Ken’s new game is going reasonably well. We’ve only had one death in two sessions of play. But I do have a question about my character that nobody can seem to answer.
We started our characters at level three. So I am playing a Feral Mountain Orc Barbarian named Ogg. Basically, I took the Mountain Orc race from the Races of Faerun, which is just a simple race like Human or Elf, and I added the Feral template to it from Savage Species. The Feral template is a +1 level adjustment, so I added only two levels of Barbarian.
Being Feral has a few neat bonuses to being an Orc. My strength is 25, which is actually pretty good. With my +7 bonus from Strength, I can do 1d12+7 damage with a great axe. Yay! But here’s the trick…
Feral also gives Ogg claws. Techincally, two claw attacks. Presumably when you apply this template to a monster (such as an orc), the monster would get two claw attacks as a primary attack, both at full attack bonuses. So I should have two claw attacks (1d8+7) at an attack bonus of +9 (Str +7, BaB +2).
A little more background on my character development is required. I intend to take Ogg toward a specific prestige class from the new Frostburn book, Primeval. Bascially, a Primeval is a character that has latent primeval genes or a past life or something, and is able to revert to a prehistoric animal. My character’s prehistoric animal is a dire wolf. The bonus is that when Ogg turns into the dire wolf, he gets a pretty good bonus to his Strength. I forget what the numbers are exactly, but it’s something like +17.
Now, one of the prerequisites for this pretige class is Knowledge (nature). Barbarians aren’t adept at acquiring knowledge, so it takes twice as long to achieve that level. To offset this (and possibly get some enhancements in other places) I thought I would take a level of Ranger, because doing so would fill all of my requirements right away (except BaB +8, which I somehow overlooked before I started on this venture - oh, well).
So when we advanced two levels last session (it was a long one with two “parts” and very difficult combats), I was contemplating what class I should take as the next level. (Never mind that I should have taken Fighter and not Ranger anyway - yeah, yeah.) If I took another level of Ranger, I would be granted the Combat Style ability, which is effectively the same as the Two Handed Fighting feat.
Ok, here we go. – If I can already fight with two claws at full attack bonuses, then what does Two Handed Fighting do for my character?
Here is our presumption. The two claw attacks are functionally a single primary attack, just as if I was going to make one attack with a sword. If I made a third claw attack (primarily two attak rolls, and then secondarily one attack roll), it would be the same as making two attacks with a sword, with the same penalties. Assuming that claws classify as light, my first two attacks would be at -4, and my third would be at -8.
Using the Two Weapon Fighting feat, all three attacks would be at only -2, just as two attacks would be with a sword and that feat.
Does this make sense?
We combed through rulebook after rulebook after Dragon Magazine on Saturday night after the game (I had been using an axe through the game, because it was easier than figuring out the claw business up front), and couldn’t find anything that specifically applied to the problem.
Any ideas? An official-ish ruling would be nice for our DM. My common sense meter is pushing into the red with this extra attack, though.
