Warped Constriction & Grasp of the Deep Interaction

Question

In PF2E, there is an Archetype called Living Vessel, and one of the features you can pick up is listed as the following:

Warped Constriction

The entity inhabiting your body is an aberrant being with unfathomable motivations, and when you hold a foe close, tendrils and tentacles unfurl from your body to crush your foe and pollute it with alien wrongness. Your grabbed or restrained foe takes bludgeoning damage equal to your level and mental damage equal to your highest mental ability modifier. The creature attempts a basic Will save that applies to both types of damage and uses the higher of your class DC or spell DC.

Now, there also exists a spell:

Grasp of the Deep

You grip one target with the phantasmal pressure of the deep sea, disorienting and crushing its lungs and joints. The target takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage and other effects, depending on its Will saving throw.

Critical Success The creature is unaffected.
Success The target takes half damage.
Failure The target takes half damage, and feels as though it's being crushed. The target becomes grabbed and takes 6d6 bludgeoning damage; it can attempt to Escape with an Escape DC equal to your spell DC.
Critical Failure As failure, but the target takes double damage.

Is it possible to activate the effect of the feature Warped Constriction while a character has a target grabbed with the effect of the spell Grasp of the Deep to deal damage to the target?

Answer 1

As written, I would say yes, grasp of the deep triggers Warped Constriction, but I’d also argue that doesn’t mean much.

Ultimately, “your grabbed or restricted foe” is just a poor choice of wording. Nothing says you have to be doing the grabbing or restricting—as written, someone else could grab or restrict your foe, and you’d deal this damage. There isn’t even a range restriction. So yes, grasp of the deep could trigger this, along with tons and tons of other things that almost-certainly aren’t supposed to be able to.

Assuming the GM injects some context here—that “constrict” abilities damage targets as you grab or restrict them, that the description of Warped Constriction indicates they’re coming from your body, that applying a damage bonus to actions other characters take is usually something that gets called out explicitly—it becomes a lot less clear that grasp of the deep works. Your ally grabbing a foe pretty clearly should not; grasp of the deep could go either way.

You’ll therefore have to ask your GM.

Answer 2

No, Warped Constriction would not modify spells

There is a significant difference between you having a foe grabbed or restrained and a foe gaining the grabbed condition in other ways. Based on both the description of Warped Constriction

when you hold a foe close, tendrils and tentacles unfurl from your body to crush your foe and pollute it with alien wrongness.

and the context of the cause/effect

Your grabbed or restrained foe takes bludgeoning damage equal to your level and mental damage equal to your highest mental ability modifier.

compared with the text of the Grapple action makes the intent of the ability pretty clear.

But what about RAW?

The spell grasp of the deep is the source of the grabbed condition. It's an effect of the spell, not directly tied to you. I will grant that you're the source of the spell (so there is a certain bit of transitive property going on), but ultimately it's not you causing the grabbed condition. Key differences include the fact that your opponent cannot attack you if you're not otherwise in their range and the fact that you can move.