[RPG] Can a single attack be a full attack action

actionsattackdnd-3.5e

The haste spell grants an extra attack when a character makes a full attack.

My DM says:

If you do a single attack and can't continue into a full attack, it's a standard attack, even if you don't use your move action for the turn. You're not full-attacking, so you can't benefit from haste.

The only thing he could provide as "proof" is that if you want to make more than one attack, you need a full attack action, but this does not look like a proof to me: nothing is said about being able to declare that a single attack is a full attack when you don't need it (no high BAB, no flurry of blows, no two-weapon fighting, no multiple natural weapons and so on), thus gaining the benefits of haste even in that case.

My DM does not want to rule based on examples, suh as monster/NPC statblocks (e.g. the elf statblock has a full attack made of a single attack) because they're famous for being badly written and also because the most recent statblocks got rid of the attack / full attack lines replacing it with melee / ranged.

Is there any better definition of what a full attack is that states or strongly implies that a character can do a single attack, that could take him just a standard action, as a full attack?

Best Answer

Cue obligatory "The DM is always right. However..."

However, yes, there is such a rule. It's the very first sentence of the "Full Attack" section of the Combat chapter. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/combat/actionsInCombat.htm#fullAttack

If you get more than one attack per round because your base attack bonus is high enough, because you fight with two weapons or a double weapon or for some special reason you must use a full-round action to get your additional attacks. You do not need to specify the targets of your attacks ahead of time. You can see how the earlier attacks turn out before assigning the later ones.

emphasis mine.

You have haste, which adds one attack per round, plus you have the ability to make at least one attack baseline. That adds up to two, which is "more than one", so the very sentence your GM is citing in his reasoning is the explicit statement you're looking for to counter him.