Question about slam attacks

[doc the grey]

Are natural slam attacks considered to be an attack that can only be carried out with a particular limb like a claw attack or is it more like improved unarmed strike and assumed to be a hit from any particular limb that is available?

[Bob Bob Bob]

The general rule with slams is that they're tied to arms, the Marilith provides a lovely example of this. One main hand and 5 off hand longswords with a tail slap, or 6 slams and a tail slap. So clearly each slam takes up a spot that used to be a longsword.

Where it gets messy is some have a slam being both arms and some have it on a single arm. The Vampire template, for instance, adds a single slam attack, not one for each arm. So it's not making each arm powerful enough to do a slam. I presume since they're assuming humanoid it's some kind of two handed hit, but I couldn't say for sure.

Then we get into elementals which explicitly choose their form but are always limited to 2 slams, despite the fact you can totally go fire octopus and just pseudopod as many people as you want.

So short answer, yes, they take up a limb.

[Scott Wilhelm]

It seems to be the case that slams are performed by limbs a lot of the time, but there are many creatures, such as oozes and golems that don't even have discernible anatomy, and they can perform slam attacks.

It's been argued that oozes form pseudopods, and those are limbs, and you could certainly argue that golem-transformed statuary usually has limbs, but I don't think those are very good arguments.

There is no particular reason, for instance that an ooze does have to form a pseudopod. It could, for instance, just anchor itself at one point then launch its whole form at its target. And earth elemental might form into a big ball and roll into its target like an avalanche. And I don't think most DMs would allow the Butcher's hack-off-a-limb power to disable a golem. Decapitating one with a Vorpal Weapon sure wouldn't. And why couldn't you make a stone golem out of the Venus de Milo, which has no arms at all? Surely the gp value is high enough.

[Umbranus]

universal monster rules wrote:

Creatures with natural attacks and attacks made with weapons can use both as part of a full attack action (although often a creature must forgo one natural attack for each weapon clutched in that limb, be it a claw, tentacle, or slam).

Until I checkt it and found the above I thought that slams were not attached to limbs. But this quote seems to indicate it.

On the other hand the zombie states:

Zombie template wrote:

Attacks: A zombie retains all the natural weapons, manufactured weapon attacks, and weapon proficiencies of the base creature. It also gains a slam attack that deals damage based on the zombie's size, but as if it were one size category larger than its actual size (see Natural Attacks).

Which doesn't note that a slam might be connected to the arms. And the fast zombie even gets an additional slam attack:

zombie template wrote:

Whenever a fast zombie takes a full-attack action, it can make one additional slam attack at its highest base attack bonus.

That means a fast zombie can, by the rules, make all of its normal natural weapons it had before becoming a fast zombie, two slams and/or all his weapon attacks.

All in all it seems, at least, unclear.

[doc the grey]

Umbranus wrote:

universal monster rules wrote:

Creatures with natural attacks and attacks made with weapons can use both as part of a full attack action (although often a creature must forgo one natural attack for each weapon clutched in that limb, be it a claw, tentacle, or slam).

Until I checkt it and found the above I thought that slams were not attached to limbs. But this quote seems to indicate it.

On the other hand the zombie states:

Zombie template wrote:

Attacks: A zombie retains all the natural weapons, manufactured weapon attacks, and weapon proficiencies of the base creature. It also gains a slam attack that deals damage based on the zombie's size, but as if it were one size category larger than its actual size (see Natural Attacks).

Which doesn't note that a slam might be connected to the arms. And the fast zombie even gets an additional slam attack:

zombie template wrote:

Whenever a fast zombie takes a full-attack action, it can make one additional slam attack at its highest base attack bonus.

That means a fast zombie can, by the rules, make all of its normal natural weapons it had before becoming a fast zombie, two slams and/or all his weapon attacks.

All in all it seems, at least, unclear.

K so I guess that means that my winter wight rocking a gladius in one hand and a shield in the other can full court press a slam on my party lol. Sunday is going to suck for them.