Melee help! Natural attacks and melee weapons.


Rules Questions


I apologize if this has been addressed in another post but I have a question: If you give a dragon a sword and it makes a full attack, is its bite still at 1 1/2 strength?

Rules for natural attacks state that when making attacks with a melee weapon, additional natural attacks are treated as secondary attacks. Normally this would mean that all natural attacks would be 1/2 strength bonus to damage....however the dragon specifically states that it gets 1 1/2 strength to its bite. Hence my confusion.

Thank you!

Silver Crusade

From the Combat chapter of the Core Rulebook:

Quote:

Natural Attacks: Attacks made with natural weapons, such as claws and bites, are melee attacks that can be made against any creature within your reach (usually 5 feet). These attacks are made using your full attack bonus and deal an amount of damage that depends on their type (plus your Strength modifier, as normal). You do not receive additional natural attacks for a high base attack bonus. Instead, you receive additional attack rolls for multiple limb and body parts capable of making the attack (as noted by the race or ability that grants the attacks). If you possess only one natural attack (such as a bite—two claw attacks do not qualify), you add 1–1/2 times your Strength bonus on damage rolls made with that attack.

Some natural attacks are denoted as secondary natural attacks, such as tails and wings. Attacks with secondary natural attacks are made using your base attack bonus minus 5. These attacks deal an amount of damage depending on their type, but you only add half your Strength modifier on damage rolls.

You can make attacks with natural weapons in combination with attacks made with a melee weapon and unarmed strikes, so long as a different limb is used for each attack. For example, you cannot make a claw attack and also use that hand to make attacks with a longsword. When you make additional attacks in this way, all of your natural attacks are treated as secondary natural attacks, using your base attack bonus minus 5 and adding only 1/2 of your Strength modifier on damage rolls. Feats such as Two-Weapon Fighting and Multiattack can reduce these penalties.

So primary natural attacks get 1.5 strength bonus, unless they're reduced to secondary because you're also using a weapon.

Unless you have the Multiattack feat, and I'm not really sure how that plays into it, but it's not legal for PCs in PFS. But then, neither are dragons. Why is this question in the PFS section?

Liberty's Edge

primary natural attacks only get 1.5 strength if you only have one natural attack.

So for those who have bite/claw/claw as 3 primary natural attacks, your strength bonus is only x1.

Shadow Lodge

Fromper wrote:
Unless you have the Multiattack feat, and I'm not really sure how that plays into it, but it's not legal for PCs in PFS.

Multiattack only reduces the penalty for secondary attacks from -5 to -2, but does not effect the Strength bonus to damage.

Multiattack is available to PFS players via the 10th level combat style feat for rangers with the Natural Weapon combat style, and an eidolon gains it when the summoner hits ninth level (so do animal companions, but they don't get to wield swords), but yeah, this doesn't really sound like a PFS question.


Thank you both for responding. The dragon's bite is special. In the description of dragons you can see that they get 1 1/2 strength bonus even through they have additional attacks. This is what I am questioning. Since this "special feature" overrides the normal rules for 1X strength. The dragon's bite states:

"Bite: This is a primary attack that deals the indicated damage plus 1-1/2 times the dragon's Strength bonus (even though it has more than one attack). A dragon's bite attack has reach as if the creature were one size category larger (+10 feet for Colossal dragons)."

Which is against the normal rules for natural attacks. My question is defining how it plays into the rules for attacks with melee weapons.


SCPRedMage wrote:
Fromper wrote:
Unless you have the Multiattack feat, and I'm not really sure how that plays into it, but it's not legal for PCs in PFS.

Multiattack only reduces the penalty for secondary attacks from -5 to -2, but does not effect the Strength bonus to damage.

Multiattack is available to PFS players via the 10th level combat style feat for rangers with the Natural Weapon combat style, and an eidolon gains it when the summoner hits ninth level (so do animal companions, but they don't get to wield swords), but yeah, this doesn't really sound like a PFS question.

I forgot to add that in. It applies to PFS for any character that can get a 1 1/2 str bonus to a natural attack and wishes to wield a weapon.

Sczarni

If your Dragon BBEG is wielding a Greatsword, its Bite gets relegated to .5 Strength.

Grand Lodge

Andrew Christian wrote:
primary natural attacks only get 1.5 strength if you only have one natural attack.

This is why I keep Master Garble's fingernails trimmed.

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