So, I know this is going to sound silly or dumb but I have a legit question about the Weapon Ikons which use Unarmed or Natural weapons. How do I decide which of this actually apply to Hands of the Wildling, Gleaming Blade or Titan's Breaker?
Exemplar Feats
Hurl at the Horizon (Level 2)
Steel on Steel (level 4) (For the Ancestry that gets Adamentine claws)
Binding Arrow Celestial Serpent(level 6) (Does this work if I apply Hurl at the Horizon to any weapon Ikon?)
Compliant Gold (level 12)
As written? It could be all of them, or it could be none of them.
It depends on how you interpret melee weapon ikon, which all of these feats require.
Is it a melee weapon ikon, meaning any weapon icon that isn't a ranged weapon? Then all of them apply, and it's up to you to flavor them. Maybe Hurl at the Horizon is you chopping the air so hard you make shockwaves.
Is it a melee weapon ikon, meaning it's an ikon that is a melee weapon? Then none of them apply, because unarmed attacks are not melee weapons.
I'm inclined to go for the first option, but you could read it both ways. It doesn't help that all the descriptions talk about Weapon Ikons as being actual items, especially this part:
"Body ikons accentuate a physical trait of your body and so can’t be stolen, disarmed, dispelled, or otherwise taken away. Weapon and worn ikons are tied to items of power. When you select one, you gain a nonmagical, level-0 item of your choice that matches its usage entry. Providence ensures you come across these items; you might be traveling along a path to find a spear in a tree that only you can dislodge, or you might awaken holding a gleaming sash you saw in your dreams."
So yeah, it's a bit of a mess, and you're not silly or dumb to be unsure of how Unarmed Attack Ikons fit into this.
I’ve seen uncertainty about this elsewhere (extensive discord discussions ) and it’s probably a good errata question.
If unarmed weapon ikons aren't really weapon ikons then that'd throw many feats out the window. It is already that Exemplars don't get their unarmed strike boosted if you have an unarmed weapon Ikon. It feels weird that Hands of the Wildling deals 1 splash damage.
It's very uncertain, I've been reading and re-reading everything and I don't think there's a clear answer.
Maybe unarmed ikons were overlooked either as the result of changes over time to how ikons work from the "pick one of each" or because it was supposed to be covered by Humble Strikes. It would be odd to me if every other weapon type were covered except unarmed (though crossbows/firearms are a bit left out until you can get Deft). Problem is that unarmed strikes are explicitly not weapons, but Hands of the Wildling calls out, as a "weapon ikon", a free-hand melee weapon or a melee unarmed strike. Then other things simply refer to it as your "weapon ikon" and not as a melee weapon. So in that case it interacts with everything but Humble Strikes.
I suppose there could be an argument that it's intentional, that you don't want Exemplars to compete with Monks on unarmed strikes, or that they want the "weapon" ikon to be a weapon ikon, as discussed above. But that seems against the spirit of the demigod/hero of legend flavor they're going for, because a monstrously strong hero with fists of iron or a fast martial artist are both clear archetypes.
Hopefully this gets errata so it's clear, because it was definitely a miss for a class that I think otherwise covers a lot of character ideas really well.
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All of the Unarmed Ikons are clearly labeled 'Weapon Ikon.' Feats that apply to Weapon Ikons apply to them as well. The feats point to the type of Ikon, not how the weapon is defined.
In other words, what they are saying is: Your Spark needs to be in this Ikon for this feat to function. It is not saying your unarmed Strike is a weapon, it is pointing to the Weapon Ikon itself. I think people are thinking the feats point to the type of attack they are making, instead of 'is your spark in your weapon Ikon'