Iterative Attacks

[bkdubs123]

Any 1st level Kobold gets two Claw attacks and one Bite in a full attack, the Claws at his highest base attack bonus, and the Bite at -5 from his base attack bonus (the same penalty as Iteratives).

A Dextrous 1st level warrior with the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, wielding a Longsword and a Shortsword, gets two attacks in a full attack, both at his highest base attack bonus -2.

Any 6th level warrior gets two attacks in a full attack, with any weapon, gets two attacks in a full attack, the first at his highest base attack bonus, the second at -5 from his base attack bonus.

Now, these are the standard rules, and even though TWF really sucks it also heavily devalues the concept of Iterative Attacks, while Natural Attacks destroy the concept. I'd like to divorce the Iterative Attack concept from base attack bonus a little bit and apply it more uniformly across these options.

I don't have any ideas yet for making this work with Natural Attacks, but for TWF, for example, what if anyone could pick up a second one-handed weapon and, without needing any feats, make an attack with it at the flat -5 "iterative penalty" to attack rolls? No looking up on the chart what your penalty is based on weapon size, etc, you just hold a second weapon and attack at -5. Not sure what the TWF feat would do at that point (reducing the penalty to -2 could work, probably in addition to granting the ability to make both attacks as a standard action), but that's one thought.

What if the iteratives gained as a result of BAB, not only cap at a -5 penalty (for a routine of +20/+15/+15/+15) as is a common idea, but also were added to a standard action attack routine? So a 1st level Kobold Fighter with Str 18 might swing in for Claw +5 (1d3+4), Claw +5 (1d3+4), and Bite +0 (1d3+2) as a full round action, but a 6th level Goliath Fighter with Str 22 swings in for Greatsword +12 (2d6+9), Greatsword +7 (2d6+9) as a standard action.

How about the Primary/Secondary attacks angle? Perhaps that could be used more uniformly across the board. Unarmed Strike could be the default primary attack of a Humanoid, but an armed Humanoid could treat its equipped weapon as its primary attack and its Unarmed Strike as its secondary. Then the term "Iterative Attack" could be used to refer to any attacks made above and beyond a creature's primary attack routine. In these model primary attacks are always made at full base attack bonus, while only secondary, iterative, attacks take the -5 penalty. All primary attacks might even be able to be made as a standard action while a full attack allows any secondary or tertiary (and so on) attacks to be made. Not sure how TWF (or multi-weapon fighting as the case may be) would work under this model, perhaps additional weapons are added as secondary, tertiary, etc attacks unless you have the Two-Weapon or Multi-Weapon Fighting feats and use multiples of the same weapon. So, a 1st level Human Fighter with Str 18 could pick up a Longsword and a Flail and make a standard attack with whichever he calls his primary weapon at +5 to hit, or he could make a full attack with them both at +5/+0. If the same Fighter took the Two-Weapon Fighting feat and instead picked up two Battleaxes he could make a standard attack with them both at +5/+5. A 1st level Thri-Kreen Fighter with Str 18 could wield a Longsword, a Scimitar, a Morningstar, and a Rapier and make a full attack with them all at Primary +5/Secondary +0/Tertiary -5/Quaternary -10, or with the Multi-Weapon Fighting her could wield four Longswords and make a standard attack with them all at +5/+5/+5/+5, OR pick up a couple torches and a couple Shortswords for a full attack at Primary +5/+5; Secondary +0/+0.

That's a lot of thoughts, so I'll keep it at that for now. What do you think is best? Do you have any other ideas that might work out better than the ones I have above?

[RobbyPants]

One idea is to simply not have TWF confer extra attacks.  Instead, you get some other benefits like parrying, creating openings, and having the option to switch which weapon you attack with to better overcome DR.

Other than that, I don't have any ideas right now.

[veekie]

Personally, I'd have TWF confer additional attacks, but remove the Iterative attacks in favor of damage bonus on armed attacks. Have TWF and Flurry be the unusual ways of gaining additional weapon attacks. The damage bonus applying only to armed attacks(and unarmed strikes with IUS) exclude natural weapons.

[Tenebrus]

I would like shields to be more useful.  You would think 8,000 years of warfare -- most of it with spears and shields, from pharaohs to medieval levies  -- would be persuasive.  Some of the ideas for TWF giving other benefits other than an additional attack should be true for shields as well.  Might start a thread on this for shields.

For the TWF, maybe each round, as an immediate action, the extra weapon does one of these things:
O + 1/2 of BAB to AC (parry)
O + 1/2 of BAB to damage (follow up), also adding 1/2 of Strength bonus
O + 1/2 of BAB to hit (maneuver)

[Otto the Bugbear]

Just to shoot off a random idea ...

Iterative attacks can be used during a standard action, but keep the cascading -5 penalty. This should be the normal rule regardless of this TWF thread.
Anyone can pick up a secondary weapon to gain an extra attack at -5. This extra attack is only available during a full attack.
Ambidexterity (feat) makes the secondary weapon available during a standard action attack and eliminates the -5 penalty.
Two-Weapon Fighting (feat) grants a number of secondary weapon attacks equal to the number of main-hand attacks.

Two feats. That's all the feats necessary to become Mr. Ginsu.

I'm working on an idea for the shields thread. I'll cross post here when I have time to post.

[bkdubs123]

I'm working on an idea for the shields thread. I'll cross post here when I have time to post.

Not to be rude, but I'd rather you didn't.

I'm finding it difficult to describe exactly what I'm trying to accomplish in this thread but it's nothing to do with Shields, that's for sure, and it's also not just "how do I fix Two-Weapon Fighting?"

Basically, I'm trying to do something to eliminate rules confusion and redundancies as they apply to multiple attacks per round. Iterative attacks via BAB, Natural Attacks, and TWF all offer different, sometimes contradictory, sets of rules for granting more than one attack per round. I want to consolidate and simplify. In doing so, icing on the cake would be bringing the baseline of melee up slightly and making two-weapon fighting a viable fighting style without taking any feats, but those two issues are secondary to the goal at best.

[EjoThims]

Keep in mind, TWF is both already possible without the feats, additionally, it is possible to use two different weapons with iterative attacks without using TWF.

Remember, anyone can already pick up a second weapon and gain an extra attack with it. Doing so gives a -6 penalty to the MH and a -10 penalty to the offhand. Penalties are reduced if using a light weapon in the off-hand.

if you were to shift the TWF penalties to 0/-5, making the extra attack suffer normal iterative penalty, then I would make the TWF feat grant OH attacks equal to the number of iteratives, but all at -5. So routine would look like MH: 20/15/10/5 OH: 15/10/5/0. Combined with houserule it would be MH: 20/15/15/15 OH: 15/10/10/10. This would make mainhand attacks hit more often but offhands less. And it would be a slight buff to people using two one-handed weapons instead of one one-handed and one light.

And most monsters have all of their natural weapon attacks become secondary when they pick up a weapon, making it consistent (-5 penalty for extra attacks) with the houseruled iteratives anyway. Multi-attack and Imp Multi-attack are things you might want to look at though.

[Prime32]

So let's say there's a dragon with a bite, two claws and a tail slap.

It could full attack with one of its natural weapons in the same manner as a manufactured weapon.
It could TWF two of its natural weapons (with claws counting as light weapons and bite as two-handed).
If it gets multiple attacks it could still attack with multiple natural weapons, same way you can switch between weapons in a full attack without TWFing. It probably wouldn't have a reason to unless different weapons were effective against different opponents.
A feat exists which lets you multi-wield three weapons at once, and one extra weapon every time you take it.

Does that make sense?