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View Full Version : [PF] PCs with natural attacks, how do you maximize the number of attacks in a round?



harpy
2010-02-07, 04:13 PM
So you end up being able to play a PC with natural attacks (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/rules-for-monsters/universal-monster-rules#TOC-Natural-Attacks), say three of them (claw, claw, bite) and you want to figure out how to optimize their use.

First, you want to make sure you're DM will let you use the multiattack feat out of the Bestiary. This will drop secondary attacks down from -5 to hit to -2 to hit. That will end up being important if you use manufactured weapons.

Also, in general, you'll want to consider using the Improved Natural Attack feat to up the damage die on one type of natural attack.

Now for the tough part, how to stack these natural attacks on top of the regular attacks you get for being a character.

In 3.5, if you dug around in the FAQ long enough, you'd find that you could stack monk's flurry of blows with natural attacks. That allowed for some 1st level monster PCs to start off with four to seven attacks. The to hit rolls were awful, but dang... that handful of dice was a lot of fun to roll.

You can't do this in Pathfinder as they specifically plugged that hole in the flurry of blows (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/basic-classes/monk#TOC-Flurry-of-Blows-Ex-) entry, saying natural attacks can't be used in conjunction with a flurry.

What about being a Druid? Well, you won't get a gonzo amount of attacks at first level, but do your natural attacks in some bizarre way mesh with wild shape later on? No, unfortunately not. In the polymorph description (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic#TOC-Transmutation) while at first it reads encouragingly vague, by the end of the entry you find that your original natural attacks go away.

Alright, what about two-weapon fighting? You grab two weapons and then try and bite your opponent on top of that. Here you can actually pull that off, but with some penalties. First, all of your natural attacks drop down to secondary status if you use manufactured weapons, regardless of their normal status. So you're looking at -5 to hit (or -2 if you have multiattack).

Second, it really depends on the types of natural attacks you have. For each natural attack you have to have the limb free to use in the attack. If you have the rather typical claw/claw/bite then only your bite is going to be free with two-weapon fighting. So claws, one of the most common natural attacks, is something to avoid if you want to stack all of these attacks together. Bite, gore, tail, wings, hooves... these are all pretty good. A slam attack might be good if it can mean a kick or body check, though I haven't been able to track down its specific definition in Pathfinder.

Third, this is a good point, is that natural attacks always count as light so that these extra attacks won't muck up your two-weapon fighting modifiers.

The end result would be at first level (assuming a fighter type):

-1 longsword (+1 BAB and -2 TWF), -1 shortsword (+1 BAB and -2 TWF), and -6 Bite (+1 BAB, -2 TWF, -5 secondary).

What about iterative attacks? Yes! It works! So once you get to the magical +6/+1 BAB you can bust out several attacks. If you go back to the claw/claw/bite you'll find it isn't totally useless because of the claws. The iterative attacks you use as a normal character can all be used with one weapon, so if you have a long sword you can take your +6/+1 attacks with the longsword. In addition you can take one claw (with your free hand) and the bite. Even better, they use your full BAB score of +6!

So you end up with an attack array of +6 longsword, +1 longsword, +1 claw (+6 BAB -5 for being temporarily secondary) and +1 bite +6 BAB -5 for being temporarily secondary).

It should be noted that you can do this at level 1 with just your one attack you get. It just isn't that flashy at that level, since it would be +1 longsword, -4 claw, -4 bite.

It looks as if Paizo was able to plug up that loophole from 3.5 and now you can roll over low level games with zillions of attacks, at least without making PC monster races filled with non arm based natural attacks.

Did I miss anything?

TheOOB
2010-02-07, 04:38 PM
Flurry of blows doesn't work with natural attacks, pathfinder just clarified that point. Flurry of blows works with unarmed attacks and attacks with monk weapons. Natural attacks are armed attacks, ergo, to synnergy.

That said, you can use unarmed attacks and then use your natural attacks as secondary attacks. With multiattack a werewolf monk could get 5 attacks, two unarmed, two claws, and a bite, all at -2 penalty.

As I belive you mentioned, the same werewolf using a longsword as a fighter could get all the attacks with the longsword a fighter would get, plus an additional claw and bite attack(one claw is occupied by the sword naturally).