Combat Modes

Combat modes are an abstraction of a creature's combat skill. They represent the creature's coordination and natural ability at fighting. You use combat modes in order to use weapons, shields, and other items in battle.

To use a combat mode, you must select a weapon to use it with. If you are using multiple modes, you can only select a particular weapon once - each individual mode must have its own weapon.

As an attack action, you can use a single combat mode to make one attack with the selected weapon. As a full-attack action, you may select a single mode as your primary mode. You gain iterative attacks based on your BAB with your primary mode, and a single attack with each of your secondary modes if you choose (incurring Two-Weapon Fighting penalties if you do so).

Combat modes can be used for purposes other than purely attacking. For example, attacking with a two-handed weapon requires you to spend an additional combat mode. Benefiting from a shield requires the use of a combat mode. Using items that must be held in the hand, such as potions or wands, also use a combat mode. As a general rule, anything which requires the use of a hand uses a combat mode. This is not a strict rule, as it can be violated in both directions, but it's a good guideline.

Typically, a creature has as many combat modes as it does hands. This is because most creatures have evolved the abilities to actually use their hands, and combat is always a necessity. So, a human would have two combat modes, while a marilith would have six. However, combat modes are independent of your actual handedness. A human that has lost an arm, for example, still has two modes. He is restricted in what kinds of weapons he can wield, but he may still use his secondary mode for weapons that do not require a hand, such as unarmed strikes or armor spikes. Unintelligent creatures gain no combat modes at all - instead, they have special modes.

Natural Weapons and Unarmed Strikes

Some creatures have natural weapons that they may use. These utilize the ordinary rules for combat modes - they choose a weapon (which may be a natural weapon), possibly gain iterative attacks with it, and must choose separate natural weapons if they are using more than one mode to attack. Most creatures with natural weapons have enough to fill all their modes when necessary.

Unarmed strikes violate the general rule that you must select a different weapon for each mode used to attack. You may select an unarmed strike for any mode, or all of them. You may even take unarmed strikes in the middle of a mode that is nominally using another weapon. For example, if a fighter has +15 BAB and is wielding a greatsword, they may make an attack with the greatsword at +15, an unarmed strike at +10, and another greatsword attack at +5, even though he only used a single mode to attack. (Note that in this example, the fighter's second mode was used because he was attacking with a two-handed weapon. If he had been using a one-handed weapon the example would have been identical, but he also could have possibly used an unarmed strike with a secondary mode, incurring TWF penalties.)

Special Modes

Some creatures are not intelligent enough to gain combat modes. Others merely have additional attacks with their appendages that they can use in addition to any normal attacks they may gain. These attacks are special modes, and work slightly differently than normal.

You may make a normal attack with a single special mode in place of using a combat mode. When using a full-attack, in addition to any attacks you may gain from your combat modes, you also gain a single attack with each of your special modes, though these are all taken at a -5 penalty. If you are not using combat modes at all, you may select a single named type of special mode to use with no penalty. For example, a Monstrous Scorpion gains two claw special modes and a poison sting special mode. As it is an unintelligent beast, it has no combat modes. Thus, on a full-attack, it may choose to use its claws with no penalty, and its poison sting at a -5.

Converting Creatures

These rules require no conversion for ordinary PCs (as they have only combat modes) or unintelligent creatures (as they have only special modes). The issues appear when you have intelligent monsters with natural attacks. Which attacks should be special modes, and which should simply be natural weapons that they may choose to use with their combat modes?

As a guideline, any attack which is replaced when they pick up a weapon should just be a weapon itself. For example, most creatures with claw attacks should treat their claws as simply natural weapons. A Hill Giant should treat his slam as a natural weapon. Make sure to note how many slams or claw attacks the creature can make, as they must choose a different one with each mode used to attack.

If a natural weapon is not replaced, treat it as a special mode. It is obviously a special ability that complements their normal fighting ability.

When the DM is simply using monsters against the PCs and simplicity is valued over consistency, it may be easiest to simply treat all natural attacks as special modes. This way, the Attacks line in the monster's entry may be used verbatim.

Why do all this?

This all raises an obvious question; namely, what's the point? If the rules are designed to make everything work exactly the same most of the time, why go to this extra work?

My answer is simply that natural weapons and manufactured attacks don't work well together. It simply doesn't make sense that a creature with claw attacks can make a single attack with each claw, while if you put a longsword in his hand he can gain multiple iterative attacks. It becomes even more ridiculous if you replace the longsword with a weapon like, say, Battle Claws from Arcana Evolved. Are his real claws really that much suckier than a gauntlet with claws on it?

As well, this answers once and for all all questions about the use of unarmed strikes. The RAW rules are built around physical hands - you can use as many weapons as you can hold. Since USes don't have to be made with hands, this makes them... tricky to adjudicate. You can run into major problems without trying very hard. Combat modes abstract attacks away from hands and make it simply a quantity that you gain and spend. To make an unarmed strike, you use a combat mode, same as making an attack with a longsword. This also fixes a number of tricky issues-that-seem-obvious-but-really-aren't, such as the infamous (to me) "Can I use a greatsword and then TWF with armor spikes?" (Note that armor spikes specifically state they are to be used as an offhand weapon.) The lack of a proper abstraction led the author of the official FAQ to conclude that yes, he can, because he's using the appropriate amount of hands, which just flies in the face of proper balance. These rules make it quite clear - the answer is no, as a greatsword requires you to spend your second mode, so it's not available to TWF with.

Finally, this cleans up some rules and opens up some situations which are reasonable, but not RAW. For example, the rule about losing the benefit from your shield on the round you use it to attack is no longer necessary, as it's implicit. Both attacking and defending with a shield would use a combat mode, so under ordinary (TWF) circumstances, you can't do both at the same time. But it does open the possibility of you using your shield as your only weapon. In this case, you can use your shield for both attack and defense in the same round, as you are only using one mode for attacking and leaving the other one free for defense. Another case which is improved by this are rules that require a free hand. It is trivial to alter them so that they use a combat mode. They may still require a free hand, of course, depending on their flavor, but it automatically answers questions such as "Can I TWF with a longsword and armor spikes, and then still use Deflect Arrows?". The answer is no, and so this contrived weapon setup is made balanced with more normal weapon setups. No ad hoc reasoning is required to adjudicate these scenarios - you just follow the rules.