I stumbled upon this and couldn’t find any definite answers.
The Escape action states that you can use Athletics, Acrobatics, or your unarmed attack modifier. However, it specifically says that you use your modifier and not an actual attack. While fists have the Finesse trait, the regular attack does not - so am I correct in assuming that if you have a higher Dex than Str, that you can only use Dex with acrobatics, not with the unarmed attack modifier?
I think the reason they added this is because some creatures are untrained in both athletics and acrobatics, and defensive actions should always scale with level. Just a theory tho
That makes sense, but it still feels like a hack, either because the original idea was to let people who haven’t invested in STR or DEX skills just remain tied up (which is thematically coherent, but it’s a major feel-bad for the player), or it was an oversight.
Whatever the cause, it sure is kind of clunky.