MoI clarification

[GutterFace]

If anyone can lend a hand that would be swell.

for Totem binds in the MoI:

Kruthik claws say in the totem bind section you specifically have 2(two) claws that you use to attack.

is this 2 claw attacks PER round, or you do have 2 claws to attack with and each claw attack would be a separate attack>

Secondly:

Sphinx claws don't say anywhere that you get 2 claws, it just keeps using the verbiage "claws"...plural indicating that there are more than 1. does anyone know if you do get 2?

i have a DM that's a stickler for the black and white and im trying to clear this up!

[Answerer]

Anyone who is a stickler for the black and white shouldn't be playing 3.5. It's neither consistent nor particularly well-edited, and even when they say what they mean what they mean is frequently a bad idea. Just saying.

Anyway, Totemists gain Natural Attacks, which have their own (sort of vague and complicated) rules. The Kruthik Claws totem bind simply gives you two natural Claw attacks, which function exactly like any other claws.

Main rules:
Anyone with a natural attack is considered armed, for the purposes of threatening.

One natural attack can be used just like a manufactured weapon to make a single attack, e.g. during a standard action attack or an attack of opportunity.

Full-attack actions are different. One natural weapon (or pair of natural weapons) is primary, and attacks once at your full BAB. The rest are secondary, and each also attacks once, but at your full BAB-5. The penalties are not cumulative as with iteratives, but none of the natural attacks get iteratives. As a result, your BAB doesn't affect how many natural attacks you get, only your actual number of natural attacks does.

Gaining a natural attack does not necessarily give you the limb to use it. If you have only two arms, and you gain a third Claw attack, you can't use three Claw attacks in one full-attack. The third Claw attack replaces one of the previous two (assuming it's better than they were). Similarly, most humanoids are only going to be able to use one Bite, one Slam (two if they're large enough to slam with an arm), one Gore, two Wing Buffets, etc. Tentacles are generally assumed to be limitless.

Girallon Arms explicitly gives you more limbs. If you started with two, you now have four, and four Claw attacks. If you started with more or fewer arms than two, what happens is not well-defined by the book.

Natural attacks may be mixed with manufactured weapon attacks. Any claws on the hand(s) wielding the weapon may not be used as natural attacks at the same time, however. The manufactured weapon gains the normal iteratives on a full-attack, and then all remaining natural attacks can be made, but as secondary (the manufactured weapon effectively counts as your primary one).

How natural attacks interact with effects like haste or Whirling Frenzy that grant bonus attacks is unclear to me. You can certainly take those attacks with a manufactured weapon if you're mixing the two, but if you use only natural attacks I'm not sure how they're supposed to work.

As for Sphinx Claws, Magic of Incarnum merely says that your hands become claws. It seems that you would gain as many Claw attacks as you have hands. No, it's not terribly clear, but it is there – in the italics section that most people skim over. But sometimes Magic of Incarnum inserts actual mechanical stuff into those italics sections, which is really just unwise but they do.

[GutterFace]

This was super helpful. thank you!