Dragon attacks

[Bolcien]

ok I've built a dragon for my adventure, it's a CR 15, Red dragon. now I want to make sure of a full attack for this dragon, it has a bite, 2 claws, 2 wings and tail as per the stat block I found for this level of dragon.

What I want to make sure is that in a full attack round, I can do it's bite, claws, wings and tail? although it seems like a lot. I have tried to look it up to no avail. If some one would be kind to clarify it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Dragons are bad news.

 

[dragonis111]

Im pretty sure It gets the bite, and then you can do either 2 claws, or 2 wings, or wing and a claw, or a tail attack.

 

[saundby]

Looking at the CR15 red dragon in the SRD:
Red Dragon, Mature Adult - Pathfinder_OGC

I'm seeing that it gets all the attacks you list: bite, 2 claws, 2 wings, tail slap.
Every so often it gets a breath weapon attack, too. And, hey, there's always Crush. Personally I'd have bite or breath weapon in the rounds the breath weapon is on-line, and I'd consider the wings occupied in a round where a Crush occurs.* But attacking with the wings even while crushing (through flight) is OK:
"Wings: The dragon can slam foes with its wings, even when flying. Wing attacks are secondary attacks that deal the indicated damage plus 1/2 the dragon's Strength bonus."

Have a look at this chart detailing attacks for different sizes of dragon:
Dragons, True - Pathfinder_OGC

*Unless I felt the field needed a bit of levelling for the dragon's sake, in which case I'd go ahead and let the dragon do them in the same round. It's one possible way of "scaling" the encounter a bit. RAW, it gets ALL the attacks.

 

[Empirate]

"RAW, it gets all the attacks" is the bit that the OP cares about. The rest of that post and the posts before are rather... unhelpful.

It works this way: if a creature has more than one attack, regardless of the source, it needs to take a full attack action (which takes up a full-round action) to use more than one of its attacks. Very few creatures have exceptional abilities (as the result of their natural capabilities, feats, class features etc.) that allow them to make more than one attack on less than a full attack action.

So on rounds in which the dragon moves about, readies an item, or controls a Flaming Sphere etc. (all of which take a move action), it can only make a single attack, since it can only take an attack action (which takes up a standard action). That single attack would use its bite attack.

If the dragon wants to use all of his natural attacks, it must do so on a round when it is already in melee with an opponent (or up to 5' away, since you can always take a 5' step free of any action cost). Spending a full round action, the dragon can attack with all its natural attacks: a bite, two claws, two wings, and a tail slap. It can spend all these attacks on a single opponent, or it can spread them out over as many opponents as it can reach. It can only take a single 5' step this round, but it may take this step even between attacks.
Note that the dragon can decide after the first attack whether it will leave it at that (thus spending only a standard action, leaving its move action free to do something else), or go on attacking (thus spending a full-round action). It can only make this decision if it hasn't spent its move action yet.

If the dragon wants to do anything else that would use a standard action, such as cast a spell, use its breath weapon, drink a potion etc., it cannot attack at all, since it doesn't have the actions left.



So, I hope that was clear.