Iterative Strike Problem

[CAHaugen]

A question was raised in our game. When you have multiple Iterative BABs, does a "Full Attack" actually have to be multiple strikes?

Let's say you have 15/10/5, and you use a Full Attack. Is there anything that says you must actually do three strikes or can you preform things such as Disarm Attempts, Trip Attempts, and other such things?

I know the majority of these are considered Move Actions, not Standard Actions. There are Feats however that allow these to become Standard Actions. However, since it is a Full Attack this shouldn't matter; As long as you don't take more than your allowed 5'-step you should be fine.

So, with the right Feats, can you use Disarm / Trip / Feint / Grapple / Bull Rush / Sunder in a Full Attack?

We are curious because we have a character who is a Monk and with his Flurry of Blows he is wondering if he can trip his opponent and strike them while they are down, disarm them so they can't really fight back, or even use Feint to remove their Dexterity Bonus so their AC is lower.

[Phelix-Mu]

I'm not clear on the RAW, but this is something a monk should be able to do. The wizard can bind demons. The monk should be good at knocking people over, knocking away blades, and otherwise being impressive in combat.

Unless you are playing in a very unoptimized setting, there will be very few problems with allowing it to work in the way you are suggesting (and it might even already work that way...I think at least one of the combat maneuvers is started by an attack roll, and I think it can be any attack roll, but I'm not sure).

[Slipperychicken]

You can make most of those maneuvers in place of an attack, wherever it says "in place of an attack". So your monk could make 3 attacks, or make 2 attacks+ 1 trip attempt, or 1 attack + 1 trip attempt +1 disarm attempt, or even 3 disarm attempts in a row.

Bull Rushes, however, normally can only be performed as part of a charge, and Grappling is a standard action. Feinting is a move action, and IIRC can't be taken in place of an attack. Sunder, Trip, and Disarm can be made as part of a full-attack, however.

[The_Snark]

Look at the special attacks (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/specialAttacks.htm) section. Some of these actions require a standard action, in which case they are not compatible with a full attack; others say "as a melee attack, you may..." in which case you may include them as part of a full attack (or an attack of opportunity, or any other time you get an attack).

A list of which special attack actions contain this clause:
Aid Another: no
Bull Rush: no
Disarm: yes
Feint: no
Grapple: yes
Sunder: yes
Trip: yes

So your monk can mix disarm attempts, grapples, sunder attempts, and tripping into his full attacks. No feinting or bull rushing, though.


I know the majority of these are considered Move Actions, not Standard Actions. There are Feats however that allow these to become Standard Actions. However, since it is a Full Attack this shouldn't matter; As long as you don't take more than your allowed 5'-step you should be fine.

I'm not sure what you mean by this; none of these are considered move actions, and a feat to convert from Move to Standard would be useless because standard actions can already be used in place of move actions...

[Big Fau]

Bull Rushes, however, normally can only be performed as part of a charge, and Grappling is a standard action.

Bull Rushes can be performed as part of any attack that you use Power Attack on if you have the Knockback feat (RoS), and you're wrong about grappling. It isn't your fault for being wrong about grappling, but you can grapple instead of making any melee attack.

[Nirhael]

I'm not sure if I can directly quote the PHB, but on page 96 where you have Improved Trip, there's an example involving Tordek using multiple trip attempts with +11/+6/+1.

[Zharradan Marr]

A question was raised in our game. When you have multiple Iterative BABs, does a "Full Attack" actually have to be multiple strikes?

Let's say you have 15/10/5, and you use a Full Attack. Is there anything that says you must actually do three strikes or can you preform things such as Disarm Attempts, Trip Attempts, and other such things?

I know the majority of these are considered Move Actions, not Standard Actions. There are Feats however that allow these to become Standard Actions. However, since it is a Full Attack this shouldn't matter; As long as you don't take more than your allowed 5'-step you should be fine.

So, with the right Feats, can you use Disarm / Trip / Feint / Grapple / Bull Rush / Sunder in a Full Attack?

We are curious because we have a character who is a Monk and with his Flurry of Blows he is wondering if he can trip his opponent and strike them while they are down, disarm them so they can't really fight back, or even use Feint to remove their Dexterity Bonus so their AC is lower.
- Disarm is done "As a melee attack". So you can replace any attack with a disarm attempt. You can, for example, disarm your opponent using the first iterative, then attack him for damage using the other two. Or attempt to disarm him twice, if the first attempt failed... etc.

- Trip is also done "As an unarmed melee attack"; as above, whenever you could make an unarmed melee attack (or an attack with a tripping weapon, such as Spiked Chain), you can substitute it for a trip attempt.

- Feinting is a Standard Action, so you can't really make additional attacks after you feint. If you have the Improved Feint feat, you can feint as a move action, which means you can make one attack after feinting (but not a full attack).

- Grappling: "If you get multiple attacks, you can attempt to start a grapple multiple times" - seems pretty straightforward.

- Bull Rush: "You can make a bull rush as a standard action (an attack) or as part of a charge" - also seems quite straightforward - only one Bull Rush, regardless of how many attacks you get.

- Sunder: "You can use a melee attack with a slashing or bludgeoning weapon to strike a weapon or shield ..." - once again, you can Sunder as many times as you have attacks.

In summary: Sunder, Grapple, Trip and Disarm are all attack actions. You can do as many of those, in any combination, as you have attacks.
Bull Rush and Feint can normally only be done once per round.

[Slipperychicken]

It isn't your fault for being wrong about grappling, but you can grapple instead of making any melee attack.

I confused it with the Pathfinder version, where it actually is a standard action.