Hello there
Well.. my tiefling monk (still lvl 1 in a Kingmaker campaign) thought of taking the Hamatulatsu feat. Until the new version.
Now I'm not sure so I thought I'd come here and ask for advices.
My first idea was to take Improved grapple and Greater grapple as bonus feats and Hamatulatsu, Hamatula strike and Hamatula grasp with regular feats.
Main question is : is that useful ? Or should I take something more immediately useful ?
Thanks by advance.
Hamatulatsu is a decent feat to take if you're going to be using unarmed strikes (even the new version).
Hamatula Strike doesn't make a lot of sense, IMO; in most cases, I would think that you would be better off making normal grapple checks to damage your opponent without any penalty. Maybe if you're using a one-handed piercing weapon, but what are the odds of that? As far as I know, you would still suffer a penalty for grappling with only one free hand. Likewise, that means that Hamatula Grasp isn't very useful either.
Note that Greater Grapple is not a monk bonus feat, for what it's worth.
Thanks.
And a silly question (I'm still new to Pathfinder) : is grappling useful at mid-high level ? (Enough to justify taking Improved and greater grapple)
And a silly question (I'm still new to Pathfinder) : is grappling useful at mid-high level ? (Enough to justify taking Improved and greater grapple)
That's not a silly question at all. My opinion is that grappling (and pinning) can still be useful at higher levels, although (a) very large enemies with high Str scores can be hard to grapple and (b) it would be difficult to kill an enemy through grappling since you only get two grapple checks per round. But grappling a spellcaster or a creature that uses spell-like abilities could be worthwhile.