I've yet to see a clarified 'outline' of how this ability works. I've checked errata and FAQ, and found references to it, but they've been relatively vague, at least to me.
In the PHB, under grab, it says that the attacker must succeed at a melee touch attack...
Here's how I viewed this, and I will use 'Lord of the Iron Fortress' created monster, the Steel Predator.
I envisioned it as the attacker(predator) biting down with his jaws, raking with his rear legs, then letting go.. I haven't been using grapple checks in my game because it made sense, to me, that it wouldn't need it, as it wasn't trying to hold on.
I have a player that is arguing this point, and he raises some valid concerns. He compared the rake ability to the rend ability on dire apes, girallons, and trolls... Those don't require any kind of check.
So I guess my opinion is now swaying towards giving the monster a grapple check, though that renders half of these creatures virtually useless. The steel predator doesn't do much damage as it is, and this would mean even less. Not overly frightening for my party of 15th level characters.. And 2 CR13 critters should pose some threat.
So that gets to my question:
How exactly does Improved Grab work?
In the PHB, under grab, it says that the attacker must succeed at a melee touch attack...
Here's how I viewed this, and I will use 'Lord of the Iron Fortress' created monster, the Steel Predator.
I envisioned it as the attacker(predator) biting down with his jaws, raking with his rear legs, then letting go.. I haven't been using grapple checks in my game because it made sense, to me, that it wouldn't need it, as it wasn't trying to hold on.
I have a player that is arguing this point, and he raises some valid concerns. He compared the rake ability to the rend ability on dire apes, girallons, and trolls... Those don't require any kind of check.
So I guess my opinion is now swaying towards giving the monster a grapple check, though that renders half of these creatures virtually useless. The steel predator doesn't do much damage as it is, and this would mean even less. Not overly frightening for my party of 15th level characters.. And 2 CR13 critters should pose some threat.
So that gets to my question:
How exactly does Improved Grab work?
