How should I handle 4 arms?

[D20ragon]

One of my players is a Vedalken, of mtg. (I'm running a Mirrodin game.)
And thusly, I am wondering how to handle 4 arms. What's the RAW for this?
Is there any homebrew that works better?
I know you qualify for multiattack and such, but it seems like there would be other benefits or penalties.

[Segev]

I would suggest looking at the Girallon and the Demon (Marilith) entries; they have special abilities pertaining to their possession of multiple arms.

[docnessuno]

The RAW?
A character with 4 (functional) arms can use all of them as he please, following the normal rules.
He can pick up the multiweapon-fighting line instead of the two-weapon fighting one.

And that's all.

As a side note, you might also want to check the Sahuagin (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/sahuagin.htm) race, wich has a 4-armed variant. (And note that said variant ECL is 1 higher than the one of the base monster).

[Psyren]

Pathfinder's race builder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races) has a "multi-armed" trait that can help you specify how it works. You could build Vedalken or any other 4-armed race pretty easily with it.

(Also, note that normal Vedalken actually only have 2 arms - the 4 armed ones were mutated by Memnarch's constant tinkering with Mirrodin's ecosystem. You can see what Vedalken actually look like in Ravnica.)

[D20ragon]

Thanks!
(Also, I do know that the Vedalken aren't normally 4 armed.)

[Doc_Maynot]

The Diopsid from Dragon Magazine Compendium also have 4 arms.

[grarrrg]

Pathfinder's race builder (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races) has a "multi-armed" trait that can help you specify how it works. You could build Vedalken or any other 4-armed race pretty easily with it.

WOW!
Growing _one_ extra arm is worth _FOUR_ RP?
What the heck?
And unlike some of the other "upgrade options" it still costs _FOUR_ to get another extra arm!

[D20ragon]

WOW!
Growing _one_ extra arm is worth _FOUR_ RP?
What the heck?
And unlike some of the other "upgrade options" it still costs _FOUR_ to get another extra arm!

Yeah, and the benefits aren't even that great. The feat tax to effectively 2,3,or 4 hand fight is absurd.

[Psyren]

Considering that their own 4-armed race (Kasatha) have 20 RP and are still considered "LA 0" it's not that big a deal, you've still got plenty of room to play with. Kasatha don't even have any ability score negatives either, and they still get more traits on top of that.

[grarrrg]

Yeah, and the benefits aren't even that great. The feat tax to effectively 2,3,or 4 hand fight is absurd.

:smallconfused:
As far as I as aware, the feat tax got arguably better.
Two-Weapon Fighting requires 15 DEX.
Multi-Weapon Fighting requires 13 DEX.

Most shenanigans with Two-Weapon work fine with Multi-Weapon.

The only drawback I see is that there is no "Improved Multi-Weapon" feat, so you can't tack on extra attacks all that easy. Then again, all of your extra attacks are only at -2 To-Hit.

[docnessuno]

Considering that their own 4-armed race (Kasatha) have 20 RP and are still considered "LA 0" it's not that big a deal, you've still got plenty of room to play with. Kasatha don't even have any ability score negatives either, and they still get more traits on top of that.

Possibly because LA doesn't exist in Pathfinder.

[Segev]

Considering that their own 4-armed race (Kasatha) have 20 RP and are still considered "LA 0" it's not that big a deal, you've still got plenty of room to play with. Kasatha don't even have any ability score negatives either, and they still get more traits on top of that.

The RP-build system has a fundamental flaw in that PF decided that there wasn't any LA to be associated with it. In fact, if you have a 20 RP race in a party with a bunch of 3 RP people - for instance, 3 3 RP races and 1 20 RP race - then the average party level is the only thing that needs adjusting, so you should face CRs as if your APL were adjusted for being a party full of 7 RP races.

Which penalizes the low-RP characters with harder encounters and no greater rewards.

They really need something to tweak specific individuals who have disproportionate RP races to make their RP system connect meaningfully with the rest of the PF system.

[Psyren]

Possibly because LA doesn't exist in Pathfinder.

Right, but the general idea is for parties to consist of races within the same ballpark, abilities-wise, and then for challenges to be tailored to that party. The points system gives DMs a metric for facilitating that cohesion. For example, if one PC wants to play a Gargoyle (36 RP), while another wants to play a Dwarf (11 RP), the points are a shorthand to let the DM know that the Gargoyle PC is going to have significant advantages before class is taken into account (e.g. 50ft. flight, +3 AC, monstrous humanoid type, and DR 10/magic.) The DM then has several options available to address the gap - reinstating LA via the old Bestiary method, trimming some abilities from the Gargoyle PC, or just saying that the Dwarf is a "paragon" and granting him additional points to spend on racials, among others.

I brought up Kasatha specifically because they are a 4-armed race introduced in ARG that was rereleased in Bestiary 4 and specifically called out as an acceptable player option. This suggests that 4-armed races in general, and 20 RP races in particular, have some "breathing room" as far as being allowed as player races, even though the Kasatha's point value puts it at the very top end of the "Advanced category." Giving them a -2 somewhere or removing another trait would deal with even that ambiguity.


The RP-build system has a fundamental flaw in that PF decided that there wasn't any LA to be associated with it. In fact, if you have a 20 RP race in a party with a bunch of 3 RP people - for instance, 3 3 RP races and 1 20 RP race - then the average party level is the only thing that needs adjusting, so you should face CRs as if your APL were adjusted for being a party full of 7 RP races.

Which penalizes the low-RP characters with harder encounters and no greater rewards.

They really need something to tweak specific individuals who have disproportionate RP races to make their RP system connect meaningfully with the rest of the PF system.

They specifically suggest that you "power up" low-RP races if you intend to run them alongside high-RP ones.

[docnessuno]

The RP-build system has a fundamental flaw in that PF decided that there wasn't any LA to be associated with it. In fact, if you have a 20 RP race in a party with a bunch of 3 RP people - for instance, 3 3 RP races and 1 20 RP race - then the average party level is the only thing that needs adjusting, so you should face CRs as if your APL were adjusted for being a party full of 7 RP races.

Which penalizes the low-RP characters with harder encounters and no greater rewards.

They really need something to tweak specific individuals who have disproportionate RP races to make their RP system connect meaningfully with the rest of the PF system.

One personal fix i kinda like is reducing PB by 1 for every (full) 2 points a race is above 10 (and increasing it for every 2 full points below 10).

[Urpriest]

One of my players is a Vedalken, of mtg. (I'm running a Mirrodin game.)
And thusly, I am wondering how to handle 4 arms. What's the RAW for this?
Is there any homebrew that works better?
I know you qualify for multiattack and such, but it seems like there would be other benefits or penalties.

You don't qualify for Multiattack, actually, that's for natural attacks. You want Multiweapon Fighting, and the related feat chain.

Basically, having more arms lets you make more attacks when using two-weapon fighting, and that's all it does. Anything else you would expect it to do?

[D20ragon]

Actually, yes. I was wondering what the rules would be for multitasking, or using multiple magic items at once, casting multiple purely somatic spells, making simultaneous slight of hand or disable device checks, perhaps giving bonuses to grapple checks.
It's probably brushed off as being to hard to concentrate, which doesn't make much sense, given that a 4 armed creature would likely have a brain built to make the most use of 4 limbs.
But given the nature of 3.5 ruleset(which I love, don't get me wrong) I'm not surprised that combat is all it helps with. :smallsigh:

[Psyren]

It also gives you extra "free hands"you can use while your first two hands are occupied. So you could, for example, sword-and-board while holding a metamagic rod in hand #3 and using hand #4 to perform somatic components. I'm not clear on whether this is the case in 3.5 but it is in PF.


EDIT: You replied while I was replying so I'll address this a bit more directly:


Actually, yes. I was wondering what the rules would be for multitasking, or using multiple magic items at once, casting multiple purely somatic spells, making simultaneous slight of hand or disable device checks, perhaps giving bonuses to grapple checks.
It's probably brushed off as being to hard to concentrate, which doesn't make much sense, given that a 4 armed creature would likely have a brain built to make the most use of 4 limbs.
But given the nature of 3.5 ruleset(which I love, don't get me wrong) I'm not surprised that combat is all it helps with. :smallsigh:

Multitasking/multicasting - having more hands free doesn't give you more actions, any more than a wizard with both hands free can cast more spells in a round than one holding a rod. This also applies to magic items - you still need the actions to use each of them even if yo're holding more than one. Of course, items that don't need a discrete action to activate

Grapple checks - As written you get no bonus other than a better chance at avoiding the "less than two hands free" penalty.

Somatic components - More hands does not affect these, beyond the increased capacity to hold things and still perform them which I mentioned above.

[Urpriest]

Actually, yes. I was wondering what the rules would be for multitasking, or using multiple magic items at once, casting multiple purely somatic spells, making simultaneous slight of hand or disable device checks, perhaps giving bonuses to grapple checks.
It's probably brushed off as being to hard to concentrate, which doesn't make much sense, given that a 4 armed creature would likely have a brain built to make the most use of 4 limbs.
But given the nature of 3.5 ruleset(which I love, don't get me wrong) I'm not surprised that combat is all it helps with. :smallsigh:

Having more arms doesn't really make you better at multitasking, so none of those things really apply. To put it another way, you have two hands, so you should be able to do two different things with them, right?

Bonuses to grapple checks are present on some multi-armed races, but not all. I wouldn't put it on a Vedalken, I wouldn't expect them to be very good at grappling.

[Necroticplague]

Actually, yes. I was wondering what the rules would be for multitasking, or using multiple magic items at once, casting multiple purely somatic spells, making simultaneous slight of hand or disable device checks, perhaps giving bonuses to grapple checks.
It's probably brushed off as being to hard to concentrate, which doesn't make much sense, given that a 4 armed creature would likely have a brain built to make the most use of 4 limbs.
But given the nature of 3.5 ruleset(which I love, don't get me wrong) I'm not surprised that combat is all it helps with. :smallsigh:

In order:
extra arms don't inherently give you more actions, though their's a feat that allows for it (appropriately called Multitasking. Lot of tax for it, though).
Doesn't work for same reason as above, and you don't get another set of arm and hand slot, though you can wield more weapons.
See above yet again (though their is a certain race that can do exactly that).
Once again, you aren't doing several things at once unless you pick up the right feat.
Their actually is a book, Sword and Fist I believe, that mentions extra arms giving you a minor bonus to grapple per arm (+2, I think?).

[squiggit]

The RP-build system has a fundamental flaw in that PF decided that there wasn't any LA to be associated with it. In fact, if you have a 20 RP race in a party with a bunch of 3 RP people - for instance, 3 3 RP races and 1 20 RP race - then the average party level is the only thing that needs adjusting, so you should face CRs as if your APL were adjusted for being a party full of 7 RP races.
To be fair, that's not necessarily true. The Pathfinder race builder has the same problem the feat point system does, some of the numbers are really wonky and lead to over budget races that can still be pretty terrible

[Psyren]

Bonuses to grapple checks are present on some multi-armed races, but not all. I wouldn't put it on a Vedalken, I wouldn't expect them to be very good at grappling.

Agreed here. I would consider a more magical use for their hands; perhaps they can retrieve magic items as a swift action, or even swap items (draw and stow) as a swift action.

[D20ragon]

I also agree with Vedalken not being grapplers.
The idea that 4 arms would help with grappling was just more of a general statement.