Stranglehold

You have trained yourself to render unaware opponents unconscious by applying pressure to major arteries.

• Increase your Strength score by 1, to a maximum of 20.
• When you use your attack action to grapple an unaware creature instead you can make a special grapple check, a stranglehold check. The target of your stranglehold must be no more than one size larger than you and must be within your reach. Using at least one free arm and one empty opposing hand, you try to seize the target around the neck by making a stranglehold check instead of an attack roll: a Strength (Athletics) check contested by the target's Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check (the target chooses the ability to use). Succeed on the stranglehold check and you subject the target to the grappled condition and it gains these changes:
  • Until this stranglehold ends, the target is restrained.
  • If the check is a critical hit, the target also can’t breathe or speak until the stranglehold ends.
    • Taken from suffocating: the creature can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can't regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
  • If the target fails to escape your stranglehold, then at the end of their turn they must make a Constitution Save versus 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Strength modifier or be rendered unconscious.
    • If you continue the stranglehold past unconsciousness (taken from suffocating again): the creature can survive for a number of rounds equal to its Constitution modifier (minimum of 1 round). At the start of its next turn, it drops to 0 hit points and is dying, and it can't regain hit points or be stabilized until it can breathe again.
  • You can also choose to end a stranglehold (no action required) or reduce it to a normal grapple and lose all of the benefits above of being a stranglehold.
  • Whatever can end the grappled condition can also end a stranglehold.
  • This special grapple attack has no effect on undead, creatures that lack a functional/recognizable circulatory system or have no neck.