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so... i have an odd question.

At 1st level, a monk gains Improved Unarmed Strike as a bonus feat. A monk’s attacks may be with fist, elbows, knees, and feet. This means that a monk may make unarmed strikes with his hands full. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed. A monk may thus apply his full Strength bonus on damage rolls for all his unarmed strikes.

If you wield a second weapon in your off hand, you can get one extra attack per round with that weapon...

so, for a master of many styles, is it necessary to take two-weapon fighting to reduce the penalties for making two unarmed strikes during a full attack? it seems like that would have to be the case. otherwise, what would the penalties be? natural attacks are at the full attack bonus, but unarmed strikes are specifically separate from natural attacks.

the other thing that kind of muddies the waters is that the "unarmed strike applies full strength bonus on damage rolls", which either equates them to natural attacks or gives the monk the double slice feat (albeit circumstantially applied only to unarmed strikes).

any help? i'm sure my logic is ridiculously flawed.

sorry, but i couldn't find this anywhere.

if a master of many styles monk with a level in, oh i don't know, say fighter, wears armor with which he's proficient, does he lose the fuse styles class feature?

my thought is yes. even though in the monk description it specifically says, when wearing armor... a monk loses... flurry of blows abilities," since fuse styles replaces flurry he would lose that as well.

on the other hand, under archetypes it says "A character who takes an alternate class feature does not count as having the class feature that was replaced when meeting any requirements or prerequisites." so if you give up flurry for fuse styles, should he be able to wear armor?

i'm trying to figure this out at a generic level for any class, it just happens that the monk has some pretty specific limitations when he wears armor. anybody know the answer?

thanks!