A
Good question! I had to do some digging for this one. Okey dokey here you go.
Option B is correct.
Dragons specifically have a rule that enables them to apply their 1.5 STR mod to their bite attacks despite getting multiple attacks.
Hippopotami lack that wording.
Yes, they lack the wording, but would the same problem apply if you got an extra attack from haste? As far as I am aware, no, it wouldn't.
The general idea of the additional attack from the AC's multiattack ability is to make single attack ACs more competitive with ACs with ones with more attacks. With A, you are (potentially) getting 150% more damage at mid levels. This is not too much when you consider that this roughly places the wolf (1.5x2 attacks) on par with the small cats (1x3 attacks).
If it was B, then you are only getting a very marginal increase in potential attack, and you are in fact risk losing the same amount of damage since it gets absorbed in the attack with the lower bonus. Similarly, you could argue that it would never get 1.5x damage in case B, even if it was using a standard action or attack of opportunity. That hardly seems like an upgrade at all (it is more of an overall downgrade), and since there would be little reason to even add it on a companion like a wolf, you could argue that it goes against RAI.
So simply treat the additional attack like the additional attacks provided by haste, which would be case A. Simple enough. It is not like it is getting an additional natural weapon, simple another attack with it.
Yes, they lack the wording, but would the same problem apply if you got an extra attack from haste? As far as I am aware, no, it wouldn't.
The general idea of the additional attack from the AC's multiattack ability is to make single attack ACs more competitive with ACs with ones with more attacks. With A, you are (potentially) getting 150% more damage at mid levels. This is not too much when you consider that this roughly places the wolf (1.5x2 attacks) on par with the small cats (1x3 attacks).
If it was B, then you are only getting a very marginal increase in potential attack, and you are in fact risk losing the same amount of damage since it gets absorbed in the attack with the lower bonus. Similarly, you could argue that it would never get 1.5x damage in case B, even if it was using a standard action or attack of opportunity. That hardly seems like an upgrade at all (it is more of an overall downgrade), and since there would be little reason to even add it on a companion like a wolf, you could argue that it goes against RAI.
So simply treat the additional attack like the additional attacks provided by haste, which would be case A. Simple enough. It is not like it is getting an additional natural weapon, simple another attack with it.
Balance wise, I'd be fine with it. The wording however is quite clear. If you have ONLY one natural attack, then it gets the damage boost. But as soon as you get more than one, it goes down to Str x1.0
Well I feel if you look at it it doesn't follow the same wording.
An animal companion gains Multiattack as a bonus feat if it has three or more natural attacks and does not already have that feat. If it does not have the requisite three or more natural attacks, the animal companion instead gains a second attack with its primary natural weapon, albeit at a –5 penalty.
So since it still only has one natural attack it gets the boost, even though that one natural attack has an iterative quality now.
Honestly, I feel it could be well worth their time to spend some time rewriting a lot of their text to make it consistent and clear as to what they mean. Or have someone do a lot of FAQ's. There's just so much stuff that has debates over the meaning, and from the given text it's impossible to conclusively make a decision.
It's A. The multiple natural weapon thing only comes in to play if there are multiple weapon types. Ordinarily natural weapons don't get iterative attacks, but single attack AC needed something to put them on par with their multiweaponed counterparts. It would seem rather silly if getting an iterative attack actually weakened your offensive capability, as lemeres noted.
The thing is, you only have one natural attack, you just get to use it more than once in a round. The problem is that the word attack is used both for the weapon AND the roll, making it hard to figure out what the RAW is.
What does the word attack mean? One counts the number of weapons and one counts the number of 'attack' rolls.
The thing is, you only have one natural attack, you just get to use it more than once in a round. The problem is that the word attack is used both for the weapon AND the roll, making it hard to figure out what the RAW is.
What does the word attack mean? One counts the number of weapons and one counts the number of 'attack' rolls.
Ordinarily it doesn't matter because you typically cannot take any more than one attack with any natural weapons. This is specific to animal companions which ordinarily have only one attack.
This is how it works in the NPC Codex. For instance, the Dog AC with a 10-11 level Druid has a bite attack of +12/+7 (1d6+7) with a 21 strength. Similarly, the Wolf AC at the same level has a bite attack of +13/+8 (1d8+10) with a 25 strength. The Bore AC at the same level has a gore attack of +14/+9 (1d8+9) with a 22 strength.
All of them have multiple attacks with the same natural weapon, all using 1.5 strength bonus.
Cool. I didn't think to find an NPC AC to check. That's the way I'd have ruled anyway, but it's good to see an example in print someplace.
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C) Full Bab + 1 Str
& Full Bab -5 + 0,5 Str
For reference see Horned Devil.
On his Natural only line he deals 1.0 STR for all Primary and 0.5 STR for all Secondary weapons.
To be clear, he doesn't get any more attacks from Multiattack. He only gets to reduce any penalties he may need to apply on the multiple natural weapons he already had.
He still have 1 natural attack, he just attacks twice with it. "natural attack" in this case mean "natural weapon with wich you can make attacks" and wolf does not grow another pair of jaws. So i believe its A.
P.S. Bah, someone already said that.
The answer is A.
When you get a single attack the str mod is 1.5
Multiattack for animal companions allows you to make the same attack but with a -5 penalty. However the attack does not become a secondary attack, and there is no precedent for a particular natural attack to be a primary and secondary attack in the same round.