Homebrew Attacks System

[Anachronity]

So I have always had issues with the idea that a monster can have 5+ attacks against a target 5 feet away, but suddenly only 1 against a more distant target. At the same time I would like to avoid absurd situations where a creature with a large number of natural attacks is able to make a number of attacks in a full attack action far in excess of what its level/CR indicates it should be able to. This sort of power is fine for monsters that are balanced for it, but immediately becomes abusable in the hands of the PCs. What I propose is a homebrew rework to the way a character's number of attacks per round are handled.


This rework should...
-Balance two-weapon fighting with other fighting styles (other underused fighting styles like sword-and-board and einhander will also receive love, but not with this system)
-Prevent massive natural attack spam
-Still give an advantage to characters with many attack types
-Remove the necessity of pounce or exotic movement abilities for a functional melee fighter with more than one attack

This rework should not...
-Bring martial characters up to the level of casters and skill monkeys (I hope to accomplish this elsewhere)
-Make one fighting style mandatory, even if it is an improvement over the most viable fighting styles of Core


Attack Routine (AR)
The number of attacks a character can make in a single action is now a separate statistic called their attack routine (AR). It is independent from the number of different weapons, natural weapons, and weapon-wielding limbs possessed by the character, collectively referred to herein as available attacks (AA).

When attacking as a standard action or as part of a charge, the character may make a number of attacks equal to his attack routine. A character's attack routine is initially one attack and gains an additional attack for each 5 points by which the character's base attack bonus exceeds 1. (thus the fighter's attack routine increases from 1 to 2 when leveling up from 5th to 6th level, just like a full attack in normal D&D).

Attacks made in this manner are selected from the character's available attacks. If a specific available attack is used more than once per round, each use after the first incurs a cumulative -3 penalty for the attack roll. This attack system does not otherwise involve iterative penalties, so possessing many available attacks can allow a character to use his full attack bonus for more than one attack.

Taking a full-attack action adds an additional attack to the character's attack routine. While this single additional attack will diminish in effectiveness as characters progress in levels, many feats, items, spells, and effects will exist which increase a character's attack routine or grant powerful additional benefits only when taking a full-attack action.

This means that a character can choose to focus on full attacks if desired to gain power at the cost of mobility. While some of these feats/items/effects will increase damage further or grant more additional attacks (particularly dual-wielding feats), many will give utility buffs or unusual effects such as temporary concealment or a free intimidate check against a nearby enemy. Characters focused on full attacks will often be oriented towards battlefield control.

Improving a character's attack routine for standard attacks would be more difficult, with dual-wielding being by far the easiest means to increase it. Dual-wielding will require fewer feats to function, but will have more feats which give extra dual-wielding benefits or increase a character's attack routine.

Available Attacks (AA)
A character's available attacks are the attacks that whatever equipped or natural weapons he has enable him to make. This means that any natural attacks possessed are simply a part of this list, rather than independent secondary attacks that are made during a full attack action.

The available attack includes characteristics of the attack such as range/reach, damage type, classifications of the attack (ranged, melee, main, secondary, natural, off-handed, two-handed, etc.), the attack bonus of the attack, the damage that the attack will deal on a successful hit, any effects that will apply on a hit, the critical threat range and multiplier of the attack, and so on. Off-handed attacks are made at a -4 penalty.

When a character makes an attack through an attack action (standard or full), through an attack of opportunity, or through the effects of feats, spells, etc., he selects an appropriate attack from his available attacks. Some attacks can only be made with an available attack of a certain classification, such as how the extra attack gained from dual-wielding must be made with an off-hand weapon.

Some monsters with many natural attacks still possess extraordinary abilities which increase their attack routines, but the more rediculous examples (sword spiders, mariliths, fully grown dragons, etc.) are more limited by these new rules.

A new version of pounce might be the following:
Pounce (ex): When charging this creature adds two additional attacks to its attack routine which must be made with natural weapons.

Grappling
A character may, as a standard action, make a number of grapple checks equal to his attack routine, increasing as normal for a full attack action. Additional attacks which can only be made with a certain type of available attack (such as from dual-wielding or a monk's flurry of blows) can only be used to attempt to damage a grappled opponent with the appropriate attack, and may not be used to attempt other grapple actions.

Dual/Multi-wielding
A character who possesses one or more secondary natural attacks, who carries more than one manufactured weapon, or who is fighting unarmed may take a -4 penalty to all attacks made during his turn to add an attack to his attack routine which must be made with an off-hand or secondary weapon, or an unarmed attack. This penalty is in addition to the normal penalty for an off-hand/secondary attack. Both penalties can be reduced through the two-weapon fighting feat.

EDIT 4/13/14: Added secondary/off-hand penalty (was accidentally left out)
EDIT 4/15/14: Removed arbitrary -4 penalty to secondary attacks (not sure what I was thinking there)

[Anachronity]

Le Bump

To clarify, I'm looking for opinions on the balance of this system. Will TWF keep up or is it still too weak? Are the grappling rules too OP? Will every fighter want a bunch of different attack types just to avoid the iterative penalty? Will this be relatively easy for new-ish players to understand?

[Seerow]

So if I understand this:

Attack Routine is Attacks = BAB. So level 20 Fighter gets 4 attacks from their routine, Rogue gets 3. You get these attacks while mobile no matter what.

Attacks Available is just a list of each attack you have readied. Having more attacks available doesn't improve your number of attacks at all. The Lion with 2 claws and a bite, but only +3 BAB, only gets 1 attack, but it can be either claw or bite.

When making a full attack, you pick independently for each one. So a Rhino with its +6 BAB can use its Gore attack twice per round. The Dire Lion with +6 BAB and 3 natural attacks can choose to bite twice on its standard attack, claw twice, or use a bite and a claw.


Assuming I have this all right... it works okay for anyone who doesn't use natural attacks or two weapon fight, but any character or monster with natural attacks needs to be seriously rebalanced. Just look at the examples already listed above. A Rhino used to get one attack even as a full attack or on a charge. Its attack damage is high to compensate for this. Now that Rhino can charge and deal double its intended damage. On the other hand, the Lion just got gimped. It went from being able to make 3-4 attacks in a round to only 1. Even with your suggested Pounce modifier, it gets up to 3 while charging.

Both of these animals would need to be rewritten and rebalanced. But it's not just the monsters. The humanoids and giants using weapon based attacks are also now much more dangerous. While a human fighter being more dangerous is desirable, let's check out the Hill Giant. Your winning strategy against a giant at low levels is to stay out of melee range, force him to move so he only gets one attack off at a time. If he double attacks anyone, that person is dropping (seriously the CR7 hill giant easily puts out 50-60 points of damage on a full attack. That will one round most if not all PCs at that level). But with your changes, the only solution is to stay more than 60ft away and force him to throw rocks at you... except even that rock throw is suddenly much more dangerous because he can full attack and throw 3 rocks per round, where he was previously restricted to 1. The Giant which was previously a good challenge for a level 6-8 party is now going to overpower them, most likely killing 1-2 players before being taken down.


One more issue I see is that your multi-attack/TWFing rules seem ridiculously punitive. Seriously, a two weapon fighter gets to add a single attack with his offhand, but take a -4 penalty to hit on top of normal TWFing penalties?! I can't imagine what possessed you to think that TWFing was so strong it needed a nerf like that, but seriously, what the heck. You mention this also applies to creatures with more than one natural attack, or multi-attacking, but no indication of if it can be used once per additional available attack, or only once period. ie can the Lion take a full attack and end up with 3 attacks, or is it capped at 2? Does the penalty go up to -8 on top of the -5 secondary penalty, for adding two attacks, or is it a static -4 to add as many attacks as you want? How does this work if you have a Raptoran Fighter using a footbow, a two handed weapon, armor spikes, spiked gauntlets, a boot blade, and whatever other silly extra weapons you can squeeze on there? Do you get to take all of those attacks, or are you still limited to 2 like in normal 3.5 because you have only two hands?

Of course, the other problem which you already noted is full attacks are much weaker to the point where for the most part there's no incentive to use them. You mentioned there would be feats/abilities that make them much better, but without those actually being written it's impossible to judge them. And the basic full attack is pretty lame.



It just seems to me like this fails to address a lot of the issues it raises, and does so in a clunky and counterintuitive way, that really means you need to rewrite every monster in the game and create a bunch of new abilities to interact with it. I'm not sure how workable it actually is.

[Anachronity]

Seriously, a two weapon fighter gets to add a single attack with his offhand, but take a -4 penalty to hit on top of normal TWFing penalties?!
Nonono, those are meant to be the Two-Weapon Fighting penalties. Secondary and off-hand attacks take an inherent -4 penalty that I just noticed I forgot to include in the text. So while TWF'ing with no feats your total penalty would be -4 to the main hand and -8 to the off hand, like normal. Thanks for catching that though.

The idea is that your Attack Routine is a hard limit on the number of attacks. So if the raptoran fighter is 6th level he'll get two attacks with a standard action, each of which is made with a single weapon of his choice. However, if both attacks are not made with the same weapon he would get his full bonus on both of them. Thus, if he used his two-hander for one attack and armor spikes for the other, they would both be at full bonus. If he made both attacks with the two-hander, he would take the -3 iterative penalty. He couldn't use the boot blade, spiked gauntlets, or footbow in either of those cases.

As far as the Giant goes I see no reason why it can't already throw 2 rocks, but it's entry indicates otherwise which leaves me to assume its throwing is limited by being able to pick up enough rocks, sort of like loading a crossbow. You make a good point about the Rhino, the Giant, and other high-strength melee monsters. On the other hand, these monsters' challenge ratings are nearly half their respective hit dice, and I feel like in assigning those ratings the designers took into account how easy it is to avoid full attacks. The fact that their CR is so low despite all those hit dice is really just a testament to how much melee rules need to change. The simplest solution would be to increase these monster's challenge ratings or reduce their hit dice.

The Lion is a bit more tricky. Monsters with large numbers of attacks are generally pretty balanced, but PCs with large numbers of attacks are generally not. I think the only real solution, which would still be quite involved, is to assign extraordinary abilities to these sorts of monsters that give them special exceptions to the attack routine limit, to the point where they generally get the same number of attacks as they normally do. The Lion might have another extraordinary ability in addition to pounce called 'Rake' that explicitly allows it to make those attacks while pouncing or grappling in addition to its normal attack routine. While this still does not prevent a shapeshifting PC from massing attacks, I think that's more a problem with polymorph spells than anything.

[Anachronity]

Bump! I hunger for more opinions!

It is unlikely that anyone will ever end up using this system other than myself when I DM, meaning modifying a large number of monsters isn't out of the question. I'm mostly asking about whether it makes one type of fighting style too powerful (i.e. I'm curious how it will change balance for PCs more than monsters).

[erikun]

I have to agree with Seerow, in that this throws monsters all out of balance. Any monster that normally used one or two big attacks is now getting a large number of attacks for nothing, generally with an already-high damage just being multiplied. Monsters which previously were dangerous due to multiple attacks are now considerably weaker, as 1d6+2 isn't nearly as threatening when not part of eight attacks.

It also means that anything with more than one attack type is kind of pointless. Why would a dragon ever use anything other than its Tail Slap (4d6+STR x1.5) if they get a set number of attacks and can use any attack they want each round? The idea of having a large attack routine was that the dragon couldn't just sweep it's tail around all the time, and so used the less damaging claws and wings as well.


As for two weapon fighting, I've had a change in mind. I haven't ran a D&D3e game recently to test it out, so I don't know how well it would work. But here's the general idea, if you're interested.
This only relates to attacking with multiple manufactured weapons, not with natural attacks.

A person may attack with any two weapons that they may hold in each hand. They are free to use any one-handed weapon as their off-hand weapon; it is not restricted to light weapons.

Any time the person would make an attack roll, they may choose to attack with both weapons. This includes at the end of a charge, as an AoO, or during a full attack. Attacking with two weapons gives a total -2 penalty to both attacks, along with a special -4 nonproficiency penalty for the off-hand weapon, due to not being proficient in using a second weapon like that. Damage from the primary weapon is dealt as normal, but the secondary weapon only deals damage based on the weapon itself, including magical enhancements. Strength bonuses, precision damage, and other abilities of the character do not apply for the off-hand attack (including Power Attack and such).

Note that the choice is made at each attack, so someone using a full attack can choose to attack with two weapons for some attacks, and just one weapon for other attacks.

(Note: The idea behind the nonproficiency penalty is to make nonproficiency penalties not stack. That way, picking up a weapon they are unfamiliar with, such as a bar stool, would not penalize the attack into uselessness. Reasonably speaking, the reason someone would pick up an off-hand weapon when they are unfamiliar with the style is as a "better than nothing" option. This, at least, makes it somewhat plausable.)

Two-Weapon Fighting feat is a single feat, and it grants the character proficiency in fighting with two weapons. The -4 nonproficiency penalty from fighting with two weapons goes away. (although it could still apply if not proficient with the weapon, i.e. barstool) In addition, the -2 penalty drops as the character's BAB increases: it is lessened to -1 at BAB+6, and reduced to -0 at BAB+11. The full strength bonus, precision damage, and everything else is applied to the off-hand weapon just as with the first, including damage bonuses from Power Attack and such.

I haven't considered how Multiweapon Fighting would be affected by this, so I don't have an opinion on it right now.


So, as an example:
This is assuming a character with 18 Strength and wielding two longswords.



Main Hand Penalty
Off Hand Penalty
Main Hand Damage
Off Hand Damage


No Feat
-2
-6
1d8+4
1d8


Two-Weapon Fighting
-2
-2
1d8+4
1d8+4


Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +6
-1
-1
1d8+4
1d8+4


Two-Weapon Fighting, BAB +11
none
none
1d8+4
1d8+4

[Anachronity]

Why would a dragon ever use anything other than its Tail Slap (4d6+STR x1.5) if they get a set number of attacks and can use any attack they want each round?

There is a -3 iterative penalty for using the same attack more than once. That being said, a dragon probably wouldn't care too much. I think maybe secondary attacks should be counted differently than primary ones, since generally they are less powerful. Maybe the character can substitute in two secondary attacks rather than a primary attack?

[Coidzor]

I think one issue is that this thread probably belongs in the homebrew subforum, so you might need to go ahead and ask a Mod to move the thread.

[Anachronity]

Ah, my bad. Didn't realize I wasn't in that subforum already. How would I ask a mod to move it?

Alternatively I think I would rather start over, as the thread title could certainly be more descriptive. Unless there's a way to also change the thread title?

[Coidzor]

Ah, my bad. Didn't realize I wasn't in that subforum already. How would I ask a mod to move it?

Alternatively I think I would rather start over, as the thread title could certainly be more descriptive. Unless there's a way to also change the thread title?

Editing your first post will allow you to change the thread title. I can't recall offhand the procedure, the Rules (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?a=1)should cover it though, if not it's got to be one of PMing a relevant Mod or reporting your opening post and explaining what's what.