[D&D 3.5] Houseruling iterative attacks.

[Gnomo]

I'm pretty tired of iterative attacks, they slow down the combat more than anything else, I was thinking of reducing them to make the game faster, and I just came up with this:

• The characters do not gain iterative attacks as they gain more BAB.
• You can make an attack as a standard action or two attacks as a full round action.
• The second attack in a full attack action has a penalty of -10.
• Both of this attacks have a bonus to damage equal to the character's BAB.
• Any extra attack does not benefit from this bonus to damage (such as those provided from spells, feats, class features, special attacks, etc).

I'm trying to foresee potential problems, such as that Two Weapon Fighting now provides more attacks than the regular attacks, so I changed "Improved Two Weapon Fighting" to add a +1 bonus to all attacks with a penalty for attacking with two weapons instead of adding a new extra attack with a -5 penalty.

I know that Manyshot looks a little better now, I don't know if I should remove it from the game, I also know that casting a spell while hit is much harder with the bonus to damage, but that's Ok to me. I changed Monk's Flurry of Strikes to an attack as an immediate action.

I need opinions on this, do you think this will solve the problem, do you think the bonus to damage is equivalent to the attacks lost? Is this abusable somehow?

[Gpope]

Get out of my braaaaain. I was idly pondering iterative attacks the other day and came up with a very similar idea. I'm not sure that it's something that you could just drop into 3.5e and have it work, though. If you're planning on homebrewing a more extensive d20 revamp I do think it's a pretty solid basis for streamlining combat, though.

The damage bonus seems like a bit of an unnecessary complication. Granted, you are taking utility away from BAB-based classes and they do need a bone thrown to them (lots of bones, really), but I'm not sure it's a good idea to have any more differences between standard/full attacks than strictly necessary. You may be able to simply get away with adding BAB to damage with all attacks period; it's a difference that would be minuscule at low levels and... well, still minuscule at high levels, really, compared to what spellcasters are doing by that point.

The thing to watch out for there would then be other sources of extra attacks. But really, if I was going to go this route then I would probably houserule away most or all sources of extra attacks anyhow, changing them into either to-hit bonuses for full attacks or ways to get attacks off more easily. For instance, you might alter the Haste spell to allow full attacks as a standard action rather than giving an extra attack.

Generally I don't think this kind of system would be terribly abusable at all, especially if you're clamping down on alternate ways to get off multiple attacks. The only characters that really get helped are going to be under-optimized ones, while a lot of better fighter-type builds are going to get nerfed. Bear in mind that this does hurt melee classes' ability to compete with spellcasters at higher levels, though.

[Debihuman]

Then only give monsters single attacks as well. Otherwise, combat will be lopsided.

Debby

[Set]

My house rule would be to allow iterative attacks, for those who want them, or to allow an option to take a single attack at Full BAB in a full-attack action, and get an extra die for each iterative attack you would have gotten.

So a longsword wielding fighter with BAB +11 could take three swings at BAB +11/+6/+1 or a single swing at BAB +11 for 3d8+his modifiers.

If he uses a weapon that has multiple dice, like a greatsword, he adds the multiple dice for each iteration, thus allowing the above character a single swing at BAB +11 for 6d6 plus his modifiers.

Extra damage from Strength, weapon enhancement, flaming/frost/etc. or specialization / sneak attack / etc. doesn't multiply, which means it might be better to attempt iterative attacks against something you are guaranteed to hit with those iterative attacks (like an ooze or colossal insect or somthing).

Other options that give a bonus attack, like Haste, or a dragon's two claw attacks, would work similarly, just adding extra dice to a primary attack. Options that give bonus attacks of different types, like Two-Weapon Fighting, or a Sahuagin with a bite attack and trident, or a dragon using claw, claw, bite, would be resolved seperately. (So the dragon would roll for his bite seperately, but roll his two claws as a single attack with double the base damage.)

[Volos]

I honestly don't have much trouble with ballancing a game with iterative attacks between the players and monsters. Monsters that hit more then once usually do less damage each time they hit, be it from two weapon fighting or high enough BAB. One of my player two weapon fights with shortswords, and the other does so with a longsword and handaxe. The latter tends to switch weapons off depending on the type of enemy or situation (he always has a torch in one hand during the dugeon crawls). The bard has a bow with rapid shot as well. So far the game doesn't slow down at all and the ballance is still there... perhaps something else is bothering you?

[Toliudar]

Wait, you want to make the game harder for those characters that rely on full attacks? Whew.

Can't you just ask your players to roll all their dice at once in order to speed things along?

[Gnomo]

@Gpope:
Yeah, at the beginning I thought of just limiting the attacks to 2 but then realized how much of a hit it was to meleers, it's huge so they need something to increase their damage, on one hand this houserule has a very good point for meleers, by increasing the damage of hits it makes Damage Reduction less of a problem, on the other hand it helps normalize board&swords with 2handeds, which is a good thing in my book.

I think I can leave extra attacks as they are if I don't give them the BAB bonus, I don't think it's a complication, but giving all attacks bonuses is a no-no, it's too easy to get extra attacks in this game, I'm not planning to make an abusable rule.

@Debihuman
This is something I thought also, mainly to prevent polymorphing abuse, but to make every monster hit more scary, at the moment the players usally mop the floor with most monsters right off the manual, I have to gimp them to challenge the players, with this houserule the monster will also get 2 attacks, and also add their (very high) BAB to damage, I think this is good to make combat more deadly.

@Seth
Although it looks like a simple and good solution I have yet to think of the statistics,
I would like to streamline the attacks, if I'm still accepting the full attack action then I'm still allowing characters making 8 or so attacks per round and uberchargers one-shot anything.

@LordWolfgang
I'm having problems, the players have characters between levels 18 and 22, they are making 8 or so attacks per full attack, one-shoting with pounce and taking forever to calculate all the hits and the damage. I know D&D it's supposed not to work from level 15th on (I would dare to say even a little sooner) but we can't start over, we can't throw 6 years of campaigns away.

@Toliudar
It's actually not that bad, I'm trying to do the math here:

Let's say you have a bonus to damage called DAMAGE, your usual foes have an AC equal to your total attack bonus, and your usual weapon has a critical threat of 19-20 and a critical multiplier of x2, I'm assuming this is a regular AC value for enemies of the correct CR.

Regular Iterative Attacks
{table=head]Attack|BAB|Hit|Critical|Total
1st|x<6|0.95|0.1 x 0.95|1.045
2nd|5<x<11|0.75|0.1 x 0.75|0.825
3rd|10<x<16|0.50|0.1 x 0.50|0.550
4th|15<x|0.25|0.1 x 0.25|0.275[/table]

The houserule proposes taking only the 1st and the 3rd attacks and gives them a bonus to damage equal to the characters BAB. So let's go case by case what's the difference in damage output:

For BAB below 6
Regular iterative attacks: 1.045 x DAMAGE
Houseruled full attack: (1.045 + 0.550) x (DAMAGE + BAB) = 1.595*Damage + 1.595*BAB
Difference: 0.550*DAMAGE + 1.595*BAB
Conclusion: There's no point of discussion here, the houseruled full attack is much powerful than the regular attack, not only granting a small bonus to damage but granting a second attack, this is great for Barbarians with pounce at low level, when there's no difference between standard attack and full attack, this could also make low level game very deadly.

For BAB between 6 and 10
Regular iterative attacks: 1.87*DAMAGE
Houseruled full attack: 1.595*DAMAGE + 1.595*BAB
Difference: 1.595*BAB - 0.225*DAMAGE
Conclusion: The difference in damage is still clear, the houseruled is better, the only possibility to be gimped by the houserule is to have a DAMAGE bonus greater than 7 times your BAB, that means having an average damage equal to 42 (min) at BAB 6 or 70 (max) at BAB 10, only uberchargers can claim to surpass this, in which case i have no problem to nerf, even then the difference is very small.

For BAB between 11 and 15
Regular iterative attacks: 2.42*DAMAGE
Houseruled full attack: 1.595*DAMAGE + 1.595*BAB
Difference: 1.595*BAB - 0.825*DAMAGE
Conclusion: This time the difference is notable, the regular iterative attacks are gimped if the average damage is greater than twice the BAB, something not so uncommon in heavy melee classes, that means having an average damage equal to 22 (min) at BAB 11 or 30 at BAB 15, at this point Power Attack is having a diminished return because of the second attack missing. Again there's no clarity if this is a clear nerf or not, but most indications point to a small nerf.

For BAB higher than 15
Regular iterative attacks: 2.695*DAMAGE
Houseruled full attack: 1.595*DAMAGE + 1.595*BAB
Difference: 1.595*BAB - 1.1*DAMAGE
Conclusion: On this specific case the houserule clearly nerfs two handed weapon users and gishes, since they are usually the ones to have a high average damage on hit, Power Attack, bonus damage on hits (such as Arcane Strike) or a high Strength score are now less relevant to damage, the difference still isn't huge, but I'm glad to see that that the DAMAGE average never got close to the BAB bonus, which is a good thing.

As for characters reliant on many attacks, like Pouncers, I have no problem on nerfing them, in fact I expected to see a bigger difference in damage but there's actually not one, the big disparities seem to be on the early levels where the houseruled attacks are way better than the regular, and the latest levels, where two handed meleers are being nerfed.

I guess this still have to see play test to meet the real problems, anyhow in my experience the 4th attack is usually rubbish so I no see a major difference.

[ericgrau]

This seems incredibly difficult to balance. The group I'm in has a neat idea for this though. AC is posted for all to see. You roll hits and damage before your turn and add it up before your turn.

[Anonymouswizard]

Another way to speed it up:all the attacks use the same die roll. the first attack is at +0, the second at -5, and so on. It is the same in most ways, but 1 rolll is required.