Derklord wrote:
What you (and all the others who argue that way) ignore is that the Monkäs unarmed strikes "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 manufactured weapons or natural weapons." Emphasis mine. A general rule is not an effect, however. It's also a classification, not an enhancement or improvement. Furthermore, the same natural attack rules also state "If a creature has only one natural attack, it is always made using the creature’s full base attack bonus and adds 1-1/2 times the creature’s Strength bonus on damage rolls." - if the general natural attack rules affect a Monk's US, then you don't even need Dragon Style/Ferocity in the first place! Oh, and your iteratives would all be made at full BAB.
I'm sorry, but that can not possibly be the correct interpretation.
You didn't quote any prior posts in the above statement like you did with the rest of your post(s), so this may have been replying to my post, which was the one directly preceding. If this was unintended then feel free to discount my response to the above.
I would never argue that the PA damage scaling should apply to unarmed attacks based upon the scalar allowed for primary natural attacks due to the line that a monk's Unarmed Strikes, by way of IUS, count as Manufactured Weapons and Natural Attacks for the purposes of spells or effects that enhance either one or the other.
My argument, which I make only for games I run or play in with a DM who is amenable to the argument, is that the nature of the bonus to damage in Power Attack is clearly scalable with forms of attack that either increase or decrease the amount of bonus damage from Strength.
In the PHB, the book in which the Power Attack feat was printed for Pathfinder, there were only 3 ways to achieve a Strength damage bonus of 1.5x to an attack, and only 2 ways to achieve a penalty dropping you to .5x Strength bonus damage to an attack. All 5 examples of bonus/malus are listed explicitly in the text for the Power Attack feat. In these cases, Power Attack bonus damage suffers a penalty or receives a bonus to the damage done per point to-hit sacrificed. It logically follows to apply the same proportional bonus/malus to attacks that receive the same penalty or benefit from feats or features that were/will be printed in future supplements.
Trying to use the Natural Attacks rules simply muddies the waters and turns an easy yes or no question into a long, drawn out and fruitless discussion, along with clearly absurd conclusions that you highlight rather well in the above quote and following posts. My houserule is purely an errata for Power Attack stating that the feat provides -1 to hit, +2x , with an additional -1, +2x per 4 BAB, where x is the coefficient applied to your Strength Bonus Damage for the given attack, on a per attack basis. This also means that attacks made without a Strength modifier to damage (e.g. Dervish Dance, Unchained Rogue Finesse Training) receive 0 bonus damage from Power Attack. I feel this follows a consistent internal logic for the feat, as well as other feats or features that may be enhanced by it.
As intimated before, this is not in any way supported by Paizo. Paizo is not sanctioning my games, nor am I seeking their blessing. For me, it comes back to logical consistency, fun play, and relative balance. The balance of the combat system is not particularly heavily impacted by these changes, but may enhance the fun of a player playing in my game when they get a few extra points of damage in a round. If that few extra points means the difference between killing something and it surviving to take another turn, so much the better. I'll not weep for the masses of NPCs slaughtered in the pursuit of good times with friends.
