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The playtest grapple rules look good at first, but closer inspect reveals that they have some exploitable issues. Before anyone comments that these are "assumed rules", don't bother, that is not the point, this is a playtest, we should be working to make the rules as clear as possible now, not argue about "assumed rules" before the actual rulebook drops.
Wording Issue: Grappling has the requirement of having a free hand. This is fine, however, at no point does it say anywhere that grappling someone uses up that free hand leading to strange situations where you are grabbing someone with apparently no listed appendage.
Working under these rules and the fact that the grappling penalty does not end until the end of the grapplers next turn, the grappler could grapple 3 people with a single hand, or no hands/limbs, then proceed to literally whoop them with multiple attacks next turn with whatever they want to, and then let them go with no downside other than the MAP.
Solution: Grappling requires a free hand and under success and critical success add the line "this takes up the free hand required to grapple".
Gameplay Issue: Grappling does not reduce the offensive capabilities of an opponent, it only hampers their ability to use actions with the "manipulate" tag. Because of this, a character can go up and grapple an opponent, then get his arm cut off by the guy swinging his greataxe at him with no penalty while he is apparently "grabbed".
Solution:Having the grabbed condition also gives them a -2 attack penalty on top of the -2 AC penalty
I agree.
Your wording addition is good for clarity - ie that if you are grabbing someone you lose a 'free hand'. You could see that being interesting for creatures with lots of arms, or for example, a grappling octopus.
The grabbed condition granting no conditional penalty to attack is an issue, your -2 to attack seems ok. Alternatively change the wording of the grabbed condition to the following:
GRABBED (condition): If you attempt a manipulate action, activity, attack action, free action, or reaction while grabbed, you must succeed at a DC 5 flat check or it is lost
It's possible that this is already RAI, and that the word 'activity' under grabbed applies to all actions that could be seen as activities, which includes attack actions. But i don' think it was intended that way. It's a bit tricky I've been finding to work out in some situations whether something is an activity or an action.
I see one other issue with the Grapple too. Right now the only way to go from 'grabbed' to 'restrained' is with a critical success with your grapple attempt. Which is often going to be numerically impossible without a natural 20. There probably should be some way to go from grabbed to restrained that doesn't rely on that. For example, as in PF 1 where you could succeed with a second grapple attempt to make someone 'pinned'.
A fix might be to say that if you succeed in putting the Grabbed condition on someone who is already grabbed, they become Restrained. Either that or you grant a significant conditional bonus (Ie +4) to grappling someone who is already grabbed, making the chance of a critical success on the second grapple higher (Ie the chance of 'restrained' instead of 'grabbed').
And something interesting: since grappling delivers the grabbed condition, and when you are grabbed you are flat footed, we can expect the standard rogue attack to be:
Action 1 > Grapple
Action 2 > Attack w. sneak attack (since the opponent is now flat footed).
Rogues are going to get very grabby!
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The problem with being able to choose to restrain someone in 2e is that my experience from 1e is that grapple was extremely overpowered in a lot of situations. For example, big bad is a caster without freedom of movement and you pinned them because you're a martial and they aren't? Game over for the big bad.
I definitely read the current grabbed condition as only penalizing actions, activities, attack actions, free actions, and reactions with the manipulate tag, but it could mean the other way around in which case, this is an ok penalty, but a DC 5 flat check doesn't seem like much of a downside to me.