Knock-down, Drag-out: A Rune Knight Grappler build for 5e
Grappling, on the surface, seems like a relatively weak alternative to simply attacking. We can replace one attack from our attack action with a grapple attempt, where we make a contested Athletics Strength check (both roll a D20, add proficiency and modifier, winner is the highest result), and if we win that contest, the target is grappled.
We also can’t grapple creatures who are more than one size larger than us, normally meaning huge and larger creatures are off the table. Once a creature is grappled, it’s speed is reduced to 0, and it can break free by attempting another Athletics contest with their action, or using some form of forced movement to push themselves or us away, or teleport. Note that if you manage to grapple a flying creature, they fall to the ground, taking damage and landing prone.
A final, somewhat hidden feature that is criminally underused is the ability to move the creature we have grappled with our movement. When we do this, we move both ourselves and the enemy, and we move at half speed. This gives us almost unparalleled control and precision over our enemy’s position on the battlefield, allowing us to put them exactly where we want them without costing us any actions. Combine this with damaging AoEs and ways to improve our speed and you’ve got a build that both works well on its own and compliments the other spellcasters in your party. Let’s see how far we can push this concept.
Race: Centaur
With the old Aarakocra now out of print and unavailable at the majority of tables (and for good reason), the Centaur is the new king of movement speed. 40ft is ten more than most races bestow, and importantly, gives us 20ft when grappling. A race with 35ft like Wood Elf would round down to 15ft when grappling, effectively making it no different than a 30ft speed. Charge will occasionally give us a bonus action attack with our hooves, and our hooves themselves give us a means to attack when our hands are full of creatures that we’ve grappled. Both the Loxodon and Simic Hybrid also have means of assisting our grappling efforts, but for this specific build I want the extra movement speed.
Also, playing a Centaur has some inherent advantages. For one, we are fey, meaning we are unaffected by “Person” spells like Hold Person, and some other fringe effects from both monsters and spells that only target humanoids. Just don’t put in your backstory that you are native to the Feywild or anything, because then Banishment is going to be a real problem for you. Additionally, a small race can ride on us, and there are tons of fun stuff that you can pull off when two player characters are coordinating like that. That’s beyond the scope of this build, as I can’t count on any of your friends playing a small race, but maybe talk to them at character creation and see what fun stuff you can come up with.
Starting Stats:
17/13/14/8/11/13 (+2 to Strength and +1 to Constitution from race)
We take a 17 Strength as it is our main stat, 13 Dexterity for a multiclass, 14 Constitution for HP, dump Intelligence, 11 Wisdom to be rounded up for saving throws, and 13 Charisma for a multiclass.
Level 1-5: Rune Knight Fighter
There’s a lot to love about the Rune Knight, especially for a grapple build. The biggest reason (literally) is Giant Might, which allows us to grow to large size, giving us advantage on our grapple checks, extra damage, and the ability to grapple huge creatures. This means we can grapple the majority of monsters in the game, and do it very consistently thanks to our advantage. Also note that this feature does allow a medium sized party member to use us as a mount, and I’ll leave it up to you as to what to do with that information. We also get two runes at this level.
Runes:
Cloud: This gives us advantage on Sleight of Hand and Deception checks, along with a reaction to redirect an attack that would hit us or our allies to another target. This is a great defensive option that is best saved for crits. For example, I had a phase spider crit a player in a game I DM’d for, and it was going to deal over 60 damage and outright kill the ranger player. Instead, the Fighter redirected that attack to one of the other spiders, killing that spider in a single hit. You may think stuff like that won’t happen often, but you’d be surprised.
Stone: This rune gives us 120ft darkvision, which is notably absent from our race, and a different reaction which we can use to charm a creature that ends its turn near us, reducing their speed to 0, giving us yet another means of locking down a creature.
There’s an argument for taking the Frost rune, as this allows us to use a bonus action to get +2 to Strength and Constitution checks, which would increase our chances of successfully grappling. The reason I didn’t take this is twofold. For one, we already have advantage on the check, and proficiency in Athletics, and we will be gaining more ways to boost that check as we level up. Also, it takes a bonus action to set up, and growing to large size already uses our bonus action, along with other bonus action options we will be getting later, so I really don’t want to clutter that up anymore than we already will be doing.
Our basic strategy for these early levels isn’t the strongest, but with some help from friends we could be a menace on the battlefield. Take your pick of weapons, but probably keep a good variety on hand. A two handed weapon for when we can’t grapple our opponent for whatever reason, and a one handed weapon for when we can grapple. Oftentimes we will be grappling two creatures, meaning we won’t have any weapons in our hands, and we will be making attacks with our hooves. Action Surge will be very helpful, allowing us to grapple and make a series of attacks on the same turn, or attempt to grapple again if we failed on our first try.
Don’t forget that once we get extra attack at level 5, we only need to use one of those attacks to grapple. What we do with that second attack is interesting. We could attempt to grapple another creature if we have one available, or shove our grappled foe prone. This is an especially useful effective combo, as the prone creature is still grappled and thus cannot stand up as it has 0 movement. In a melee heavy party this could be a death sentence, giving us an our allies advantage on our attacks and forcing disadvantage on attacks from our grappled enemy. This also boosts our defense, and since we will be in melee for most of combat, that’s a big plus.
Feat: Heavy Armor Master
We need a +1 to our Strength, as the majority of our build hinges on that stat, but our options for good strength boosting feats are limited. In the end, I decided to go for the defensive option. -3 damage from nonmagical physical attacks might not sound like a lot, but it will add up over the course of a campaign. We will be spending our time in melee, and our hands don’t have room to hold a shield, so to neglect our defenses any further would make this character very frail. Don’t be too concerned about the whole “nonmagical damage” part of this, you’ll find that even at high levels, magical weapon attacks are quite uncommon. Mostly only boss monsters have magical attacks.
Now the question becomes when to grapple. Obviously, the best instance is when there are areas on the battlefield that you’d like to move your enemies towards, such as cliffs, spell effects, fire, etc. We don’t currently have the means to produce these examples on our own, so these next levels will help in that regard. That being said, if your party is regularly providing great instances to take advantage of grapple and drag, such as a Cleric with Spirit Guardians or a Druid with Spike Growth, you may want to skip these next few levels and just skip to the next step instead. Of course, I can’t rely on that when creating this build, so I’ll assume we need to do everything ourselves.
Level 6-8: Rune Knight Fighter 5, Dao Genie Warlock 3
Spells:
Cantrips: Pick your Favorites
1st level: Pick your Favorites
2nd level: Spike Growth
Pact Boon: Chain
Eldritch Invocations:
I don’t particularly care about any spells on this list except for Spike Growth. This spell creates a large area of difficult terrain, and any creature that moves through the area (even if forced) takes 2d4 damage for every 5ft they are moved. That’s an average of 5 damage per 5ft, which also happens to make the math super easy! Our goal is to drag our enemy (or enemies ideally) around the perimeter of the spell’s area, keeping ourselves outside of it and dragging our foes face through the spikes like how Ridley did to Samus in that one Smash Bros Brawl cutscene.
With our movement speed of 40ft, we can drag our enemies 20ft each round, dealing 20 damage just by moving. Thanks to Action Surge, we can cast the spell, surge, then grapple and drag all on the same turn! Don’t forget that dashing is also an option, and if a friend of ours wants to get crazy and cast Haste on us (a rare example of when I believe that Haste is actually worth casting), we’re really off the the races then.
We go Dao Genie in order to get this spell, as I find it the best way to grab it for this character. Going 5 levels of Ranger would take too long and stretch our scores to thinly, and Druid has the whole metal armor restriction thing that I just can’t be bothered to deal with. We also get some other goodies from these levels. Eldritch Mind helps us keep concentration on Spike Growth, and Misty Visions has tons of utility both in and out of combat. Note that it does require concentration, but that’s fine as we will often want Silent Image outside of combat and Spike Growth inside.
Take your pick of Chain Pact familiars, but the Imp will always be my pick. At will invisibility, unassuming polymorph forms, a powerful attack, good hp and resistances, and flight. Make sure to have your Genie Vessel be a ring, as wearing it counts as holding it for the purposes of Genie’s Wrath, granting us extra bludgeoning damage once per turn when we hit with an attack and leaving our hands free to grapple. Bottled Respite is a really interesting little feature, giving us basically a free Bag of Holding that we can access once per day, and even spend time in there ourselves. A very easy stealth and infiltration technique is to go inside your ring, then have your imp familiar go invisible and carry the ring, allowing you to go basically anywhere and be almost completely undetected.
Level 9-11: Rune Knight Fighter 5, Dao Genie Warlock 3, Scout Rogue 3
We go Rogue here mostly for Cunning Action allowing us to dash as a bonus action, giving us even more movement to hurt our enemies with. We do get sneak attack, but we won’t be taking advantage of it most of the time. I suppose you could attack with a rapier, so there’s that at least. We also get Expertise, and we will obviously be putting that towards our Athletics, basically guaranteeing we succeed at our grapple checks from this point onwards. We choose Scout for its Skirmisher feature, as it allows us to use our reaction to move half our speed when an enemy ends its turn within 5ft of us. Since we will be grappling foes, this should be happening every turn. That’s an extra 10ft of dragging through Spike Growth every turn, even more if we can increase our speed. This brings our total speed we can move while dragging up to 30ft with just our movement an reaction, 50ft if we can spare a bonus action, 70ft if we can dash with our action, and 90ft if we dash with both actions from Action Surge, our bonus action, and use our reaction to move. That’s 90 damage to potentially two creatures, no save, no attack roll.
Level 12: Rune Knight Fighter 5, Dao Genie Warlock 3, Scout Rogue 3, Divine Soul Sorcerer 1
Spells:
Cantrips: Pick your Favorites
1st level: Longstrider, Bless, Absorb Elements
We’re mostly here for Longstrider, as the additional 10ft of movement speed will translate to a lot of total damage. Try to cast it before combat, which shouldn’t be hard thanks to its 1 hour duration. Bless is a great option for when we can’t execute our strategy for whatever reason, and Absorb Elements will help defend us against big instances of elemental damage like dragon breath attacks.
I choose Divine Soul specifically because it gives us Favor of the Gods, a feature that yes, can be used to boost our grapple checks, but would be much more responsibly used to boost saving throws.
Level 13-14: Rune Knight Fighter 5, Dao Genie Warlock 4, Scout Rogue 4, Divine Soul Sorcerer 1
You’ll notice that we took two levels in classes we had 3 levels in, allowing us to get two feats back-to-back. That’s really the only reason I wanted these two levels, the classes themselves aren’t giving us much here.
Feat: Resilient (Wisdom)
We cannot afford to neglect our Wisdom saves any longer. Taking this rounds us up to a new modifier and gives us a big boost to our chance to save. This plus Favor of the Gods will make us quite consistent at most saving throws.
Feat: Mobile
We are only here for the movement speed increase. The other bullet points may come up rarely, but 10ft of speed is enough for me to take this alone. With this and Longstrider, we have a 60ft speed, and can drag 30ft when grappling. Let’s run the math again.
Dragging our foe through Spike Growth, that’s 30 damage for just using our movement, 45 damage by using our reaction, 75 if we dash with a bonus action, 105 if we dash with our action, and 135 damage if we use Action Surge and dash with all possible actions. For fun, let’s throw Haste on top. We get double speed, so the math is easy. Just double the damage, then add one additional dash from the spell which is also doubled in speed. That’s a potential 330 damage to up to two creatures, no attack, no save. It’s all magical piercing damage from the spell, and basically nothing resists that. That’s half of the total HP of the Tarrasque. Enough said.
Further Levels:
At this point, the build has reached a point I’m happy with. We have quite a few options for where to go from here. We could take more Fighter levels for more feats, runes, and even a 3rd attack at level 20. Alternatively, you can go 3 more Warlock levels to gain temporary, concentration free flight, allowing us to bring down flying enemies with our grapples. Going Rogue the rest of the way would give us a 10ft speed increase at character level 20, but I don’t think that’s worth it, as we aren’t getting much else from Rogue. More Sorcerer levels are also dubious, as our spell save DC isn’t high enough to cast spells that require it. I definitely could see taking a few levels though to grab Shield and some more slots to cast it with, as that would be a great improvement to our defense.
Weaknesses of the Build:
I won’t deny that this build has some shortcomings, namely against creatures that are immune to the grappled condition. Thankfully, only 123/2624 printed monsters are immune to being grappled, so that won’t come up very often. Teleporting creatures aren’t actually a big concern, as we can do enough damage though our combo on our turn that we really don’t care if they escape on theirs, assuming they actually lived of course.
If you find flying creatures to be common in your campaign, rushing to Warlock 6 might be more necessary, but at least we do have an option. Gargantuan sized creatures, while rare, do exist, but a simple Enlarge spell cast from an ally onto us will bring us to huge size, allowing us to grapple even the largest monsters in the game. Essentially, as long as every enemy on the field isn’t immune to the grappled condition, we have a way to put the hurting on them, so I would feel confident to bring this build to just about any campaign.
Final Thoughts:
Grappling is often seen as weak or useless by many players, and I’m sorry, but that’s just flat out wrong. Grappling is bad in situations where you have no plan on what you’re going to do after you grapple, but the same could be said about anything. Calling grappling bad just because you don’t have a plan for what to do with it is the same as calling Fireball bad because you can cast it on an empty room. Yeah, Fireballing an empty room is a waste, but no one is doing that! I hope I’ve shown how grappling with a plan can be incredibly strong, and this definitely isn’t the only build that can make use of it. Experiment with grappling, and you’ll find tons of awesome uses for it!
Check out Prince Phantom on Twitch!
Thank you for visiting!
If you’d like to support this ongoing project, you can do so by buying my books, getting some sweet C&C merch, or joining my Patreon.
The text on this page is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.
‘d20 System’ and the ‘d20 System’ logo are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast, Inc.
and are used according to the terms of the d20 System License version 6.0.
A copy of this License can be found at www.wizards.com/d20.
