Grappling and Natural Attacks

[Lord Zardoz]

I am expecting to soon encounter a situation wherein I will have my players attack Troglodytes for the first time. While the stench, decent HP for humanoids, and the standard use of a 10ft reach weapon is all very fun to play around with, I like to go that extra mile to make my players lives difficult.

I may want to have Troglodytes grapple some opponents and exploit their natural attacks when doing so. The PHB says that you can attack with a light weapon. How does this interact with having a claw / claw / bite attack routine? Can I inflict damage with all three, or am I limited to one claw and the bite? Or just the bite?

END COMMUNICATION

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Here's the trick:

When grappling, you can do one of several possible actions, many of which you can do multiple times based on your BAB / iterative attacks.

One of those options is "Attack your opponent." You may attack your opponent using an unarmed strike, a natural weapon, or a light weapon, with a -4 penalty on your attack roll.

Note that creatures with natural weapons never receive iterative attacks based on BAB when using them. So, a troglodyte with a BAB of +6 / +1 couldn't make 4 claw attacks in one round.

So, if you had a high enough BAB to get multiple attacks per round (which a standard troglodyte does not), you could use the "Attack your opponent" grapple option once for each iterative attack you had, at successively lower BABs. Note that, because you can't gain iterative attacks with a natural weapon based on BAB, you'd need to attack with a different natural weapon each time. Thus, a trog with a BAB of +11 or more could claw, claw, and bite while grappled (at +11 / +6 / +1), but a standard troglodyte may only use one such natural attack of your choice.

And, of course, you still suffer the -4 penalty to all attack rolls.