Are Rakes Secondary, Primary, or Both?

[frankthedm]

The Rake special attack is undefined in how they calculate the attack bonus, damage dice, and damage bonus. Agreed?

No. Wotc defined it in the playtest documents and in savave species. Some creatures are exeptions to it, but those exeptions are easy to find.

So, either I treat rakes as primary/secondary (easy option) or things like bull's strength, animal growth, advancement, and so forth have no effect at all on rake attacks. This last reason is why I call it silly and I don't think my consternation over this problem is at all silly or unbelievable.

You trying to be stubborn? The formula those creatures use is simple enough to find. I do think the dire tiger is an error and the leonal gets the full damage bonus as a beanie since it is a good outsider. Some others don’t follow the usually way rake works, but even those are normally decipherable.

Bull STR raises the attack and damage bonus of the creature, the rake's to hit goes up [using primary bonus] and the damage bonus goes up little [1/2 STR bonus].

Animal growth raise the claw attack die and str as well. The rake gets a bigger die and the rest operates like Bulls STR above.

Advancement is a mirror of Animal growth IIRC.

 

[Infiniti2000]

Bull STR raises the attack and damage bonus of the creature, the rake's to hit goes up [using primary bonus] and the damage bonus goes up little [1/2 STR bonus].

As a special attack we have no indication that STR applies to either the attack roll or damage roll. Obviously, it's a strong assumption, but nothing explicitly says that and why I'm in need of such a definition.

Animal growth raise the claw attack die and str as well. The rake gets a bigger die and the rest operates like Bulls STR above.

As a special attack, the rake doesn't necessarily get a bigger die. For example, look at the elder arrowhawk vs. the adult. Strangely, the adult arrowhawk gains an increase vs. the juvenile. There might be other examples, but I knew of this one off hand, and it proves the theory wrong that rake would gain a bigger die.

Your persistence anyway has led me to rethink my strict categorization with regards to primary/secondary. I am going to treat the attack bonus as primary (either for grappling or as part of a full attack pounce) and the damage bonus as secondary and the rake attack equivalent to claws for other effects.

Fwiw, I appreciate the discussion, and would listen to any further arguments.

PS. I don't have to try to be stubborn, I just am. Poles are born that way.

 

[seans23]

I
No problem, BP. I figure you owe me a lot of bad names for what seans23 did to you on my behalf. (At least, I think it was you)

What did I do now?!?

P.S. Will we ever see another Infiniti Campaign Log entry on Monte's Board? Or that umm... "Unique" statblock you were working on?

 

[Infiniti2000]

P.S. Will we ever see another Infiniti Campaign Log entry on Monte's Board? Or that umm... "Unique" statblock you were working on?

I hope so. I finally found my notes again. I didn't put it all up on my website to let it falter there. As for that stat block, I 'kinda' finished him. I guess I'll try to post him someday.