And I'm flip flopping AGAIN!
You flip-flopper.
Seriously, this is great feedback (: Thanks!
It's also worth noting that the official answer does seem to imply that feats are considered effects, because otherwise INA wouldn't need errata (it would be a rules clarification that feats are not considered effects, instead).
Eh, considering Improved Natural Attack is the one example I can think of where a feat = effect -- and the link between monk unarmed strike is effectively removed -- it's essentially a non-issue now.
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In my opinion, Improved Natural Attack has always been some kind of compensation for the difficulty to get enhancement bonuses to unarmed strike. Even in Pathfinder, the monk is still handicapped in comparison to weapon users. He's able to get weapon enhancements now, but getting them reduces his chance of hitting since he'll only be able to get an effective +5 weapon, not a +10 one. Unarmed strike counting as a natural weapon for amulets of mighty fists is more of a disadvantage.
And there are already feats that are mandatory for certain character types, Power Attack or Deadly Aim come to mind. Or Weapon Focus for fighters.
HA!
And I'm flip flopping AGAIN!
Jason crunched his numbers and the official errata is this—the Improved Natural Attack feat can not be applied to unarmed strike. We'll be issuing an errata for that feat that adds this sentence to the feat:
"Improved Natural Attack can not be applied to unarmed strikes."
Unarmed strikes ARE still treated as natural weapons for most effects (particularly for the spell magic fang and for amulets of magic fang), but the Improved Natural Attack feat is an exception to that rule.
So! There ya go! Official errata! Sorry it took so long to nail it down.
Well, I cannot say I'm the happiest person on the face of the Earth for this, but at least we have an official answer.
Oh, well, let's hope that the Advanced Players Guide would include some other options for the Monk - for example, with the current rules, a Monk can only Sunder +1 weapons (since, to break a Magic Weapon, you need a weapon with an Enhancement equal to that of the weapon you are trying to break). I hope that at least an Amulet of Mighty Fists with an Enhancement bonus allows a Monk to be considered a '+X' weapon when Sundering Magic Weapons...
(of course, I would really love to see some day a 'ki bolt' for the Monk - something more useful and 'Monk-specific' than the Ki Blast feat from PHB2)
+1 on official errata.
I would have prefered the erratum to say:
"Monks cannot benefit from Improved Unarmed Strike, as they have an innate damage progression."
That way other characters could take the feat if they wanted to.
I can see pugilist fighters wanting to take this feat. Boosting their damage to 1d6 is well within balance.
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I dunno if this has been addressed before on another thread but I thought of this while reading this one...
How does a Sorcerer(Draconic)1/Monk 8 calculate his Unarmed Strike damage and Claw damage? Can he take the improved natural attacks feat to improve his claws and in the same instance improve his unarmed strikes if those unarmed strikes are made with the claws?
I ask cause this does seem like a pretty common multiclass option especially when you add in Dragon Disciple which grants Form of the Dragon at higher levels.
I dunno if this has been addressed before on another thread but I thought of this while reading this one...
How does a Sorcerer(Draconic)1/Monk 8 calculate his Unarmed Strike damage and Claw damage? Can he take the improved natural attacks feat to improve his claws and in the same instance improve his unarmed strikes if those unarmed strikes are made with the claws?
I ask cause this does seem like a pretty common multiclass option especially when you add in Dragon Disciple which grants Form of the Dragon at higher levels.
You cannot combine natural weapons and flurry of blows, which generally makes the combination weaker combat wise.
The greatest advantage is in boosting monk abilities with low level sorcerer spells (such as mage armor).When combining Unarmed strikes with natural weapons the natural weapons becomesecondary attacks.
Depending upon how the unarmed strikes are executed you might also have to forfeit some or all of your natural weapon attacks.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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1) Gamers don't debate when the Errata disagrees with them.Said as the two of you debate. :)
Remember, there are people that go by the book and only the book, errata be damned.
I'm not debating, I go with the Official Errata (in this case "you can't INA Unarmed.)
As for your second point, I actually ran into my first "I don't use Errata" DM at DragonCon 2009. I left my ticket and walked away stunned and speechless.
Using that reasoning, I suppose Weapon Specialization and Improved Weapon Specialization contribute very little to a dual-wielding fighter's average damage?
Would you argue that feat prerequisites are effects? q:
The top improvements are Flurry, TWF, MeleeWM, WSpec, SanctifiedS (evil only), WF, SUS and/or INA. At least against "standard" monster AC (based on your Character Level.) PA hovers around just above WF until 5th level when it drops off to an insignificant improvement. PA shines when the Monster's AC either sucks or is god like.
As for your second point, yes everything is an effect.
Jason's still got to mull it over in his head a bit and run some numbers or something.
So, if your comfortable with an 8th level monk doing unarmed damage that he'd normally have to wait until 16th level to achieve, go for it. I'm not sure I'd be comfortable with that in my games, is all.
I would. In 3.5 (I haven't updated my spreadsheet for 3.p yet) a Monk using Fist of the Forest, WF, INA, Superior Unarmed Strike, and a Monk's Belt exceeded a "generic" Greatsword Fighter with WF/WS/etc from 10th level to 17th level when the Fighter regains dominance.
I don't think Monk are designed to damage dealers. In 3.p the BAB improvement during flurry helps, but the loss of TWF on top of Flurry hurts. I suspect (especially with the loss of INA) that a 3.p Monk will benchmark around the old 3.5 Monk. When I build my next Monk, I will find out as I will need to revise/update the spreadsheet.
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I dunno if this has been addressed before on another thread but I thought of this while reading this one...
How does a Sorcerer(Draconic)1/Monk 8 calculate his Unarmed Strike damage and Claw damage? Can he take the improved natural attacks feat to improve his claws and in the same instance improve his unarmed strikes if those unarmed strikes are made with the claws?
I ask cause this does seem like a pretty common multiclass option especially when you add in Dragon Disciple which grants Form of the Dragon at higher levels.
You cannot combine natural weapons and flurry of blows, which generally makes the combination weaker combat wise.
The greatest advantage is in boosting monk abilities with low level sorcerer spells (such as mage armor).When combining Unarmed strikes with natural weapons the natural weapons becomesecondary attacks.
Depending upon how the unarmed strikes are executed you might also have to forfeit some or all of your natural weapon attacks.
I know it doesn't work with furry but how do you calculate the damage of natural attacks and unarmed strikes? are each exclusive?
- A 1st level sorcerer (draconic) has a claw attack that does 1d4 damage
- An 8th level monk does 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
- An 8th level monk/1st level sorcerer (draconic) has a claw attack that does 1d4 damage and does 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
- A 1st level sorcerer (draconic)/8th level monk/10th level dragon disciple deals 1d10 unarmed strike damage but has 2 claws that do 1d6+1d6 energy damage and a 1d6 bite that also does 1d6 energy damage.
Although stacking of damage can become abusive and unbalancing I couldn't see why it would be unbalancing to use the best of the two?
So the monk sorcerer would do 1d10 with his claw and 1d10 with his unarmed strikes and the sorcerer/monk/dragon disciple would do 1d0+1d6 energy with his claws and bite and 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
If the player chose to take the improved natural attacks feat his damage would not change, since the feat only increases his 1d6 claws and bite to 1d8 and his unarmed strike still supersedes that with 1d10.
I know it doesn't work with furry but how do you calculate the damage of natural attacks and unarmed strikes? are each exclusive?
Yes, they cannot be combined.
- A 1st level sorcerer (draconic) has a claw attack that does 1d4 damage
- An 8th level monk does 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
- An 8th level monk/1st level sorcerer (draconic) has a claw attack that does 1d4 damage and does 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
- A 1st level sorcerer (draconic)/8th level monk/10th level dragon disciple deals 1d10 unarmed strike damage but has 2 claws that do 1d6+1d6 energy damage and a 1d6 bite that also does 1d6 energy damage.
That appears to be correct.
Although stacking of damage can become abusive and unbalancing I couldn't see why it would be unbalancing to use the best of the two?
That really dfepends on the powr level of the campaign. In a high powered campaign it probably will not make that big of a diference. In a raw campaign it becomes a significant boost to the monk/sorcerer/dd.
So the monk sorcerer would do 1d10 with his claw and 1d10 with his unarmed strikes and the sorcerer/monk/dragon disciple would do 1d0+1d6 energy with his claws and bite and 1d10 with his unarmed strikes.
If the player chose to take the improved...
As stated on page 315 of the PB IN Attack only enhances one of the creatures natural weapon types. In this case either the bite or the claws.
My question then is can a monk/druid then substitute his unarmed strike damage for his natural weapon damage attacks since they are the same thing? OR does he add them together?
Example: Fluffy bunny has 2 claws(1d6) and a bite(1d4)
Can I then take and make 3 unarmed strikes in place of each? (say maybe 1d8 attacks)
or
Do I add my unarmed strike damage to my claw/bite?
OR
Reason I am asking is for Pathfinder society...
My question then is can a monk/druid then substitute his unarmed strike damage for his natural weapon damage attacks since they are the same thing? OR does he add them together?Example: Fluffy bunny has 2 claws(1d6) and a bite(1d4)
Can I then take and make 3 unarmed strikes in place of each? (say maybe 1d8 attacks)
or
Do I add my unarmed strike damage to my claw/bite?
OR
Reason I am asking is for Pathfinder society...
I think I found the answer to my own question. You would get your full BAB in attacks based off your monk damage plus one natural attack at
-5 BAB as a secondary attack.It is still nice for druids to get improved natural attack!!
My question then is can a monk/druid then substitute his unarmed strike damage for his natural weapon damage attacks since they are the same thing? OR does he add them together?Example: Fluffy bunny has 2 claws(1d6) and a bite(1d4)
Can I then take and make 3 unarmed strikes in place of each? (say maybe 1d8 attacks)
or
Do I add my unarmed strike damage to my claw/bite?
OR
Reason I am asking is for Pathfinder society...
I think I found the answer to my own question. You would get your full BAB in attacks based off your monk damage plus one natural attack at
-5 BAB as a secondary attack.It is still nice for druids to get improved natural attack!!
You get full BAB plus natural as secondary is correct. If you flurry you get no natural weapons as per the flurry of blows description.
Now you could be a druid and wildshape into a monkey and TWF with a quarterstaff and add a bite at the end as a secondary, but doesn't mesh well with monks.
I think the biggest issue with applying the feat to monks (and why the official errata makes sense) is that natural weapon attacks are not expected to increase in quantity iteratively with BAB.
That said, I'm not going to cry for monks, since I feel RAW allows them to use gauntlets qualifying in all other ways as unarmed attacks, but there's a whole separate thread for that.
That said, I'm not going to cry for monks, since I feel RAW allows them to use gauntlets qualifying in all other ways as unarmed attacks, but there's a whole separate thread for that.
That's quite a word twist ("A strike with a gauntlet is otherwise considered an unarmed attack." != "A strike with a gauntlet is considered an unarmed attack."), but I see what you're doing. Gauntlets are not special monk weapons, so using them as a weapon -- even if they're treated as an unarmed attacks -- doesn't give you the benefit from FoB. As much as the 3.5 FAQ annoys me, it does verify that gauntlets don't benefit FoB in several places (search for "gauntlet"). Nice try though (:
On a side note, there is a 2nd level pathfinder spell (min/level) that gives an extra bite attack to a person.
1) Gamers don't debate when the Errata disagrees with them.Said as the two of you debate. :)
Remember, there are people that go by the book and only the book, errata be damned.
I'm not debating, I go with the Official Errata (in this case "you can't INA Unarmed.)
As for your second point, I actually ran into my first "I don't use Errata" DM at DragonCon 2009. I left my ticket and walked away stunned and speechless.
Really? My GM wouldn't even know where to find the errata. I just don't see why there is this insistence that everything be nailed down and every game run the exact same rules. You sit down at the table, you game, you have fun. If the rules are a little different at one table or the other then it's not a big deal.
I guess at a con it could be frustrating if your build is reliant on some edge features but the solution to that is simple, play characters that don't rely on features that require errata.
I just don't see why there is this insistence that everything be nailed down and every game run the exact same rules. You sit down at the table, you game, you have fun. If the rules are a little different at one table or the other then it's not a big deal.
That's easy to say at an actual table. It's a bit of a stretch to say it on a rules forum. . . where rules are being discussed. How can anyone answer questions about anything if every game runs everything differently? Where's the line between "wrong" and "DM discretion"? And yes, DMs/judges/arbiters can be wrong.
I just don't see why there is this insistence that everything be nailed down and every game run the exact same rules. You sit down at the table, you game, you have fun. If the rules are a little different at one table or the other then it's not a big deal.That's easy to say at an actual table. It's a bit of a stretch to say it on a rules forum. . . where rules are being discussed. How can anyone answer questions about anything if every game runs everything differently? Where's the line between "wrong" and "DM discretion"? And yes, DMs/judges/arbiters can be wrong.
I was referring to his comment that he walked away from a table at a con (which I quoted).
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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My GM wouldn't even know where to find the errata ... play characters that don't rely on features that require errata.
I guess in my mind a GM that doesn't know the Errata doesn't care about broken or otherwise bad mechanics. I suspect (but do not know) that most of these GM's like the broken material nice and broken. I don't like broken material.
As for relying on characters that don't use Errata that is very difficult to do in practice. Pretty much every class is effected in some way (sometimes minor) by one errata or another.
I was referring to his comment that he walked away from a table at a con (which I quoted).
The interesting part is the errata nerfed me, leaving it as written made me more powerful. If instead he said "you know I like you being awesome so keep the old way" I wouldn't have walked away. It was when he said "I don't use Errata" that I decided that game wasn't for me.
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For me errata's are a necessary evil. This actually cropped up in an argument the other week at my gaming group in a 3.5 game...
I pointed out the restriction of soft cover on the scouts ranged attacks. the player imediately grabbed his PHB and quoted that it stated only MELEE attacks! I then grabbed my PHB and pointed out it said ranged attacks and that my book was a second printing while his was first print run meaning erratas had been entered in mine.
We then got into the discussion of the validity of errata's and I pointed out that the cleric using Righteous Might without the errata was alot more powerful than he should have been, The cleric player was fine with that until I pointed out that the same applies to the monsters the DM puts in and the idea of a cleric spell casting creature receiving such a huge boost breaks the CR system and likely wipes out the party.
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My GM wouldn't even know where to find the errata ... play characters that don't rely on features that require errata.I guess in my mind a GM that doesn't know the Errata doesn't care about broken or otherwise bad mechanics. I suspect (but do not know) that most of these GM's like the broken material nice and broken. I don't like broken material.
I really think you've got an interesting interpretation there, I don't run with errata because I don't want to have to find errata, now if its for a society game I can understand it, since a society game is it's own microcosm, and it sounds like this probably was since it was a con. But it has absolutely nothing to do with preferring broken material. In fact I want things to be nice and balanced, but I'm not going to spend my life following up on every little tidbit of errata that comes up. If I find something isn't working and I learn that there's errata that fixes it, that's one thing, but I'm not going to waste time finding all this errata, a lot of it for things that aren't even relevant to my game. For the most part we'll keep to the rules of the book, and if we have multiple printings as you mentioned we'll use the later version, but then we may not use either version as I may decide that I don't like how the rules out of the book run (paladin dealing double damage against certain monster types I'm looking at you).
I skimmed through the thread from beginning to end and did not see this mentioned. I apologize if it was and I missed it...
Now that we have an official ruling about Improved Natural Attack... perhaps would be a good time to point out Superior Unarmed Strike from Tome of Battle: TBo9S on pg. 33.
For those of you allowing 3.5 material to be grandfathered in... Superior Unarmed Strike is a great way to increase unarmed strike damage for any character. Its prereq prevents it from being taken before 3rd level (for any full BAB class) and 5th level for monks.
Superior Unarmed Strike is a great way to increase unarmed strike damage for any character.
Admittedly, SUS is more balanced than INA. Having a further monk progression (adds 2 average damage) is better than being treated as a size larger. It still improves the effectiveness of being larger, adding significantly more damage if you're affected by enlarge person. However, enlarge person is easier to deal with compared to INA.
Superior Unarmed Strike is a great way to increase unarmed strike damage for any character.Admittedly, SUS is more balanced than INA. Having a further monk progression (adds 2 average damage) is better than being treated as a size larger. It still improves the effectiveness of being larger, adding significantly more damage if you're affected by enlarge person. However, enlarge person is easier to deal with compared to INA.
Yes it does seem to balance well.
Enlarge Person gives its benefits to all classes anyway, so a monk with Superior Unarmed Strike who has been Enlarged is not that much different than a fighter who swapped to a greatsword before being Enlarged.
Enlarge Person gives its benefits to all classes anyway, so a monk with Superior Unarmed Strike who has been Enlarged is not that much different than a fighter who swapped to a greatsword before being Enlarged.
There is a significant damage difference between the monk progression of base weapon damage increases and weapon size increases. As the dice get bigger with monks, the effect of weapon size increases also get bigger.
A greatsword gets 1d6 of extra damage if its wielder becomes enlarged. This doesn't change. This a damage multiplier (x1.5), but it's multiplying a fixed number.
The damage multiplier multiplies a function with monks -- and the output is much greater. At level 12, 2d10 (SUS + Monk's Robe) becomes 4d8 with enlarge person. That's a gain of 7 average damage, which translates to 2d6 or double the benefit of a fighter with a greatsword.
My GM wouldn't even know where to find the errata ... play characters that don't rely on features that require errata.I guess in my mind a GM that doesn't know the Errata doesn't care about broken or otherwise bad mechanics. I suspect (but do not know) that most of these GM's like the broken material nice and broken. I don't like broken material.
Mostly they don't have the time to chase it down. You are under the impression that all GMs have tons of time to have the rules down pat and then can DL the errata and will put a sticker in their book or pencil in the changes. This just isn't the case. There are tons of GMs out there who have barely read the core book and don't understand half of the core rules.
As for relying on characters that don't use Errata that is very difficult to do in practice. Pretty much every class is effected in some way (sometimes minor) by one errata or another.
If it's a "sometimes minor" thing then it's going to have a sometimes minor effect on your character and it won't really matter will it? So ultimately you aren't relying on it unless it's something significant, which is much less common.
Some rules stuff on monks and gauntlets.
There's a whole separate thread for that. I'm not rehashing it here; it's not all fresh in my brain so I couldn't even if I wanted to.
On the topic of errata, I use it whenever I can. I wish companies di a better job of creating/distributing errata, but it's pretty much the standard patch dilemma that software developers face.
I've found that I have a pretty good grasp of what is or is not unbalanced, as my inner powergamer has found many a "broken" rule that later was fixed. Armor of Haste from the old Sword and Fist, I think, was a great one. So I enjoy being forewarned about things that are potentially going to be an issue.
That said, I err on the side of giving players more options, rather than fewer, so in cases of weird rules that could be interpreted in a limiting way or a way that gives more choice, I tend to go with the "more choice" option, as long as it doesn't completely unbalance things. I've occasionally found errata or a FAQ that is the exact opposite of my ruling, and in those instances I may ret-con the campaign to bring it in line with the printed errata.
I've only occasionally run into serious problems with giving players lots of options, and it rarely has to do with something that would even ever receive errata anyway.
And Superior Unarmed Strike seems fine to me. I'd allow it, although none of my players would ever find it unless I specifically suggested it.
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Wow, I think this is one of the longer threads I've started. I also expected there to be more about the Ability Focus question. I have a couple more on that. If I take Ability Focus (Stunning Fist), it applies to all of the effects a monk can cause with Stunning Fist at higher levels, like blindness/deafness, right? If not, do you take it multiple times, or can only the stunning application of stunning fist be improved by this feat?
Also, what's the default assumption on qualification and training for feats? In particular, could I take Ability Focus (Quivering Palm) at level 15, or would I have to wait until 17th level to take it? The only thing I could find suggestive on this point was the rules for taking ranks in the fly skill, which seems to imply that most wizards won't be able to take ranks until 6th level, sorcerers at 7th, druids at 4th, &c.
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HA!
And I'm flip flopping AGAIN!
Jason crunched his numbers and the official errata is this—the Improved Natural Attack feat can not be applied to unarmed strike. We'll be issuing an errata for that feat that adds this sentence to the feat:
"Improved Natural Attack can not be applied to unarmed strikes."
Unarmed strikes ARE still treated as natural weapons for most effects (particularly for the spell magic fang and for amulets of magic fang), but the Improved Natural Attack feat is an exception to that rule.
So! There ya go! Official errata! Sorry it took so long to nail it down.
Although I find it amusing that it took you 24 hours and 10 minutes to go 360 degrees, I was wondering if this would also imply cororlary errata to Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization. As grapple and unarmed strikes are currently the only natural weapon-like things that are mentioned as being eligible to be applied to these feats other than rays and manufactured weapons, will future versions of WF and WS explicitly say they can only otherwise be applied to manufactured weapons? Do monsters not have this hindrance because they are monsters? Druids with awakened animal allies want to know!
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Owner - D20 Hobbies
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I skimmed through the thread from beginning to end and did not see this mentioned ... Superior Unarmed Strike
I mentioned this earlier, as it and Fist of the Forest, Monk's Robes, and INA were all required in 3.5 to make Monk's compete with the Generic Fighter in average damage output. In 3.p, with the many improvements and loss of INA I'm not sure if they are on top, on par, or below a Generic Fighter. I suspect below.
Mostly they don't have the time to chase it down.
While I can appreciate that thought, I consider it my duty as a player/DM to find it. The time to track it down is on the order of 1 minute (with published Errata) or less and the time to integrate it into a PDF is also in minutes (assuming Adobe Professional or a Mac with Skim.) So 10 minutes a month (if Errata/FAQ is published per month) hardly seems excessive.
Well, count this as another thing I'll be ignoring. Besides the fact that both WotC and Paizo have actually used INA with monks in the rules, this is just kind of lame. I've seen monks ignore the option, and I've seen monks go with the option. I don't think it unfairly overpowers the monk, and I certainly don't understand why a company that has used the rules that way would then go and say that they refuse to acknowledge them functioning that way. The PFCS is suddenly mechanically incompatible with the PFRPG, at least in this instance.
+1 more house rule.
Can a monk take Improved Natural Attack to increase his unarmed strike damage? Could he take Ability Focus (Stunning Fist, Scorpion Style, or Gorgon's Fist)?Actually...
An unarmed strike is not a natural attack. It's using an appendage to make an attack even though the natural features of that appendage do not make it a viable natural attack in the same way that claws or teeth work.
Unarmed strike is therefore a "weapon" that's listed on the list of weapons in the Core rules.
Improved Natural Attack applies ONLY to natural attacks like bites, claws, slams, tentacles, etc; the list of natural attacks appears on our around page 301 or 302 in the Bestiary. Unarmed strike is NOT on that list.
Actually, it's been stated by Sage Advice several times that the quirk to a Monk's unarmed strike feature (as opposed to anyone else with the Improved Unarmed Strike feat) is that their unarmed strikes count as both manufactured and natural weapons for the purposes of special effects, like feats and spells. And it was declared that, yes, you can take Improved Natural Attack to increase a monk's (and a monk's only) unarmed strike damage.
Just saw the post where it's been errata'd for Pathfinder. Not too keen on doing that. I see nothing wrong with someone using a feat slot just to increase their unarmed damage by one size category. Everything else has the ability to increase with just a feat. And the feat can only be taken once.
I guess I'll stick with the 3.5e official version of Improved Natural Attack.
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I am glad for the new ruling. I always thought it was cheesy for players of humanoid races to take feats designed for monsters to optimize. I never allowed INA for players of monks in my games, and I never noticed any gimped monks running around, in general the class is pretty solid IMO. As far as cutting edge damage comparisons...I don't really care, neither do my players. They tend to play as a team, as opposed to competing for highest DPR.
Good call on keeping the cheese out of organized play Paizo. Keep it up :)
love,
malkav
I am glad for the new ruling. I always thought it was cheesy for players of humanoid races to take feats designed for monsters to optimize. I never allowed INA for players of monks in my games, and I never noticed any gimped monks running around, in general the class is pretty solid IMO. As far as cutting edge damage comparisons...I don't really care, neither do my players. They tend to play as a team, as opposed to competing for highest DPR.
Good call on keeping the cheese out of organized play Paizo. Keep it up :)
love,
malkav
There's a HUGE difference between 'competing for highest DPR' and 'Trying to actually deal competent damage'
Trust me, if you compared a well built Monk vs his equivalent Fighter, without access to INA, you would really, truly wonder why the Monk is even adventuring instead of meditating in some monestary somewhere hoping he never has to fight so he won't die.
EDIT: Pardon the strong language/tone of this post, I have a tendency to emphasize my points in ways that feel agressive.
Hmmm... Sort of off-topic, then again, maybe not...
I'm always sort of amused when people begin to compare damage output between classes that IMO have different roles. The monk is a capable damage dealer, but the way I see him is in a more tactical view. He's your guy who zippes across the battle field and take out the squishy annoying spellcaster-types or the annoying archer or what have you... The fighter fights. He hits. He kills. He deal damage... So what do you like best? Them oranges or them apples?Sorry if this was a bit off topic... But I felt like getting it out of my system ;)
I don't see the feat as a game-breaking at all really.
The simplest and best way to judge a feat being too good has always been this: Does EVERY single player want it? If the answer is no, then your feat is halfway to being a balanced feat for your game.
I have DMed many Monk characters over the years, and I do show them that INA is eligible for them to take. So far, not one decided to do it as they wanted to invest a feat slot in something else to build their character and only ONE is considering it. It's nice, but not GREAT. And that shows a balanced feat.
Now if all my Monk players were jotting that feat down onto their character sheets, that'd be a different story. But they don't, and I honestly don't see many Monk players outside of my group that do have it (though this could be because most of them that I have talked to had no idea about INA and didn't know a Monk can legitly take it when they did know.)
For the record, from Sage Advice:
Can a monk take Improved Natural Attack (Monster Manual, page 304) to improve his unarmed strike?
Yes. As stated on page 41 of the Player’s Handbook, a monk’s unarmed strike “is treated as both a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either” which includes feats such as Improved Natural Attack. Barring multiclassing, the earliest a monk could take this feat would be at 6th level (due to the base attack bonus prerequisite), at which point her unarmed strike damage would improve from 1d8 to 2d6 (which represents an average increase of +2.5 points of damage). The same monk at 20th level would deal 4d8 points of damage with her unarmed strike.
Now if all my Monk players were jotting that feat down onto their character sheets, that'd be a different story.
They would if:
- It was actually in the player's guide (it wasn't designed for players to take).
- They knew it stacks with both effects that increase size and the monk's normal unarmed strike progression. Various feats/spells that increase size or the monk's unarmed strike progression all benefit from this feat.
- They knew it's overall better than Weapon Specialization and Improved Weapon Specialization. Those feats are static; this feat continues to get better as you gain levels. It shouldn't be better than 2 feats with higher prereqs. Depending on what you stack with it, it can become 4 times better than Weapon Specialization at level 12.
- They understand there's no way to get rid of this feat. Other effects (monk's robe, enlarge person, polymorph) can be dispelled or otherwise removed.
So mostly it's a matter of ignorance. And of course, anyone who is trying to take feats to roleplay a specific character wouldn't take this feat. Anyone who takes this is trying to optimize damage output.
And of course, anyone who is trying to take feats to roleplay a specific character wouldn't take this feat. Anyone who takes this is trying to optimize damage output.
The two are not mutually exclusive.
Now if all my Monk players were jotting that feat down onto their character sheets, that'd be a different story.They would if:
- It was actually in the player's guide (it wasn't designed for players to take).
- They knew it stacks with both effects that increase size and the monk's normal unarmed strike progression. Various feats/spells that increase size or the monk's unarmed strike progression all benefit from this feat.
- They knew it's overall better than Weapon Specialization and Improved Weapon Specialization. Those feats are static; this feat continues to get better as you gain levels. It shouldn't be better than 2 feats with higher prereqs. Depending on what you stack with it, it can become 4 times better than Weapon Specialization at level 12.
- They understand there's no way to get rid of this feat. Other effects (monk's robe, enlarge person, polymorph) can be dispelled or otherwise removed.
So mostly it's a matter of ignorance. And of course, anyone who is trying to take feats to roleplay a specific character wouldn't take this feat. Anyone who takes this is trying to optimize damage output.
That's the thing. They DO know. I let them all know the minute a Monk is made and they need ideas for feats for their new Monk. They've all nodded at INA but seeing it as so far off to get (the prerequisites are high) and thinking of other chains to use precious feat slots on that it became a passing thought. When making Monk NPCs, I usually forget about it unless I am specifically making a Monk that I want to deal more damage.
And Weapon Specialization is Fighter exclusive and opens a Fighter to other feat chains. (outside core books, I mean) Has nothing to do with Monks.