Grappling stuff is weak, right? I'm not making that up? It's been obviously weak since the start?
Do we feel it's weak because it isn't supported enough, or are the designs just all weaksauce?
The reason I ask is because we all know that Tavern Brawler is a better grappler feat than Grappler... and today I came across this epic boon:
Boon of the Unfettered
You have advantage on ability checks made to resist being grappled. In addition, you can use an action to automatically escape a grapple or free yourself of restraints of any kind.
In case it gets redacted, the Boon of the Unfettered lets you nope your way out of a grapple whenever.
How much did they expect grappling to come up?! Can you imagine taking that as your boon? It's like they needed something that Grappler could insult.
The boon is fine, because monsters usually get to break the ordinary rules on grappling. They'll grapple you automatically when they hit you with their special grappling attack, and still deal damage most of the time.
I have a theory that grappling is weak on purpose. It's an action that doesn't advance the fight towards its conclusion. Just like healing! I think the designers intentionally nerfed it in order to discourage people from doing it very often. That way fights don't drag out as long.
There is some interesting stuff you can do with grappling.
A grapple and a shove and you’ve got a fairly helpless opponent you can kill the 💩 out of. Admittedly it’s mostly only useful for Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians, but that’s who one expects to grapple the most anyway.
Then there’s my personal favorite, the chokehold. Start strangling a grappled opponent and they skip the “holding your breath” phase of suffocating and go straight into the “choking” phase. 😉
I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful... (I mean specifically when you can use a combination of pins and prones to prevent a monster from making full use of its actions, obviously millage will vary based on what characters are able to do with this tool...)
I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful...
No it doesn't. It sets speed to 0. That's it. That's all it does.
I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful...
No it doesn't. It sets speed to 0. That's it. That's all it does.
Ah, yes. Because no one ever has to move to reach a priority target, right?
Nor do they ever have to stand up to avoid disadvantage on attacks... Or waste a turn double moving because getting up cost half their movement... Or spend actions escaping a grapple in order to avoid being force moved into an environmental hazard...
I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful...
No it doesn't. It sets speed to 0. That's it. That's all it does.
Ah, yes. Because no one ever has to move to reach a priority target, right?
Nor do they ever have to stand up to avoid disadvantage on attacks... Or waste a turn double moving because getting up cost half their movement... Or spend actions escaping a grapple in order to avoid being force moved into an environmental hazard...
Grapple doesn't let you knock the target prone or shove them. How often is it actually worth giving up one of your attacks to hold the target in place instead of just smacking them an extra time every round to drop them that much faster?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful...
No it doesn't. It sets speed to 0. That's it. That's all it does.
Ah, yes. Because no one ever has to move to reach a priority target, right?
You set up the goalpost as being about the action economy. Now you"re shifting it to mobility after I pointed out grappling interferes with mobility, not action economy.
Nor do they ever have to stand up to avoid disadvantage on attacks... Or waste a turn double moving because getting up cost half their movement... Or spend actions escaping a grapple in order to avoid being force moved into an environmental hazard...
Look, I can make up claims you didn't make and accuse you of them, too. It's just patently absurd to do so. For example, how dare you suggest that wizards can't cast spells? The PHB is very clear that they can. See how silly I sound?
I mean you're not wrong that action economy is important. And what you're giving up when you grapple is your own action. Yes, a grappled, shoved enemy is easier to kill. But even easier than that is just using those attacks to go ahead and kill the target. Shove is also a mixed bag, making enemies actually harder to hit for your ranged allies. There's also very few ways to keep it relevant as you level up and start facing larger and larger creatures.
Go check any forum related to 5e character optimization. The only grapple threads you'll find is "how do I make this good?" and the answer is that you pretty much can't. Believe me, if it were OP we'd have builds exploiting the heck out of it.
This is not to say that you can't make a grapple-focused character and have a lot of fun with it. You obviously don't need to be optimized to the nines to enjoy the game. And occasionally grappling is exactly what you need in a situation. It's just not something worth doing in nearly all other situations.
Theory: the grappling rules weren't built with tactical, mechanical mini/wargaming combat in mind. D&D, as a whole, doesn't really like grappling. It doesn't fit the paradigm Turn-based combat has never liked grappling, which is fundamentally a fluid struggle that doesn't break down easily into "you swing, then I swing, then you swing, then I swing..."
The grappling rules in 5e are a combination of "D&D has always had grappling so we can't ditch it" and the design team going "players are GONNA ask if they can grab a guy and stop him from moving, or otherwise try and wrestle. We can't leave it to the DM to invent that out of whole cloth, so...much as we don't like grappling, how can we give the DM enough bare bones rules to handle it when a player says 'I grab the guy before he can run away'?"
The grappling rules aren't meant for combat. They're meant for out-of-initiative situations where the DM wants to resolve whether somebody can grab/stop somebody else from getting away/doing something. They work in combat, but only poorly, and that's intentional. The number of abilities that tie into grappling is extremely small, and it's design space the devs have been ignoring since the game came out. They gave you Tavern Brawler, Grappler as an 'example' feat, and then one maneuver in Tasha's Cauldron...and that's it. because they don't want you grappling in combat. The combat system is super terrible at representing/modeling wrestling matches, so they just don't bother doing so.
I've been playing a long-running game with friends as a Barbarian with a very deliberate Wrestling-inspired personality. My character is very good at grappling, and I've got a few signature moves that really take advantage of it, but it's not something I do in every combat. Here's a few situations where it has come up...
With the wrestling premise, my DM has run a few combats in an arena without weapons. This pairs great with Tavern Brawler... My go-to move has usually been the classic Attack-Grapple-Shove Prone, which I usually flavor as just picking up the enemy and body slamming them. This is basically spending one round to make the rest of the fight much easier... Rage gives advantage on Athletics checks to land the grapple and maintain it, the enemy has no movement speed to use to get up from prone, and has to either attack at disadvantage or spend their action to break the grapple. Great for one-on-one fights... made even easier eventually because I'm playing as a Storm Soul Barbarian, which eventually gets the ability to add a shove prone as part of an attack.
That's the big, complicated one. Grapples generally come up in simpler ways. It's a very valuable skill in taking on a Tank role for your party. I've had situations where a powerful martial enemy was right on top of the spellcasters in my group, so just to protect them I'll sometimes grapple the opponent and pull them away. It's also a good way to keep an opponent's focus on yourself. It pairs great with AOE battlefield control spells from your allies... whether you're holding an opponent in place inside a Cloud of Daggers or making sure they're stuck in a bad situation.
That all said... for the majority of combats I find myself in, I don't bother grappling. In about 9 out of 10 combats I find myself in, it's a lot more valuable to just attack the opponents and take them off the board completely. I eventually got the Sentinel Feat in addition to Tavern Brawler, and I've used that feat in virtually every single combat I've been in since taking the feat. But there's nothing quite as fun as getting into a fight in a weird situation, grabbing a chair and clocking a dude in the face with it before body slamming him to the ground.
"players are GONNA ask if they can grab a guy and stop him from moving, or otherwise try and wrestle. We can't leave it to the DM to invent that out of whole cloth, so...much as we don't like grappling, how can we give the DM enough bare bones rules to handle it when a player says 'I grab the guy before he can run away'?"
--- !!! tangent incoming !!! ---
In my experience, the much more common player request is "can I grab this guy to stop him from casting spells" or "can I grab this guy to stop him from attacking." And while I understand that the current rules are set up in a way that would basically destroy all sense of danger if the DM said yes to either of those questions, I do consider it a failure of the system. These are really common questions, and the game is supposed to be pretty "yes, and."
The result is that every new player gets smacked really early on with some version of the following: "Using your imagination is great and all, but ultimately it takes a backseat to the balance of the rules. Stop thinking in terms of the story, and start thinking in terms of what clickable buttons exist on your character sheet."
And that sucks. Especially when the rules really aren't all that balanced to begin with. But I digress.
I think there's probably a solution involving opportunity attacks. Maybe instead of triggering one whenever someone moves, you could change the rules so a character can choose a type of action to hinder on their turn. Idk. This isn't the homebrew subforum. I'm just thinking out loud.
The other evidence that PC grapples aren't great in the action economy is that every single "grappley" monster gets their grapple baked right into their attacks. They don't have to choose one or the other, they get to hit and grapple in the same action. Because a monster that has to sacrifice damage to grapple is just not a threat. Neither, in most cases, is a PC.
The result is that every new player gets smacked really early on with some version of the following: "Using your imagination is great and all, but ultimately it takes a backseat to the balance of the rules. Stop thinking in terms of the story, and start thinking in terms of what clickable buttons exist on your character sheet."
To be fair, this is always going to be the case to a degree. Someone will always want to permanently blind a target with a bucket over the head or "punch someone so hard they fall unconscious" and you have to say no or let them try and fail to succeed which is just a more complicated way to say no. A story is only good if the tension rises and falls, and unlimited Imagination Time tends to result in no tension at all. In that respect the game serves the story as well.
The result is that every new player gets smacked really early on with some version of the following: "Using your imagination is great and all, but ultimately it takes a backseat to the balance of the rules. Stop thinking in terms of the story, and start thinking in terms of what clickable buttons exist on your character sheet."
To be fair, this is always going to be the case to a degree. Someone will always want to permanently blind a target with a bucket over the head or "punch someone so hard they fall unconscious" and you have to say no or let them try and fail to succeed which is just a more complicated way to say no. A story is only good if the tension rises and falls, and unlimited Imagination Time tends to result in no tension at all. In that respect the game serves the story as well.
Sure, I'm just saying that ideally, the things you have to shut down aren't the really common things that everybody wants to try within the first two sessions.
The basic problem for grappling is that you're spending an attack to do it. Sure, grappling a monster and knocking it prone means it's easier to beat up -- but it just cost you 20-30 damage (depending on tier). Even if your entire party is melee attackers, unless you're dealing with a monster with 100-150 hit points, it's slower to grapple than to just apply a beatdown -- and if half your party isn't melee, you need monsters with more like 200+ hit points to come out ahead.
You're not routinely going to be dealing with 200+ hit point threats until tier 3 (by which time it's costing you closer to 30 points of damage per lost hit, so you probably need 250-300 hit point monsters). There's also a defensive aspect to grapples, so this math is underestimating their value, but still... grappling a monster that's less than CR 10 is probably not going to be worth your time.
I've been playing a long-running game with friends as a Barbarian with a very deliberate Wrestling-inspired personality. My character is very good at grappling, and I've got a few signature moves that really take advantage of it, but it's not something I do in every combat. Here's a few situations where it has come up...
With the wrestling premise, my DM has run a few combats in an arena without weapons. This pairs great with Tavern Brawler... My go-to move has usually been the classic Attack-Grapple-Shove Prone, which I usually flavor as just picking up the enemy and body slamming them. This is basically spending one round to make the rest of the fight much easier... Rage gives advantage on Athletics checks to land the grapple and maintain it, the enemy has no movement speed to use to get up from prone, and has to either attack at disadvantage or spend their action to break the grapple. Great for one-on-one fights... made even easier eventually because I'm playing as a Storm Soul Barbarian, which eventually gets the ability to add a shove prone as part of an attack.
That's the big, complicated one. Grapples generally come up in simpler ways. It's a very valuable skill in taking on a Tank role for your party. I've had situations where a powerful martial enemy was right on top of the spellcasters in my group, so just to protect them I'll sometimes grapple the opponent and pull them away. It's also a good way to keep an opponent's focus on yourself. It pairs great with AOE battlefield control spells from your allies... whether you're holding an opponent in place inside a Cloud of Daggers or making sure they're stuck in a bad situation.
That all said... for the majority of combats I find myself in, I don't bother grappling. In about 9 out of 10 combats I find myself in, it's a lot more valuable to just attack the opponents and take them off the board completely. I eventually got the Sentinel Feat in addition to Tavern Brawler, and I've used that feat in virtually every single combat I've been in since taking the feat. But there's nothing quite as fun as getting into a fight in a weird situation, grabbing a chair and clocking a dude in the face with it before body slamming him to the ground.
AND that's with a character built around wrestling. God do I love Tavern Brawler (to gain proficiency with improvised weapons). Few things are as satisfying as annoyingly reminding your party that you are proficient in chairs and goblin-chucks.
Honestly, I feel like they could be fixed pretty easily by making the basic grapple stronger... which would make it worth your time in combat.
If you improve grappling, you reduce movement in combat. The system of opportunity attacks in 3.5e did this as well -- 5e's opportunity attacks are much more lenient. In that edition you would often hear people complain that combat is just "approach enemy, swing until someone dies." This is what we want to avoid.
One way might be to have both parties roll any time one of them tries to move. This way you can still have positional changes happen, because the dice are volatile, but players can exert some control. You might get away with removing the "half speed" thing since the math usually comes out to the same total effect anyway, just with more variance.
Or, you could make it so that any successful attack forces movement. You hit someone with a dagger, they take a step back or to the side. This would transform grappling to a form of subdual that runs parallel to regular combat but barely intersects with it, because your allies wouldn't want to hit the guy you're grappling. It would also wildly transform a lot of other things. Might be exciting to try. Then you could buff up grappling without risking too much overspill into other rules.
If you improve grappling, you reduce movement in combat. The system of opportunity attacks in 3.5e did this as well -- 5e's opportunity attacks are much more lenient. In that edition you would often hear people complain that combat is just "approach enemy, swing until someone dies." This is what we want to avoid.
I suspect grappling should be changed from an attack to an action, but then made more potent (say, equivalent to restrained). That makes it better at low levels, but since you can't do it three times in a single action, not something you'll just always do at high levels.
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Grappling stuff is weak, right? I'm not making that up? It's been obviously weak since the start?
Do we feel it's weak because it isn't supported enough, or are the designs just all weaksauce?
The reason I ask is because we all know that Tavern Brawler is a better grappler feat than Grappler... and today I came across this epic boon:
Boon of the Unfettered
You have advantage on ability checks made to resist being grappled. In addition, you can use an action to automatically escape a grapple or free yourself of restraints of any kind.
In case it gets redacted, the Boon of the Unfettered lets you nope your way out of a grapple whenever.
How much did they expect grappling to come up?! Can you imagine taking that as your boon? It's like they needed something that Grappler could insult.
The boon is fine, because monsters usually get to break the ordinary rules on grappling. They'll grapple you automatically when they hit you with their special grappling attack, and still deal damage most of the time.
I have a theory that grappling is weak on purpose. It's an action that doesn't advance the fight towards its conclusion. Just like healing! I think the designers intentionally nerfed it in order to discourage people from doing it very often. That way fights don't drag out as long.
Grappling rules got nerfed ever since the unholy mess that was Third Edition Grappling Rules.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
There is some interesting stuff you can do with grappling.
A grapple and a shove and you’ve got a fairly helpless opponent you can kill the 💩 out of. Admittedly it’s mostly only useful for Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians, but that’s who one expects to grapple the most anyway.
Then there’s my personal favorite, the chokehold. Start strangling a grappled opponent and they skip the “holding your breath” phase of suffocating and go straight into the “choking” phase. 😉
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I think you could make the inverse argument. Action economy is king in this edition. Grappling attacks an enemy's action economy, therefore grappling is absurdly powerful... (I mean specifically when you can use a combination of pins and prones to prevent a monster from making full use of its actions, obviously millage will vary based on what characters are able to do with this tool...)
No it doesn't. It sets speed to 0. That's it. That's all it does.
If it was that powerful, people would grapple all the time instead of taking GWM and Polearm Master.
Ah, yes. Because no one ever has to move to reach a priority target, right?
Nor do they ever have to stand up to avoid disadvantage on attacks... Or waste a turn double moving because getting up cost half their movement... Or spend actions escaping a grapple in order to avoid being force moved into an environmental hazard...
Grapple doesn't let you knock the target prone or shove them. How often is it actually worth giving up one of your attacks to hold the target in place instead of just smacking them an extra time every round to drop them that much faster?
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
You set up the goalpost as being about the action economy. Now you"re shifting it to mobility after I pointed out grappling interferes with mobility, not action economy.
Look, I can make up claims you didn't make and accuse you of them, too. It's just patently absurd to do so. For example, how dare you suggest that wizards can't cast spells? The PHB is very clear that they can. See how silly I sound?
I mean you're not wrong that action economy is important. And what you're giving up when you grapple is your own action. Yes, a grappled, shoved enemy is easier to kill. But even easier than that is just using those attacks to go ahead and kill the target. Shove is also a mixed bag, making enemies actually harder to hit for your ranged allies. There's also very few ways to keep it relevant as you level up and start facing larger and larger creatures.
Go check any forum related to 5e character optimization. The only grapple threads you'll find is "how do I make this good?" and the answer is that you pretty much can't. Believe me, if it were OP we'd have builds exploiting the heck out of it.
This is not to say that you can't make a grapple-focused character and have a lot of fun with it. You obviously don't need to be optimized to the nines to enjoy the game. And occasionally grappling is exactly what you need in a situation. It's just not something worth doing in nearly all other situations.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Theory: the grappling rules weren't built with tactical, mechanical mini/wargaming combat in mind. D&D, as a whole, doesn't really like grappling. It doesn't fit the paradigm Turn-based combat has never liked grappling, which is fundamentally a fluid struggle that doesn't break down easily into "you swing, then I swing, then you swing, then I swing..."
The grappling rules in 5e are a combination of "D&D has always had grappling so we can't ditch it" and the design team going "players are GONNA ask if they can grab a guy and stop him from moving, or otherwise try and wrestle. We can't leave it to the DM to invent that out of whole cloth, so...much as we don't like grappling, how can we give the DM enough bare bones rules to handle it when a player says 'I grab the guy before he can run away'?"
The grappling rules aren't meant for combat. They're meant for out-of-initiative situations where the DM wants to resolve whether somebody can grab/stop somebody else from getting away/doing something. They work in combat, but only poorly, and that's intentional. The number of abilities that tie into grappling is extremely small, and it's design space the devs have been ignoring since the game came out. They gave you Tavern Brawler, Grappler as an 'example' feat, and then one maneuver in Tasha's Cauldron...and that's it. because they don't want you grappling in combat. The combat system is super terrible at representing/modeling wrestling matches, so they just don't bother doing so.
Please do not contact or message me.
I've been playing a long-running game with friends as a Barbarian with a very deliberate Wrestling-inspired personality. My character is very good at grappling, and I've got a few signature moves that really take advantage of it, but it's not something I do in every combat. Here's a few situations where it has come up...
With the wrestling premise, my DM has run a few combats in an arena without weapons. This pairs great with Tavern Brawler... My go-to move has usually been the classic Attack-Grapple-Shove Prone, which I usually flavor as just picking up the enemy and body slamming them. This is basically spending one round to make the rest of the fight much easier... Rage gives advantage on Athletics checks to land the grapple and maintain it, the enemy has no movement speed to use to get up from prone, and has to either attack at disadvantage or spend their action to break the grapple. Great for one-on-one fights... made even easier eventually because I'm playing as a Storm Soul Barbarian, which eventually gets the ability to add a shove prone as part of an attack.
That's the big, complicated one. Grapples generally come up in simpler ways. It's a very valuable skill in taking on a Tank role for your party. I've had situations where a powerful martial enemy was right on top of the spellcasters in my group, so just to protect them I'll sometimes grapple the opponent and pull them away. It's also a good way to keep an opponent's focus on yourself. It pairs great with AOE battlefield control spells from your allies... whether you're holding an opponent in place inside a Cloud of Daggers or making sure they're stuck in a bad situation.
That all said... for the majority of combats I find myself in, I don't bother grappling. In about 9 out of 10 combats I find myself in, it's a lot more valuable to just attack the opponents and take them off the board completely. I eventually got the Sentinel Feat in addition to Tavern Brawler, and I've used that feat in virtually every single combat I've been in since taking the feat. But there's nothing quite as fun as getting into a fight in a weird situation, grabbing a chair and clocking a dude in the face with it before body slamming him to the ground.
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--- !!! tangent incoming !!! ---
In my experience, the much more common player request is "can I grab this guy to stop him from casting spells" or "can I grab this guy to stop him from attacking." And while I understand that the current rules are set up in a way that would basically destroy all sense of danger if the DM said yes to either of those questions, I do consider it a failure of the system. These are really common questions, and the game is supposed to be pretty "yes, and."
The result is that every new player gets smacked really early on with some version of the following: "Using your imagination is great and all, but ultimately it takes a backseat to the balance of the rules. Stop thinking in terms of the story, and start thinking in terms of what clickable buttons exist on your character sheet."
And that sucks. Especially when the rules really aren't all that balanced to begin with. But I digress.
I think there's probably a solution involving opportunity attacks. Maybe instead of triggering one whenever someone moves, you could change the rules so a character can choose a type of action to hinder on their turn. Idk. This isn't the homebrew subforum. I'm just thinking out loud.
The other evidence that PC grapples aren't great in the action economy is that every single "grappley" monster gets their grapple baked right into their attacks. They don't have to choose one or the other, they get to hit and grapple in the same action. Because a monster that has to sacrifice damage to grapple is just not a threat. Neither, in most cases, is a PC.
To be fair, this is always going to be the case to a degree. Someone will always want to permanently blind a target with a bucket over the head or "punch someone so hard they fall unconscious" and you have to say no or let them try and fail to succeed which is just a more complicated way to say no. A story is only good if the tension rises and falls, and unlimited Imagination Time tends to result in no tension at all. In that respect the game serves the story as well.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Sure, I'm just saying that ideally, the things you have to shut down aren't the really common things that everybody wants to try within the first two sessions.
The basic problem for grappling is that you're spending an attack to do it. Sure, grappling a monster and knocking it prone means it's easier to beat up -- but it just cost you 20-30 damage (depending on tier). Even if your entire party is melee attackers, unless you're dealing with a monster with 100-150 hit points, it's slower to grapple than to just apply a beatdown -- and if half your party isn't melee, you need monsters with more like 200+ hit points to come out ahead.
You're not routinely going to be dealing with 200+ hit point threats until tier 3 (by which time it's costing you closer to 30 points of damage per lost hit, so you probably need 250-300 hit point monsters). There's also a defensive aspect to grapples, so this math is underestimating their value, but still... grappling a monster that's less than CR 10 is probably not going to be worth your time.
AND that's with a character built around wrestling. God do I love Tavern Brawler (to gain proficiency with improvised weapons). Few things are as satisfying as annoyingly reminding your party that you are proficient in chairs and goblin-chucks.
Honestly, I feel like they could be fixed pretty easily by making the basic grapple stronger... which would make it worth your time in combat.
If you improve grappling, you reduce movement in combat. The system of opportunity attacks in 3.5e did this as well -- 5e's opportunity attacks are much more lenient. In that edition you would often hear people complain that combat is just "approach enemy, swing until someone dies." This is what we want to avoid.
One way might be to have both parties roll any time one of them tries to move. This way you can still have positional changes happen, because the dice are volatile, but players can exert some control. You might get away with removing the "half speed" thing since the math usually comes out to the same total effect anyway, just with more variance.
Or, you could make it so that any successful attack forces movement. You hit someone with a dagger, they take a step back or to the side. This would transform grappling to a form of subdual that runs parallel to regular combat but barely intersects with it, because your allies wouldn't want to hit the guy you're grappling. It would also wildly transform a lot of other things. Might be exciting to try. Then you could buff up grappling without risking too much overspill into other rules.
I suspect grappling should be changed from an attack to an action, but then made more potent (say, equivalent to restrained). That makes it better at low levels, but since you can't do it three times in a single action, not something you'll just always do at high levels.