Feral Gnasher Bitey Bitey

[Mog & Gom]

I've been considering rolling a Feral Gnasher, and I've been researching the grapple rules. There's a previous thread from last year talking about this, but I have a possible quibble.

The previous thread talked about combining part of the Animal Fury rage power to get additional damage when grappling. The consensus at the time was (at higher level, combining Animal Fury, Improved & Greater Grapple, and Rapid Grappling:

Attack -> if hits, free grapple check
Grapple successful -> use Greater Grapple to maintain as a move action
Attempting to maintain -> use Animal Fury to get free bite attack
Successful maintain -> choose to do damage instead of move or pin
Rapid Grappling -> Swift action to maintain grapple
Attempting to maintain -> use Animal Fury to get free bite attack
Successful maintain -> choose to do damage instead of move or pin

This would get a combined 5 damage rolls. The following round would get another since the grapple is already started.

I think this is all wrong.

With Feral Gnasher, at level 3 you get Lockjaw.
From the PRD:
Lockjaw (Ex): At 3rd level, a feral gnasher gains the grab ability with her bite attack. A feral gnasher can use this ability on a creature up to one size category larger than she is. This replaces trap sense +1.

At level 6 you get:
Improved Lockjaw (Ex): At 6th level, as long as a feral gnasher is controlling the grapple with her lockjaw attack, she does not gain the grappled condition, but is unable to move or use her mouth for anything other than grappling. This ability replaces trap sense +2.

And the relevant part from Animal Fury:
Animal Fury: A barbarian can make a bite attack as part of the action to maintain or break free from a grapple. This attack is resolved before the grapple check is made. If the bite attack hits, any grapple checks made by the barbarian against the target this round are at a +2 bonus.

This is why I think it's wrong.

From Improved Lockjaw you get this text: unable to use her mouth for anything other than grappling. Wouldn't the free attack from Animal Fury be negated by this wording?

Now, I think you can get exactly the same thing, but using the Grab ability that the level 3 Lockjaw gives your bite attack:

From Grab in the PRD, the relevant part:
Grab (Ex) If the creature does not constrict, each successful grapple check it makes during successive rounds automatically deals the damage indicated for the attack that established the hold.

Attack -> if hits, free grapple check
Grapple successful -> use Greater Grapple to maintain as a move action
Attempting to maintain -> Grab ability automatically gives free damage
Successful maintain -> choose to do damage instead of move or pin
Rapid Grappling -> Swift action to maintain grapple
Attempting to maintain -> Grab ability automatically gives free damage
Successful maintain -> choose to do damage instead of move or pin

Comments?

[Kazaan]

It looks like you've got it pretty well nailed down. Just as if you have two different hand-associated attacks, say a sword and a claw, you can't use your sword with that hand if you've already used the claw and vice versa. Likewise, if you have bite attacks from multiple sources, you can't use both in a full-attack and, by extension, if one of those bite attack allows you a grapple, but the other bite gives bigger damage dice, you can only pick one to use in a given round; either grapple chance or larger dice. Lastly, if you're using your mouth to maintain the grapple, you can't use it for a bite attack anymore than you could use the arm maintaining a grapple for a Claw attack.

[Mojorat]

I think Kazaan has it. While not strictly the same thing the natural attack rules have a stipulation that if the limb is used for something else it cant be used for a natural attack.

What you can do however, is release the mouth and then use animal fury to bite then hold on i think. Not entirely clear if this works.

[Mog & Gom]

I would think that if you release the mouth, you release the grapple completely. You would have to make a completely new grapple check.

From what I understand of the rules, the bite attack you get from Animal Fury is completely useless for Feral Gnashers, unless they happen to have another mouth from which to make another bite attack.

[Kazaan]

Yeah, if you release the mouth grapple to make a bite attack, the target would no longer suffer the grapple penalties, presuming that's a valid option to start with seeing as, having passed the check, you're essentially "locked" to them for the purpose of delivering your damage. You could use an unarmed strike, but not a bite.