Submitted by: Johnathon Wilson
Complaining about grappling has been a D&D meme before memes were memeing. It used to involve at minimum four steps, with the grappled target getting to make an attack of opportunity when the grapple was initiated, and with different DC’s depending on creature sizes and successive grapple attempts.
In Fifth Edition, the grappler and grappled make a contested check (Athletics to grapple, and Athletics or Acrobatics to avoid), and that’s it. When a target is grappled their speed becomes 0, so they can’t move away unless they break the grapple, which takes a whole Action to do. That’s pretty simple and contextually powerful, especially since actually making the grapple check only requires a single Attack out of an Attack Action.
Jumping on the other hand is…..less simple. For starters you’ve got your long jump and your high jump, and then different modifiers depending on whether you’re standing still or if you moved at least 10 feet on foot before you jump. For a long jump, you can jump your strength SCORE if you take a ten foot lead up, and half that distance if you’re standing still. So a character with maxed out strength (at least without magical assistance) can jump 20 feet with a run, and 10 feet standing still. This is all without making any check (at least Rules as Written, your DM may want some kind of check depending on if it’s a clean jump or landing space), but every foot you jump costs you a foot of movement. A high jump uses the same principle of the ten foot pre-move, with total distance jump halved from a standstill. The difference is that you can only jump 3 + your strength MODIFIER feet for a high jump, so a max of 8 for even the strongest (again without magical buffing) character, and 4 feet if you’re standing still. Granted, this is supposed to be the distance your feet are travelling, as chapter 8 of the Players Handbook states that you can “…reach above you a distance equal to the height of the jump plus 1 ½ times your height”. So the highest a 6’4, max strength Goliath could reach is…17’6 feet? That’s honestly a lot higher than I thought it would be, but we’re just going to use the base jumping figure for consistency. With that in mind the 8 foot running high jump (3 + Strength modifier of 5 (from having 20 Strength)) is actually pretty solid seeing as the high jump world record is 2.45 m (8 ft ¼ in), set by Javier Sotomayor in 1993. That being said, BOOOOOOOOOOO. That’s nowhere near a high enough or long enough jump for my tastes, and fortunately I’ve found a solution that should surprise no one. Tony the Tiger.
As we all know, Tony the Tiger is a Barbarian. I really don’t feel any need to explain this so we’re just going to move on. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, a D&D 5E official supplement released in November of 2020 contains a wonderful new subclass for the Barbarian class, Path of the Beast. For the uninitiated, Barbarians in D&D are absurdly tough warriors that are designed to absorb damage so your pretty boy sorcerer doesn’t have to. Through the mystical power of getting super pissed off, Barbarians can enter a Rage which allows them to reduce incoming damage from weapons (specifically Bludgeoning, Slashing, and Piercing damage), and do more damage with their own weapons. For Tony, the most important part of that Frosted Flake fueled fury is the very first clause that gives you “…advantage on Strength checks”. But I’m getting ahead of myself, if you want to make Tony the Tiger you’re going to want to start with the Tabaxi race, D&D’s resident cat-people. Tabaxi’s come with a whole host of excellent features like darkvison, built in additional damage on unarmed strikes, a climbing speed, and Feline Agility. Feline Agility is really what we’re here for, as it allows you double your speed once per turn when you move, and then recharges once you don’t use any movement on your turn.
After getting Tabaxi set, you can use the standard point array or roll for your stats, as long as you prioritize Strength. Fortunately, Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything added an optional rule that allows players to allocate their stat increases however they want, instead of being beholden to the stats listed for the specific race. While it's been a controversial option, it's fantasatic for our purposes because it allows us to use the Standard Array (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8), and apply the +2 that Tabaxi usually get to Dexterity to Strength, and the +1 to Charisma to whatever else. I'd recommend bumping the 13 to a 14 for either Dexterity or Constitution, as you want both for a Barbarian, but that's not the focus of this build, the focus is jumping goddamn it.
The Path of the Beast gives Tony some great options, and is specifically designed to emulate a character with a powerful beastial spirit in them. At level 3, Tony gains the ability to grow natural weapons when he enters a Rage, the most notable of which for our purposes are the claws. This option lets you make a melee weapon attack with the claws for 1d6+ Strength modifier, and whenever you use the Attack Action to do so, you can make one additional attack with your claws. At level 4, we want to take the Skill Expert feat, another wonderful addition by Tasha. This feat gives you a +1 to an ability score of your choice (round up Strength to 18 for a +4 modifier), proficiency with a skill of your choice, and expertise in a skill you are proficient in. Expertise is usually something only seen in Bards and Rogues, that allows you to double your proficiency bonus for said skill. This allows for huge flat bonuses to certain skills, and is going to allow Tony to jump and grapple like a superhero. With the +1 to Strength, and expertise in Athletics, Tony's Athletics bonus goes up to +8 at level 4. At level 5, Tony gains the Extra Attack feature, and proficiency bonus increases to 3. This gives Tony a +10 bonus to Athletics checks, and when his claws are active he can now make an attack with his claws, a grapple check, and then another attack, all on the same turn.
Level 6 is where Tony really comes online, as the level 6 benefit of The Path of the Beast lets Tony choose a passive buff everytime he finishes a rest. This can either be the ability to climb like a spider, swim and breath underwater, or JUMP. I feel like our option is clear here. The jumping option allows you to, once per turn, make an Athletics check and extend your jump by that amount. At this point Tony has a +10 to Athletics, and advantage on Strength checks while raging, which is exactly what Athletics is. What does this give us? An average standing high jump of 23 feet (3 + 10 + 10 (average d20 roll)), an average standing long jump of 29 feet (9 (1/2 of strength score) + 10 + 10), an averge running high jump of 27 feet, and an average running long jump of 39 feet. By this point Barbarians have 40 feet of movement speed, which is even further supplemented by Feline Agility. Being able to double that to 80 feet allows Tony to pull of some wild stunts, like grappling an enemy spellcaster and then jumping away to take them to Tony's House of Pain.
“Jump around!”
Dragging a grappled creature halves the movement speed of the grappler, so being able to increase that speed through Feline Agility will actually let you make some moves that otherwise wouldn't have been possible. Isoating an enemy damage dealer is helpful, but it can also be helpful to pull an enemy healer into your team to lay the hurt on them. OR if you have a conveniently placed cliff or gap, you can always jump over it and just...let go. The grappling rules state that you can end a grapple with no action required, which means you can pretty easily yeet an enemy to their death if the fall is long enough. This capacity combined with the Path of the Beast free claw attack allows Tony to leverage grappling and jumping extremely well, maintain solid damage, and to get things done quickly. In a single turn at level 6 Tony can: Rage as a bonus action, make 2 claw attacks for 1d6 + 6 (+2 damage from Rage), a grapple check (with advantage from Rage and +10 from Athletics), and then jump away with his prey almost 30 feet straight up or horizontally. That's accounting for the halved movement speed from grappling, and the 10 foot lead up needed for a running long/high jump. As proficiency bonus scales up, so will Tony's overall jumping distance due to the bonus he'll receive to Athletics, increasing to +17 by level 17 ((+6 proficiency bonus) x2 +5 Strength bonus)), and up to +19 at level 20 thanks to the Barbarian capstone feature.
Woe to those who dare to whisper that Frosted Flakes are anything short of gr-r-r-r-r-reat, because if Tony finds out, you damn sure won't be able to get away.
If you haven’t seen #tonyisback, do yourself a favor.
