I go for RAW.
How often a player or creature pulls off a Full Attack has many factors beyond those that you cite, Slaygrim.
- Is the character going for Melee or Ranged Attack?
- Who / What is fighting? Against mounted archers, Full Attack is not frequent at all
- How durable is the attacker?
- How durable are the targets?
- How well enforced are weapon drawing rules? (ie: Do people change from ranged to melee and back to ranged in the same fight, and do they pull off full attacks when doing so)
- How is the character optimized? (Someone build on AoO and Spring Attack may not bother with full Attack)
My game has a Ftr 8 and a Ftr 2 / Rngr 6 as the primary combatants. The Cleric is an ok secondary combatant. I am currently running RHoD right now, so opponents range from Hobgoblin and Draconian cannon fodder to some pretty scary high HP opponents (a black dragon, some classed opponents).
The Ftr 8 is basically a full on tank right now. He has a very high attack bonus due to a combination of Bab, Feats, a and a legacy weapon which just recently gained a constant bless aura. He has some mounted combat feats, but favors the sword at the moment. He generally charges into combat, and just beats on the opponent. If the opponent is highly mobile, he will stay mounted, and if the opponent flies, he switches to archery. He pulls off full attacks in melee about 1/3rd of the time, since few opponents are 1 hit wonders. When he is mounted, he usually ends up using charge / ride by attack. A full attack with a sword for the fighter right now does about 1d8+8 damage and is at +16 / +11 (Bab 8 + 1 Wpn + 3 Str + 1 Wpn Focus + 2 Wpn Mastery + 1 PermaBless from legacy weapon)
The Ftr 2 / Rngr 6 has gone with 2 wpn fighting. He does not have quite the same to hit bonus as the Ftr 8, and his weapons are not as powerful. The build is also probably sub-optimal, but it has plenty of potential, if the player would make more effort to exploit it. He manages to make up for the reduced to hit / base damage with his Favored enemy bonus (he took Goblins and Dragons, which applies to nearly every opponent, since I ruled that Dragons / Draconians / Half Dragons fall into the same category). He also has a high Dex (16 or 17), and does quite well with archery. He manages to get full attacks off more often than the Ftr 8. He is content to stay out of melee, and when he does enter melee, he has a higher movement rate (light armour + boots of striding and springing), and has his Riding dog companion set up flanks and use the trip ability. Against goblinoid opponents (about 80% of what he has fought) he does 1d8+5 damage, and is at +9/+9/+4 when doing a full attack.
The Cleric 8 has 8 Str, but a very high AC. He does not full attack very often.
As for monsters, not many of the opponents have had iterative or multiple attacks, though that is starting to change. I have run fights with a Hydra, a Troll, 2 Dragons on different occasions, a 7th level ranger opponent, Sivak Draconians (Wpn + Tail or Wpn + Bite), Ghouls, Manticores, and Chimeras. None of these fights caused problems due to slowdown when dealing with the iterative attacks. The Young Adult Black dragon did cause a "OMG were so screwed" reaction when the +21 Bite / +18 Claw / +18 Claw / +18 Wing / +18 Wing / +18 Tail full attack came into play, but that was more a concern with me getting about 2 or 3 critical hits in the Bite attack that was doing 3d6 damage and threatened on a 19.
The only time that the game has started to bog down is when we had to look up rules that we were unfamiliar with, (Can a Wand be used by a Silenced caster, me wanting confirmation that Monster Summon 4 could summon X amount of creatures from the Monster Summon 3 list, and a few others that I do not recollect right now) in a fight that had a large number of participants.
Doing Full attack as RAW has not had an adverse impact on the game in terms of slowing things down. We tend to roll the Attack + Damage at the same time, and in the case of the players, if they full attack they tend to throw all the dice at once, using colour to match the damage die with the attack die.
END COMMUNICATION
