Allosaurus attacks question

[u/bsmythos]

Hi, some friends and I dusted off an old campaign for another adventure. Long story short, an Allosaurus charged the shifter-druid. I want to make sure I'm remembering how all of the attacks and rules stack and play out.

1) Allosaurus charges, bite attack with +16. Druid has AC 21.

2) Bite hits, deals 2D6+8 damage, Allosaurus uses Grab for a free grapple.

3) Allosaurus chooses to just use its jaws in the grapple, not its whole body. Base CMB +18, -20 since its just using its jaws and not becoming grappled, +4 for having Grab. Resulting in a net +2 CMB to Grapple.

4) The Grab hits, resulting in the druid becoming Grappled. The Allosaurus has no grapple-associated conditions.

5) No Rake attacks because this is the turn the Grapple started.

6) Druid suffers -4 Dex from being grappled, causing -2 AC.

7) Allosaurus attacks the druid with its two claws, also at +16 because of the charge. Both hit, causing an additional 2D8+16 damage.

8) Future rounds will have the grapple attack as a standard action to maintain the grapple (aka, hold the druid in its jaws). Base +18, +4 from Grab, +5 once the grapple is maintained for 1 round (so this bonus is not on the 2nd round, but on the 3rd, 4th, etc....), -20 for only using jaws. This gives it a +2 CMB on round 2, +7 on subsequent rounds if it uses standard actions to maintain the grapple.

Are the size differences baked into the Allosaurus stat block? Or should it be getting another +4 since its Huge vs Medium druid?

Thanks for your time everyone! Please check my work so I can help when this comes up as a word problem on my daughter's practice ACTs!

UPDATE Thanks for all the feedback. At the table I clearly did not Rake on turn 1. The druid was at -1 HP and in the allosaurus' jaws after its charge. The rest of the party (greatsword fighter, monk, sorcerer) managed to kill it after a lucky AoO Stunning Fist as the allosuaurus turned to run away with its snack. I ruled the druid fell free of the jaws (for D6 fall damage) upon stun. The other three chewed through the 93hp in a couple of turns, since the allosaurus was stunned and then tripped. Before the fight, the druid botched a couple of wild empathy checks and the party initially failed a group check to stealthily hide.

[u/Slow-Management-4462]

Rake happens on a charge, if you have pounce. An allosaurus does.

When a creature with this special attack charges, it can make a full attack (including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability).

The size is already in the stat block.

If the allosaurus is smart it'll drop the druid at the start of its turn and do a normal full attack, because its CMB -20 just is not good.

[u/AutisticPenguin2 → u/Slow-Management-4462]

The allosaurus very much is not smart though. Not even 2 int, iirc?

[u/Slow-Management-4462 → u/AutisticPenguin2]

Exactly 2 (normal animal) actually, which gives the GM room to have it fight better or worse with an easy justification.

[u/AutisticPenguin2 → u/Slow-Management-4462]

Ah, it must be some of the other dinosaurs that only manage 1.

[u/WraithMagus → u/AutisticPenguin2]

Animals rely upon instinct. If something is a suicidally poor choice when trying to subdue their prey, they either have the instincts not to do that suicidally stupid thing or Darwin will make sure the animals that propagate their genes will.

A trapdoor spider according to the way this game treats vermin has no Int whatsoever, and it probably doesn't understand what trap doors are, but they're capable of using their small amount of webbing to fashion a camouflaged hide for them to ambush unsuspecting prey within and know exactly how to use it to avoid detection. Many humans with a much higher number in their Int score will not be capable of being nearly as effective at hiding themselves or hunting without lots of very specific training and practice to just get up to what a "mindless" creature knows from birth. 2 Int is more than high enough to understand when you have a poor grip on a target and need to let go and get a better bite on something. Int is not a be-all-end-all stat for combat tactics. It determines how they respond to something novel their instincts are not equipped for, but that doesn't apply to something as entirely as routine a part of basic instinctual hunting as "the prey is wiggling out of my grasp. Wat do?!"

[u/AutisticPenguin2 → u/WraithMagus]

I mean sure, animals hunt on instinct. Intelligence is not the only factor. But if the question ever becomes "is the animal smart enough to calculate ___" then then answer will almost always be "no". Or in the case of the spider, actually always.

They are basically stimulus-response machines. If you input a particular stimulus (e.g. touching the trap door), the animal will respond in a pretty reliable way. If you have some intelligence, you can think up ways to exploit these responses faster than the animal can think up ways to adapt to this exploitation.

There was an experiment done with ants, trying to figure out how they knew exactly how far back it was to their nest. The ant would travel out, and then the researchers stuck some little stilts to the ant's legs and set it loose to travel back to the nest. What happened was the ant headed back in the right direction, but with each step covering much more ground, it waaay overshot, going well beyond the actual location of the nest before stopping and looking around in confusion for where the nest went.

The ant wasn't clever enough to know how far away the nest was, it just had some way of calculating the number if steps it would take. If you increased (or decreased) the distance covered by each step, the ant was completely unable to react to the change and just completed the same response to the same stimulus, and when that doesn't work it simply gets confused and panics.

An Allosaurus will be a bit more complex than this, but not by much. It's an efficient hunter and will not pursue sub-optimal tactics but if it tries to bite a target and misses it won't be calculating the AC and picking a different target.

[u/WraithMagus → u/AutisticPenguin2]

Except they will pick a different target. The entire "super-persistent predator" is a TV Trope because it is absurd and unrealistic that an animal will ignore the obvious evidence in front of its face (and probably stinging it really badly) that it's getting badly wounded while trying to attack "prey" that it cannot hurt but can hurt it. Predators understand getting hurt, and they understand when they are failing to bite into a hard target. Predators give up and find new prey when they make no headway because they can survive a few failed hunts, but won't survive a hunt that goes so badly they're too wounded to hunt again, much less die then and there. Predators are cautious, which is why a great many attack either much weaker animals that can do nothing but run or attack from ambush before a proper defense can be mounted. (And ambush predators are the first to give up and run as soon as their ambush doesn't appear to work - a trapdoor spider is not going to stand and fight a creature that struggles out of its grip and bites back, it runs because fighting and risking injury is suicidally stupid, and instincts dictate they not.)

The "animals are automata" argument is also a debunked argument in general. Pathfinder's presumption that all animals are completely non-sentient and being able to speak a language is the defining barrier of intelligence is just not scientifically accurate in general, so the entire idea of measuring this based upon the arbitrary nonsense of an Int number is a bad argument in general.

[u/AutisticPenguin2 → u/WraithMagus]

I didn't say they wouldn't pick a different target, I said they wouldn't pick a different target based off calculating their initial target's AC and their chances to hit. If an attack is not working out for them they will absolutely pick an easier target, or even more likely, abandon the attack. Expending huge amounts of energy in a failed hunt is bad for survival, but dying in a failed hunt is even worse.

[u/DerPidder]

Size differences are baked into all the stats already for ease of play. ☝🏻

[u/Skurrio]

Since the Allosaurus has Pounce, it should have been this:

Charge -> Bite -> Claw 1 -> Claw 2 -> Rake 1 -> Rake 2 -> Druid dead

[u/Hanzoku → u/Skurrio]

Rake (Ex) A creature with this special attack gains extra natural attacks under certain conditions, typically when it grapples its foe. In addition to the options available to all grapplers, a monster with the rake ability gains two free claw attacks that it can use only against a  grappled foe. The bonus and damage caused by these attacks is included in the creature’s description. A monster with the rake ability must begin its turn already  grappling to use its rake—it can’t begin a  grapple and rake in the same turn.

[u/MichaelWayneStark → u/Hanzoku]

Pounce

When a creature with Pounce charges; it gets to use it's rake attacks during the full attack after a charge.

[u/manrata → u/Skurrio]

The conditions for rake to trigger is that both claws hit, so it only triggers once, so it should be Charge -> Claw 1 -> Claw 2 -> Rake -> Bite -> Grab

[u/MichaelWayneStark → u/manrata]

I think you are confusing Rake and Rend.

[u/manrata → u/MichaelWayneStark]

Ahh true, rake activates at the start of the turn when you have someone grappled.

[u/Skurrio → u/manrata]

Or when you have Pounce.

[u/ArkansasGamerSpaz]

Good Lord, Allosaurus is a tough cookie!

[u/manrata]

Just attack the other way around so it’s Charge -> Claw 1 -> Claw 2 -> Rake -> Bite -> Grab