Full Attack: Natural Weapons, Unarmed Strike, and Manufactured Weapons

[dunebugg]

Hopefully simple question with a simple answer.

I think I remember reading somewhere that when you wield a weapon all natural attacks (in my mind this includes IUS) are treated as secondary attacks and can be made at BAB-5.

Am I right? Or does it incur TWF penalties, or... what?

Specifically the case I'm looking at is 1-hand weapon, Bite, and Unarmed Strike.

[Starglim]

dunebugg wrote:

(in my mind this includes IUS)

An unarmed strike isn't a natural weapon. You would have to treat it as a second manufactured (light) weapon.

In the specific case you mentioned, assuming your BAB is +5 or less, your bite is an actual natural weapon and you have no relevant feats, your full attack is: one-handed weapon (-4 To Hit, STR bonus to damage), off-hand unarmed strike (-8 To Hit, 1/2 STR bonus to damage) and bite (-5 To Hit, 1/2 STR bonus to damage).

The Two-Weapon Fighting feat improves this to: one-handed weapon (-2), unarmed strike (-2) and bite (-5).

This character probably doesn't qualify for Multiattack. If you did and took TWF and Multiattack, you could have: one-handed weapon (-2), unarmed strike (-2) and bite (-2).

If you had BAB +6 and no relevant feats, you could get: one-handed weapon (+6 with other modifiers), unarmed strike (+1 with other modifiers) and bite (+1 with other modifiers).

[Archaeik]

UMR
do a find for natural attacks or just scroll down

anyway, the above is correct in terms of numbers

A few things I want to clarify or restate

-unarmed strike is treated as a manufactured weapon for the purposes of mixing with natural attacks

-penalties to your natural attacks are only incurred when you actually MIX them with manufactured
(just "wielding" a manufactured weapon doesn't cause the penalty -- if you hold a sword but only attack with your natural weapons, there is no penalty)

-natural attacks come in 2 forms, primary and secondary. Mixing attack types causes any primary to be treated as secondary but does not change secondary further

-TWF penalties only apply to manufactured weapons, AND only apply if you attempt to get more attacks than your current iterative progression allows you
Ex 1. BAB +1 - you get 1 attack, if you try to make more than this, you are TWF and activate the penalties
Ex 2. BAB +6 - you get 2 attacks, if you try to make more than this, you activate TWF

-per the above, this means you can use ANY combination of manufactured weapons to complete your iterative sequence
(and it is worth noting, that you don't actually need the feat to TWF, it's just really bad w/o it)

-Flurry of Blows is a SPECIAL full round action that specifically states that it cannot be combined with natural attacks.
(this can be confusing sometimes, as feral combat training describes how natural attacks can be used to REPLACE attacks in your flurry sequence, but NEVER 'in addition to')

[dunebugg]

Thanks for the explanations. And the character in question is a Kitsune Magus, not a monk.

Decided to think about taking Crane Style tree as the character is quite defense-oriented.

[Nathanial321]

Nathanial321 wrote:
Hi James,

The topic is mixing natural attacks, unarmed attacks, and weapon attacks. My gamemaster thinks that it would be unbalanced to let my level 2 catfolk character, which has the feats: two-weapon fighting and improved unarmed strike, make more than two attacks.

So, which of the following are legal mixtures of attacks? Let's go with BAB +5, feats: two-weapon fighting, and improved unarmed strike.

1) headbutt (+3) (primary), headbutt (+3) (off-hand), claw (0) (additional natural attack), claw (0) (additional natural attack)

2) longsword (+3) (primary), headbutt (+3) (off-hand), claw (0) (additional natural attack)

Very respectfully,

Nathanial

James Jacobs wrote:
As for being "unbalanced," allowing any PC race to have a natural attack is inherently unbalanced, since none of the core races have that option. A GM who's worried about that level of balance needs to not allow PCs of races who get natural attacks.

Unless you have two heads, I wouldn't allow an "off-hand" headbut when your primary attack is a headbutt. The whole point of an off-hand attack is that you're using a second limb in addition to the primary limb to make an additional attack.

As a result, I'd say that #1 above is illegal, but #2 is not.

It IS certainly a sticky issue, mixing unarmed strikes with natural attacks—the game isn't really made to take that type of fighting style into account since none of the core races have natural attacks, and no monsters who have natural attacks ever bother with unarmed strikes. It DOES kind of reek of "attack scrounging" which is kinda cheesy in my opinion...

But it's certainly an issue that could serve well being posted over in the rules forums so folks can FAQ it.

Nathanial wrote:
Also what about this option?
3) Heabutt (+3) (Primary), Kick (-2) (Secondary), Claw (0) (Additional Attack), Claw (0) (Additional Attack)