Lizzy,
The grooves were introduced by Mauser as an upgrade and these grooved pins (or vented pins as we tend to call them) can simply be swapped with no problems.
The vents help agains damaged breech blocks when a pierced primer forces gases backwards. The vents help to relieve the pressure and therefore it's advisable to exchange non-vented firing pins for vented ones when shooting Lugers.
I've swapped quite a number of them around between Mausers and DWMs without problems.
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