Core rules Monk

[OldSmith]

Hoping to play my first game soon and have made a monk from the core rules as it is the only book I have so far. Planning to play him as a brawler as per the option in class description. When looking at weapons things like brass knuckles or a cestus. Does the damage they deal add on to my unarmed damage or is it instead of

[Arachnofiend]

Just... ignore everything in the description. Brass knuckles are a light weapon that can be flurried with, no further interaction with Monk abilities.

[OldSmith]

so wearing them would actually lower my unarmed damage to 1d2 instead of 1d6

[blackbloodtroll]

It is separate.

Brass Knuckles, deal Brass Knuckle damage.

The Cestus, deals Cestus damage.

The unarmed strike, deals unarmed strike damage.

No changes in one, effects the other.

[OldSmith]

thank you. That is what I figured. But then I couldn't figure out why a Monk would wear brass knuckles

[Arachnofiend]

It used to be that all the Monk stuff worked with brass knuckles, but they changed it because it basically made unarmed strikes worthless.

[James Risner]

OldSmith wrote:

thank you. That is what I figured. But then I couldn't figure out why a Monk would wear brass knuckles

When I played a monk I used them for Cold Iron and Silver damage. 1d10+STR is 0 when DR was too high.

[Claxon]

They can be enhanced without needing to resort to an amulet of mighty fists, which helps with the problem of being able to hit. At low levels the difference between 1d2+str versus 1d6+str may not be enough in the damage department to actually overcome the additional bonus to hit from enhancing a single brass knuckle over buying an amulet of mighty fists.

[David_Bross]

Since we're talking core only you'll probably want the following collection of weapons
1) Cold Iron Siangham
2) Silver Siangham
3) Cold Iron Kama

That will enable you to overcome B (Unarmed strike), S (Kama), and P (Siangham), along with cold iron and silver. You could get masterwork variants as needed, with a masterwork Cold Iron Kama probably being my first pickup.

As a side note, my VC makes extensive use of a high strength core only monk with dangerously curious and a wand of shillelagh to flurry of blows with a quarterstaff for 3d6+strength.

[Nefreet]

You don't even need UMD.

One of our local Monks uses 50gp oils of Shillelagh.

[OldSmith]

Thanks for the advice