[3.5] Natural Claws, Arms of Plenty, and Girallon's Blessing

[Maginomicon]

1. Has anyone ever heard of a creature that has a claw (or set of claws) that's treated as primary AND another claw (or set of claws) that's treated as secondary?

2. Shouldn't the extra claw arms from Arms of Plenty (Lords of Madness page 209) be treated as secondary natural weapons if a manufactured weapon is used in any of the arms (original or new) ? (RE: "Since the claws are primary attacks, you can attack with them in addition to making your weapon attacks without penalty." which violates the normal rules for natural weapons IIRC)

3. Does Girallon's Blessing (Spell Compendium page 106) stack with itself? (It doesn't say it doesn't, but Arms of Plenty explicitly doesn't stack with itself)

4. Shouldn't Girallon's Blessing let you add manufactured weapons to the attack routine as normal for natural weapons? (RE: "A creature cannot use normal weapons and the claw attacks in the same round" which violates the normal rules for natural weapons IIRC unless it's saying the claws can't hold a weapon AND attack as a claw)

5. A Thri-kreen has 4 claws and a bite with the 4 claws treated as primary. What's the full attack routine (list of attack bonuses) of a thri-kreen with both girallon's blessing and arms of plenty affecting it? (Assume the creature has BAB +0 and STRmod +0 and no manufactured weapons are used)

6. Does the fact that the thri-kreen treats its claw attacks as primary affect whether other claws added to it are also primary? (This is why I asked whether anyone's heard of a creature that has two claws of different categories.)

7. It seems to me like the text of Arms of Plenty and the text of Girallon's Blessing are each trying to explain the complexities of the natural weapons rules in only a few sentences and each fail in their own way. What's your take on the RAI of those two spells?

[Jeff the Green]

2. It should, but in this case I think specific trumps general and you get to attack with them at no penalty even while wielding a manufactured weapon too.

3. No. Spells don't stack with themselves. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicOverview/castingSpells.htm#stackingEffects)

5. I think Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Claw +0/Bite -5. This (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#naturalWeapons) says that a set of natural weapons (by which I think it means "all natural weapons of a particular kind") can be primary weapons.

6. I think so, yes.

[Devronq]

2. IT also specifically says in the spell that these extra arms cannot use weapons, so they cant use manufactured weapons

[Jeff the Green]

2. IT also specifically says in the spell that these extra arms cannot use weapons, so they cant use manufactured weapons

Irrelevant, because you probably have arms capable of wielding weapons to begin with. You'd wield e.g. a greatsword in your normal hands and strike with your claws at the same time, for +0/+0/+0.

Incidentally, Maginomicon, you shouldn't post links to D&DTools. It's copyright infringement, and forum rules frown on posting links to infringing sites. Just use the name of the spell and the book, and people can look it up on their own.

[Maginomicon]

<snip>Fixed. :smallsmile:

[Darrin]

1. Has anyone ever heard of a creature that has a claw (or set of claws) that's treated as primary AND another claw (or set of claws) that's treated as secondary?


The best example I can think of would be binding the Lamia Belt soulmeld to your Totem chakra while you already have a primary claw attack. Both the Lamia Belt claws are restricted to secondary attacks.

As for monsters in print... I can't recall any off the top of my head.



2. Shouldn't the extra claw arms from Arms of Plenty (Lords of Madness page 209) be treated as secondary natural weapons if a manufactured weapon is used in any of the arms (original or new) ? (RE: "Since the claws are primary attacks, you can attack with them in addition to making your weapon attacks without penalty." which violates the normal rules for natural weapons IIRC)


There are two ways to interpret this.

A) This a poorly-worded reminder of the rules on page 311 of the Monster Manual:

"Some creatures combine attacks with natural and manufactured weapons when they make a full attack. When they do so, the manufactured weapon attack is considered the primary attack unless the creature’s description indicates otherwise (using the manufactured weapon consumes most of the creature’s attention), and any natural weapons the creature also uses are considered secondary natural attacks. These secondary attacks do not interfere with the primary attack as attacking with an off-hand weapon does, but they take the usual –5 penalty (or –2 with the Multiattack feat) for such attacks, even if the natural weapon used is normally the creature’s primary natural weapon."

What arms of plenty is trying to say is the claws become secondary attacks, and thus there is no penalty on your manufactured weapon attacks, which are now primary. But unfortunately, the way they worded it, it sounds like the claws are still primary attacks along with your manufactured weapon attacks. Essentially, the "without penalty" phrase is supposed to only apply to the "weapon attacks", while the claw attacks get the -5 penalty that all such primary attacks get when they become secondary attacks.

B) The second interpretation is that the designers really did intend to give you additional primary claw attacks without any penalty along with your iterative manufactured weapon attacks. This would be a rather unusual spell effect (I'm not aware of any other spell or ability that does this)... but for a 3rd level spell, it's not really game-breaking, so why not?

(However, based on my research, Option A is the most likely. Most, if not all, of the designers were really shaky on the whole natural weapon/manufactured weapon stuff.)



3. Does Girallon's Blessing (Spell Compendium page 106) stack with itself? (It doesn't say it doesn't, but Arms of Plenty explicitly doesn't stack with itself)


As others have stated, no, the same spell effect won't stack. If you cast it twice, you'd get a longer spell duration, but that's it. Even if it did stack, the spell sets the number of "claw attacks = 4", rather than "# of current arms + 2".

You could, however, stack girallon's blessing with arms of plenty, but only if you cast them in that order (otherwise the "claw attacks = 4" kicks in after you get six arms). In that case, it's not clear if you get two or four primary claw attacks... but I think the best I can do by RAW is the rules for Natural Weapons on page 312 says this:

"When a creature has more than one natural weapon, one of them (or sometimes a pair or set of them) is the primary weapon. All the creature’s remaining natural weapons are secondary."

Since arms of plenty gives you two primaries, and this appears to be the maximum unless any specific effect says otherwise, then it looks like the two primary claws from girallon's blessing become secondary as per the MM rules.



4. Shouldn't Girallon's Blessing let you add manufactured weapons to the attack routine as normal for natural weapons? (RE: "A creature cannot use normal weapons and the claw attacks in the same round" which violates the normal rules for natural weapons IIRC unless it's saying the claws can't hold a weapon AND attack as a claw)


The general rule is that some creatures can mix manufactured weapons with natural attacks, but this is "specific trumps general". In this case, if you attack with the claws, you cannot mix in manufactured weapons, period. Claws of the beast (XPH) has similar wording.

The rule you're referring to, where if you attack with a manufactured weapon held in a claw, you can't attack with the claw that round, doesn't actually exist, at least not in print, although it's heavily implied by the stat blocks in the MMs. Even if you assume this rule exists and should be followed (and if you care anything about common sense it should), even then the way the restriction is worded in girallon's blessing is too broad to be so specific. If you want to get iterative attacks and still get your full complement of claw attacks, then use Improved Unarmed Strike.



5. A Thri-kreen has 4 claws and a bite with the 4 claws treated as primary. What's the full attack routine (list of attack bonuses) of a thri-kreen with both girallon's blessing and arms of plenty affecting it? (Assume the creature has BAB +0 and STRmod +0 and no manufactured weapons are used)


If girallon's blessing was cast first, you get 8 arms but only 6 claw attacks: 2 primary, 4 secondary:

claw 0/claw 0/claw -5/claw -5/claw -5/claw -5

You're "wasting" two arms because girallon's blessing sets "claw attacks = 4" (which the thri-kreen already had), and then arms of plenty added two more. The two "extra" arms could carry a shield or other items, but if they tried to attack with manufactured weapons, you'd lose the 4 claw attacks from girallon's blessing but keep the two from arms of plenty as secondary claw attacks.

6. Does the fact that the thri-kreen treats its claw attacks as primary affect whether other claws added to it are also primary? (This is why I asked whether anyone's heard of a creature that has two claws of different categories.)



7. It seems to me like the text of Arms of Plenty and the text of Girallon's Blessing are each trying to explain the complexities of the natural weapons rules in only a few sentences and each fail in their own way. What's your take on the RAI of those two spells?

RAI on girallon's blessing, they were "fixing" the older version from Savage Species, which required a Will save DC 19 to use the arms/claws in combat. This is a stupid restriction, and doesn't make much sense to a spellcaster who can already use alter self, polymorph, or wild shape into a variety of non-humanoid forms. As far as the restriction on manufactured weapons, that seems to be following whatever the reasoning was behind claws of the beast, but I can't tell if the designers were trying to avoid something they felt was overpowered, or trying to simplify things to steer the players away from some of the more confusing and obtuse rules on mixing manufactured/natural weapons. My gut says it was probably concerns about being overpowered (standard WotC policy = "Melee Can't Have Nice Things", AKA "MCHNT"), although it could have been a mix of both.

As far as arms of plenty, it appears to be a simpler fix for girallon's blessing, where the designers said "F*** it, I want to use my claws and my weapons!" and went with the rule of cool. If they could have done a better job clarifying that "manufactured weapons = primary and claws = secondary", it would be a much simpler, much cooler version of girallon's blessing that is easier to understand and more fun to use. The "taboo" against mixing manufactured with natural weapons may have been dropped very late in 3.5, possibly as the designers realized that their policy of "Melee Can't Have Nice Things" was really hurting the game. Incarnum, grafts, and Tome of Battle all appear to be in the spirit of "fixes for melee", but WotC was very slow to come around to this idea, it wasn't universally embraced, and the sourcebook support was either nonexistent or extremely spotty.