Holy Crap, Natural Attacks Are Badass!


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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I might be late to the party on this one, but one of my current campaigns is the first time natural attacks have been something the party is using, as well as the DM (we have two skinwalkers in the party, one a swashbuckler, the other a barbarian). I was aware that natural attacks are useful, and they've always been great flavor, but it wasn't till someone put me behind the wheel that I realized how much damage you could do with them.

I also wrote up a post breaking them down, and showing their strengths and weaknesses at Natural Attacks Can Turn Your Pathfinder Character Into a Monster, for those who are interested. Just wanted to geek out a bit, and give my brain a break from trying to make a whirlwind of attacks at the lowest level possible.


Yeah its known that they are very good, if you can get a lot of them. That is how eidolons do a lot of damage.

Shadow Lodge

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In other news, water is wet. :)


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TOZ wrote:
In other news, water is wet. :)

Very true, Toz, but I'm excited since it's a particular rule set I've never gotten to play with before. I figured I was late to the party, but it's a great party all the same.


I'm quite fond of them myself. XD In fact, at the moment, I'm playing a shapeshifter made with the Spheres of Power rules who forms new natural attacks on the fly. They're quite fun thus far. ^^


They're pretty amazing.

Be careful though, the rules for them are written pretty terribly too.

Scarab Sages

They are phenomenal from 1-10. Once weapon users have several iterative attacks, higher weapon bonuses than allowed by an AoMF, and ready access to haste they pull ahead.


Imbicatus wrote:
They are phenomenal from 1-10. Once weapon users have several iterative attacks, higher weapon bonuses than allowed by an AoMF, and ready access to haste they pull ahead.

That's why the option to use both pleases me. And may or may not lead to me trying to make a two-weapon fighter with two hoof attacks, and a gore...


Imbicatus wrote:
They are phenomenal from 1-10. Once weapon users have several iterative attacks, higher weapon bonuses than allowed by an AoMF, and ready access to haste they pull ahead.

Actually this isn't entirely true. You can continually add natural attacks through magic items or barbairan rage powers.

Also, haste affects natural attacks so its mostly a wash there


A Ragebred Skinwalker with two levels of Ranger(to get claws from the Natural Weapon combat style. Aspect of the Beast, I think?) can have 5 natural attacks at level 2. Something is going to die and die fast.

Silver Crusade

Azten wrote:
A Ragebred Skinwalker with two levels of Ranger(to get claws from the Natural Weapon combat style. Aspect of the Beast, I think?) can have 5 natural attacks at level 2. Something is going to die and die fast.

Throw in Toothy (half-orc racial trait snagged with Adopted) or Mother's Maw and you've got six. To get six, you'll also need the Extra Feature feat to get both hooves and a gore.

You could also go with the same combination with an alchemist, go feral mutagen and have less long lasting claws and bite with better damage.

Seriously, natural attacks are silly good, and ragebred skinwalker was a mistake.


I don't really see the benefit of Natural Attacks.

Even if you have a literal crapton of them, you're going to be heavily screwed over by the factor that A. You have no reach, plus unless you have pounce, you'll only be using one of those multiple Natural Attacks, and B. You'll have maybe a couple Primary attacks, and your other attacks will be Secondaries, which means -5 to-hit, and only half your modifier. Let's not even take into consideration that you can't hardly use them in conjunction with weapon attacks, and if you do, they'll lose relevance by ~5th level, at the latest, because DR and stuff.


Just get multiattack feat that lowers penalty to -2.


Darksol the Painbringer wrote:

You have no reach

You aren't any worse than than Falchion Fred in that regard. Besides, you can sacrifice a single claw attack to hold a polearm and threaten with reach off turn, making you better than a bog standard falchion wielding fighter.

Quote:
, plus unless you have pounce, you'll only be using one of those multiple Natural Attacks

They are only mildly worse off than Falchion Fred. Both suffer when they can't get off their entire attack routine, but at least the natural attacker will tend to be a caster of some form and might be able to burn that standard action on something more worthwhile.

Quote:


, and B. You'll have maybe a couple Primary attacks, and your other attacks will be Secondaries, which means -5 to-hit, and only half your modifier.

That's not true. Look at the suggestions in this thread. You can have 6 attacks at 2nd level, and only 2 of them are secondary. In fact, the three most common attacks on a natural attacker (claw,claw, bite) are all primary. Also, the only three items I can think of that give extra attacks (Cloak of the Manta Ray, Cloak of the Wyvern and Helm of the Mammoth Lord) all give primary attacks.

Quote:
Let's not even take into consideration that you can't hardly use them in conjunction with weapon attacks, and if you do, they'll lose relevance by ~5th level, at the latest, because DR and stuff.

True for the most part. Don't bother trying to focus in Natural Weapons AND wield a manufactured weapon under most circumstances. That isn't much of a point against Natural Weapons as a primary combat style, though.


Even if all but one natural attack is secondary, it's STILL better off than manufactured weapons because the second iterative is at a -5, and third at -10 etc. Natural attacks would have 1 at full, and all the rest at -5. Two weapon fighting would help the fighter get more out of his swings, but will have a higher cost to improve his weapons. Although material DR could be a problem, but that seems rare. Being able to throw agile on an amulet of mighty fists means you can also stack dex for still reasonable ac + all its other benefits if you wanted. Or if you take str, all your primary natural attacks add full str (instead of half for offhand manufactured weapons without spending a feat).

I'm curious why natural attacks were made so reliable and so effective. My expectation is that it was to keep the bestiary scary, but that seems like a really poor way to do it because of all the balance issues that come out of it. Especially if you're someone with sneak attack, getting 6 attacks at level 2 that do their respective 1d4 + str + 1d6 precision....each. And the additional damage with sneak attack scales incredibly well with multiple attacks, but unlike a regular rogue or two weapon slayer, you're not taking penalties for your extra attacks....


Amulet of mighty fist is your friend with these as well. Don't forget potions like Strong Jaw and Long Arm for some added fun (enlarge person if your race allows it).

Scarab Sages

Amulet of Mighty Fists is a limitation in high level play. It only has a +5 total enhancement ceiling, and it costs double the amount of an equivalent weapon. Basically you are paying twice as much to get something half as effective as a weapon user. It also means if you decide to add agile, you'll never be able to have a +5 weapon to overcome all dr.


N. Jolly wrote:
Azten wrote:
A Ragebred Skinwalker with two levels of Ranger(to get claws from the Natural Weapon combat style. Aspect of the Beast, I think?) can have 5 natural attacks at level 2. Something is going to die and die fast.

Throw in Toothy (half-orc racial trait snagged with Adopted) or Mother's Maw and you've got six. To get six, you'll also need the Extra Feature feat to get both hooves and a gore.

You could also go with the same combination with an alchemist, go feral mutagen and have less long lasting claws and bite with better damage.

Seriously, natural attacks are silly good, and ragebred skinwalker was a mistake.

2 hoof attacks and a gore was a mistake.

Changing them from +Wis+Con to +Str+Con was the cherry on the delicious mistaken sundae.


teaching the forums to suck eggs


As to DR, there are things like the Amulet of Mighty Fists that you can use to get around the problem. Plus that Amulet affects ALL of your natural attacks, not just a single weapon. So if you have 6 natural attacks, and a Amulet of Mighty Fists +1, all your attacks have +1 to hit & damage, and count as Magic to overcome DR.

Throw in the fact that Bite & (and maybe some of the other primaries) count as ALL melee damage types (B/P/S), and the DR problem becomes a little less relevant.

Additionally, you actually don't have to have the +1 on the Amulet to get special enhancements. You can have a Holy Amulet of Mighty Fists +0.

Then there fun spells like Align Weapon and so on that can be used to help bypass DR.

Or worse yet, just dip a level into Paladin (or any other class that grants a smite). I smiteth thee and all my attacks bypass all your DR.

DR is less relevant than you think it really is.

Hardness might be a bit of issue though - but there are ways around that too - such as again Amulet of Mighty Fists, enchant it with Frost or one of the other elements - as that does half damage on hardness (but half is better than none). Or weapon blanch adamantine.

Scarab Sages

B.O.B.Johnson wrote:


Additionally, you actually don't have to have the +1 on the Amulet to get special enhancements. You can have a Holy Amulet of Mighty Fists +0.

Again, good at low level, not so good at high level, when it's impossible to have a +4 Holy amulet.

B.O.B.Johnson wrote:


Then there fun spells like Align Weapon and so on that can be used to help bypass DR.

Or worse yet, just dip a level into Paladin (or any other class that grants a smite). I smiteth thee and all my attacks bypass all your DR.

DR is less relevant than you think it really is.

Spells work in some cases, if you have access to them. And while a smite bypasses all DR on evil opponents, not all opponents are evil, and not all natural weapon users are LG. The most common natural weapon users, druids, cannot be LG and keep their powers.

B.O.B.Johnson wrote:


Hardness might be a bit of issue though - but there are ways around that too - such as again Amulet of Mighty Fists, enchant it with Frost or one of the other elements - as that does half damage on hardness (but half is better than none). Or weapon blanch adamantine.

Elemental Enhancements are waste of money, especially on a double price amulet, because energy resistance is extremely common, and the minimum resistance is 5. When you are spending a +1 bonus for 1d6, those are bad odds.

Weapon blanch is also a bad idea. To activate weapon blanch you have to old the weapon over an open flame to activate it. Unless you have a high fire resistance or immunity, doing this with a natural weapon seems like a bad idea. Besides, Adamantine weapon blanch only overcomes DR/Adamantine. It doesn't do anything vs hardness.

Sovereign Court

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
plus unless you have pounce, you'll only be using one of those multiple Natural Attacks,

At high levels nearly all martials should have a few Quick-Runner Shirts - changing them out between encounters. It's basically pounce for classes that don't use swift actions much.

Darksol the Painbringer wrote:
and B. You'll have maybe a couple Primary attacks, and your other attacks will be Secondaries...

Really? That was true in 3.5, but in Pathfinder the majority of nat. attacks are primary.

Sovereign Court

Warpriests make them really interesting since they bump the damage dice up.


B.O.B.Johnson wrote:
As to DR, there are things like the Amulet of Mighty Fists that you can use to get around the problem. Plus that Amulet affects ALL of your natural attacks, not just a single weapon. So if you have 6 natural attacks, and a Amulet of Mighty Fists +1, all your attacks have +1 to hit & damage, and count as Magic to overcome DR.

At +3 they also overcome silver and cold iron (or +1, Furious when Raging). The only named buff that makes sense on an AoMF to me is Furious. If you really need something, put it on a Body Wrap of Mighty Strikes and let your Amulet affect other natural attacks.

Liberty's Edge

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I don't always make full attacks with multiple weapons. But when i do, i make sure they're natural weapons.

Slaughter responsibly.


Ah I never noticed that part where it doesn't apply to Hardness - only DR. That's interesting.

As to smite, I did mention other smites - Hell Knights have Smite Chaos. I'm assuming an Anti-Paladin has Smite Good. There might be others.

Also this is a home game - who's to say the GM isn't allowing them to treat the amulet just like any other weapon or piece of armor, where it can +5 enhancement along with +5 in special abilities? Yes it may be double the cost of a single weapon, but double weapons have the same problem. Not to mention if you have 3 or more natural attacks, you are already beating the price of the guy that wants to have 3 different weapons depending on needs (IE, an enchanted ranged weapon + favorite melee weapon + reach and/or special weapon).

I knew a guy who played a barbarian, and his barbarian was like "what is this DR and hardness you speak of? My mighty muscles crush through it." - Basically he just raged and power attacked through it. There is also feats that can help you overcome DR, such as the Vital Strike feat chain.

If the GM allows it, you can also play a monk and just use Ki Strikes to bypass DR (and eventually Adamantine). I'm sure that with the GM making the campaign natural attack heavy, I'm sure he's providing his players with ways to overcome DR/hardness. Not to mention, I think some encounters CR is designed specifically so you can't always overcome the DR/Hardness.


Blanches are bad idea, but Holy Weapon Balm works wonders!

Liberty's Edge

Andrew L Klein wrote:
Warpriests make them really interesting since they bump the damage dice up.

That's a whole lot of weapon focus you'll be taking, considering most full attack routines at high level are going to be Bite,Gore,Claw,Claw,Hoof,Hoof,tentacle/wings, maybe add in a slam as well. Static damage boost are usually the better choice, though warpriest can still do pretty well on that with Divine Favor or Divine Power.

Scarab Sages

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B.O.B.Johnson wrote:


Also this is a home game - who's to say the GM isn't allowing them to treat the amulet just like any other weapon or piece of armor, where it can +5 enhancement along with +5 in special abilities? Yes it may be double the cost of a single weapon, but double weapons have the same problem. Not to mention if you have 3 or more natural attacks, you are already beating the price of the guy that wants to have 3 different weapons depending on needs (IE, an enchanted ranged weapon + favorite melee weapon + reach and/or special weapon).

House rules are not a valid fix to the state of the AoMF and natural attacks rules. Yes, you can make house rules to ignore the limitations the game places on them. That doesn't mean those limitations don't exist in the game as it written.


Imbicatus wrote:
Amulet of Mighty Fists is a limitation in high level play. It only has a +5 total enhancement ceiling, and it costs double the amount of an equivalent weapon. Basically you are paying twice as much to get something half as effective as a weapon user. It also means if you decide to add agile, you'll never be able to have a +5 weapon to overcome all dr.

Sure AOMF costs twice as much as a magic weapon, but you break even if you have 2 natural attacks and come out ahead if you have 3 or more.

Scarab Sages

thorin001 wrote:
Imbicatus wrote:
Amulet of Mighty Fists is a limitation in high level play. It only has a +5 total enhancement ceiling, and it costs double the amount of an equivalent weapon. Basically you are paying twice as much to get something half as effective as a weapon user. It also means if you decide to add agile, you'll never be able to have a +5 weapon to overcome all dr.
Sure AOMF costs twice as much as a magic weapon, but you break even if you have 2 natural attacks and come out ahead if you have 3 or more.

Yes, but you still have the needless +5 total enhancement cap, when everything else has a +10.

Liberty's Edge

thorin001 wrote:
Imbicatus wrote:
Amulet of Mighty Fists is a limitation in high level play. It only has a +5 total enhancement ceiling, and it costs double the amount of an equivalent weapon. Basically you are paying twice as much to get something half as effective as a weapon user. It also means if you decide to add agile, you'll never be able to have a +5 weapon to overcome all dr.
Sure AOMF costs twice as much as a magic weapon, but you break even if you have 2 natural attacks and come out ahead if you have 3 or more.

Except that you can make more than one attack with that magic weapon, so it's not exactly a 1-1 comparison. A natural weapon build can be making as many attacks as a monk while having to spend twice as much on weapons.


Honestly, +4 Ghost Touch is probably fine.


You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

The most reasonable interpretation of the wereboar is that it is becoming a quadruped to use its hooves since with the exception of raptors all animals have two limbs they don't attack with outside of rakes and trample.

The cloak of the wyvern adds a sting for four attacks. You can also dip something that gives access to hexes to get hair attacks (though they'd be int based or wis if available through shaman).

The cloak of the manta ray doesn't work because it's a polymorph effect and overrides all other shapechanging, giving you only the tail spine. The effect is automatic and acts as Beast Shape II. The second paragraph is pointless: the user has no other attacks other than unarmed strikes because he's polymorphed into something without hands, and polymorphing already did not deny a character unarmed strikes. Even if it did work a cloak of the wyvern and manta ray would reasonably only allow one tail attack at a time. Both give tails the wearer didn't previously have, but it's not unreasonable to rule that they apply to an existing tail when present or that they just don't stack.

I think the best you can do without items is natural weapon ranger style on a kobold to get claw claw bite tail, and you're a kobold. To get four attacks (not including the possibility of hair since that must use a nonstandard stat) while not a kobold requires the cloak of the wyvern, which means either not having a resistance bonus to saves or paying a premium to get it stacked with the wyvern or in a nonstandard slot. I don't believe more than four (still excluding hair) are ever possible without polymorphing or wearing an eidolon.

Subject to that limit natural attacks aren't so great. A bite is a free extra attack, and at low levels claws are better than two weapon fighting, but the over the top cheese is either illegal (as combining gore and bite) or at best in a grey area (as using hooves and claws).

Sovereign Court

Imbicatus wrote:
thorin001 wrote:
Imbicatus wrote:
Amulet of Mighty Fists is a limitation in high level play. It only has a +5 total enhancement ceiling, and it costs double the amount of an equivalent weapon. Basically you are paying twice as much to get something half as effective as a weapon user. It also means if you decide to add agile, you'll never be able to have a +5 weapon to overcome all dr.
Sure AOMF costs twice as much as a magic weapon, but you break even if you have 2 natural attacks and come out ahead if you have 3 or more.
Yes, but you still have the needless +5 total enhancement cap, when everything else has a +10.

Once you max out the AoMF you can stack a Bodywrap on top of it. Sure - it likely doesn't apply to all of your nat attacks as the AoMF does (so I'd keep the straight +5 on it) but 3-4 attacks getting Holy/Flaming/Shocking/Frost on them is certainly worthwhile. Heck, those 3-4 attacks could theoretically get +14 on them since you wouldn't bother putting past +1 enhancement on the Bodywrap, you might as well stack the other +9 with specials.

Sovereign Court

Atarlost wrote:

You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

If that's the case - why are there multiple creatures in the bestiaries which have both?

1 example - Bukavac in the SRD


Atarlost wrote:

You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

That's far from obvious. Natural Attack rules are really vague when it comes to what stacks with what, it's one of the biggest weaknesses of the system.

All we really have is an FAQ saying you can't gain two bite attacks without a second mouth. How bite interacts with gore is far from obvious (in fact I've never seen anyone make the claim you did). There's no rules at all about how various types of natural attacks work with each other and what fills the same 'slot' or not. Very few of these things are defined.

This leads to a lot of other vague cases too, like how slams interact with claws or weapons and so on.

Either way, your assertion is purely a houserule.

Charon's Little Helper wrote:

If that's the case - why are there multiple creatures in the bestiaries which have both?

1 example - Bukavac in the SRD

Bukavac is third party.

Silver Crusade

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Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Atarlost wrote:

You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

If that's the case - why are there multiple creatures in the bestiaries which have both?

1 example - Bukavac in the SRD

Or something 1st party and 1st bestiary, the gargoyle.


N. Jolly wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Atarlost wrote:

You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

If that's the case - why are there multiple creatures in the bestiaries which have both?

1 example - Bukavac in the SRD

Or something 1st party and 1st bestiary, the gargoyle.

Also the tarrasque


N. Jolly wrote:
Charon's Little Helper wrote:
Atarlost wrote:

You can only make one natural attack with any appendage.

Gore and bite obviously cannot be combined except by creatures with more than one head.

If that's the case - why are there multiple creatures in the bestiaries which have both?

1 example - Bukavac in the SRD

Or something 1st party and 1st bestiary, the gargoyle.

Because Paizo has multiple employees and uses freelancers and not all of them know the rules as well as they should. Someone didn't catch the Gargoyle and Tarrasque in the 3.5-PF conversion and they have attacks they cannot use in the same round without a note to that effect in their entry. That doesn't change the rules.


Atarlost wrote:


Because Paizo has multiple employees and uses freelancers and not all of them know the rules as well as they should. Someone didn't catch the Gargoyle and Tarrasque in the 3.5-PF conversion and they have attacks they cannot use in the same round without a note to that effect in their entry. That doesn't change the rules.

What rule?

Liberty's Edge

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Atarlost wrote:
Someone didn't catch the Gargoyle and Tarrasque in the 3.5-PF conversion and they have attacks they cannot use in the same round without a note to that effect in their entry. That doesn't change the rules.

...and where is this, no gore and bite in the same round, 'rule' actually written?

*crickets*

Silver Crusade

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Atarlost wrote:
Because Paizo has multiple employees and uses freelancers and not all of them know the rules as well as they should. Someone didn't catch the Gargoyle and Tarrasque in the 3.5-PF conversion and they have attacks they cannot use in the same round without a note to that effect in their entry. That doesn't change the rules.

So what about every imperial dragon? Looks like a gore and a bite to me.


N. Jolly wrote:
Throw in Toothy (half-orc racial trait snagged with Adopted) or Mother's Maw and you've got six. To get six, you'll also need the Extra Feature feat to get both hooves and a gore.

I have serious problems with that. Ignoring the whole balance issue of 'having as many attacks as a TWF full attack', it breaks down on several levels when you try to imagine how it would actually work.

First- how do you learn to be toothy by being adopted? This has irked me ever since the surge of catfolk barbarians years ago. How do you learn how to grow 3 inch tusks?

Second- isn't a boar's gore attack already based off of teeth? This isn't the child of a were bull here. The gore is from the mouth. Not a problem rules wise (I...think- I am still unsure of the official 'head as limb' thing; I've seen conflicting info on that), but it still has me asking questions


I have issues with natural attacks on many levels. How is it that 2 consecutive swings from a sword is more difficult than a bite, wing buffet & tail slap from a dragon with multiattack (ignoring that it has 2 claws as well)? The dragon would have to basically turn around to have any kind of real threat with its tail, but two thrusts / slashes with one arm in a row is more challenging....

Actually, thought. What if additional natural attacks took the same penalty as additional iterative attacks? With the exception of things like claws / talons being "pairs" that have the same bab? What if, on top of that, you could do iterative attacks with natural attacks provided you only used a single one? That would prevent the absurdity that is 6 attacks at full bab (or 4 at full and 2 at -5), but give natural attackers more options from iteratives (and make single NA monsters more threatening).


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It doesnt make sense is anon argument. You could do that about almost everything.

The reason? Its a game


CWheezy wrote:

It doesnt make sense is anon argument. You could do that about almost everything.

The reason? Its a game

Alright that's fair and I should know better than to fall into that trap (although consistency is still necessary, and "makes sense" tends to provide that...being intuitive, or something of the sort).

So, why should a dragon (or clever PCs) be able to swing with its 6 natural attacks, taking at worse a -2 penalty, while the fighter can only swing once with his sword for every 5 levels above 1 with penalties for each additional swing? Or twice but with substantial penalties?


Ranishe wrote:
So, why should a dragon (or clever PCs) be able to swing with its 6 natural attacks, taking at worse a -2 penalty, while the fighter can only swing once with his sword for every 5 levels above 1 with penalties for each additional swing? Or twice but with substantial penalties?

They probably shouldn't. And martial characters probably shouldn't get increasingly less mobile the higher level they are.

But the rules are janky and that's really the best explanation one can offer.


Ranishe wrote:
CWheezy wrote:

It doesnt make sense is anon argument. You could do that about almost everything.

The reason? Its a game

Alright that's fair and I should know better than to fall into that trap (although consistency is still necessary, and "makes sense" tends to provide that...being intuitive, or something of the sort).

So, why should a dragon (or clever PCs) be able to swing with its 6 natural attacks, taking at worse a -2 penalty, while the fighter can only swing once with his sword for every 5 levels above 1 with penalties for each additional swing? Or twice but with substantial penalties?

Because dragons are awesome


because dragons are inherently magical creatures that help them do awesome things.

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