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I am not sure Sean Reynolds agrees with you on that topic...Correct.
A monk is not attacking with a "hand" or a "foot" or a "head" - just an "unarmed strike." You cast MF/MW/GMF/GMW on the "unarmed strike," which as noted is treated as *A* manufactured weapon/*A* natural weapon, singular. Those spells affect a single manu/nat weapon, singular.
One spell is all that is needed.
Ruling otherwise requires a flavorized inference that is not present in the literal rules text, and which is a ruling to the detriment of the monk.
(shrug) Neither is he. He's tossing ideas out, and the posted responses lay out a number of issues with the things he's tossing already; some of the ideas are mutually exclusive, in fact, whether he realizes it or not (and he's a fairly bright guy, I'd imagine he does), so that's a long way from a definitive response.
In any case, the question is still in the air. Grantedly, more than I thought myself, too.
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In my group we've offered a few options to fulfill the martial aspirations of our players. We removed alignment restrictions on monks, and we reduced the price of the Amulet of Mighty Fists to match the cost of a magical weapon of equal value, and allow characters to take the Improved Natural Attack feat. Because the amulet is equal in value to a weapon, we also allow monks to spend a feat to make non-monk weapons count as monk weapons for purpose of their abilities. Finally, all monk weapons use the monk's unarmed damage as their base damage if it exceeds the damage of their weapon. Pointless? Not really, it allows people to create sword-wielding martial artists who actually have a reason to keep using their weapons when the damage falls behind. This makes Monks much more playable to represent any number of martial artist archetypes.
As for making a fighter variant, bring in the Greater Unarmed Strike feat and you suddenly have a non-supernatural martial artists. For those without access to the feat, just create a feat that gives a monk's unarmed progression to a fighter. It should require Improved Unarmed Strike as a prereq. Futhermore, with this it is possible to make martial artists out of nearly any class.
That being said, I do understand the desire to see the company produce something official here. Variants and homerules are the jury rigged solution, new material is the custom made part that fixes things.
As for making a fighter variant, bring in the Greater Unarmed Strike feat and you suddenly have a non-supernatural martial artists. For those without access to the feat, just create a feat that gives a monk's unarmed progression to a fighter. It should require Improved Unarmed Strike as a prereq. Futhermore, with this it is possible to make martial artists out of nearly any class.
Or look over the Unarmed Fighter archtype (for the Fighter class) in UC which is a non-Monk martial artist.
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I have not seen UC yet, so I don't really know what is in there. An Unarmed Fighter variant would solve many of the issues.
Using the Improved/Greater Unarmed feats also opens up martial arts to every class. Most people would be unlikely to spend two feats on that, feats are valuable, but it is out there. Futhermore, if someone wanted to run a more wuxia type game, Everyone could get Improved Unarmed for free, maybe even both, allowing for everybody to be good at martial arts within the limits of their BAB and HP, etc.
