, or something with resistance or even invulnerability to the attacks available to them. Heck, sometimes it's just something smart that will disengage from the fighter and move to attack the squishy members. This is where the fighter/barbarian can regain their usefulness by ignoring AC, resistances and vulnerabilities by shoving and grappling to add value or keep the enemy pinned away from squishy members.
But none of that stops the grappler build from coming into it's own when there's one or two nastier creatures in a battle that can be held prone while the rest of the party take care of the others or wail on the nasties while they're more vulnerable. I've personally played the build a few times and had plenty of use for it's style. Once again, it's not some crazy, game breaking uber build, but it is effective and quite fun for the cinematics.