One of the six Pugilist Subclasses, the Squared Circle, is all about bringing grappling and groundwork to D&D.
The Pugilist, available now on D&D Beyond, is a class that packs a punch. But it also offers up an archetype that many people feel has been a little lacking in D&D 5.5E – the Grappler. In older editions, you’d often find a surprising amount of mileage out of a character built around the idea of wrestling enemies to the ground, pinning them down, and keeping them from fighting effectively while the rest of the party gangs up on them.
Or if you’re less teamwork-focused, a grappler might just be capable of locking down enemies, moving them around, and throwing them off a cliff or whatever. In older editions, there were plenty of feats and features that could help you wrestle even Ogres or Giants and come out on top. Now, grappling is a lot simpler – but that’s only because nobody has done much with it. Enter the Pugilist’s Squared Circle Subclass.
The Squared Circle
This is a subclass all about grappling. And again, just a caveat (for the emptor in this case) this is third-party material. It’s not WotC official. It may not be balanced the way you want for your games – but that’s kind of why I’m talking through them, so that folks can get an idea if this is something they want to add to their game. I think there’s a lot to be gained from 3rd Party and Homebrew stuff, be it, classes, subclasses, spells, monsters, magic items, or whatever.
Back to the Squared Circle though. As the name suggests, this kind of takes a lot of cues from modern fighting where it’s all about who can get on the ground and gain control of their opponent first. As the subclass stats “the fastest way to win a fight is to force a submission.”
To that end, you get some powerful grappling abilities starting right at level 3. Your first big feature is Groundwork. This gives the subclass a lot of its identity and paints the picture of what this subclass does in pretty broad strokes. You gain three abilities – whenever you start your turn with at least one creature grappled you can deal damage to them; whenever someone tries to escape a grapple, you can spend a Moxie to give them Disadvantage, and whenever you hit someone with an Unarmed Strike and aren’t using a weapon mastery, you can both grapple them and shove them, meaning you can knock them prone.
Your other big feature is Muscle Mass, and it’s basically just a ribbon feature. You gain Expertise in Acrobatics or Athletics if you’re proficient with them. It’s nice, but I feel like this is a holdover – being good at Athletics doesn’t actually increase your ability to be better at Grappling anymore.
And Grappling is what you’re going to be doing. If you want to get the features of this subclass, you’re gonna be punching people and then grappling them and hopefully knocking them prone. Because if they’re prone and restrained, they can’t stand up, which makes all sorts of interesting combat options.
I think it still kind of speaks to the systemic difficulties with grappling just being a saving throw now. But, the higher levels of the subclass give you extra things to do on top of that.
Grappling At Higher Levels For Fun And Profit
At level 6, Meat Shield opens up some interesting opportunities for you. Whenever you have a creature Grappled, you use them as a shield. This is surprisingly literal, because you get half cover for grappling someone which gives you a +2 to AC, the same benefit as a shield. Though half cover also improves your Dex saves. Which I dunno if that makes sense because if I’m holding someone I feel like I’m going to be worse at Dex, but even if it’s a little gamey, it’s still cool.
Especially since you can also spend a Reaction and a Moxie Point to have an attack that misses target the creature instead. It’s a little clunky of a mechanic – I can see why the designer wouldn’t want it to be a feature that lets you just force an attack to target whoever you’re grappling instead, that would be like Shield but better, and Shield is already overtuned. There’d be all sorts of restrictions. Instead your enemy has to make a new attack roll against the creature you’re grappling.
At level 11, Heavyweight gives you a feature that honestly should probably come online a little earlier. But it’s one that the subclass needs regardless of when it comes online. Whenever you grapple or shove someone, you count as being one size larger. And you don’t have to spend extra movement to move a grappled creature of your size or smaller (so up to a Large creature you can now toss around the battlefield).
Finally at level 17, Clean Finish brings the “submission” into the play. You get the ability to try and incapacitate a creature you have grappled. You can use a Reaction to force a creature to make a save or be Incapacitated (which is the ‘you can’t take actions or concentrate or speak’ condition). And if the creature is bloodied and has already been incapacitated by this feature, you can drop them to 0 hit points. Now, you can only reduce a creature to 0 hit points once per long rest and when you do, you can’t keep Incapacitating them anymore. But it does let you take someone out of the fight. Though by the time you get this feature to trigger, you’ve probably won already anyway.
And that’s the Squared Circle – check it out and the rest of the Pugilist at the link below!
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