Gaining a Decent Claw Attack

[Aristocracy]

Hi Everyone,

Does anyone know of a reasonable way to gain an effective claw attack without multi-classing from Cloistered Cleric (The good 3.5 version not the eviscerated Pathfinder version)? All Pathfinder and 3.5 materials is allowed as well as Dragon Magazine. I know of two ways without multi-classing.

My race is Catfolk.

Option 1:

I could trade a valuable race feature (+2 on bluff, diplomacy, and sense motive) for the claw attack for a whopping 1d4 damage claw attack.

If I burn a feat (Catfolk exemplar- Sharp Claws) I could get this to an astounding 1d6.

If I blow an additional feat (Improved Natural Weapons) I could get the god-like power of 1d8

... or you know, I could spend a little gold and carry a mace.

Option 2:

Take the Feral Template from Savage Species. Just as Option 1 is absurdly awful this option is absurdly too powerful. It would make me a better fighter as a cloistered cleric than anyone else in the party-- I expect that to happen anyway, but not until I can get the right spells and DMM Persist online.

Two claws at 1d8 (it's unclear to me if these are primary attacks... I think they are.)
Scaling list of special attacks
Improved grab at 1st level
Darkvision 60ft.
Fast healing 2 which only gets better as I level.
+6 natural armor
+4 Str
+2Con
+2 Wis
-2 Dex (who cares with a +6 nat armor)
-4 Int (That hurts 'cause I like skill points, but I can get over it)

All for the low low price of +1 LA.

I don't want to break the game-- The feral template would probably do just that. I don't want burn two feats and a racial feature for all the power of a common mace either...

Is there a third option out there?

[TheIronGolem]

I think you're overly focused on damage die size. The real damage comes from bonuses. I'd take the ART and settle for the 1d4 claw damage, then use Power Attack (or dip UnRogue for Dex damage if that's your jam).

[Zombulian]

Just be a Totemist with Girallon Arms or Landshark boots honestly duder. Don't mess with templates/silly races for mediocre claws.

Edit: Misread your post I guess. Depending on your level you could start preparing Girallon's blessing. TIG is right that you're too focused on the die size. Bonuses is what gets that sniz to be useful. If you're set on Catfolk, just trade those minor bonuses, you want the claws obviously. Your spells should be enough to make your nat attacks viable for a while, maybe you could pick up Superior Unarmed Strike and Beast Strike + Snap Kick later on.
Edit #2: I dunno what type of Cleric you are, but you could possibly also pick up the Hunger domain for a bite attack, and the Strength domain (traded for Strength Devotion) for a slam attack and turning all your attacks to adamantine for a minute. The feat's wording is also interesting, it seems to maybe imply that you could trade your natural attack die sizes for what the Table for the feat offers (which would upgrade your claws and bite), also it gives a +2 on all your damage rolls with nat weapons you already had.

[Venger]

just apply dragonborn and take shape soulmeld (claws of the wyrm) for 1d6 claws. enjoy.

[Aristocracy]

Hrm, I dunno...

Never had a character that could have claws before so maybe I'm not seeing the possibilities... or maybe I'm just trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. I worship Thoth a Knowledge god. Domains are Knowledge, Spell, Rune, Magic, and Craft. Good skills and Trapfinding make me a passable rogue and divine spells are keeping everyone alive.

The Strength devotion is exactly what made me want claws! I'll be able to scratch my name into the walls wherever I go! And chalkboards ~Really~ won't know what hit them. I just thought claws sounded fun, but if the best I can reasonable expect a 1d4+Str I don't see how that is any better than 1d8+Str from the mace... much less invest race features. Even though I presumably have two claws, I think I still would get only one attack with them.

I'm not convinced Power Attack is the right move...particularly for a Cloistered Cleric with less than optimal to-hit bonuses... at least not until I can DMM some serious buffs. Until then I think the feat would be Power-Whiff. By the time I get decent buffs I don't think the claws are going to be very useful in the face of enchanted magic weapons and the like. As a Cleric I get Magic Weapon, but not Magic Fang... so I don't think I can keep up with the power curve with claws alone the way a druid might.

I might be off base here as well, but I don't think Superior Unarmed Strike would be applicable as the Claw attack would be ... well a Claw attack rather than an Unarmed Attack.

Dragonborn seems like a more significant shift than I was going for. We are playing AP Mummy's Mask (Egyptian Theme) and there is something satisfying about being cat-folk in that particular arena. I was hoping it would be as simple as a feat I overlooked or a trait of some kind.

Let me try to attack this from a different direction... Using the same amount of resources is it possible to get a claw attack that is at least equal in strength to a swing of a mace?

[Rebel7284]

Due the LA, Feral makes your character weaker... so I am not sure what the big deal is. You seem fully aware that DMM is where the power is. Delayed access to persisted Divine Power, delayed access to persisted Righteous Might, etc make much more of a difference than the boosts the template offers. Or are you folks doing the weird pathfinder thing where instead of LA it's just a lower point buy?

Also, how is your DM reading the Special Attacks part of the Feral template? RAW that only scales with racial HD.

Beast Strike feat would be very flavorful for such a character, but is difficult to justify the associated feat costs.

Gauntlets of the Talon give you 1d8 claw attacks but are pretty expensive at 20K

[thoroughlyS]

I just thought claws sounded fun, but if the best I can reasonable expect a 1d4+Str I don't see how that is any better than 1d8+Str from the mace... much less invest race features. Even though I presumably have two claws, I think I still would get only one attack with them.
You are actually discounting the exact reason to choose claws over a mace. If you have claws, when you take the full attack action on your turn you can make an attack with each of your claws at no penalty (assuming your hands aren't full). This makes having claws an obvious improvement over normal Two-Weapon Fighting (which isn't really saying much). However, there are a lot of character decisions that make this strategy viable.

I'm not convinced Power Attack is the right move...particularly for a Cloistered Cleric with less than optimal to-hit bonuses... at least not until I can DMM some serious buffs. Until then I think the feat would be Power-Whiff. By the time I get decent buffs I don't think the claws are going to be very useful in the face of enchanted magic weapons and the like. As a Cleric I get Magic Weapon, but not Magic Fang... so I don't think I can keep up with the power curve with claws alone the way a druid might.
For someone who's never used claws, these are very accurate assessments.

I might be off base here as well, but I don't think Superior Unarmed Strike would be applicable as the Claw attack would be ... well a Claw attack rather than an Unarmed Attack.
You are correct.

Let me try to attack this from a different direction... Using the same amount of resources is it possible to get a claw attack that is at least equal in strength to a swing of a mace?
Depending on how you want to act in combat, your Catfolk Claw's can be better or worse, right off the bat. There are a few factors that weigh in on this:

Moving into melee.
Chance to hit.
Damage modifiers.


If you want to move into melee, you will usually have to spend a move action to do that, which means you will only have a standard action left with which to attack. This means making only 1 attack. In this case, the mace offers an average of 2 more damage over the single claw attack. The simplest way around this (especially as a Cleric) is to take the Travel Devotion feat (Complete Champion p.62). It allows you to move up to your speed as a swift action a limited number of times per day. This means that you can instead take the full attack action, allowing you to make two claw attacks at no penalty. This is better at levels 1-10, before iterative attacks really come in to play. This leads into the second point.

Making two attacks doesn't automatically mean dealing damage twice. You still need to be able to hit the target. As you mentioned above, being a cleric (especially a cloistered cleric) means your BAB starts off low, and the gap only widens as you increase in level. If you want to put out relatively the same damage as a mace, for your entire career, this means investing in ways to up your chance to hit. And when you hit, you want to hit hard.

The final deciding factor is damage modifiers. there are two schools of thought regarding extra sources of damage: modifier multipliers and bonus damage dice. The first school is exemplified best by the Ubercharger, who battle jump-leap attack-shock trooper-power attack-two hands his way to 2d6 + U DED damage. The second school adds as many sources of damage to as many attacks as it can make, so that it can sudden strike-sneak attack-skirmish-haste-braid blade-pounce all the way to 7 hits for fistfuld6 + 0 each.

Considering your interest in Strength Devotion (Complete Champion p.62), which gives a third natural attack, I think you would benefit most from dipping into the second school. At mid levels, you can take the feat Martial Stance (Tome of Battle p.31) for Assassin's Stance which gives +2d6 sneak attack all day. It requires one martial maneuver, so without dipping you will also have to take Martial Study (Tome of Battle p.31). Off the top of my head, Wolf Fang Strike would let you attack with both claws as a standard action once per encounter.


Also, how is your DM reading the Special Attacks part of the Feral template? RAW that only scales with racial HD.
I have to disagree with that. RAW is murky at worst, but seems to indicate the opposite.

A feral creature gains additional special qualities depending on its Hit Dice, as shown on the table below. If the base creature possesses a duplicate ability, the feral creature has whichever ability is better.

If a creature acquires a character class, it follows the rules for multiclass characters described on pages 59–60 of the Player’s Handbook. The creature’s Hit Dice equal the number of class levels it has plus its racial Hit Dice. For example, an ogre normally has 4 HD. If it picks up one level of barbarian, it becomes a creature of 5 Hit Dice: 4d8 HD for its ogre levels, plus 1d12 HD for its barbarian level. A creature’s “monster class” is always a favored class, and the creature never takes XP penalties for having it. Additional Hit Dice gained from taking levels in a character class never affect a creature’s size.

Gauntlets of the Talon give you 1d8 claw attacks but are pretty expensive at 20K
A better item would be the Beast Claws (Savage Species p.49), which are effectively +2 claws that deal an additional 1d6 per attack for 9,610 gp.

[TheIronGolem]

Couple of things I'll point out:


[Catfolk] manipulate objects as easily as any other humanoid, but their fingers terminate in small, sharp, retractable claws. These claws are typically not powerful enough to be used as weapons, but some members of the species—either by quirk of birth or from years of honing—can use them with deadly effect.

So if you just want claws for non-adventuring stuff like scratching your initials into trees and suchlike, you'll have that with or without the ART.

That said, you're a Cloistered Cleric. You're only marginally less squishy than a Wizard. Melee isn't your forte to begin with, so it's not like you're dragging the party down if you choose suboptimal melee options. The 2 damage per hit you'll lose on average* will rarely impact even a single combat in a significant way, let alone the game as a whole.

*And even that's assuming you actually have a net loss of damage, which is not a given since (as others have noted) you get two claw attacks at no penalty.

[Aristocracy]

@ Rebel7284

I respectfully disagree about the +1 LA being a detriment rather than a boon. The claw damage is pretty respectable and the +6 nat armor will ensure that I can spend some time on the front line. In short, the Cloistered Cleric can stay physically relevant in combat through the levels that they normally would have to sit out until Divine power and Righteous Might and the like. It looks like a great package that keeps on giving throughout the adventuring career. People take one level dips for much less.

One level to take an awful melee class to one that can hold its own in a fight is pretty good, I think.

Jsketchy has the right of how Feral would work out by RAW

@Jsketchy

Firstly, your forum-format-fu is top notch! And yes, now that I see I'm looking at two attacks and not just one it looks much more attractive... at least until magical weapons and DR start becoming a thing. I think you've convinced me of the error of my ways. Thank you for the very helpful suggestions--I'll check out the Tome of Battle as I should have some spare feats at higher levels (Was allotted a free feat and access to flaws)

@TheIronGolem

Your point is well taken, sir (or madam?). I'm taking a gambit at trying to be everything. Spellcaster, skill-monkey, and dip into melee. Our group is without a tank so I can't completely leave everyone to twist in the wind. The Cloistered Cleric can make a great tank mid to high levels-- I'm just reaching for a glimmer of that glory before that time.

[Zombulian]

Hrm, I dunno...

Never had a character that could have claws before so maybe I'm not seeing the possibilities... or maybe I'm just trying to hammer a square peg into a round hole. I worship Thoth a Knowledge god. Domains are Knowledge, Spell, Rune, Magic, and Craft. Good skills and Trapfinding make me a passable rogue and divine spells are keeping everyone alive.

The Strength devotion is exactly what made me want claws! I'll be able to scratch my name into the walls wherever I go! And chalkboards ~Really~ won't know what hit them. I just thought claws sounded fun, but if the best I can reasonable expect a 1d4+Str I don't see how that is any better than 1d8+Str from the mace... much less invest race features. Even though I presumably have two claws, I think I still would get only one attack with them.

I'm not convinced Power Attack is the right move...particularly for a Cloistered Cleric with less than optimal to-hit bonuses... at least not until I can DMM some serious buffs. Until then I think the feat would be Power-Whiff. By the time I get decent buffs I don't think the claws are going to be very useful in the face of enchanted magic weapons and the like. As a Cleric I get Magic Weapon, but not Magic Fang... so I don't think I can keep up with the power curve with claws alone the way a druid might.

I might be off base here as well, but I don't think Superior Unarmed Strike would be applicable as the Claw attack would be ... well a Claw attack rather than an Unarmed Attack.

Dragonborn seems like a more significant shift than I was going for. We are playing AP Mummy's Mask (Egyptian Theme) and there is something satisfying about being cat-folk in that particular arena. I was hoping it would be as simple as a feat I overlooked or a trait of some kind.

Let me try to attack this from a different direction... Using the same amount of resources is it possible to get a claw attack that is at least equal in strength to a swing of a mace?

I didn't mean use Superior UAS to progress your claws, I meant use Superior UAS to give you another attack mode in the way of punching things (also because you can buff them) and Beast Strike is a feat that has you do your claw damage on unarmed strikes.
Knowledge Devotion would probably be a good idea too, as it gives bonuses to hit and damage equally and scales (with your ability to blow Know checks out of the water). Your BAB has nothing to do with how many attacks you can make with your claws. Natural weapons don't have iteratives so you can use them all from the start.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Half-Fiend (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20031010a) 1 gets you two claws and a bunch of other benefits, you don't have to finish the template class (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/sp/20030824a) (1/8 fiend?), and you can buy off the +1 level adjustment (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/races/reducingLevelAdjustments.htm) after gaining three class levels.



You can use Pathfinder's custom race guidelines (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/creating-new-races/) to make a custom race with two claw attacks (2 RP) and some beneficial thematically appropriate ability score bonuses and traits. Core races are ~10 RP, so something like...

Primordial Elf
Medium Humanoid (Elf) - 0 RP
30 ft. land speed - 0 RP
+2 Dex, -2 Int, +2 Wis (standard) - 0 RP
Elven and Common languages, limited bonus languages for high Int (standard) - 0 RP
Elven Immunities - 2 RP
Star-Touched or Moon-Touched: SR 11 + character level or DR 5/Silver - 3 RP
Darkvision 60 ft. - 2 RP
Low-Light Vision - 1 RP
Two Claws (1d4 base) - 2 RP
Total: 10 RP