Question about Monk's Perfect Self

[Tambryn]

So, in the description of the PF Monk ability Perfect Self it says:

"Additionally, the monk gains damage reduction 10/chaotic, which allows him to ignore the first 10 points of damage from any attack made by a nonchaotic weapon or by any natural attack by a creature that doesn't have similar damage reduction"

This of course may be a hold over from 3.5. But this is the first time I have considered playing a monk so here is my question. Why would the natural attacks of creatures with similar damage reduction be allowed to bypass DR 10/Chaotic? DR 10/Chaotic seems like a lawful ability to me and appropriate for lawful charaters. So why would a lawful character be naturally able to bypass DR that is only bypassed by chaotic sources. I can see that maybe it is intended to allow monks to smack each other around. Shouldn't a natural attack from a chaotic outsider bypass the DR?

Thanks,

Tam

[Ninjaiguana]

It's fuzzy wording. It means attacks from a chaotic creature. Notably, from the Bestiary Preview section on damage reduction:

'Some monsters are vulnerable to good-, evil-, chaotically, or lawfully aligned weapons. A creature with an alignment subtype (chaotic, evil, good, or lawful) can overcome this type of damage reduction with its natural weapons and weapons it wields as if the weapons or natural weapons had an alignment (or alignments) that matched the subtype(s) of the creature.'

[monk by many names]

I've always found perfect self to be more than slightly wonky since the DR10/chaotic should be DR10/melee, since resistance to alignments only work 1/3 of the time and if any class were to have DR/ chaos it should be Paladins. but for the purpose of fillers to make this even slightly viable for a class feat, it was just thrown in there

[Jonne Karila]

I also don't see why monk or paladin should have DR/chaotic, when that really does no good for them (they are usually fighting against chaotic beings) DR/good or lawful would make much more sense.

[Tectorman]

No, what's really wonky about the Perfect Self is that it designates the Monk as an Outsider.

Not an Outsider (Lawful), not an Outsider (Native), just Outsider.

So if you take a Ranger who have a different type of Outsider for every Favored Enemy, and you give him a Bane weapon for every type of Outsider that he doesn't yet have as his Favored Enemy and you set him up against a Monk 20,...

Not a single bit of that is going to apply.

Easy enough to fix, but it irks me that I posted several times about fixing that bit of wording and now we still have that problem perpetuated.

[Jonne Karila]

I'd say the monk's alignment effects what type of outsider he is. So a lawful monk would become Lawful outsider.

[Tectorman]

Jonne Karila wrote:

So a lawful monk would become Lawful outsider.

As opposed to the other kind of Monk?

Pet Peeve: Making Monks Lawful only in 3.5 was a bad idea then, and I maintain it's a bad idea now. But I've already gone through all that with Bagpuss.

[Michael New]

Simple question about a monk's movement and the use of a Ki point to increase it: "... he can spend 1 point to increase his speed by 20 feet for 1 round."

Is this speed increase to his base speed (base speed 60ft at 9th level becomes base speed 80 ft) or is it an increase to the total movement in a round (the same monk can run at 240ft/round, and this becomes 260 by spending a ki point)?

In other words, can that same monk run at 260 now, or 320?

[Arakhor]

I would imagine that the speed increase is a base speed increase, probably as an enhancement bonus.