Multiple-arms & multi-weapon fighting

[Sunseeker]

So I'm trying to come up with fun and creative things to throw at my party, and I'm trying to at least understand the rules behind them before I ignore them outright. So my current creative project is a running villain, a power-hungry, natural were-tiger who the party has encountered before. Each time the party encounters them I try to add something to this guy and in his quest for more raw physical power (which the party failed to take up the quest to prevent) Dakar (that's the villain) has got himself 4 arms. I figure they won't see him around for a few levels (they're 9th) but I got to looking into multi-weapon fighting and I'm not sure I quite remember how two-weapon fighting works.

If I recall, it goes as this: when you attack, you get an extra attack with your off-hand weapon (provided it meets various prerequs) at a slight penalty to the primary hand and a significant penalty to the offhand. Making your attack look something like M/O/*repeat based on BAB*. If I follow this logic through to multiple arms, since all non-primary arms are considered "offhands" and take the same penalty, Dakar here would have an attack that looks something like: M/O1/O2/O3/*repeat based on BAB*. Do I have that correct? So, given that this guy is at present a Rogue 10 and I plan to tack on a few Fighter levels to cover those feats putting him oh, probably level 15 by the time the party finds him again his BAB would be 16, giving him 4 attacks during a full attack it would look something like: M/O1/O2/O3A @ full BAB, then: Mb/O1b/O2b/O3b @ -5 BAB /Mc/O1c/O2c/O3c @ -10 BAB, and finally Md/O1d/O2d/O3d @ -10 BAB; with all applicable penalties applied to the respective attacks from multi-weapon fighting w/or w/o the appropriate feats (the party may encounter him before he reaches blender-level proportions).

I could of course certainly say that he just attacks as many times as I feel is appropriate, at the appropriate bonus or penalty because *reasons* but (and you may accuse me of insanity here) there is a risk of a party member becoming infected and since Dakar's lycanthropic curse uses him as a base, a play may be subjected to these headaches as well and since it is technically possible in my setting to both cure and transition from afflicted to natural lycanthrope it's possible a player may be tempted to try and keep their new body parts.

But mostly I'm just rusty with 3rd and want to make sure I still understand the math of iterative attacks and two+ weapon fighting. So if anyone could give me a thumbs up or down on my calculations I'd appreciate it.

 

[Shin Okada]

Assuming his BAB is +16, he has 4 arms and holding weapons in all of his hands, and has Multiweapon Fighting feat, he attacks at +14/+9/+4/-1 with his main arm, and +14 with other 3 hands. So, 7 attacks in total. In addition to them, he can use his Bite attack as secondary natural attack at +11.

 

[Sunseeker]

Assuming his BAB is +16, he has 4 arms and holding weapons in all of his hands, and has Multiweapon Fighting feat, he attacks at +14/+9/+4/-1 with his main arm, and +14 with other 3 hands. So, 7 attacks in total. In addition to them, he can use his Bite attack as secondary natural attack at +11.

Okay, so the extra attacks granted by the Multi-Weapon Fighting feat are tacked on to the end of the full attack, not after each stage of the Full Attack. Knew what I was doing sounded a bit overkill.

 

[Cleon]

Okay, so the extra attacks granted by the Multi-Weapon Fighting feat are tacked on to the end of the full attack, not after each stage of the Full Attack. Knew what I was doing sounded a bit overkill.

The extra attacks are secondary weapons so are separate from the iterative attack of the primary weapon. This also means you get half strength bonus on the damage from the extra attacks.

Also, the -2 penalty only applies if the off-hand weapons are light. If your weretiger is using heavier weapons as off-hand weapons the penalty is -4.

i.e., a full attack would go something like the following, including its secondary bite attack. I'll assume it doesn't have Multiweapon to reduce the secondary attack penalty of the bite:

Full Attack: Primary weapon +14*/+9*/+4*/-1* melee (weapon + Str*) and 3 off-hand light weapons +14* melee (weapon + ½Str*) and bite +11* melee (2d6 + ½Str*)
*plus adjustments for Strength, feats, weapon enhancements et cetera.

or, if the off-hand weapons aren't light:

Full Attack: Primary weapon +12*/+7*/+2*/-3* melee (weapon + Str*) and 3 off-hand light weapons +12* melee (weapon + ½Str*) and bite +11* melee (2d6 + ½Str*)

If you want even more damage, the Improved Multiweapon Fighting and Greater Multiweapon Fighting add iterative attacks to the off-hand weapons. The main difficulty with those is (a) having the feats to spare and (b) meeting the Dex requirements - Improved Multiweapon's Dex 15 isn't too hard to get, but Greater Multiweapon's Dex 19 may be tricky.

With Improved Multiweapon Fighting and off-hand light weapons, it becomes:

Full Attack: Primary weapon +14*/+9*/+4*/-1* melee (weapon + Str*) and 3 off-hand light weapons +14*/+9* melee (weapon + ½Str*) and bite +11* melee (2d6 + ½Str*)

Greater Multiweapon Fighting would make it:

Full Attack: Primary weapon +14*/+9*/+4*/-1* melee (weapon + Str*) and 3 off-hand light weapons +14*/+9*/+4* melee (weapon + ½Str*) and bite +11* melee (2d6 + ½Str*)

 

[nijineko]

Well laid out explanation!

Much the same as a thri-kreen combat type.

if you want to get magic, and assuming the BBEG survives this encounters, then borrow from the spellweaver's ability next time.