cr0m said:
If you were to eliminate the full-attack from 3.5e, how would you do it?
When my group decided to get rid of full attack actions, we made a few changes that worked fairly well:
1) All characters and monsters add their BAB to damage. This includes melee and ranged, so archers now gain a good bonus to damage. We decided this bonus also added to damage caused by a grapple.
2) Creatures with more than one attack instead kept the most powerful attack, adding a bonus for every other natural attack, plus BAB. There was no set formula, but typically the bonus was equal to 1/3 or 1/4 of the max damage the extra attacks could have caused (so 1d4 adds +1 damage, 1d6 adds +2).
3) Creatures with special abilities dependent on multiple hits instead had those abilities replaced with a percent chance of occurring. For example, a troll normally rends if both claw attacks hit. With the new system, if it's main attack lands, it has a 50% chance of rending.
4) A few creatures kept multiple attacks, because that was their schtick. For example, the hydra.
5) Two weapon fighting became a single feat. It's effect was two-fold: the character could use one weapon to parry, gaining +1 AC (+ weapon bonus). If not used to parry, the character could wait to see the results of their melee attack roll; if the attack succeeded, the player could declare which weapon hit.
A few comments on these changes:
*Damage output tended to be higher at low and mid levels, and we didn't see much difference at high levels, as so many opponents have high AC's. Power Attack was more useful at high levels, but that just helped balance losing so many iterative attacks.
*Archers tended to be more effective without special equipment, as the BAB bonus to damage added up.
*High strength and 2H weapons still mattered, but less so. After all, if your fighter is averaging 15 points in one hit, an extra couple points from a bigger weapon or higher strength score has less impact. Especially since those things only add to one attack a round (usually - see next point).
*Due to higher damage, it wasn't uncommon to drop an opponent in one shot. Cleave and Great Cleave were great feats (pretty much must-haves, but that's no different than RAW). Characters also had to be careful - that troll could do an enormous amount of damage with one roll.
*Because a character could go from healthy to dying in one roll, we modified the death and dying rules. Essentially, any attack that took a character from positive to negative hit points only took the character to -1, no matter how much damage was done. Getting hit when at negative hit points worked per RAW, so don't get fireballed when down.
*It sped up combat considerably, especially with the folks who have trouble remembering which attacks have which bonuses.
*There was more movement in combat (in part because we eliminated AoO's for movement at the same time as we made these changes).
All in all, we liked the changes and probably wouldn't go back without some strong incentives. Of course, RL got in the way, so we haven't gamed in while, darn it...
