Does the Brawler rage power increase a Monk's unarmed damage

[Cainus]

I'm looking at a Martial Artist/Barbarian and I was wondering if the Brawler rage power would increase a Monk's unarmed damage.

Brawler
Benefit: While raging, the barbarian is treated as if she has Improved Unarmed Strike. If she already has the feat, her unarmed strikes deal 1d6 points of damage (1d4 if she is Small).

So I suppose the question is, does Brawler increase the damage dice up by one step, or does it just set it to the number stated in the description.

For example, if it just increases the damage by the amount in the description then what would it do for large size Barbarians?

[Protoman]

Since Improved Unarmed Strike just does 1d3 damage, Brawler rage actually bumps it up 2 steps. With that in mind, I think a monk/barbarian (already miniumum 1d6 damage) doesn't benefit from brawler rage otherwise the damage would go much higher than RAI.

If a barbarian became large size, I think the brawler rage unarmed damage should go up to 1d8.

[Kazejin]

Simple answer: it works as written.

It doesn't say it increases the dice. It says it deals 1d6 (assuming medium size). So that's it. In the case of a monk/barbarian, you use whichever unarmed strike damage is more favorable -- the monk's.

Increasing character size is another issue entirely, as the rules for that already include increasing damage dice for any weapon of the new size (and unarmed strikes scale with your size automatically, because they are a part of your body). A large barbarian would deal 1d8.

[i208]

Kazejin wrote:

Simple answer: it works as written.

It doesn't say it increases the dice. It says it deals 1d6 (assuming medium size). So that's it. In the case of a monk/barbarian, you use whichever unarmed strike damage is more favorable -- the monk's.

Increasing character size is another issue entirely, as the rules for that already include increasing damage dice for any weapon of the new size (and unarmed strikes scale with your size automatically, because they are a part of your body). A large barbarian would deal 1d8.

I actually just tested this out in HeroLab, and they bumped up my d8 monk unarmed damage to 3d6 while raging... and my damage is already off the charts with the build I have. So I'm just wondering if that's a HeroLab mistake or unearthed gold.

[Ciaran Barnes]

Hero lab mistake from programming shortcut.