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I have seen similar posts on the boards, but nothing quite addresses my specific questions.
Maneuver Mastery (Ex): Select one type of combat maneuver. When performing the selected maneuver, you treat your oracle level as your base attack bonus when determining your CMB. At 7th level, you gain the Improved feat (such as Improved Trip) that grants you a bonus when performing that maneuver. At 11th level, you gain the Greater feat (such as Greater Trip) that grants you a bonus when performing that maneuver. You do not need to meet the prerequisites to receive these feats.
Given a sixth level Battle Oracle (BAB 4) with Maneuver Mastery (Trip), he could make one attack at 4 BAB or one attack at 6 BAB.
1) When the Oracle's level being treated as BAB reaches the point where a normal BAB would grant iterative attacks, does the Oracle gain iterative attacks with the combat maneuver? In this case, at level 6, with a full-attack action, could the Oracle attempt two trips?
I would say no, because I read it as only being used for purposes of calculating CMB (as in the numerical value), and not for determining his number of attacks.
2) Assuming #1 is valid, could they mix attacks with maneuvers? So for instance, attack at 4 BAB and then trip at 1 BAB?
Replacing Attacks with Combat Maneuvers
Any combination of a creature's attacks during a melee full attack can be replaced by a trip, disarm, or sunder maneuver (any maneuver that says "in place of a melee attack"). When doing this, the calculation for the creature's Combat Maneuver Bonus uses the base attack bonus of the attack that was exchanged for a combat maneuver. For example, a creature with a BAB of +6/+1 who performs a trip with her second attack uses +1 as her BAB for the CMB of the trip.
The rules here are pretty clear when using a normal BAB, but when you basically have two BAB sets, it gets a little hazy. Basically, given the first BAB set of 4 for attacks or the second BAB set of 6/1 for trips, could I cherry pick and do an attack at 4 and a trip at 1?
Given an eighth level Battle Oracle (BAB 6/1) with Maneuver Mastery (Trip), with a full-attack action, he could make two attacks: one at 6 BAB and one at 1 BAB.
3) Would the Oracle be able to make two trips, both at 8 BAB?
4) Could you mix attacks and maneuvers like before at 8/1 BAB or 6/8 BAB?
You are probably face-palming right now, as I did when I first heard it, but hear me out.
If we go by the logic from earlier where it's not really determining a new BAB set, and it really is used to replace your BAB when determining your CMB, then you would replace 6 with 8 and 1 with 8, meaning you could in fact get do 3 & 4. This is pretty powerful, considering you could turn your second attack that has a high probability of missing into a trip/sunder/disarm that has an extremely high chance of succeeding. Even a full BAB class can't turn their lower attacks into a full BAB maneuver.
If you say that it doesn't replace your BAB separately, but instead creates its own set, then you end up contradicting the reasonable answer to questions #1 & #2. So as you can see, I have quite a conundrum.
The only answer I can come up with that feels intuitively correct is that you replace the BAB values in respect to the current BAB set--that is to say, you still incur the -5 cumulative attack penalty for iterative attacks. So if you have a BAB of 6/1, you could do:
Attack 6 / Attack 1
Attack 6 / Trip 3
Trip 8 / Attack 1
Trip 8 / Trip 3
I will be handling it this way, but I feel like this could be abused in PFS where RAW is king. What is the intended way? Am I missing something?
P.S. I couldn't find ANYWHERE the rules for taking the -5 cumulative penalty for iterative attacks. I thought it would be in the Combat section with the BAB or Full-Attack Action rules, but it's not apparently. Can someone please point that out for me?
at lv6 you can make one attack, and if you do a trip it'll be at bab 6.
at lv8 you can make two attacks, if both are trips you'll have bab 8 bab 3.
There's no "+6/+1 BAB". It's shorthand for +6 BAB, and the ability to make one iterative attack at a -5 penalty, that you get at +6 BAB.
You need actual BAB 6, and thus level 8, to make two attacks, and the iterative will take a -5 penalty.
you treat your oracle level as your base attack bonus when determining your CMB.
Not for any other purpose. Iterative attacks are determined by your BAB, but that is clearly something other than your CMB.