Dragon Disciple - Grow Claws and Bite

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

Sounds fun! But when I grow claws in battle it just seems to trigger a second attack with my main weapon. Do you have to be unarmed to use the claws? Bite triggers fine, although at a -5 penalty for being a secondary attack (not sure if it's supposed to be like that), but the claws don't seem to activate, and the combat log and combat animation both show me attacking with my main weapon again, the Chilly Midnight sickle (also wearing a light shield +2). Any explanations on this one?

[Selvokaz]

yes you generally need at least one hand free to claw someone. i assume you're using a two handed weapon or a sword and shield? if you remove your weapons and or shield you'll use your claws when you pop them out. If you only have a one handed weapon then you might be wielding it two handed, unfortunately there is no way to tell the game you want to wield such a weapon one handed so as to free up a hand for the claw attack.

[Autocthon]

Originally posted by Lettus:

yes you generally need at least one hand free to claw someone. i assume you're using a two handed weapon or a sword and shield? if you remove your weapons and or shield you'll use your claws when you pop them out. If you only have a one handed weapon then you might be wielding it two handed, unfortunately there is no way to tell the game you want to wield such a weapon one handed so as to free up a hand for the claw attack.

More specifically the game will always wield a one handed weapon two handed.

However it always wields a light weapon one handed. So if you want a second attack without needing to wepaon switch (from your claws) you can use alight weapon such as a dagger or short sword. At the point that you can grow a bite attack you'll always make the bite as long as you can take a full attack option.

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

What is this with wielding one handed weapons with two hands? I don't understand that. Is there an option to do that or enable/disable it? And is a sickle a light weapon? How can you tell if a weapon is light or not?

Two Weapon Fighting doesn't seem to lower the -5 penalty on either the bite or claw when testing it. Is this normal? How can I make the bite/claws work better and have a higher attack bonus?

[Autocthon]

There is no option to enable or disable wielding a weapon in two hands.

So basically how weapons work is that when you wield a non-light one handed weapon you can wield it in two hands to increase the damage you deal by half your strength. This is generally the best thing to do, so the game simply does it for you.

There are a few things thatlock your character out of the behavior. Spell Combat for instance forces the character to wield weapons one handed.

As far as how you can tell if a weapon is light or not... The game doesn't do a great job of communicating it. Which is to say that it doesn't communicate it at all and basically assumes you are familiar with the pathfinder ruleset.

https://www.d20pfsrd.com/

Is the system reference document for the tabletop. In general it's close enough ot correct that you can believe it for the purposes of the game. Just take a look at the weapons list under equipment.

As for your other questions.

A sickle is light. Any natural attacks you make as part of your full attack are supposed to be made at -5 BAB (because they're free attacks) and they aren't a weapon (or a weapon in your offhand) so the yaren't subject to the two weapon fighting feat. This does not make them bad, in fact the best way to snag free DPS is to get lots of natural attacks and because they aren't subject to the two weapon fighting penalties they're useful for adding attacks without an offhand weapon and without taking a penalty to your mainhand attack.

A classic way to benefit from natural attacks is to play an Alchemist and take the Feral Mutagen discovery when it becomes available. This guarantees three attacks per round, and if you wield no weapons you make all three attacks at full BAB.

Compare that to two weapon fighting where you don't gain a third attack until level 6 at the earliest, and even then your attacks are made at BAB-2, BAB-2, BAB-7 in the best case scenario. Of course you can add an additional bite attack into that to get an fourth attack :P

[GAME GOD FLUENT]

Awesome info, thank you! So that's what natural attacks are. I've built a 5 Archaeologist / 4 Rogue / 2 Dragon Disciple so far. I might take one more level of Rogue to get that additional Sneak Attack bonus and then finish with DD the rest of the way.

[Autocthon]

Statistically speaking most of the time TWF is "better" because you'll end up with a full 6 Attacks at each of your BAB values and they'll be with your (usually better enchanted) weapons.

Of course bite gets thrown in for free when making those attacks if you have it. And the other benefits to DD are not bad.