This is two questions.
First question is if things like the Leanan Sidhe's Cha damage touch attack and the Muse's ranged sound strikes count as natural attacks? I don't think they should count but without something in the statblock listing them as extraordinary or supernatural, my understanding is that they do count as natural attacks. Is there information that contradicts my interpretation? Does this need a FAQ?
Second question isn't specific to Fey Form since other polymorph spells have creatures that bring it up. How do you handle natural attacks that are part of an Ex or Su part of the statblock? The more well known example is the Green Man's vines but now we have the Rusalka's tresses. Polymorph gives you any natural attacks of the base creature, so does it include these natural attacks? I've seen people saying polymorph spells don't grant Ex or Su attacks but the only rules quote I can find of that is from 3.5. Does anyone have a link to that being written out as part of Pathfinder's rules?
FWIW, I'm currently allowing a player in my home game to use the Rusalka's tresses and it doesn't really come across as significantly more powerful than any other ball of natural attacks the Polymorph spells offer. I really like that it gives a reason to pick a form other than the flying form with the most natural attacks (looking at you, Monstrous Gargoyle Physique). I'll probably continue allowing it for this player but I'd love to know if there is an actual ruling here.
notice this spell and the others like it (beast, dragon etc) have
"a piece of the creature whose form you plan to assume" (scale in dragon case etc) in the material comp of the spell. this let a gm denay you from asuming specific ctearues forms,like the famed green man (or mythic like in the leanan Sidhe case) without you first getting the needed body part.
and for anyone who claim i got 'X 'that let me ignroe up to 1 gp or 100 gp in material cost. id say legendery creature body parts are worth a LOT more.
1) "Natural attack" doesn't mean "an attack form that isn't Ex or Su"; it means an attack with natural weapons, such as claws and bites. So I don't believe either of your examples counts.
2) By RAW it appears they get them, since the polymorph rules say plainly "you gain any of the natural attacks of the base creature" not "any non-supernatural natural attacks." RAI, I dunno.
notice this spell and the others like it (beast, dragon etc) have
"a piece of the creature whose form you plan to assume" (scale in dragon case etc) in the material comp of the spell. this let a gm denay you from asuming specific ctearues forms,like the famed green man (or mythic like in the leanan Sidhe case) without you first getting the needed body part.and for anyone who claim i got 'X 'that let me ignroe up to 1 gp or 100 gp in material cost. id say legendery creature body parts are worth a LOT more
This is actually an awful way to deny players from using these spells, since it directly contradicts written rules on non-costly components and gives a disruptive player a reason to knock your game off track ("I need to get this component? Okay, I go do that instead of what you had planned."). I don't advocate being disruptive but if I heard about a DM throwing about house rules like that out of the blue, I wouldn't think the player was the only jerk at that table.
As a DM, I'll generally just have an out-of-game conversation since banning specific creatures off the polymorph spells generally has out of game reasons ("it's too powerful", "that doesn't fit how I think the rules work", "it's disrupting party balance", etc.). If a player catches me totally off guard, I'll play their interpretation for that one session, then sort it out. I ask people who want to use more complicated spells like polymorph stuff or summoning to run stuff by me, though, so it's not often that I'm caught off guard.
More relevantly, your response doesn't answer either of my questions.
1) "Natural attack" doesn't mean "an attack form that isn't Ex or Su"; it means an attack with natural weapons, such as claws and bites. So I don't believe either of your examples counts.
2) By RAW it appears they get them, since the polymorph rules say plainly "you gain any of the natural attacks of the base creature" not "any non-supernatural natural attacks." RAI, I dunno.
1) I don't know where I got the impression that "not manufactured/Ex/Su? Must be natural!" was the rule but the text on Natural Attacks seems pretty clear that's not the case. Thanks for pointing that out.
2) I'm still not sure that's the RAW. I think it's interpretive to assume that you do automatically gain (Ex) and (Su) natural attacks just for them being natural, especially when you don't automatically gain other (Ex) and (Su) abilities.
hmm i didn't sy all craetures are restricted by the body part limitation. as the rules say you can asume anything worth up to 1 gp is in a material pouch ing bag. so say a troll's hair or a lion fur should be easy and not require a quest to get and use. but yes. the green men is a freaking god-like level being who give out spells to it's belivers. to have a piece of his body and tranform into him i would say 1 gp is not really enough.
1) "Natural attack" doesn't mean "an attack form that isn't Ex or Su"; it means an attack with natural weapons, such as claws and bites. So I don't believe either of your examples counts.I'm not sure that follows. There are all sorts of different natural weapons beyond claws and bites, and there's no reason that, say, "sound strikes" couldn't be one of them. After all, it's formatted just like all other natural attacks in the game. And the rules specifically say they can include ranged attacks, or can deal unusual damage.
Which part of the rules are you looking at there?
I mean, you'd agree that other rules for natural attacks apply to the sound strikes, right? If you made a full-attack with sound strikes and manufactured weapons, wouldn't you take a -5 to hit?
Hmm, that's a good argument. But I feel like we're missing information on the sound strikes---there should be an explanatory block or something that stipulates the range, right? And which might also say "this takes a standard action to use" like many other special attacks.
I'm not sure that follows. There are all sorts of different natural weapons beyond claws and bites, and there's no reason that, say, "sound strikes" couldn't be one of them. After all, it's formatted just like all other natural attacks in the game. And the rules specifically say they can include ranged attacks, or can deal unusual damage.
Yeah, I'd also like to see where the rules quote on that is. The text on natural attacks Fuzzy Wuzzy linked does explicitly state natural attacks have to be melee attacks. I was a little surprised by that, so I looked up ranged natural attacks. There are a few (Venomous Spray, Integrated Weapons, and Adaptive Shifter) but they all have text accompanying them that identifies them as natural attacks. I'd say that those are cases of specific trumps general, though. The general rule is clear - natural attacks are melee attacks.
I mean, you'd agree that other rules for natural attacks apply to the sound strikes, right? If you made a full-attack with sound strikes and manufactured weapons, wouldn't you take a -5 to hit?
I don't know that I do agree. They have to be proven to be natural attacks for the secondary attack -5 to kick in. If they're not natural attacks, I don't think they take a penalty.
Ranged natural attacks also potentially interact strangely with full attacking. The Robot that I gave as an example for Integrated Weaponry as ranged natural attacks example has the "Combined Arms" ability that lets it use both ranged and melee natural attacks. So do a few other robots. It's not super clear if the "Combined Arms" ability is overriding the one attack per limb restriction (the art for Annihilator Robots contradicts this but I don't think art is a rules source) or if it is overriding some unknown restriction on combining ranged and melee natural attacks.But a creature with +6 BAB is allowed to make a melee dagger attack then throw the dagger as a ranged attack on their iterative as a single full attack action. So why wouldn't you be able to combine ranged and melee natural attacks? If you can't, could you combine ranged natural attacks and ranged manufactured attacks? Man, I've got more questions on how this works after trying to read up on it.
It's from the "Natural Attacks" entry in the universal monster rules - specifically, the last line.
Format: bite +5 (1d6+1), 2 claws +5 (1d4+2), 4 tentacles +0 (1d4+1); Location: Melee and Ranged.This makes it pretty clear that natural attacks can be either melee or ranged.
It still doesn't explicitly allow for unusual damage types like you said earlier. Good find, though.
I'm still having a hard time believing that "isn't listed as anything else" = "natural attack", especially when unusual things like being ranged, dealing different damage types, and not being one of the natural attack types listed in the Universal Monster Rules all seem to be consistently reasons to have an additional line in the statblock specifically making note that they are natural attacks.
The sound strikes do seem to behave like natural attacks, though, so I'm not convinced they aren't. Which is why I asked the question in the first place. Almost wish you hadn't found that bit, the CRB section on natural attacks made it seem like it was an obvious not melee=not natural.
unrelated, but what is up with the bite attack in that example? why is it taking a penalty on damage? it's in the print copy, too. so weird
unrelated, but what is up with the bite attack in that example? why is it taking a penalty on damage? it's in the print copy, too. so weirdIt's not a dmg penalty, it's just the claws being 1d4+1+str vs 1d6+str for the bite, and 1d4+str for the tentacles.
Tentacles are secondary and deal 1/2 Str. Claws and Bite are both primary, so deal full strength. Claws deal 1d4+2 and tentacles dealing 1d4+1 implies a Strength of 14, which makes the bite damage off by 1. I thought the same as you initially but I'm fairly certain the bite attack has a penalty. It could also be that the example given has 12 Str, and the Claws and Tentacle are both getting +1 from something. No matter what, it's still weird that there is some unexplained bonus or penalty in their example for natural attacks.
Some creatures treat one or more of their attacks differently, such as dragons, which always receive 1-1/2 times their Strength bonus on damage rolls with their bite attack. These exceptions are noted in the creature's description.
Honestly, I'm more concerned with this part.
Specifically, I was speaking to the fact that not adding Str to damage on the sound strikes doesn't disqualify them
Ranged attacks don't automatically add strength to damage. I was thinking about the fact that the sound strikes deal sonic damage and target touch AC, though I suppose that falls under "treat one or more of their attacks different" anyways.
I've been trying to find if there's another case of a creature having an unusual type of natural attack (AKA not on the list in the Universal Monster Rules) that doesn't call it out as being explicitly a natural attack. That'd do a lot to convince me that sound strikes are natural attacks. My google skills are coming up short, though, so I'm not sure if there's any way to check that other than going through the Bestiaries one by one and looking for it.
I did find a creature that uses a non-natural attack like a secondary natural attack - the Lamia. So there's precedent for adding non-natural attacks to a full attack in a way that works like natural attacks, just like how the Muse's sound strikes seem to follow natural attack rules when making a full attack.
Thanks for showing me those. I've never really looked this deeply into natural attacks before. Looks like I'm going back to my old reason for not allowing sound strikes via Fey Form, which is that a 3rd level spell being capable of dealing 20d6 sonic damage on top of your regular full attack is too far above the power curve (especially since it's a 6th level druid asking! Pretty sure you're not supposed to be reliably dealing 20d6+ at level 6). I don't really like telling my players "because I said so" but none of them really expected that one to fly.
At least there seems to be some justification and support for the Rusalka to remain a Fey Form option. I'm sure everyone will be happy that I've established that as being definitely allowed in our games.