D&D 3.5 Base Attack Bonus questions

[flash0002]

I am creating a character in 3.5. This is not my first but for the life of me I can't figure this out by Google or the PHB. To get your base attack you look at your class and it gives you the number on the class table. However on pg 22 they have a table saying good, average and poor. Are you taking the numbers from the table on pg 22 and your class? Sorry for the possibly stupid question.

[Curmudgeon]

The table shows how things work generally. Unless you're throwing in racial HD and have to use those descriptions, you can just ignore those columns. Your class tables will have all the BAB specifics you need.

[AmberVael]

There are three different progressions of base attack bonus to be found among all existing classes, and the 'good, average, poor' terms are just shorthand for communicating them. Its not an extra bonus, its just instead of saying "a fighter has a BAB that increases by one each level" you can say "a fighter has good BAB," or "a cleric has average BAB."

[RoyVG]

Sometimes BAB is referred to as being 'average' or 'good' or 'as a cleric' or 'as a fighter'. These references are towards the table you pointed out. When you take class levels in any class, your BAB will be presented to you in the class table, but for things not directly related to you but instead things around you, it may be referred to in a different way. Animal Companions are an example of this; They gain HD (or racial levels if you want to call it that) when you level, and their BAB needs to be calculated from this new HD. Animla Companions have the same BAb as a Druid with a level equal to its HD. Salculating Saves use this same method often as well.

If you only take a single class, it's very easy, just look in the class table and there is your BAB. If you multiclass, you add the BAB together of the two classes.