If I have a weapon in hand and two natural attacks- How does that effect attack penalties?


Rules Questions


I'm an oozemorph who uses a one-handed weapon and two natural attacks. to my understanding, if you're going to use a weapon and natural attacks which would normally be primary attacks are instead treated as secondary attacks meaning they get a -5 to hit. But saying that would that mean my normal weapon attack would be getting -6 as if I were two-weapon fighting without the proper feat? And if I were to pick up two-weapon fighting- would that even do anything for my natural attacks or is that strictly for if I were to pick up a second weapon? I've looked at Multiattack which- I mean I think I might qualify for at later levels when I get one more natural attack but currently I only have two natural attacks as opposed to the required three.. So- Yeah I'm probably overcomplicating things here but can anyone help me figure out the math here?


Natural weapons never impose a penalty on attacks with manufactured weapons/unarmed strikes.

The penalty from being a secondary attack is not in any way affected by the TWF feat, the mentioning of it in the natural attack rules is an artifact from 3.5 where combining the two attack styles did impose a penalty on the manufactured weapon attack.


You can think of the natural attacks as tagged onto the end of your normal manufactured-weapon iterative chain when you full attack. Nothing about the normal chain changes, but you can add your natural attacks as secondary natural attacks (overriding normal for their natural attack types) which includes as -5 penalty to the attack (-2 with multiattack) and only half strength bonus to damage. The only thing that forces you to not add a natural attack is if that limb is busy using the manufactured-weapon (e.g. a claw that is holding a sword), and there's usually not too much of a reason to ever forgo an attack you could otherwise make.

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