When your grappling can you benefit from flanking or inspire courage? Do those contribute to beat your enemies Fort save?
Short answer is no but yes but no.
Strictly speaking nobody 'benefits' from flanking in terms of a bonus to their own attacks. Rather if you are flanking an opponent, that opponent is Flat-Footed to you, which is a -2 circumstance penalty to AC. You can take advantage of this regardless whether you are currently affected by the Grabbed condition, however a flat-footed target does not take a penalty against your Grapple actions.
On the other hand, if you are currently grabbing a creature which you are also flanking, note that Grabbed and Flat-footed both apply the same penalty to AC, meaning there is no additional advantage to doing both at the same time.
Finally, Inspire Courage applies a +1 status bonus to all attack rolls. The Grapple action, like the Strike action, carries the Attack trait, meaning your Athletics check DOES gain a +1 if you are benefiting from Courage. However, this bonus doesn't apply to the DC that the opponent needs to roll against when they try to Escape your Grab.
I think that covers it.
(I have to admit I expected Inspire Courage not to give a bonus to grapple checks, because I was still thinking of them as a skill check and not an attack roll)
Thank you. So if you are trying to Grapple a monster that you have flanked it doesn't matter since it only affects the enemies AC and not their Fort Save. What I would need to do essentially is frighten my opponent in order to lower there fort save.
Thank you. So if you are trying to Grapple a monster that you have flanked it doesn't matter since it only affects the enemies AC and not their Fort Save. What I would need to do essentially is frighten my opponent in order to lower there fort save.
Or use one of the feats that lets you auto grapple on a successful strike.