D&D 3E/3.5 Need idea for a low level 3.5 campaign.

[Nezkrul]

Psion - go Seer or Telepath, cherry pick your monkey wrench powers, be a god!

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Not Impressive? Ranged? You're not playing Warlocks right. *cough*Clawlock*chough*

Clawlock requires the Eldritch Claws feat from Dragon 358, so it might very well be off the table in this and other instances. If the feat is allowed then Clawlocks definitely rock when it comes to damage (especially with Beast Strike

I'm unfamiliar with dragon magazine Warlock material, I'm going to have to look into this! Always good to learn new things about 3.5, thanks gents. (And this isn't even my thread!)

 

[Dozen]

I'm unfamiliar with dragon magazine Warlock material, I'm going to have to look into this! Always good to learn new things about 3.5, thanks gents. (And this isn't even my thread!)

Might wanna look into Eldritch Glaive from Dragon Magic too, then^^ Almost as good for damage dealing, and a lot less dangerous for your delicate Warlock HD.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Might wanna look into Eldritch Glaive from Dragon Magic too, then^^ Almost as good for damage dealing, and a lot less dangerous for your delicate Warlock HD.

I'm familiar with the Glavelock, it's the Clawlock that's new to me. Am I right in reading that the Clawlock is not based as a natural attack, but as an improved unarmed attack?

 

[Dozen]

I'm familiar with the Glavelock, it's the Clawlock that's new to me. Am I right in reading that the Clawlock is not based as a natural attack, but as an improved unarmed attack?

Better. It's a claw attack to which you add your unarmed strike's damage, as well as your Blast's. So when you use Eldritch Claw, Unarmed Strike, Spell-Like Ability, Manufactured Weapon(when using obscure weirdo magic weapons like Beast Claws) and Natural Weapon bonuses apply, stacking with one another. Simply beautiful.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Does the math work as natural attacks, using your full BAB for both? Do you get 2 attacks in a Full Attack action, applying damage to each, or is it BAB/-5/-5 etc like with weapons (and Eldritch Glaive)? Or is it a single attack per round, regardless of making full attacks because of the nature of Eldritch Blast?

 

[Jackinthegreen]

Eldritch Claws + Beast Strike means that the claw damage gets added to unarmed damage. Note that the regular claw damage for Eldritch Claws is unarmed strike damage + EB damage, meaning that Beast Strike effectively doubles your unarmed damage and then adds claw damage on top of that. And since it's an unarmed strike being used, it can do iteratives because unarmed strikes aren't treated as natural weapons when it comes to full attacks. That much is pretty straightforward.

What isn't straightforward is whether the character can follow up with its actual claw attacks as secondary natural weapons. The reason it's not clear is it's typically understood that if you make an iterative attack with a weapon, you can't use the hand/limb wielding that weapon for a claw attack. This gets wonky with unarmed strikes because it's noted that unarmed strikes can be made with any body part, thus it seems possible that the character could do a series of kicks as his unarmed strikes, followed by the claw attacks. Also note the Snap Kick feat screws with players even more since the fluff obviously says it's a kick.

It's messy and something that has to have a DM ruling because there is simply no way for the internet to come to a satisfactory agreement on it. Too many people have too many different interpretations of RAW, RAI, or even Read As Reasonable to actually mean a damn thing when it comes to certain oddities about unarmed strikes and various things based on them. In case you're curious, even WotC can't make up its mind when it comes to US.

Here's a thread with some handy links about WotC's stances on unarmed strikes.

And then there's this thread where people went over the manufactured and natural weapon rules in such a way that a mod had to lock it because one of the posters (you'll be quite able to tell who) was a stubborn bonehead with very bad reading comprehension.

 

[Nezkrul]

im of the opinion that beast claws doesn't do anything other than give you another way to add claw damage to an unarmed attack, it doesn't add double claw damage in anyway; either you attack with the claws and add unarmed damage, or you attack with unarmed strikes and get to add your claw (EB) damage (the better option because of possible iteratives)

 

[Jackinthegreen]

im of the opinion that beast claws doesn't do anything other than give you another way to add claw damage to an unarmed attack, it doesn't add double claw damage in anyway; either you attack with the claws and add unarmed damage, or you attack with unarmed strikes and get to add your claw (EB) damage (the better option because of possible iteratives)

I think you misinterpreted part of what I said. I never said it doubled claw damage, but it does effectively double unarmed damage. The claws deal damage equal to EB + unarmed (the exact wording is:

On a successful attack with an eldritch claw, you deal your normal amount of unarmed strike damage plus your eldritch blast damage.

and then Beast strike adds claw damage on top of unarmed, so it's effectively 2x unarmed + EB damage. Though it'd be entirely reasonable to simply say that the claw damage should only be EB damage and nothing else, and adding that onto unarmed wouldn't be a numerical problem.

It might have some odd interactions with stuff like Improved Natural Attack though, mostly because I'm pretty sure the designers never expected natural attacks to get as many base dice as Eldritch Claws can give. 4d6 becomes 6d6 according to the charts.

 

[roundviper]

I loved playing a monk at low level. You don't have to worry about AC as much because of the wisdom as well. The flurry of blows does cause a little bit of trouble at first. I played an elf monk and thought she turned out great. I played her into epic level and she was kickass in upper levels.