[3.5] Feat for Small-ish Grapplers

[Telonius]

Undersized Wrestling

Benefit: When in a Grapple with a creature 1 size category (or more) larger than yourself, you can use your Escape Artist check in place of any Grapple check (including starting and maintaining a Grapple). Since this is a skill check, not a Grapple check, the normal size penalty (or bonus) to grapple does not apply. The bonus from Improved Grapple now applies to your Escape Artist check.

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, Improved Grapple, 8 ranks of Escape Artist


What do you think?

[Telonius]

Bump. Too much? Not enough? Too meh? I think this could give a lot more usability for certain classes (looking at you, Monk) and concepts (small grapplers). But I'm not sure how open to abuse it would be.

Also thinking of making it available as one of the Monk feats at 6th.

[Debihuman]

Undersized Wrestling

Benefit: When in a Grapple with a creature 1 size category (or more) larger than yourself, you can use your Escape Artist check in place of any Grapple check (including starting and maintaining a Grapple). Since this is a skill check, not a Grapple check, the normal size penalty (or bonus) to grapple does not apply. The bonus from Improved Grapple now applies to your Escape Artist check.

Prerequisites: Dexterity 13, Improved Grapple, 8 ranks of Escape Artist


What do you think?

Might be too good. It seems counter-intuitive to use Escape Artist to start or maintain a grapple though using it to get out of grapple makes sense.

The problem ultimately become one of Strength vs. Dexterity. Wait until a warband of pixies has this feat....

Debby

[Telonius]

Might be too good. It seems counter-intuitive to use Escape Artist to start or maintain a grapple though using it to get out of grapple makes sense.

The problem ultimately become one of Strength vs. Dexterity. Wait until a warband of pixies has this feat....

Debby

I'm imagining something like this would be the result.

It is a bit counter-intuitive, but it would allow a lot of smaller creatures to grapple a larger one, without having to resort to the Swarm template. I'm hesitant to make it just a flat "increase to effective size" bonus, since that would probably end up as a smaller number (only 4 per size category you want it to increase). Keying it off Escape Artist means the character still has to invest a bit more resources in it, just not jump through all kinds of cheesy magical hoops like the usual size increase method does. I'm imagining this as a special combat style that takes some amount of effort to perfect.