You’ve developed the skills necessary to hold your own in close-quarters grappling. You gain the following benefits:
- Whenever you successfully grapple a creature, you can choose to deal your Strength modifier in bludgeoning damage to it.
- You can choose to deal your Strength modifier in bludgeoning damage to a creature grappled by you instead of making a weapon attack as part of the attack action. To do so does not require an attack roll.
- When a creature misses you with a melee weapon attack you can use your reaction to attempt to grapple the creature if you have a free hand to do so.
The original grappler feat has two very large flaws: The ability to pin a creature is mechanically worse than shoving a creature you have grappled prone, and the third point of the feat did nothing as it referenced a rule that was removed before publication.
Bot of those are pretty big flaws, and the final point was rather bland, though fairly strong. This revision seeks to make the grappler feel like a master of grappling. The ability to deal direct damage with the characters strength is used to represent squeezing, or even choking, which can’t be prevented if the creature has a hand around you already
You can use variant rules for this which could reduce the strength damage done based on the level of armor worn (0 for light, 1 less for medium, 2 less for heavy). However, the damage of this feat will likely never be more dangerous than a heroes sword or spell.