Changing the damage type of Unarmed Strikes

[Lyesmith]

Quick background: I'm playing a Monk in a homebrew campaign. currently level 3. Based almost entirely on unarmed strikes.

My questions are:

-Is there any way (feats, weapons, or otherwise) to alter the damage type or material of my Unarmed Strikes?

-Can a monk using both hands still use Unarmed Strikes? (Ex. While also wielding a longspear, or in manacles)

-At what bonus does improving Bracers of Armor become a poor investment choice?

[RaizielDragon]

There are several feats to change your unarmed damage type to piercing or slashing. Snake Style allows you to use piercing. Boar Style allows you to use slashing and the follow-up feat Boar Ferocity allows you to choose from piercing as well. Tiger Style also allows slashing damage. Another feat, Hamatulatsu Strike (not to be confused with Hamatula Strike), also allows piercing.

Monks can already spend ki to make their unarmed attacks count as Cold Iron, Silver, and Adamantine, as they increase in level.

Yes. Monk Unarmed Strikes use any part of the body. It is explained in the Monk class feature "Unarmed Strike".

Can't help you with the last one.

[Nocte ex Mortis]

Partially correct. Monks do not have to spend Ki to cause their attacks to count as different types of materials as they level. That works as long as they have one point left in their Ki pool.

As for the Bracers, as long as you have your bases covered, there's never really a bad investment in them.

[RaizielDragon]

Thanks Nocte. I just did a quick glance over the Monk table, and saw the damage types listed by ki strike. Just assumed they had to spend without going down to read the actual feature.

[Nocte ex Mortis]

I love monks. As bad as they are, and as desperately as the core class needs a rewrite so that you can actually play a *Monk* and not an archer, horseman, or cut-rate wizard, who also happen to know some Kung-Fu, I've loved them since 1E.

[Imbicatus]

There are several feat options to change the damage type on unarmed strikes:

Hamatulatsu allows unarmed strikes to do piercing damage.
Snake Style allows unarmed strikes to do piercing damage.
Boar Style allows unarmed strikes to do slashing damage.
Boar Ferocity allows unarmed strikes to do piercing damage.
Tiger Style allows unarmed strikes to do slashing damage.

For special materials, Ki Strike covers that. You can also overcome DR via an Amulet of Mighty Fists of an appropriate enhancement level.

[lemeres]

Oh, I think it is worth mentioning: there are magical items that can change what DR your unarmed strikes pierce through using the ki strike. While some are somewhat useless (A set of bells that switch it from magic to either silver or cold iron depending on the bell...which can only be used for levels 4-6 since they become redundant afterwards), there is one gem- The Prayer Wheel of Ethical Strength.

By using it while you mediate or rest to get back Ki, it changes the ability to pierce through DR/lawful you get from ki strikes at level 10 to the ability to pierce through DR/good or DR/evil (depends on the wheel, since this is a listing for 2 near identical items basically; I guess some covered in hymns and some in death metal lyrics). As you can guess, this can be extremely useful, since it costs a lot less than a Holy Amulet of Mighty Fists.

On other topics- I'll admit that I avoid the default monk due to the AC complexity. The Sohei archetype is much easier to deal with because they can use normal light armor and still flurry. Not to say that they have better AC because of it (they certainly do at early levels, when a similarly stated unarmored monk could not afford the bracers, rings, and headbands and such to boost AC), but it is useful due to the fact that it opens up more magical item slots. The Brawling armor property for an untyped +2 to attack and damage on unarmed strikes, as well as the Gloves of Dueling to complement their Weapon Training ability, means they can get some serious bonuses to their attacks that normal monks will never see.

But this whole little mention of sohei is just me plugging in a beloved archetype.

[Flaming Duck]

Perhaps Weapon Versatility , so long as you consider yourself to be wielding...yourself. Man, that was zen.

[RaizielDragon]

I could see the wording of Weapon Versatility being reflavored from changing your grip on your weapon to changing the shape of your fist. That's how martial artists do it in real life. They will point their fingers and jab if they want to pierce something, or use the edge of the hand to strike or swipe with their finger tips to emulate slashing attacks.