Similar to the this question, I've been trying to find a balanced way to improve the effectiveness of the whip. Instead of a feat, however, this homebrew feature is a Fighting Style. As such, the trade-offs and balancing criteria are somewhat modified. The feature is as follows:
Whip Specialist Fighting Style: You gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls you make with a whip.
Additionally, when you hit a creature that is Large or smaller in size with a whip, instead of dealing damage you can choose to grapple the target (escape DC 8 + your proficiency bonus + Dexterity or Strength modifier) and you can pull the target 5 feet closer to you. While the target is grappled in this way, you cannot attack with the whip.
The following classes have access to this Fighting Style: Paladin, Fighter, Ranger.
Does this seem balanced? Specifically, would a whip user want to take this Fighting Style over the Duelist Fighting Style?
Here's a general list of considerations for this feature:
- Most whip users opt towards the Duelist Fighting style, as the +2 bonus to damage rolls helps mitigate the low base damage of the whip (1d4).
- The whip is a finesse (Dexterity-based) weapon, while grappling is normally a Strength (Athletics) based attack. This opens up the possibility of a Dexterity-based grappler.
- The grapple is uncontested, meaning that the whip user simply needs to beat the target's AC. The flip side of this is that escape DC is also uncontested, meaning that the target need only beat the escape DC.
- Unlike normal grappling, however, a whip grappler cannot attack with the whip while they are grappling a target, so they sacrifice damage for utility, unless they choose to attack with whatever they are holding in their free hand. This means that if they want to attack a grappled target, they must give up a "hand slot" to wield another weapon, instead of, say, a shield.
- The pull only works on the initial hit. Perhaps, instead, it should require a bonus action that can be used any turn? I've also considered adding the option of instead tripping the target, making them fall prone.
- Thematic: this fighting style invokes imagery of Indiana Jones, a suave, whip-wielder that uses his weapon to trip and capture his opponents.
Best Answer
Grappling from a distance is inherently broken
A whip has a range of 10 feet because of its reach property. You're suggesting that hitting with this weapon will enable you to initiate a grapple instantly, which has a DC of at least 10, and that is at level 1 and a 10 in your dominant stat, a very unlikely scenario. Let's assume instead that you went for 16 in one stat, a pretty reasonable level 1 character, for a DC of 13.
Now put this level 1 character against an Ogre, by themselves. Their AC is pretty easy to hit, you're going to be hitting on a 6+. At this point, you can either deal damage, or decide that you feel like completely ruining their day and that they're stuck outside of melee combat. Why would you ever want to pull them closer at this point?
The Ogre is stuck outside of melee range and it has to use its action to break free, with 45% chance (it needs a 9+) that it fails and wastes a turn doing nothing. This problem gets exponentially worse at higher levels, because very few monsters have skill checks that help them escape grapples.
You give characters the ability to completely lock down a melee-only creature's ability to do anything useful with their action on the next turn, you shut down their ability to use the Dodge action (because they no longer have a speed), you lock them in place until they escape, and all it costs is a fighting style and a single instance of damage.
And we haven't even tried to exploit it yet!
Let's assume we're a variant human. We'll take the Dual Wielder feat. We can now dual-wield whips, meaning we're able to grapple two creatures at the same time, at a range, without having to expose ourselves to attacks in melee range.
If you're a Battlemaster, you can use Lunging Attack to grapple somebody from 15 feet away, outside of the reach of other enemies with reach! If you combine an attack with Menacing Attack (this may be a world first where menacing attack is actually useful), they will have to break out of your grapple at disadvantage until the end of your next turn, and even if they do break free, they can't actually come closer to you that turn, so they can't do anything to prevent you from grappling them again from a safe distance next round.
Grappling is incredibly effective at keeping enemies in place and you've just made it far easier to do so without putting yourself in a risky position.