I like multiple attacks, but it's hard to do them right.

[B.T.]

Multiple attacks are a fairly elegant way of allowing characters to increase their attack accuracy, attack damage, crit chance, and the like without adding in a bunch of complex mechanics. However, it presents two main problems. First, doubling your number of attacks doubles your character's offensive potential without doubling his defensive potential. This can lead to a skewed gameplay experience (also known as "rocket tag") where the person who goes first wins the fight. Second, increasing number of attacks can be cumbersome to adjudicate. Rolling 2-3 attack rolls is fine, but rolling 4-5 rapidly becomes a headache.

There have been several solutions proposed throughout D&D history.

• Multiple attacks against creatures with 1 HD. I guess if you're planning on fighting all goblins all the time, this works.

• Partial attacks. You make one attack this this time, then two the next time, then one again. This has the downside of difficult tracking.

• Descending attack bonus. Full attacks (as with the 3e sytem) created a mess of addition and subtraction. Rolling +20 / +15 / +10 / +5 is bad enough, but it gets ridiculous when you're taking a -3 penalty to your attack rolls for Power Attack and getting a +2 bonus for flanking and did you remember to add in the bard's inspire courage?

• 4e packaged multiple attacks into various powers. You get one attack all the time, but if you use a power, you can sometimes make multiple attacks. This is okay, but it feels kind of arbitrary, especially when you're someone like me who prefers the 3e-style "monsters work the same as PCs" design principle.

What are your thoughts?

 

[Crothian]

I've never had issues with multiple attacks in a round. It always seems to work out well for the character and player. I have never seen your so called "rocket tag" and rolling lots of dice is not cumbersome for an organized player. That's my experience.

 

[Starfox]

I don't find that multiple attacks really slows the game down - as long as each character/critter only acts once per turn. Its when creatures get minor-action-attacks, multiple opportunity attacks, and similar madness that the game slows down. In short, when people have to make multiple decisions each round.

 

[Sunseeker]

I've always felt that any primarily-martial class should simply get one attack per hand at their normal BAB...but to limit the weapons you're allowed to wield as has been done before. Minor penalty to light weapons and increasing with size categories. Say: -1 if both weapons are one size smaller or light. -2 if one weapon is normal size for you and the other is normal or light. -4 if one weapon is two-handed* or one size larger. Double the penalty for each step further.
* special feat required for wielding a two-handed or one size larger weapon in one hand.

With a scaled-back BAB like DDN uses, this would probably be fine, with of course some dual-weapon fighting feats to reduce these penalties.

I don't like iterative such as 3.5 because it simply goes too far. Your 5th attack is nearly worthless without some serious bonuses. A cumulative penalty to additional attacks is fine...but it ought to start lower and increase over time. So, -2 to second, -4 to third, -7 to fourth, -10 to fifth. In 3.5 a full BAB gives you a -15 to your last attack! Even with great buffs that's still unlikely to hit save 10%(19-20) of the time.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Part of the thing is that a perfectly balanced fight is "rocket tag." If I'm doing 1d8 damage each round against you and you're doing 1d8 damage against me, and we each have 4 hp, whoever goes first wins. That's a good coin flip.

Rocket tag also isn't necessarily a bad thing. There's plenty of modes of play where it makes sense.

But I'm doing it like this:

Every weapon has a damage die, 1d4-1d12. Average 1d8.

Two-handed weapons generally have two dice (ie: 2d4-2d12). The average is 2d8 (ie: greatsword).

One-handed weapons generally have one die (1d4-1d12). The average is 1d8 (ie: longsword).

You can wield another weapon in your off-hand, and then you have the equivalent of a two-handed weapon (ie: two longswords = one greatsword).

You can also wield a shield in your off-hand. That allows you to actively block: when you take damage, you can roll a dice to negate that damage. Basic shield? It's 1d8, o'course.

So take two sword-and-board folks fighting. Each one rolls 1d8 for attacks, and their target rolls 1d8 to negate damage. On average, they're just wailing on each others' shields all day, but the chaos is such that there's exceptions on both sides. This is slow, but it should be for two defensive-oriented warriors to fight each other.

Now, Dr. Two-Swords gets in there and fights Mr. Sword-And-Board. Dr. Two-Swords isn't negating any damage, so he's taking 1d8 each round. Mr. Sword-And-Board is rolling 1d8 to defend as well, so while he's taking roughly the same damage each round. This goes faster, but we have Defense vs. Offense. When Corporal Two-Hander goes up against Mr. Sword-And-Board, same thing.

When the good doctor and the corporal fight each other, they're both doing 2d8 damage to each other each round -- they're sinking fast. Offense vs. Offense. The big difference here is one of spikes vs. consistency. The doctor is reliable, because if he misses with one hit, he'll probably still slam on the other one (and there's the rare chance of hitting twice). The corporal, meanwhile, is all-or-nothing: his hits are always powerful, but they're less common.

Now, there's a measure of strategy. If you're a typical heavy-armor kind of character, you've probably got lots of hit points and all-around high defenses, and your shield is just adding to the fact that you will never frickin' go down. Your redundancies have redundancies. On the other hand (ha), if you're a dual-wielding Dex-monkey stereotype, you can dish it out, but you can't take it. If you're hit, you're in trouble. Maybe not one-hit kill, but maybe two. And if you're somewhere in the middle (ie: beefy barbarian with a big blade), you've got at least one other mode of defense, but you're not building layers upon layers.

Shields also get more interesting than "an extra +1 or +2 to AC." Active defenses!

 

[billd91]

• Partial attacks. You make one attack this this time, then two the next time, then one again. This has the downside of difficult tracking.

• Descending attack bonus. Full attacks (as with the 3e sytem) created a mess of addition and subtraction. Rolling +20 / +15 / +10 / +5 is bad enough, but it gets ridiculous when you're taking a -3 penalty to your attack rolls for Power Attack and getting a +2 bonus for flanking and did you remember to add in the bard's inspire courage?

Don't forget that with the 1e/2e version of iterative attacking, characters who qualified alternated attacks with opponents who qualified as well. This is a major contrast with 3e iteratives all being adjudicated at once.

 

[MerricB]

Don't forget that with the 1e/2e version of iterative attacking, characters who qualified alternated attacks with opponents who qualified as well. This is a major contrast with 3e iteratives all being adjudicated at once.

This. Of all the versions of multiple attacks I've seen, it's the AD&D version I come back to. The different attack bonuses of 3E look like a good way of keeping things in check, but actually they slow the game down significantly.

 

[Herobizkit]

You could also resurrect the old rule where iterative attacks happen last in the round in order of initiative... ie. everyone swings once in the round, then whoever has iterative attacks resolves them in order of initiative. It's more bookeeping, but that's the way one of the D&D's used to do it.

 

[Tuft]

What I think the 3.X iterative attack system does better than the others is giving incentive for party buffs, i.e. bardic performance, bless, prayer and so on; when those buffs starts enabling the "bad" iterative attacks to hit, the effect ought to be noticeable.

Currently I'm playing a tumble-for-flank tripmonkey acrobatic martial artist bard in a [notranslate]Pathfinder[/notranslate] campaign. Once our barbarian gets iterative attacks, I fully expect that helping her hit with her second iterative attack will far outclass my own puny 1d6-1 attacks...

 

[Cleon]

What are your thoughts?

I like the alternative initiative version I first came across in a Dragon magazine article. Can't recall what issue it was offhand.

Basically, a character has an initiative bonus based on their THAC0 (with some adjustment for weapon speed, Strength and Dex) and the number of attacks they could make depended on the roll.

e.g. your Axmeister roll 1d6+4 for initiative and get an 8, giving them an attack on initiative "8" and a second attack on "2". So initiative 7-12 gives two attacks, 13-16 gives three attacks and so on.

The main advantage is that highly skilled fighters tend to strike first (as they should) but don't get all their attacks in before their opponents have a chance to counter.

'Course, it is fiddlier in play.