[RPG] How to find the base attack bonus

character-creationpathfinder-1e

I just started Pathfinder RPG and I'm designing a level 1 character. How do I find my base attack bonus? I have the core rulebook but I'm quite confused.
Stats:
Str 16 Dex 15 Con 15 Int 12 Wis 12 Cha 13
Half-Orc Fighter with Battle Axe, short bow, and great club. Feats are Dodge(combat), Point-Blank shot, and lightning reflexes.
Please help and thank you so much!

Best Answer

Every class has a table, showing the Base Attack Bonus (or BAB), Base Saves, and special abilities gained at each class level. So, assuming you only have levels in one class, you look at the BAB value on that table. For instance, Fighter 5 gets a BAB value of +5, and Cleric 4 gets +3. Most classes will gain either +1 or +0 BAB at first level.

If you have levels in multiple classes or racial hit dice for some reason, the process is slightly more complicated - you look up the BAB amount for each of the class levels and hit dice you have, and then total them together for your total BAB. For instance, if you are a Fighter 5/Cleric 4, your total BAB will be +8.

To calculate your actual attack bonus for a specific attack type, you then add any other modifiers involved to the BAB, such as for the stat involved (Str for melee or Dex for missile, generally).

In your specific case, assuming you are level 1, your BAB will be +1. Your attack bonus with the melee weapons (Axe and Great Club) will be your BAB of +1 plus your Strength modifier of +3, for a total of +4. Your attack bonus with the missile weapon (short bow) will be BAB +1 plus Dex +2, for a total of +3. At 30' or less, Point Blank Shot will add an extra +1 attack bonus with the bow, for a total of +4. Your GM may apply various other specific modifiers during combat (one likely to come up is a -4 penalty for shooting into melee, which Precise Shot can remove).

Multiclassing Fighter and Warblade

Fighter and Warblade multiclass pretty well. Warblade levels count as Fighter levels (excepting the first two), and Fighter levels count half as Initiator Levels.

That said, Fighter 3 is pretty useless, unless you’re taking the Zhentarim Soldier substitution levels. You probably want to avoid that if you can. Ask your DM to retrain them as Warblade levels, starting early, or perhaps as something else.

Something 4/Warblade 1 is a good break-down because that way you start your Warblade career with Initiator Level 3 – you can take 2nd-level maneuvers right off the bat.

As such, you might take Fighter 4 before switching to Warblade. Another feat is not really a great option, but it’re there (don’t take Weapon Specialization; it’s awful). You could even take Martial Study, to get a maneuver that’s “always readied” (but that you cannot recover) – even something from a school Warblades don’t get.

Better options include Barbarian (Lion Spirit Totem from Complete Champion can get you Pounce, and Rage is good), or Cleric (the BAB loss is a shame, but not a huge deal: Domains can get you a wide range of things, you could get some utility spells, and Travel Devotion from Complete Champion is an excellent option), or even Ranger (great BAB/skills, some feats). If your Charisma is good, Knight might be OK (d12 HD, mostly, though, since you won’t get Bulwark of Defense at Knight 4), and if you can retrain one of those Fighter levels, Paladin’s Divine Grace is pretty awesome.

Replacing Fighter with Warblade

This is mostly about taking maneuvers that replicate your feats. I’ll just go down the list:

Skills

You have 2 more skill points per level now. I recommend Concentration for one because Diamond Mind is an excellent discipline and relies on it heavily. The other can be whatever you like.

Power Attack

This is probably a feat you should still take as a Warblade.

Cleave and Great Cleave

There are maneuvers that have similar effects as these, from White Raven or Iron Heart.

Improved Critical

How do you have this? It requires BAB +8. Anyway, it’s not a very good feat, and is unlikely to change much about your character if he doesn’t have it (which is why it’s not a very good feat).

To replicate the idea that your warrior is good at that perfect strike that does extra damage, take a look at the Diamond Mind discipline. It’s all about having that perfect strike.

If you really want to focus on critical hits, take blood in the water (Tiger Claw stance), and probably just take Improved Critical as a feat, or make a keen weapon, or buy a scabbard of keen edges.

Toughness

A Warblade’s HD is a d12 to the Fighter’s d10; that’s an average of 1 HP more per level, and 2 at 1st level. Thus, a Warblade 2 without Toughness has exactly the same average HP as a Fighter 2 with Toughness. After 2nd level, this continues to favor the Warblade unless the Fighter continues to burn feats on Toughness (which is a terrible idea; Toughness is an awful feat).

If you really want to spend a feat on your HP, take Stone Power; it’s very, very good. Temporary HP that you can refresh every round can take a lot of HP off that which is actually hitting you over the course of a day.

Recommended Low-level Warblade Maneuvers

Take moment of perfect mind (Diamond Mind counter); between maxed Concentration ranks and a good Con score, it’s almost a free pass on one Will save per combat (more if you recover it). The Reflex and Fortitude save versions aren’t nearly as important because Fortitude’s your good save, and Reflex saves tend to 1. just be damage, rather than death or worse; you have a lot of HP for a reason, and 2. tends to deal half that damage even when you do save.

Take mountain hammer (Stone Dragon strike) when you can: in addition to being a great attack, it’s the Initiator Swiss Army Knife. It ignores Hardness, which means you can mountain hammer your way through almost anything given enough time. Better than an adamantine pickaxe.

Punishing stance (Iron Heart stance) is probably the best stance available to you among the 1st-level stances. The aforementioned blood in the water (Tiger Claw stance) is not bad, either, though you really have to build for it. Hunter’s stance (Tiger Claw stance) is a good second stance, since it gives you some utility. Taking a Tiger Claw stance also allows you to take sudden leap (Tiger Claw boost), which is a great choice (that requires that you know another Tiger Claw maneuver).

Otherwise, pick two or three disciplines to focus on, and take the maneuvers that sound cool. Iron Heart and Diamond Mind come highly recommended, and White Raven does as well if you’ve got other melee types in the party. Tiger Claw is very good as well; Stone Dragon has some powerful effects but it does tend to lag behind the others, particularly if you enforce the requirement that they be initiated while standing on the ground.

Troublesome Maneuvers

You should consider iron heart surge and white raven tactics. These are both 3rd-level maneuvers (a bit out of your reach at this point), but they have to be mentioned. They’re the two most problematic maneuvers in the book, but they’re also very good, even ignoring the stupid abuses that their poor wording can cause.

Iron heart surge is extremely vague in how it works, and due to some poor wording in the book and some really poor interpretation in a Customer Service answer, it can do a lot of things it probably shouldn’t (like arguably shutting off the sun...) and can’t do a lot of things it probably should (like throwing off mind control). It’s a great maneuver as long as you and your DM agree on what it does or doesn’t work on. Mostly, if you can imagine Conan shouting “By Crom!” and getting out of it, iron heart surge should work on it. That’s basically what the maneuver is.

White raven tactics is very powerful. It’s broken, however, if you allow it to be used on yourself (which, by strict RAW, it can be since you count as your own ally). Just clear it with your DM before you take it; if he’s aware of the shenanigans it can get up to, he may not appreciate seeing it on your sheet without a talk first. I do not recommend using it on yourself in most campaigns.

[RPG] How to calculate the attack bonus

Attack Routine

Dual-wielding two bastard swords with Two-Weapon Fighting and Exotic Weapon Proficiency (Bastard Swords) causes you to take a −4 penalty for wielding two one-handed weapons. If you were to wield a one-handed weapon in one hand and a light weapon in the other, you’d have only a −2 penalty.

In addition to these penalties, you have BAB +7/+2 (that is, two attacks, one at +7 and the other at +2), and a +4 Strength modifier. As a Fighter, you have Weapon Training, which is a +1 to attack and damage as long as you use weapons from the chosen group (which is another problem because you have to pick between Heavy Blades and Light Blades).

So as it currently stands (with the −4 penalty), your attack routine is this:

Dual-wielding Bastard Swords, Heavy Blade Weapon Training

Bastard Sword +8, 1d10+5 (10.5)

other Bastard Sword +8, 1d10+3 (8.5)

Bastard Sword +3, 1d10+5 (10.5)

If you had a bastard sword and a short sword, you’d instead have a −2 penalty, like so, but you’ll only get Heavy Blade Weapon Training on the Bastard Sword attacks

Bastard Sword and Short Sword, Heavy Blade Weapon Training

Bastard Sword +10, 1d10+5 (10.5)

Short Sword +9, 1d6+2 (5.5)

Bastard Sword +5, 1d10+5 (10.5)

You lose an average of 2 damage on the second attack, but you are far more likely to hit with all three attacks.

If you swapped the Bastard Sword for a Longsword, saving yourself a feat, you would have

Longsword and Short Sword (+1 feat), Heavy Blade Weapon Training

Longsword +10, 1d8+5 (10.5)

Short Sword +9, 1d6+2 (5.5)

Longsword +5, 1d8+5 (10.5)

On average, you lose 1 damage from each of your first and third attacks (2 damage less total), but you have another feat which may be able to give you more damage than that. A really simple example is to switch to purely Short Swords, and take Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization with them. This also allows the Light Blade Weapon Training to get the bonuses on all of the attacks.

Dual-wielding Short Swords, Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization (−1 feat), Light Blade Weapon Training

Short Sword A +11, 1d6+7 (10.5)

Short Sword B +11, 1d6+5 (8.5)

Short Sword A +6, 1d6+7 (10.5)

Note that this version has the highest attack bonuses and the same damage potential as the two bastard swords. Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization are not exactly high-power feats, but they’re better here than Exotic Weapon Proficiency in the Bastard Sword. (to be fair, I used two feats to do it, but Weapon Focus in Bastard Swords doesn’t really help much since either you’re taking huge penalties for using two or you’re only getting the bonus on two out of three attacks)

Alternatively, you could consider Improved Two-Weapon Fighting, either with Exotic Weapon Proficiency in Bastard Swords:

Bastard Sword and Short Sword, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (−1 feat), Heavy Blade Weapon Training

Bastard Sword +10, 1d10+5 (10.5)

Short Sword +9, 1d6+2 (5.5)

Bastard Sword +5, 1d10+5 (10.5)

Short Sword +4, 1d6+2 (5.5)

Or with Weapon Focus (Short Sword)

Dual-wielding Short Swords, Improved Two-Weapon Fighting and Weapon Focus, Light Blade Weapon Training

Short Sword A +11, 1d6+5 (8.5)

Short Sword B +11, 1d6+3 (6.5)

Short Sword A +6, 1d6+5 (8.5)

Short Sword B +6, 1d6+3 (6.5)

Note that in the second case, you average 2 damage less on half your attacks, but have +1 on all attacks.

There are still better things you could probably do, these are just some simple, Core feat choices that you should consider without changing your existing feats too much.

Combat Maneuver Bonus/Defense

CMB = BAB + Str + size_bonus + misc

You don’t have a size bonus if you’re Medium (like Humans generally are), so ignore that. The Fighter’s Weapon Training also gives you a +1 as long as you’re using the right weapon, so +1 for that. Your BAB is +7 and your Strength modifier is +2, so your CMB is +10.

CMD = BAB + Str + Dex + size_bonus + misc

Again, size and misc don’t come into play. Weapon Training only helps against Disarm or Sunder, so I won’t include in the general number. So you have +7 + 2 + 2 = +11.