I've built a Barbarian that uses Spiked Armor as a Grapple Monkey, and was looking at Hamatula Strike. Relevant feats I've taken include (Improved Grapple, Greater Grapple, and of course Rapid Grapple is on my list for later).
Question: When attacking with armor spikes as a primary attack, it would trigger Hamatula Strike for a free grapple (assuming a succeed on the attack), which would then trigger the free damage of armor spikes on any successful grapple check (assuming I succeed on the grapple), as well as place me in a grapple with my target? Am I missing anything or making a mistake anywhere?
Relevant Rules:
Armor Spikes deal extra piercing damage (see “spiked armor” on Table: Weapons) on a successful grapple attack.
Hamatula Strike feat text
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I wanted to make a character that focused on Hamatula Strike and the part of it that I got hung up on was:
While the opponent is impaled, as an attack action you may make a grapple check on your turn at a -4 penalty to damage the opponent with your weapon, even if your weapon cannot normally be used in a grapple.
Does this mean that it's not like a typical grapple and you don't actually "maintain" the grapple, but instead have to use your "standard action" to attack in order to deal damage?
It doesn't really make sense with the "as an attack action" wordage in the Hamatula Strike feat. I fear that you can't use Rapid Grappler, nor Greater Grapple with it. I'd prefer to be wrong, but I actually haven't made the character for PFS because I don't want to have to deal with table variation.
While the opponent is impaled, as an attack action you may make a grapple check on your turn at a -4 penalty to damage the opponent with your weapon, even if your weapon cannot normally be used in a grapple.
I would not agree. This feat seems like it was designed for longer/larger weapons to be usable in a grapple (go ahead, grapple with a Lucern Hammer, or that crazy Dwarven Warpike) which is normally impossible. It specifies that you may choose as an attack action make a grapple check to deal damage with the impaling weapon. Once they are impaled, I'd think that the only time you would be limited to the "impaled" attack is if you are using a weapon that cannot normally be used during a grapple. If this is not the case, you could just use the RAW grapple rules now that the grapple has been established.
The other case for using the "impaled" attack is if you have Hamatula Grasp and wanted the bonus 1d6 damage that that feat grants, with a -2 penalty on attack, which could be worth it since it's damage would be counted as a part of the original attack and could help punch through DR.