brain fart: two-weapon (and multiweapon) fighting

[Stycotl]

so, i'm contemplating some game mechanics here.

too lazy to actually look up the rules in order to support my ideas, so feel free to correct me, but there are a number of abnormalities.

1–creature has a natural weapon. it can only take a single attack/round with that natural weapon, even if it has 40 hit dice and an uber base attack bonus.

2–creature has three different natural weapons. it can only take a single attack/round with each natural weapon, again, ignoring its bab.

3–creature has a three natural weapons–and a sword. it can now take a full base attack bonus worth of attacks with the sword... and then adds its three natural attacks (one each), as secondary attacks.

why not just say that the creature can designate its primary natural weapon to gain a full bab worth of attacks, and then add all of the secondaries as normal, single attacks?

i don't see how that would be game-breaking. granted, it would make a decent number of monsters tougher, but other monsters can already do that, so long as they have an opposable thumb and can wield a manufactured weapon.

two-weapon/multiweapon fighting should replace multiattack then, as primary weapon would get full bab, and *all* secondaries, whether natural or otherwise, would get a single attack (or more with improved, greater, advanced versions of the feat).

the only snafu here is that secondary natural weapons take a -5 mod, while secondary weapons used in the two-weapon fighting methods take a -10 penalty, AND give a -6 penalty to the primary weapon. so we'd have to streamline these two different methods of multiattack into one.

aaaaand, this is where this thread would end up going to the homebrew forum. but first i wanted to make sure i'm looking at this correctly, without having to drive home and crack my book.

or going to the srd apparently...

aaron out.

[NEO|Phyte]

why not just say that the creature can designate its primary natural weapon to gain a full bab worth of attacks, and then add all of the secondaries as normal, single attacks?

i don't see how that would be game-breaking. granted, it would make a decent number of monsters tougher, but other monsters can already do that, so long as they have an opposable thumb and can wield a manufactured weapon.

Hello, I am a Thri-kreen, I have four primary natural weapons. As long as I use those instead of weapons, I effectively have Perfect MWF (an Epic feat), only without that pesky -2 to attack, once my BAB hits +16.

[Stycotl]

nope, because that was why i was saying that you would have to designate one of them as a primary; all others become secondary.

so, four claw attacks becomes one primary claw attack that is allowed full bab progression, plus three secondary claw attacks.

same as if the creature wielded one weapon in its primary claw, and then used its others as secondaries.

so again, i don't see why they didn't do this in the first place. natural attacks are generally weaker than manufactured weapons anyway; they usually do less damage for their size, and are harder to enchant and augment.

aaron out.