Removing 3.X Iterative Attacks (Suggestions)

[Doc Eldritch]

One thing I found that slows down combat in 3.X games is the glut of attacks that start occurring at higher levels. Iterative attacks are one of the things that always annoyed me about 3.X, and the lack thereof are one of the few things I really liked about 4.0.

Enough of 4.0 does not interest me enough to switch over (yet), aside from the fact that I have TONS of 3.X books, and don't really need to be spending cash on the 4.0 ones.

What I am curious about, is if anyone else has gotten rid of iterative attacks in 3.X style games, and if so, what did you do and how did it turn out? Since I know that just ditching them entirely is a good way to mess up non mage types even more than they already can be at higher levels, I have been wrestling with ways to balance things out.
One idea I have had, has been to alter attacks as follows:

1: All damage done in melee and by ranged weapons (not spells or spell like abilities), is increased by the attacker's BaB. Thus, if a character has a BaB of +15, a +4 STR bonus, and is wielding a +3 weapon doing 1d8 damage, on a hit he would do 1d8+22 damage.

2: There would be feats to allow an extra attack, and fighter types would be able to take the feat an extra time for a total of 3 attacks. Not sure if I would penalize BaB on the extra attacks, but am thinking no, just for speed of play. Other feats, like Two Weapon Fighting, or class abilities like Flurry of Blows, would work as normal, including penalties to the extra attacks.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Particularly interested in your experiences with removing iterative attacks and how you compensated the classes, if at all!

 

[The Black Kestrel]

While I haven't removed iterative attacks from my game the changes you outline above almost exactly mirror Star Wars Saga Edition. In SWSE you only recieve one attack and you add 1/2 your character level to you damage roll. There feats that allow multiple attacks (up to three IIRC), feats that let you roll more damage dice at the cost of a full action (vice using a standard action to make your attack). There is a penalty for additonal attacks but I cannat recall what it is.

I also suggest checking out Wulf Ratbane's thread on iterative attacks and his solutions

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I think the easiest option for me is to switch to a TWF-esque model. You can take as many attacks per round as you have BAB to give, but each attack loses a cumulative 3 points of BAB per attack taken. Furthermore, a character cannot reduce their BAB below +3 using this method and they can take at most 4 attacks.

Example: Suppose a character has a BAB of +12. They could take 1 attack at +12, 2 attacks at +9, 3 attacks at +6, 4 attacks at +3.

While this may seem at first to increase the number of attacks for each round, it actually simplifies it nicely since every attack is at the same final bonus. So, in this example, the character could quickly throw down 4d20 and add the proper modifier to each die. This will be much quicker than the current method. Furthermore, because of the nature of this system a player must make the decision about their attacks at the beginning of their turn and once the decision has been made it cannot be altered.

But, this system isn't for everyone.

 

[concerro]

One thing I found that slows down combat in 3.X games is the glut of attacks that start occurring at higher levels. Iterative attacks are one of the things that always annoyed me about 3.X, and the lack thereof are one of the few things I really liked about 4.0.

Enough of 4.0 does not interest me enough to switch over (yet), aside from the fact that I have TONS of 3.X books, and don't really need to be spending cash on the 4.0 ones.

What I am curious about, is if anyone else has gotten rid of iterative attacks in 3.X style games, and if so, what did you do and how did it turn out? Since I know that just ditching them entirely is a good way to mess up non mage types even more than they already can be at higher levels, I have been wrestling with ways to balance things out.
One idea I have had, has been to alter attacks as follows:

1: All damage done in melee and by ranged weapons (not spells or spell like abilities), is increased by the attacker's BaB. Thus, if a character has a BaB of +15, a +4 STR bonus, and is wielding a +3 weapon doing 1d8 damage, on a hit he would do 1d8+22 damage.

2: There would be feats to allow an extra attack, and fighter types would be able to take the feat an extra time for a total of 3 attacks. Not sure if I would penalize BaB on the extra attacks, but am thinking no, just for speed of play. Other feats, like Two Weapon Fighting, or class abilities like Flurry of Blows, would work as normal, including penalties to the extra attacks.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Particularly interested in your experiences with removing iterative attacks and how you compensated the classes, if at all!

The iterative attacks do take time, but another time killer is players not knowing what they want to do. If it takes to long the DM counts down from 10. Another thing we do is to roll 4 dice at once. The dice at the far left is the first attack and we go to the right. We also roll damage for more than one attack at one. One hand rolls the first attack, and the other hand rolls the other dice. We also roll miss chance, and attack rolls at the same time.

 

[Herzog]

Replace iterative attack with Power Attack.

As in, everyone can substitute attack bonus for damage, even with light weapons.

You roll only one attack, and the attack becomes less certain with increased amount of damage (as is the case with iterative attacks).

Alternatively, allow an extra weapon die for every 3 points of BaB sacrificed.
(Not 5, because that would make it less powerfull than iterative attacks)

You should also consider whether this would be a full attack or not.

With two-handed weapon fighting: allow a single penalty (average of the primary and secondary hand?) to roll both weapon damage die.

Note that (as with 4e) non of these add the str bonus and magic bonusses more than once.
(a special case might be two-handed weapon fighting with a flaming and frost weapon, adding both damages to the end result)

 

[Tilenas]

I think the easiest option for me is to switch to a TWF-esque model. You can take as many attacks per round as you have BAB to give, but each attack loses a cumulative 3 points of BAB per attack taken. Furthermore, a character cannot reduce their BAB below +3 using this method and they can take at most 4 attacks.

I do it like that, with the exception that characters need feats (double/triple attack) to get addional attacks. These have BAB requirements. If you think this is too harsh on the fighters (feat tax and all), hand those out as bonus feats at appropriate levels.

 

[Ashtagon]

Last week, i did some maths on iterative attacks, calculating probabilities (see my thread on brilliant gameologists). If you replace iterative attacks with re-rolls, the probabilities work out almost exactly the same.

Basically, instead of making X attack rolls at varying penalties, you roll X numnber of d20s, and count a single hit if any of those d20 rolls was sufficient to beat the target number.

 

[Eldritch_Lord]

One idea I've tried out is letting you give up attacks to add +2 to attacks and 1 extra weapon die in that round for each attack given up. So if you have a short sword (base 1d6 damage) and your attack routine is +20/+15/+10 for 1d6+5 damage each, you could choose to instead do +22/+17 for 2d6+5 damage each or +24 for 3d6+5 damage; if you have a greatsword (base 2d6 damage) and your attack routine is +20/+15/+10 for 2d6+5 damage each, you could choose to instead do +22/+17 for 4d6+5 damage each or +24 for 6d6+5 damage.

It essentially lets you increase your accuracy slightly, to increase the chance that you hit, at the expense of your static damage on later attacks. I never quite liked the fact that casters are doing somewhere around 10d6 damage per spell and martial types are doing 1d6+100 or thereabouts; I'd prefer for their damage to be a bit more swingy, and a higher dice-to-static-damage ratio helps with that

 

[slwoyach]

There are two options I've been toying with for a while but never implemented. One is this:

I think the easiest option for me is to switch to a TWF-esque model. You can take as many attacks per round as you have BAB to give, but each attack loses a cumulative 3 points of BAB per attack taken. Furthermore, a character cannot reduce their BAB below +3 using this method and they can take at most 4 attacks.

Example: Suppose a character has a BAB of +12. They could take 1 attack at +12, 2 attacks at +9, 3 attacks at +6, 4 attacks at +3.

While this may seem at first to increase the number of attacks for each round, it actually simplifies it nicely since every attack is at the same final bonus. So, in this example, the character could quickly throw down 4d20 and add the proper modifier to each die. This will be much quicker than the current method. Furthermore, because of the nature of this system a player must make the decision about their attacks at the beginning of their turn and once the decision has been made it cannot be altered.

But, this system isn't for everyone.

Wierd that I came up with the exact same thing. The other is +1 to threat ranges for every 5 points of BAB.

 

[Hawken]

1: All damage done in melee and by ranged weapons (not spells or spell like abilities), is increased by the attacker's BaB. Thus, if a character has a BaB of +15, a +4 STR bonus, and is wielding a +3 weapon doing 1d8 damage, on a hit he would do 1d8+22 damage.

The only problem with this is that the weapon/attack becomes meaningless, damage reduction is basically useless and the characters can dish out silly amounts of damage when you factor in power attack, critical hits and extra damage (energy weapons, sneak attack, etc.).

An alternative that would make this suggestion more viable is to add a bonus to damage equal to the difference of the target's AC subtracted from the total attack roll on a successful hit.

Example: Fighter hits Orc (AC 15) with an attack roll of 25. In addition to the normal damage received, the Orc also takes an extra 10hp damage (25 - 15 = 10).

2: There would be feats to allow an extra attack, and fighter types would be able to take the feat an extra time for a total of 3 attacks. Not sure if I would penalize BaB on the extra attacks, but am thinking no, just for speed of play. Other feats, like Two Weapon Fighting, or class abilities like Flurry of Blows, would work as normal, including penalties to the extra attacks.

Star Wars Saga rules do this quite nicely. They do not have iterative attacks. You have to take a feat, Double Attack, to be able to make 2 attacks as a full round action, with your second attack at a -5 penalty from your first attack. The Triple Attack feat lets you make 3 attacks instead of 2, with your third having a -10 penalty from your first attack bonus.

If you would penalize extra attacks in twf, you should penalize extra iterative attacks as well. Otherwise, without an increased chance to miss, high BAB types are going to become woodchippers for monsters.

A good option is to give damage for each iterative attack that would be lost. Instead of a full weapon die, which could get quite messy at higher levels with large/oversized weapons, how about just a simple 1d4 damage per iterative attack. You could even create a line of feats that increase that from 1d4 to 1d6 up to 1d8 or whatever you're comfortable with. Like using a full attack action to get extra attacks, I would not allow this extra damage unless the PC was doing a full attack action.

For those that don't get multiple attacks (BAB of +5 or less), you could allow a full attack option to give an extra die of damage with a -2 penalty to the attack roll.