Grappling a foe can be pretty powerful in 5E. Because being grappled or restrained usually takes an action to escape, if you can cling to a monster and hold them in place, you have a lot more control over the battlefield. You can keep a foe from getting within melee range of your squishier party members, and you can put them in disadvantageous positions.
As one of only three obligate melee classes (the others being Barbarians and Paladins - Fighters can always build around Dexterity and ranged weapons) Monks have, since 2014, had a lot of little asterisks that make them a bit less capable throwing enemies around.
I think the new PHB is going to change that.
Let's talk about why:
The first major difference is that the Martial Arts feature will now allow you to use Dexterity in place of Strength when setting the DCs for Saving Throws against the Shove and Grapple attacks. (Notably, these are also no longer Athletics checks.) In other words, a Monk who prioritizes maximizing Dexterity as much as a Barbarians prioritizes Strength will be just as good at this (actually, I realize this is a slight nerf to Barbarians given that they'd normally get advantage on an Athletics check to grapple or shove thanks to Rage). While a Monk might only have a +1 or +0 to Strength, they'll probably have a very good Dexterity modifier, and thus get a decent DC on these.
The second difference is that Shoving and Grappling is now under the umbrella of an Unarmed Strike. Thus, if a Monk uses something like Flurry of Blows, getting two (or even three at level 10 and higher) Unarmed Strikes as a bonus action, you can make one of these a Grapple, leaving you many other attacks for damage.
Here's where things get even crazier than I realized:
The rule for Grappling requires you to have a free hand. That's usually going to prevent someone wielding a two-handed weapon or maybe two weapons or a weapon and a shield from actually grappling (honestly, this has made me realize that wielding a versatile weapon without a shield makes better sense than I previously thought.) But as a Monk, especially if we get our hands of +X Wraps of Unarmed Mastery (which I think are going to be in the new DMG,) you can easily fight without any weapon in hand.
And that means two creatures can be grappled!
Now, moving a grappled creature uses the language of costing 1 extra foot of movement for each foot you move.
If only we could, you know, Dash as a bonus action for free. Oh wait! We will be able to thanks to the change to Step of the Wind!
If you're a 5th level Monk with a base species speed of 30 feet, your movement speed will now be 40 feet. So, let's imagine that, as an action, we make two Unarmed Strikes. We use both to Grapple a pair of, oh, let's say two Ogres (assuming we're Medium - we can only grapple monsters that are one size larger than us or smaller). We get lucky and they fail their saves. So we now have an Ogre in each hand. That effectively reduces the speed we can move to 13 feet. But we still have our Step of the Wind, so we can make that into 26 feet (not all that much slower than a normal person walks).
Now, that will take up our turn. But being able to drag two large creatures 26 feet (likely rounded down to 25 if you're playing on a grid) is pretty good.
Naturally, this becomes really nasty if we have something terrible to drag them into - if your Druid (or maybe Dao Genie Warlock) slapped a Spike Growth on the ground, you can drag a foe through it. It might be awkward trying to get both of our Ogres through the spikes, but if we go down to one of them we now get to move 20 feet with them (or 40 with a dash). If we drag this guy along the edge of the spike growth, 40 feet is essentially 8 squares of it, meaning 16d4 damage, or roughly 40 damage.
One of the problems you might imagine here, of course, is that Monks don't generally like to stay in melee range because they have lower AC and lower HP than those standard tank characters. But here's the thing: Deflect Attacks kind of solves this for you. While it'll only deal with a single attack, you're looking at probably 1d10+9, or about 14.5 damage. Our Ogre's standard Greatclub attack deals, on average, 13 damage. Thus, if it's just the Ogre, there's a good chance that even if it hits us, we're not even taking any damage (and can even spend FP to deal damage back to them - 2d8+4 at this level, or that same 13 damage).
Now, let's throw around some shenanigans:
Let's say we're a Warrior of the Hand. When we Flurry of Blows, if we hit, we can force a Dex save against the target or they fall prone.
We might need to rearrange our action economy a little - luckily, though, Flurry of Blows no longer requires us to have taken the attack action. So we'll now start off with a Flurry of Blows, using the first Unarmed Attack as an actual hit (which I think you need to do to activate Open Hand Technique) and then use the Topple option. Hopefully with their -1 to Dex and your DC at this level of 16, they'll fail. Now, you use your second Unarmed Strike to grapple them (in this case they do get to use their Strength save, so +4 versus a 16 DC - still favors you, but more of a toss-up) and now you have your movement and action to start dragging that fool.
Now, obviously, the real thing you want to do is push them off a cliff. Or into a pool of acid or a river of lava. Maybe you want to kick them off your airship?
Your Shove Unarmed Strike can now also use your Dexterity to set its DC.
So, with your high movement speed, you can grab that enemy, pull them right over to the edge of your ship, and then use your next unarmed strike to shove them.
In 2014's version of the Monk, there are a lot of reasons why I think you're well-advised to continue using a weapon for your main attack action. But with the addition of the Wraps (first seen in the Book of Many Things) and these changes to how grappling works, I really think that Monks are going to be phenomenal at this kind of thing.
And the best part? Even if your arms are both being used to grapple, you can still make Unarmed Strikes! You can headbutt, kick, knee them, use your tail if you're a species that has one of those.
Frankly, while I did play a Monk a fair amount around 2019 when I was doing Adventurer's League, I'm really tempted to play another one when the new PHB comes out.
No comments:
Post a Comment