Hello Pathfinder Community, I have a question regarding a prerequisite for my level 12 Barbarian. Animal Fury: "While raging, the barbarian gains a bite attack. If used as part of a full attack action, the bite attack is made at the barbarian’s full base attack bonus –5. " I had never used it as part of a full-round attack and I think i may have been gimping myself.
Would this technically give me a 4th attack?
First Attack/Second Attack/Third Attack/Bite Attack?
or does it just take the place of any number of the attacks that I have at full BAB-5?
Thanks its a little confusing for me
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Yep, it is in addition to your normal 3 attacks from your BAB.
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If made in addition to your normal iterative attacks it is a secondary attack. (-5 to-hit, 1/2 STR).
Still, no reason not to use it. It won't add a lot, but every bite helps.
This bite attack is a natural weapon attack, and uses those rules. When combining them with iterative attacks, natural weapons work at BAB - 5. As you are a Barbarian, you have great BAB. If you normally hit with your second iterative, you will likely also hit with your bite attack.
For enchanting, the Amulet of Mighty Fists is your friend.
Per Natural Attacks, your bite is a primary attack, so you use your full strength modifier on it. [But not the 1 1/2 you could get using two hands on a weapon.] Power Attack also applies.
Since you have the free attack, use it unless doing so incurs some penalty [say from Fire Shield].
So, like @Volkard Abendroth sais: every little bite helps.
/cevah
Per Natural Attacks, your bite is a primary attack, so you use your full strength modifier on it.
I think Animal Fury overrides it by specifying that you use 1/2 of the STR bonus (for some reason).
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my guess is that they were just assuming you were still using a manufactured weapon (in which case your primary natural weapons are treated as secondary) because there's little reason for, for instance, the -5 if you're not.
but you're right that technically it gives you a crap bite attack that is worse than the default.
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my guess is that they were just assuming you were still using a manufactured weapon (in which case your primary natural weapons are treated as secondary) because there's little reason for, for instance, the -5 if you're not.
but you're right that technically it gives you a crap bite attack that is worse than the default.
The default, when you only have 1 natural attack and are not using manufactured weapons, is 1.5x strength.
Also: if you have only a single natural attack it is always primary, even if of a type that is normally secondary.
yes, i know. my post was a response to the one immediately preceding it.
The default, when you only have 1 natural attack and are not using manufactured weapons, is 1.5x strength.
Also: if you have only a single natural attack it is always primary, even if of a type that is normally secondary.
If you take Animal Fury's text literally, it overrides the default rules. As written, Animal Fury's bite attack is made at BAB-5 if part of any kind of full attack (even if it's the only type of attack, e.g. via Haste), and always (only) adds half strength. It might still be a primary attack, though, which can lead to truly biarre situations: You might make a full attack using Animal Fury's bite plus two secondary natural attacks, and with the Multiattack feat, your secondary attacks are made at a lower penalty than your primary attack.
That's because whoever wrote that, I can't say it any other way, is an idiot. They tried to summarise the relevant rules (which is utterly stupid, because you need to read the natural attack rules to understand how to use one), but they f+$+ed it up in just about the worst possible way: The rules summary is only correct under very narrow conditions.
If you want to keep your sanity, simply treat the bite as a regular natural attack. There's a reason the unchained version did just that (it still has unnecessary reminder text, but maybe there's a redundancy quota).
The default, when you only have 1 natural attack and are not using manufactured weapons, is 1.5x strength.
Also: if you have only a single natural attack it is always primary, even if of a type that is normally secondary.
If you take Animal Fury's text literally, it overrides the default rules. As written, Animal Fury's bite attack is made at BAB-5 if part of any kind of full attack (even if it's the only type of attack, e.g. via Haste), and always (only) adds half strength. It might still be a primary attack, though, which can lead to truly biarre situations: You might make a full attack using Animal Fury's bite plus two secondary natural attacks, and with the Multiattack feat, your secondary attacks are made at a lower penalty than your primary attack.
That's because whoever wrote that, I can't say it any other way, is an idiot. They tried to summarise the relevant rules (which is utterly stupid, because you need to read the natural attack rules to understand how to use one), but they f!$~ed it up in just about the worst possible way: The rules summary is only correct under very narrow conditions.
If you want to keep your sanity, simply treat the bite as a regular natural attack. There's a reason the unchained version did just that (it still has unnecessary reminder text, but maybe there's a redundancy quota).
It does leave single attacks as a standard action open, which is where you find yourself if suddenly unable to use your manufactured weapon and have no other natural attacks.
Personally, I have always read this and just assumed it was a poorly worded recap of the rules.
I never thought that text would be just a summary of natural attack rules... This makes more sense and consistency.
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The animal fury rage power was in core, so there wasn’t really pathfinder rules for Jason to reference at the time. I believe the mechanics for combining natural attacks with iterative weapon attacks were in the first bestiary, not sure if it was based on 3.5 mechanics or not (possibly the mechanic was based on Animal Fury, and the bestiary language can be considered errata for Fury).
They are based on the 3.5 natural attack rules: "" v3.5 Monster Manual pg. 299
Certainly natural attack builds were not a thing at the time.
Maybe not for Barbarian, but natural attack based characters certainly did exist back than, most notably wildshape Druids. I'm also pretty sure other natural attack based builds existed in 3.5.
I do not see players being able to understand how their rage power works from the power description itself and not having to buy a GM book like a bestiary as bad a thing.
The necessary natural attack rules are in the CRB: "" CRB pg. 182
As you can see, every single thing the Animal Fury tries to repeat is there.
For 99% of players, the language used is the useful language.
You still need to understand how you can add natural attacks to weapon based attacks, something that the rage power doesn't really tell you. You can see from this thread that you need to actually understand the natural attack rules first in order to use a natural weapon. Something like "(see pg. 182 on how to use natural weapons)" would have been immensely more useful that what was written.