Alright, so I'm basically a new roleplayer. We’re playing Pathfinder on Discord. All the rules, combat and everything else comes from the d20pfsd site. So Pathfinder ruleset, feats, etc.
My character is a natural attacker. Although I feel like I'm getting a grasp on the natural attack die increase rules, my DM kinda had me slow the progression because I was starting to do way too much damage, especially compared to the spellcaster my friend is playing. But I'd still like to know how many I should actually be getting.
Can an expert help me calculate?
Preface: Mythic Campaign – Champion&Archmage, going up to level 25 but currently lvl 17, almost 18
All the feats and abilities that should be considered:
-
Bloodrager with draconic bloodline → The claws are my main weapons.
DM says that the two claw dmg increases would count even in Dragonform.
- Feats: Improved Natural Atk, Mythic Improved natural attack
- Path Ability – Titan's Rage
- Other – Constant Strongjaw effect (mostly for the other nat atks)
Battlefist – from 3.5 I think, basically increases unarmed damage by one size category. In our game, it basically goes over the claw and with feral combat training would raise the damage by one effective size increase, but 100% does not stack with strongjaw (since lead blades spell was used for it's creation).
Currently my damage as a human is 4d8 when I use titans rage, and in dragonform doing titans rage gets me 8d8, but my own calculations put it at 8d6 and … 16d6, I think? respectively.
That's not even including the ascetic strike I'm going to take at lvl 18, plus titan strike since I have the feral combat training and IUS for it.
My DM is pretty generous, especially with gold, but it's getting irksome when I'm starting to get close to death against regular mobs that do 200dmg with their full-attack, when they should have died to my own that dealt around 400-600 dmg (other buffs and items in play). I don't want to gripe about him too much, but then he brought up recently that I shouldn't be able to do wing attacks while flying because there's no way I'd be able to keep aloft to do them. (Really?). …And a few other things, but I digress.
How much damage die should I really be doing with my claws?
Best Answer
According to the FAQ on stacking size effects, most of those do not stack:
To make this simple, these are size changing effects:
And these are effective size increases:
Pick one of each type, a size changing effect, and an effective size increase (the highest of each). Then modify your damage according to the natural weapon table (updated on this FAQ and explained on this answer). The result is your actual damage dice.
Considering that the claws from the Draconic Bloodline deal 1d6 damage for medium-sized creatures, picking the best options would mean three size increases on the table, so you increase the base damage by five steps:
When using your Dragon Form from Draconic Bloodline, which acts as Form of the Dragon II, your size is actually Large, no size changing effects will increase it any further (due to the restriction on the polymorph subschool rules), but you still get to increase it two times, which results in the same progression as before, to a final damage of 3d6, since it starts at 1d8 instead of 1d6.
Finally, Ascetic Strike increases your Unarmed damage, not the damage from any of your natural attacks. But you still would gain the bonuses to the listed combat maneuvers against smaller opponents. If you got the Feral Combat Training feat, you may replace your unarmed strikes by one of your natural weapons when making a Flurry of Blows or any ability or feats that require the Improved Unarmed Strike feat (Ascetic Strike is neither), like Boar Style or even Stunning Fist.
As a hint though, the Bestial Aspect from the Rageshaper Archetype is not a size increasing effect in any way, and should increase your polymorph-granted natural weapons by one additional dice.