Question about info on SRD

[Rallek]

Greetings fellow players. I apologize for disturbing you over so trivial a matter, but I am a poor 2nd ed. player in need of wisdom. I have recently been giving some thought into converting my gaming group over to 3rd ed., and since I have only played 3rd ed. about twice, I thought that I would take a look at the SRD to see how I felt about the basic system and rules.

While I was looking over the basic characters, I noticed that there were several Base Attack Bonus values listed for many classes. My question is what are the additional numbers for? Multiple attacks, multiple weapons, both, neither? I would appreciate any information that you could share with me.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Crothian]

Welcome to the boards. Have you found the conversion book Wizards put out? It's on their site, I'd post a link but I'm not sure exactly where it is. The conversion book is really helpful, and it guided myself from second to third fairly easy.

Once a person's BAB minus 5 equals a positive number, they get a second attack. And when you can subtract five again and get a positive number, they get a third, and the same with a fourth. Four attacks is the maximium number of attack this way.

Two handed fighting is done differently. One gets an extra attack with their off hand at -10 and they are at -6 with their main hand. Fighting with a light weapon (a weapon one size catagory smaller then you or smaller) reduces those penalities by 2 to -8/ -4 respectively. There are two feats trhat help make this type of fighting easier for the person, Ambidexterity which improves the off hand to only -6 or -4 with a light weapon, and two weapon fighting which lessones the neatives by -2 for each attack. So a person with both feats attacks at a -4/-4 modifier, that would be -2/-2 with a light weapon.

I hope that made some sense. Good luck and any more questions or clarifications please feel free to ask.

 

[Gez]

Multiple attacks.

Someone with a BAB of +6 (6th-level fighter, 8th-level cleric or rogue, 12th-level wizard, or some multiclass combination) get an additional attack at +1. That's called "iterative attacks".

Similarly, a BAB of +11 gives two iterative attacks, one at +6 and one at +1, and a BAB of +16 gives you the maximum of 3 iterative attacks, at +11, +6 and +1.

Even with epic levels and a BAB of +127, you only get 3 iterative attacks.

Exception: the monk get a special class feature that allow him to get iterative (unarmed or with special monk weapons) attacks every 3 ranks, rather than every 5 ranks. He caps at 4 iterative attacks (for a level 20 monk, that will be +15 (first attack)/+12/+9/+6/+3).

In order to perform the iterative attacks, one must do a full attack action.

Some feats or class features allow to perform other extra attacks that are not iterative attacks, like a monk's Flurry of Blow (one extra attack at the cost of a -2 penalty on all attack rolls), the Two-Weapon Fighting (one extra attack with the off-hand weapon) and Improved Two-Weapon Fighting feats, the Cleave and Great Cleave feats, etc.

And on top of that, you must add the famous Attacks of Opportunity.

 

[Rallek]

Thanks for the information, and for the prompt reply. If I decide to switch to 3rd ed., I'm sure that I'll spend a fair amount of time trying to pick useful information up on these boards.

It's always nice to have a group of experts around when starting a new project. <===(blatant attempt to earn favor)

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

Thanks for the information, and for the prompt reply. If I decide to switch to 3rd ed., I'm sure that I'll spend a fair amount of time trying to pick useful information up on these boards.

It's always nice to have a group of experts around when starting a new project. <===(blatant attempt to earn favor)

That's what we're here for. Good luck on converting your group - hopefully they're as amiable as mine was. Oh, and welcome to the boards.

 

[Douane]

In addition to Crothian's post:

Took a bit of searching on WotC's site, but here it is: The Conversion Manual


Hope this helps!

Folkert

 

[dcollins]

I'll also pitch in the "Thumbnail Rules" document I had to draft for myself as an AD&D-to-D&D converted player, available on this page: www.superdan.net/dnd3.html