Unlimited Attacks


Advice


So a cool artifact I thought of making in a game was intended to give the BBEG full attack after moving and since it's first writing has been rewritten to do only that however when I first wrote it I put down that it allowed you to make an attack as a free action. This got me thinking and I started looking everywhere and after finding nothing I decided to google it and still found nothing for any of my questions.

Does this make it grant unlimited attacks because your number of attacks in a round limited by your actions? Do you only get a number of attacks as outlined by your BAB? I cannot seem to find a ruling on this and I am curious if a weapon that has some kind of enchantment on it that makes your attacks a free action somehow lets you make as many as you want. The original intent being to make a bad guy that can fully move and still make full attacks IS stated to do exactly that now, but the questions raised by this weren't answered in the books and now I'm curious if anyone here knows or can point it out.

Liberty's Edge

The number of free actions allowed by a character are limited at the discretion of the GM. No GM would, or at least should, allow a character or NPC to have unlimited attacks as free actions.

What would be the point of playing such a character or NPC? As soon as it could reach an opponent, it would keep attacking until its opponent was dead. So is that a game, or even a combat? It would be pointless and boring.

Edit: The specific rules for free actions do address this:

CRB wrote:
Free Action: Free actions consume a very small amount of time and effort. You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally. However, there are reasonable limits on what you can really do for free, as decided by the GM.

Lantern Lodge

You only get to make iterative attacks as described by your character's BaB, unless other effects are at play.

Your BaB would read as 6/1, or 10/5 or 16/11/6/1, so some such if you can have more than 1 attack. Feats like rapid shot and two-weapon fighting increase this. Spells like haste, and weapons with the speed propterty also increase the number of attacks you can make.

However, this only applies if your making a full attack (read the Full Attack section in Combat).

Gaining attacks as free actions -may- make unlimited attacks, depending on your GM. There's an FAQ that specifically says that free actions should be limited. It's GM's discretion on how many free actions one can take in a round.

What your describing for the item is similar to having the pounce monster ability, or boots that, when activated, let you move as a free action, leaving you with a full round action to use for a full attack action.


You could make it read, 'You may make a full-round attack as a swift action instead of a full-round action; you may not make two full-round attacks in the same turn.'

Grand Lodge

Free does not mean unlimited. I feel like this has been discussued in action economy many many times. I would say if attacking is a free action that they would get their full number of attacks but your artifact sounds very overpowered.
There are other ways to get full attacks after a move, pounce, multiattack, etc.


The effect can be fixed simply by giving it two abilities:

1.) You may make a full attack after moving up to your speed.

2.) Once per round, as a Free action, you may make an extra attack at yur highest attack bonus.

That's on par with other Minor Artifacts.


Multiattack doesn't grant an attack after a move. There are ways, mind, but they largely boil down to Pounce, Pummeling Charge, Magus Bladed Dash, and mounted combat with Mounted Skirmisher.


@ baradakas: That is exactly why I made it do what Rynjin suggested but originally I only brainstormed on how he might get 4 attacks after fully moving and I thought "What about free actions." However going down that rabbit hole was a terrible idea as I couldn't really find too many concrete rulings on it.

@ Rynjin: I did exactly that because it was an end game fight and everyone was level 20. I wanted a BBEG that used minions that weren't particularly hard hitting but interfered with movement and abilities enough to buy him time to run in and then disengage quickly without taking AoO's and whatnot or staying in a compromising position. Never before has my party hated goblins so much. XD

@ FrodoOf9Fingers & BigHatLogar: See I thought something like that existed somewhere in the rules but I just couldn't find it and no amount of google fu helped me there.

@ kestral287 & Umbral Reaver: That's why I gave it a VERY specific effect. Because I figure if I made it airtight then it wouldn't be as abusable if I did decide to allow the artifact even as a houserule.

Thanks for the replies though guys especially Logar who pointed out that I might find the answer in a thread about action economy. I didn't even think of that.

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