How to Slam?

[Zaetar]

Slap or Slam
The creature batters opponents with an appendage, dealing bludgeoning damage.

Situation: I'm a warforged fighting with sword and shield. I get 1 slam from a racial trait and a second slam from a feat.

I understand the second specifies it takes a -5 from the highest AB, so i take it the first one does it too. Now...
If I'm using a sword and a shield that means i still got head and legs as free appendages (headbutts and kicks) to make the slam with.

Are there any other movements that could count as slam? It would be a bit boring to do the same 2 moves all the time .
I thought about using the hand that's holding the sword to punch since its not something ridiculous, maybe the elbow? knee? shoulder?

[torrasque666]

Shoulder, head, knee, elbow, kick, whatever really.

Just look at it this: just because you roll the attacks in a specific order, doesn't necessarily mean that you have to roleplay them in that order.

[DrMotives]

Also stomp & chestbump. Although if you attack things with chest bumps, you should yell "Bro!" as a battlecry when you do it.

[Zaetar]

This has so much potential...

[Darrin]

If I'm using a sword and a shield that means i still got head and legs as free appendages (headbutts and kicks) to make the slam with.


There is no clear answer to this by the Rules As Written (RAW). The crux of the matter is there is no written rule that specifies what happens to a natural weapon when you're using that appendage for something else, such as carrying a shield or wielding a weapon. All we have is what we can imply from the stat blocks in the Monster Manual, or more specifically, what the "Full Attack" entry says for creatures that use manufactured weapons. From that, we can imply that wielding a weapon in an arm usually means you lose the claw attack associated with that arm.

Things get considerably murkier with slams, because nothing in the text specifies what the striking surface of the slam is supposed to be... there is nothing that says "this attack involves the arm" or the elbow or whatever. We can see from the giant entries (where they get two slams, one for each arm) that they lose their slams when wielding two-handed weapons. For the Warforged listed in MM3, we do get an example of what happens when they wield a two-handed spear: they no longer have the slam listed as part of their full attack.

I tried to settle this problem in an earlier thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?240218-quot-Common-Sense-quot-approach-to-rules-(RACSD)) with an attempt to classify the categories of slams (large-sized humanoids get two arm slams, medium-sized humanoids get a single shoulder-check slam, oozes get a body slam), but I was shouted down and in retrospect it created more rules headaches than it solved.

So I came up with a simpler house rule: "One slam good, two slams bad." Basically, when a creature naturally gets two slam attacks, then that means it's slamming with its arms, and it loses those slam attacks when those arms are occupied with something else. If a creature has only a single slam, such as an ooze or doppelganger, then it's slamming with some other part of its body, and can continue to use its arms for weapons/shields/etc. Under this rule of thumb, the Warforged still gets a slam if it's wielding a two-handed weapon or using those arms for other things. (Adding the Second Slam feat doesn't change this, either... the Warforged still has only one slam, but it's attacking twice with that slam, rather than having two different slams.) This house rule doesn't really conform to the stat blocks we see in the MMs, but it's easy to remember and somewhat simple to adjudicate.

If you want something closer to "Rules As Intended" (RAI)... well, there are two other ways to add a Warforged-style slam to a creature: the Renegade Mastermaker PrC (Magic of Eberron) and the Mighty Arms graft (Faiths of Eberron). By strict RAW, these aren't exactly the same as a Warforged slam attack, as they involve different rules text that isn't compatible with the Warforged entry, the Battlefist entry, the Monster Manual, and even with each other. I am somewhat astounded that the designers managed to create three different types of Warforged slam attacks that have three different sets of rules about how they work... but if you look at the slam granted by the Mighty Arms graft, we actually get some rules text that says what happens when you have your hands occupied with other things:

"You can make a slam attack while wielding a weapon in the other hand, in which case it is treated as a secondary attack (–5 penalty on attack roll)."

So here at least it's implied that in order to use a slam, you need one hand free that isn't wielding any weapons. Unfortunately, it doesn't actually say if you lose the slam if both hands are holding something, and by RAW this text doesn't apply to a Warforged or a Renegade Mastermaker with a slam. But I think here at least we can see that the designers intended the slam to work only when you had a hand free and weren't doing anything else with that arm. From here you could say that's how they intended all slams to work, and treat the Warforged and Renegade Mastermakers accordingly.

[Tvtyrant]

Making it even weirder, the Hulks of Zoretha use slams but they use a declining attack routine like an unarmed strike.

[Scowling Dragon]

You need help from the greatest:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXEX_VUI-E0

[Zaetar]

I think i'll try to reach an agreement with my DM to let me use slams as random attacks with free limbs and maybe role play it a little as to not just stand there only moving my arms. Maybe an elbow hit, Leonidas style kick, or my head.

A warforged's forehead has to be hard...

[atemu1234]

I think i'll try to reach an agreement with my DM to let me use slams as random attacks with free limbs and maybe role play it a little as to not just stand there only moving my arms. Maybe an elbow hit, Leonidas style kick, or my head.

A warforged's forehead has to be hard...

Leonidas slamming someone would be awesome.