azhrei_fje
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In my game I ruled "no", as my players don't have access to anything outside of the Core PF book.
If you allow your players access to the Bestiary, then I would think the answer is "yes". After all, spending a feat for something that they can use for at most a few rounds a day should be a game breaking proposition.
| Mauril |
Improved Natural Attack: Yes. You possess a natural weapon (at least sometimes). You could not take the feat until level 9 though, as this is the first level where you have a BAB of +4 and gain a feat.
Multi-Attack: Yes. If you are a dragon disciple, you can have three natural attacks. You could take this feat, at the earliest, at level 7.
With INA, you are gaining an average +1 damage for the cost of a feat. This a rather sub-par usage of a feat in my opinion. With Multi-Attack, the feat is only useful when attacking with a combination of manufactured and natural weapons, which forgoes at least one of your claw attacks. Since both claw and bite are primary attacks, they take no penalties when attacking with just natural weapons. Only when using a manufactured weapon do they become secondary, taking the attack penalty. If you've invested a feat in your natural attacks to make them better, you are going to want to use them and not waste time with the simple weapons you are proficient with.
| Mogre |
Improved Natural Attack: Yes. You possess a natural weapon (at least sometimes). You could not take the feat until level 9 though, as this is the first level where you have a BAB of +4 and gain a feat.
Multi-Attack: Yes. If you are a dragon disciple, you can have three natural attacks. You could take this feat, at the earliest, at level 7.
With INA, you are gaining an average +1 damage for the cost of a feat. This a rather sub-par usage of a feat in my opinion. With Multi-Attack, the feat is only useful when attacking with a combination of manufactured and natural weapons, which forgoes at least one of your claw attacks. Since both claw and bite are primary attacks, they take no penalties when attacking with just natural weapons. Only when using a manufactured weapon do they become secondary, taking the attack penalty. If you've invested a feat in your natural attacks to make them better, you are going to want to use them and not waste time with the simple weapons you are proficient with.
There was an official ruling saying that Monks cannot take Improved Natural Attack. The reasoning was that PCs don't have access to the Feats in the Bestiary, those Feats are for monsters. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with this ruling, I just remember seeing it somewhere. I can't seem to find it now, though.
My logic was that if a PC Monk cannot take the Feats then neither would a PC Sorcerer.
| Mauril |
The ruling was not that Monks couldn't take the feat because it was for monsters, but rather because their unarmed strike was ruled to not be a natural attack for the purposes of the feat. Claws are clearly a natural attack.
Also, some of the feats in the bestiary feats section, namely Craft Construct, are prime for use by player characters. It even says so in the bestiary. The caveat in the bestiary merely warns GMs that these feats were intended for monsters and thus not necessarily balanced against the feats in the core manual. Most of the feats are a bit weak compared to the core feats, in my opinion.
You'd let your player take Weapon Focus (claws) for a +1 to hit with his sorcerer claws, yes? This is actually a better feat than Improved Natural Attack (Claws) which only adds an average +1 damage (max +2), assuming your middling strength and poor BAB let you actually hit with them. There are much more optimized feats for a sorcerer to take than these, so I'd definitely allow it.
| Mogre |
The ruling was not that Monks couldn't take the feat because it was for monsters, but rather because their unarmed strike was ruled to not be a natural attack for the purposes of the feat. Claws are clearly a natural attack.
Also, some of the feats in the bestiary feats section, namely Craft Construct, are prime for use by player characters. It even says so in the bestiary. The caveat in the bestiary merely warns GMs that these feats were intended for monsters and thus not necessarily balanced against the feats in the core manual. Most of the feats are a bit weak compared to the core feats, in my opinion.
You'd let your player take Weapon Focus (claws) for a +1 to hit with his sorcerer claws, yes? This is actually a better feat than Improved Natural Attack (Claws) which only adds an average +1 damage (max +2), assuming your middling strength and poor BAB let you actually hit with them. There are much more optimized feats for a sorcerer to take than these, so I'd definitely allow it.
The only other reason I wouldn't allow it is because the claws and the bite are not permanent.
Craft Construct does say that it could apply to PCs, and traditionally has been allowed.
The language on PCs and Monstter feats is vague, and is most likely like that on purpose. I'll stick with my original post and say it's up to the GM.
| TheDarkVice |
Actually, for my build I find Improved Natural Attack to be VERY useful. You see, I multi-classed sorcerer and monk and plan on meeting the prerequisites for dragon disciple. I take the monk levels for improved unarmed damage and a higher unarmored AC bonus (from Wisdom).
By taking dragon disciple levels, my character can improve their claw attacks to up to 1d6+1d6 and gain a bite attack that deals up to 1d6+1d6. Here's where INA comes in; stacking multiple applications of the feat increases both of the claw attacks to up to 6d6 or 8d6 in dragon form 2 (since the claw damage increases by another step) by level 17.
At max level, this character may have up to five attacks at full BAB, or eight in dragon form 2 due to additional natural attacks earned, plus additional attacks from high BAB, Two-Weapon Fighting, and Improved Two-Weapon Fighting (it's a shame, she'd have more if only her Dex were higher. ;D).
I'm NOT using Flurry of Blows, that would make the attack null due to the fact that I can't use natural attacks with FoB, just a normal full attack action. While her natural attacks are active, she deals an average of ~260 damage per full attack action in dragon form 2 (this includes Elemental Fist damage earned from being a Monk of the Four Winds and assumes all attacks hit), but does not include any damage from spell buffs (which wouldn't be very much, at max level she can cast 4th level spells).
In other words, I made a Dragon Monk.
EDIT: Btw, that 260 damage assumes she's a human who rolled 18 for strength, added 2 for her racial bonus, pooled all ability points earned through levels into strength, earned bonuses from her dragon disciple levels, and has no magic items.
| Mauril |
Claws being natural weapons (which are not on the list of monk weapons) is the reason that they don't count in monk abilities. The only way to make them function as monk weapons is to buy an Amulet of Mighty Fists and give it the Ki Focus enhancement. This still doesn't allow you to increase your natural attack damage by the monk unarmed strike table, but it does allow you to use Stunning Fist on a bite attack or Elemental Fist on a tail slap.