So with the amount of monsters with Grab as an automatic action on a hit one of the suggested ancestry feats I've seen highly recommend is the Halfling ancestry feat "Unfettered Halfling".
Unfettered Halfling
You were forced into service as a laborer, either pressed into indentured servitude or shackled by the evils of slavery, but you’ve since escaped and have trained to ensure you’ll never be caught again. Whenever you roll a success on a check to Escape or a saving throw against an effect that would impose the grabbed or restrained condition on you, you get a critical success instead. Whenever a creature rolls a failure on a check to Grapple you, they get a critical failure instead. If a creature uses the Grab ability on you, it must succeed at an Athletics check to grab you instead of automatically grabbing you.
I'm interested in this athletics check to grab you. Is it doesn't actually state what the DC is. Is like like a grapple where it's via Fort DC? I assume it doesn't have the the grapples 4 degrees of success otherwise you are opening yourself up to getting restrained.
That's how I would rule it anyway. It's verse Fort DC & it's only pass/fail no crib success or failure options. Is this how everyone else reads it?
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There's basically two questions here.
1. What is the DC of the Athletics Check?
I would personally interpret it as Fort DC as normal for Grapple. We have nothing to work with here, and it has to be something, so Fort DC is naturally the closest thing we have.
2. Is it just Fail/Success, or are there 4 degrees of success like Crit Fail/Fail/Success/Crit Success?
I personally feel, since Grab doesn't work like Grapple, that it's just a Fail/Success type of deal and not the 4 degrees of success. (I feel it's also kinda silly for a Halfling with this ability to be able to get Critically Grappled as a result of it, and it is equally as silly for the Halfling to be able to trip something that is grabbing on a bite or something due to a Crit Fail (Which, with the other part of the ability, would be also on a Fail))
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My opinion is that there are no rules for rolling an athletics check to grab. Because we have no rules for it specifically, I think we should use the rules of the closest/most similar action, which would be a grapple check.
I can definitely see the check just being a binary athletics check vs a fort DC in the future or with clarification, but I'm currently going to use a rule set we already have to resolve this occurrence. I hope we get an FAQ or something about it though!
Side note: I really love this feat because I hate "automatic abilities" like grab. I at least want the creature to roll!
