D&D 5E Natural Weapons, How Much Value Is There To Actually Having Them?

[Tonguez]

Claws on cats etc help them is seize prey so in addition to slashing damage should PC Claws give a bonus to grapple?
if a creature manages to grapple with both claws should they then get a extra attack to Bite or Rend?

Should Lizardman bites be venomous like a Komodo dragon?

I like the idea of horns granting a Knockdown Slam attack too

 

[James Gasik]

You still have to get past the fact that you can't use Dex with unarmed strikes (which natural weapons are), so they're only useful for Strength builds or Monks.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You still have to get past the fact that you can't use Dex with unarmed strikes (which natural weapons are), so they're only useful for Strength builds or Monks.

That's another mechanic you can fix.

 

[ReshiIRE]

View attachment 325817
A guy who lacks emotion and empathy and looks at me the same way I look at a steak- why would I want to go on a dangerous adventure with him again?

Fair enough on the mechanical aspects I suppose (though Con / Wis IS still great for a Cleric, and I don't think my argument about that specific class being good for Lizardfolk is good).

I suppose the lore and flavour aspects did not bother me as much due to playing in a custom setting... and the fact that Volo's guide has generally been negatively received on that side for a while. At the same time though, this type of character could be quite quite fun to play (sans the corpse stuff - logically, any lizardfolk adventurer would know revival is possible), as an exercise in xenobiology and characters way outside the standard wheel-house. Not for everyone, however.

That, and the aesthetics of skinny lizards going about wrecking shite is fun c=.

 

[ECMO3]

Okay my conversation in the 5e alike-species thread brought this up and I think it’s an actually interesting question: how valuable in play is it actually to always have a ‘weapon’ available to your character at every moment?

Sure you can never be disarmed but anyone who relys on weapons is almost certainly going to have at least one backup, and that backup will likely be doing decently more damage too as natural weapons tend to be on the d4/d6 end of the damage spectrum doing some form of nonmagic BSP,

Not to mention that any scenario where you have been reduced to using your natural weapon then chances are so have the rest of your party who aren’t likely to also all have them, the rest of your party who thus probably doesn’t want to engage in any unnecessary combat until they require their weapons, making the main scenario where they would’ve been useful for once the one where combat is going to be the least pursued option,

Do you agree? Are natural weapons even worth having most of the time, what are your experiences with a character who has had them, and if you don’t think they’re worthwhile what would you change to make them so?

The Dhampir fanged bite is pretty awesome for a few reasons:

It gives you a boost either to hit points or to an skill check a few times a day. One trick with a Dhampir with Find Familiar is to summon a familiar and then bite and kill it before a crucial skill check. This also scales off of constitution which can be nice. The wording is such you can combine it with smites, Hex or other damage bonuses to increase the amount it adds to your ability check.

Finally if the wording on a natural weapon is such that it "is considered a simple weapon you are proficient in", then it is a Monk weapon and if you play with a Monk it can use dexterity and scales with the unarmed damage dice.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You're really serving to point out how useless natural weapons are here.

Even in an idealized scenario, their use is far fetched and applicable solely to martial-melee-oriented PCs who have been disarmed but must fight. How often does that happen? Once a campaign? Less? How many PCs will it even impact? It won't impact any caster who has any offensive cantrips, for example.

Assuming that natural weapons help in this kind of situation is pretty silly, especially as you're asserting non-moron captors.

With captors, no sane captor is going to ignore actually-dangerous claws or horns, are they? They're going to use countermeasures, indeed having natural weapons could leave you in a worse situation than other PCs because you're likely to be either separated, maimed intentionally (though I'd feel a DM was a little unkind to do that in most D&D campaigns, which have a sort of subtext of "fair play"), or have devices fitted to you to disable your natural weapons or just to prevent you from acting at all, which will consequentially disable you more than other PCs.

In a "no weapons" scenario, if your natural weapons are a real threat, you may simply be denied entry to such a place, kept at a distance other PCs are not, forced to wear devices preventing use of the weapons, or a variety of other situations. The odds of a guard who is terrified of you having even a dagger being fine with you having claws you could slit throats with or fangs to rip them out are non-existent. If weapons aren't totally banned - i.e. stuff like knives are allowed, you're probably going to be fine, but any total weapon exclusion zone? Nah.

What I'm saying is that this is beyond a corner-case situation.

The reality is that in 5E D&D, natural weapons that don't have additional abilities/effects associated with them have negligible value to and impact on a campaign.

Where they do have additional abilities, like a 1/rest free attack or move-and-attack they do have some real value, but they are still typically wildly, insanely, overvalued by WotC's D&D team to the point where there has to be some kind of weird rule in place about them, which does not stem from playtesting or game experience, merely being the bugbear of Crawford or whatever.

I would agree that they're largely a ribbon.

That said, if dealing 1d6 (3.5 avg) instead of 1 damage is negligible, then so is the choice between a 1d8 (4.5) longsword and a 2d6 (7) greatsword. The difference in average damage is identical, unless the character has a feat or feature to modify one or the other.

They can also offer occasional utility. For example, if a character normally wields a maul, they can opt to use their claws if they need to slice through a rope (for example, to free an ally or if an enemy is climbing up that rope).

I don't consider natural weapons to be high value, but I do think they're a nice option to have.

In my very first post (quoted above for reference) I stated that natural weapons are "largely a ribbon". I find it a little absurd that I'm repeatedly having to defend a position that I clearly stated as a personal opinion, and moreover seems to be largely in agreement with the rest of you; natural weapons are not "high value, but I do think they're a nice option to have", and the explanations I listed for my appreciation thereof. To be clear, this is a public forum and you're well within your rights to do so; I'm just finding the pushback on my opinion a little boggling.

As to your points, of course the captor isn't going to ignore the natural weapons. However, in this case, the PC does have the advantage that their natural weapons are attached to them, meaning that any anti-measures will also be attached to them, lending them an opportunity to overcome those anti-measures. Unless the DM has the bad guys chop off a tabaxi's hands (which would be rather extreme, and no DM I know would go that far in a capture scenario) they have a chance to slip the specialized manacles (or whatever) that are preventing them from utilizing their natural weapons. This can even be leveraged to the player's advantage, as if they successfully deceive the guards into believing that the PC is still restrained, they can gain the element of surprise.

As for a "no weapons" zone, banning the creatures is certainly a possibility, but one that a good DM should communicate during session zero. The players can then make their choices based around that information. Maybe the player opts to play a human instead of a tabaxi. Maybe they simply have their character stay outside such cities and use that time to gather components for making healing potions. Or maybe they use disguises/magic to try to dupe the guards into believing that they're something that doesn't have natural weapons. It's up to the player, at that point, how they want to approach it.

I mean, at a certain point it descends into absurdity that can undermine coherent world building. Everyone in 5e technically has a natural attack (unarmed attack), to say nothing of monks. Does the city put literally everyone who visits in Hannibal Lecter style restrains as a result? If tabaxi are considered monstrous by the city, that's one thing, but what if the city has trade and other political treaties with them instead? I think it's entirely possible to have cities where weapons are not allowed inside, but natural weapons are tolerated (potentially coupled with unusually serious criminal penalties if those natural weapons are used in a violent manner). IMO that's a lot more likely and realistic. It's actually how I run such cities because my players and I enjoy such characters in my game.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think it's entirely possible to have cities where weapons are not allowed inside, but natural weapons are tolerated (potentially coupled with unusually serious criminal penalties if those natural weapons are used in a violent manner). IMO that's a lot more likely and realistic. It's actually how I run such cities because my players and I enjoy such characters in my game.

I have to say I don't think that's either likely or realistic and without any explanation from you as to why you think it is, it's just mystifying. Why would a city be so incredibly restrictive as to not allow basic tools humans use to operate like knives and sticks - which is superficially insane, no medieval city in history operated that way (that I can think of - maybe in Asia somewhere?) - but be totally fine with throat-ripping fangs and claws?

The real problem here is the bizarre fantasy of a city that doesn't allow knives/staves/clubs and natural weapons being some use there. Weapons of war are what tend to get banned. Also, you talk about severe punishments for using the natural weapons violently, and yes that seems plausible, but that's going to hit PCs who use them in self-defence as well as in offence.

And what does such a city do to casters? This seems like you've invented these incredibly paranoid cities solely to inconvenience martial characters - I was expecting, reading your post, to hear that casters had to wear a device disabling their magic or something, but it seems they're just fine?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Another way to look at it is, if we gave a points score to racial abilities, and say used Darkvision as a baseline at 1 point, then we could say like:

1/rest Misty Step 1.25 points (maybe as high as 1.5)
1/rest bonus attack with rider 1 point
Mediocre cantrip (Dancing Lights for example!) 0.25 points
Good cantrip or choice of cantrips 0.5 points
Good skill or choice of skill 0.5 points

And so on, then natural weapons, by themselves, looking at their real utility, including the fact that WotC are absolutely bound and determined that they are STR-only, no matter how much more sense DEX makes, and their damage is on-par with bad Simple weapons in general (but without having any of the features of those Simple weapons), cannot be dual-wielded (I think most DMs would allow it, but RAW my understanding is that they cannot - correct me if I'm wrong, though it doesn't make much difference), and so on are probably worth about 0.01 points, and that's no typo.

Ones which do other stuff can be much more useful (c.f. 1/rest bonus attack with rider above), but in general if we're going to value them realistically, 1d4 and 1d6 natural weapons are negligible and should not be part of the calculation of PC race's power.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

If you could dual wield natural weapons and could make off-hand attacks with ability the modifier for damage, then they might see a bit more use. Still far from amazing, but would come up more often, and I think it would make certain sense to have that sort of skill with weapons you've literally born with. I could also see some natural weapons being finesse weapons.

And for some natural weapons it makes sense to help in grappling and climbing, like already suggested before.

 

[Shardstone]

I dont want a natural weapon as a ribbon. Its kind of troll, not an interesting ribbon at all. Make it a real feature and come up with something cool and fun or make natural weapons matter so they arent just a waste of space.