There's no explicit rule in the book as far as I can tell, but as was pointed out earlier, the devs have said that there's no such thing as a MW unarmed weapon, period.
As for whether it's mechanically broken or not, I agree with you 100%.
Sadly true, even though in practice a martial artist can 'toughen' his or her body, which I would gladly say that this spell simulates.
The problem with permitting a "MW unarmed strike" is that is logically follows other natural weapons may be upgraded for enchantment as well.
It's not the worst can of worms to open, but it's still pretty messy.
Restricting it to "monk only" may solve a few of the issues, (but not really in my mind as you still have to decide how to handle monstrous monks)
I honestly don't see why applying enhancements to natural weapons would be a problem. In fact, you can already do that with the Amulet of Mighty Fists, and that's actually the situation in which AoMF is not overpriced, since it could easily be applying to three, four, or even more separate weapons, which may possibly be made in addition to weapon attacks. So it seems to me that directly enhancing a single natural attack would actually be the less powerful option. And why would it be 'messy'? It just means applying the logic of weapon enhancements to all weapons.
it is far more costly but a monk could get Greater Magic Fang cast on him and then a Permanency spell cast (since Greater Magic Fang is one of the spells that can be made permanent)
Unclear if one spell is sufficient to make all of the monk's attacks magically enhanced (or if it just makes one specific part of his body. The spell specifically talks about the option of either a +1-5 (depending on caster level) to a SINGLE natural weapon OR an overall +1 to ALL natural weapons (regardless of the caster level of the caster).
According to the FoB = TWF ruling (which is still provisional) unarmed strike is multiple weapons. This is why an amulet of mighty fists is so expensive - it enhances ALL the natural weapons. Hence you either get +1 on all unarmed strikes or +5 on one of them. Which one? your guess is good as mine.
Brass knuckles are errata'd, as are all "unarmed" weapons. They are just light weapons, and do not count as unarmed strikes for anything.
This is, apparently, because they would make the Amulet of Might Fists redundant, and in any rate brass knuckles are a single weapon while unarmed strike is, according to SKR, multiple weapons. This then led into all the broohaha about flurry-of-blows always having been intended to be TWF by another name, and the resultant storm that kicked up.
I don't really see how they make the AoMF redundant. Brace Knuckles are weapons, which means they can be disarmed, while the Amulet can't. The Amulet special abilities don't stack with the Knuckles because the Amulet enhances unarmed strikes, while the knuckles deal unarmed strike damage (pre-errata). So a +1 Frost Brass Knuckle and a Flaming AoMF don't stack for 1d6 Cold and 1d6 Fire.
Not only that, the Knuckles must be used in the strikes to gain their benefits. So if a monk had his hands tied, he can still use his legs to make attacks at no penalty, but he doesn't gain the benefit of the knuckles, whereas the Amulet would still function. The stupid thing is, for the price of a +2 Amulet, I could buy 2 +2 Brass Knuckles, a +1 Amulet of Natural Armor and still have 1,398 GP left over. But the downsides and ridiculousness of the AoMF is well documented, and we shan't rehash them here.
No, a lot of people didn't get it, but that's what they said.
I don't really see how they make the AoMF redundant. Brace Knuckles are weapons, which means they can be disarmed, while the Amulet can't. The Amulet special abilities don't stack with the Knuckles because the Amulet enhances unarmed strikes, while the knuckles deal unarmed strike damage (pre-errata). So a +1 Frost Brass Knuckle and a Flaming AoMF don't stack for 1d6 Cold and 1d6 Fire.
Not only that, the Knuckles must be used in the strikes to gain their benefits. So if a monk had his hands tied, he can still use his legs to make attacks at no penalty, but he doesn't gain the benefit of the knuckles, whereas the Amulet would still function. The stupid thing is, for the price of a +2 Amulet, I could buy 2 +2 Brass Knuckles, a +1 Amulet of Natural Armor and still have 1,398 GP left over. But the downsides and ridiculousness of the AoMF is well documented, and we shan't rehash them here.
Actually, brass knuckles were originally listed as "unarmed strike" weapons, not normal weapons. Which is why they errataed them to NOT letting the monk deal his unarmed damage, because then it does get fuzzy with comparisons to the AOMF.
I have always felt personally if you let brass knuckles be weapons and work under weapon rules AND simply just let them deal its wielder's unarmed strike damage, it would not be a problem, as you say.
When I suggested this in Ultimate Equipment, Sean Reynolds said he felt that it made other monk weapons obsolete and was power creep.
Even though I am someone who is hysterically oversensitive to both obsolescence of core material and power creep to the great disgruntlement of my fellow players (as I tend to be very reluctant about allowing supplemental material in my games), in this specific case, I still strongly disagree. Especially with the idea of making monk weapons obsolete--monks should want to use them for their special qualities (and for dealing slashing/bludgeoning damage), not because they are your only choice if you want to wield an enchanted weapon. I stated this in the original thread, but never got any further reply. Generally speaking, I am glad the devs prefer to err on the side of avoiding power creep. Still am not sure it best applies to the situation, in my entirely inconsequential opinion.
ETA: And now that I've had my coffee, I realize I've just been repeating what Dabbler and Tels were already saying. Got to stop that early morning posting habit...
There isn't one, so far as I can see.
Hmm, maybe we can narrow that list of "Paizo hates Monks" to "SKR hates Monks"...
I kid, I kid.
(Totally serious about Paizo hating Monks though)
I don't think Paizo hates monks, or even that SKR hates monks, but I do think they are not appreciating how difficult it is to make a monk effective offensively. Defensive is easy, but not offence, and perhaps this is their sticking point: it's hard to slow monks down, so they shouldn't have the same offensive capacity as other classes. Indeed, we aren't asking for that. The problem is that if the monk does not have any significant offensive capacity then they cannot contribute to the party dynamic in combat very much, and that's a gaping failure in a combat class.
A monk with a fully-enhanced unarmed strike (that is, enchanted as a single weapon in terms of cost and maximum enhancement) is still not going to threaten the damage kings of fighters and barbarians, although he will come closer than is currently possible. Further, the one area where the monk's defences are not as strong as other combat classes is in raw AC (often) and hit-points (always).
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Maybe Hate is too strong of a word.
Paizo doesn't want Monks or Rogues to be as good as any of the other classes, so they arent allowed to have things that make them suck less.
When making new Monk and Rogue abilities, they try to err on the side of crappier than the base. That may not be a big deal when youre designing stuff for the Druid or the Summoner. But for the Monk and Rogue you're making the crappiest classes even more crappy; albeit with a variety of ways for you to be crappy.
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+1 to almost everything said.
again, I don't PFS. our homegame rules that DM fiat in conjunction with common sense > RAW. fun is the goal, and getting bogged down in rule arguments takes away a lot of time from playing.
regardless, I do wish there was some option for the unarmed monk to be as effective as his weapon bearing brethren. the glove and boot slot are weak items (non-essential might be a better term) for the monk anyhow, and I think there could easily by some items added in the upcoming UE book that provide benefits to punches/kicks.
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I do wish there was some option for the unarmed monk to be as effective as his weapon bearing brethren. the glove and boot slot are weak items (non-essential might be a better term) for the monk anyhow, and I think there could easily by some items added in the upcoming UE book that provide benefits to punches/kicks.
We all wish there were options to bring the monk closer in overall usefulness to the fighter, ranger, barbarian, paladin, or bard.
But they're pretty careful to make sure that doesn't happen, to prevent "power creep" even if the power creep would serve to make a flavorful but crap class be as good as the other skill and melee classes.
In short, it doesn't matter if the power creep is *Needed*, they avoid it anyways.
I doubt they have time to do this properly, but maybe Paizo needs to run a monk playtest. I know it sounds silly to do that so far into the game's run, but given this needs reviewing anyway...
Part of the thing about the flurry rules as IIRC they were not in the Pathfinder Beta, they were a revision post-Beta, so were not part of the open playtest. (Some of this might have been caught if it was).
Heck, maybe we could do some of this on our own, and report the results if the Paizo staff aren't sick of us hearing us flap our traps all day about this.
Let's see... to do this right, we'd probably need a few monk builds---core, using the clarification; core using the "the way a lot of us thought it worked with single weapon flurry"; and a few archetypes. Use more or less same statblock for all of them so all that changes is the different flurry interpretations.
We'd also need a few brief encounters/scenarios to run the builds through. With party and without, etc.
Would it be doable/manageable? Anyone interested in trying? Or would that be too crazy to try and organize via message board?
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I think a playtest that shows the results might help. Numerical analysis could help too; particularly if you include comparisons to the other meleers.
But Put me in the camp that says the Rogue and the Monk need to be fixed. Theyre both broken. The Monk and the Rogue are both terrible. At least there are some good ways to replace the Rogue using variants on Bard and Ranger, so we can just pretend that the Rogue never existed. The Unarmed Fighter makes a good brawler, but not a good martial artist; so that doesn't work.
Either the Rogue and Monk need to be rewritten (or archetypes made for them that just add things instead of taking away things as well), or archetypes for decent classes need to be made to replace them. The Rogue has the second one down pretty well. The Monk, not so much. We need like, a Combat Manoeuvre Specialist Fighter, an unarmored fighter, and they'd need to be compatible with the unarmed fighter so you could take all three together. Come up with similar archetypes for Ranger.
Maybe make a Generalist Fighter as well, for more skillpoints. Having mathed it out, you just have them give up a bonus feat for +2 skill points per level and it works out pretty well (if you want to see how that works, go check out the ARG Playtest, "What's a feat worth", I dont intend to explain it here.)
I agree that a playtest might help a lot.
DH, I think at this point at least all *I* want to do is try mostly the monk as written but with a few different interpretations. Other classes may need different work or rewriting depending on your opinion, but I am not proposing anything that would produce a massive rewrite, just a few tweaks. In other words, stuff that would produce, as you say, numerical data that might be useful to show how things work within the existing rules, with the existing class as written.
Since this is on the enchanted natural attack thread, it also occurs to me maybe we could throw a few different proposed monk magic items into the mix as well. Or Dabbler's feats with the enhanced attacks via ki.
If this seems like an idea worth pursuing, I'll brainstorm a little more and hopefully start a new thread later on. (Or if anyone else wants to start a thread in suggestions/homebrew, please do!)
That balance reason won't be even slightly true anymore if the new Flurry errata stays around.
Of course, the fighter is still going to be dealing better damage anyway, but I don't think that was your point.
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I think that one of the questions that many people need to ask themselves is this:
What role do I want the monk to play in combat?
I have seen many different answers to this question.
Are they damage dealers?
Are they "battlefield control" (via CM's)?
etc...
I would also like to hear what the developers ideas are on what role they want the monk to fill. It may help people to better understand what the RAI for monks was, and help with suggestions to better fill that role.
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There's a balance reason for the monk having to pay extra for enchanted weapons (via the magic amulet thing)
Essentially, a monk, unlike any other two-weapon fighter, is allowed to make his full flurry of attacks using only one.
When you compare a fighter with two shortswords making a similar flurry, the fighter is forced to make half his attacks with the off-hand weapon, and has to pay to have it enchanted separately.
By contrast, the monk is allowed to make a flurry of blows that goes: Right fist, Right fist, Right fist, Right fist, Right fist, Right fist.
Therefore, for the cost of weapon enchantments to be even across the board, enchanting the monk's unarmed strike should cost at least twice as much as it costs to enchant a magic weapon, as they work much like a double weapon in mechanics.
That might make sense if the monk was as good as the twf fighter otherwise. that is not the case, and has shown to not be the case on many occasions. Plus, the fact that the monk has to use his amulet slot for offense means he will have a lower AC than the fighter, since he can't get an amulet of natural armor. His AC will already be low, because the monk AC bonus doesn't scale enough to take magic armor into the question, and you cant put an armor enchant on the monk robes.
Additionally, IIRC, AoMF costs 4x as much, not 2.;
and this whole thing came out of the newest errata, which explicitly states that fob works the same as twf. So you get "Right fist, Right fist, Right fist, Left fist, Left fist, Left fist".
Because non-twf iterative attacks can be any weapon, and twf iteratives all have to be the "offhand attack", you can also get:
"Head-butt, Right Kama, Left Temple Sword, Left knee, Left knee, Left knee".
In fact the fighter can get away with using the same weapon for twf as well, based on how the clarifications work; he can hold two weapons, lets say a normal handaxe in his main hand, enchant a shortsword in his off-hand, and go: "Left Sword, Left Sword, Left Sword" (no Penalties), "Left Sword, Left Sword, Left Sword" (off-hand Penalties.) Yes, Seriously, that's how it works.
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I think that one of the questions that many people need to ask themselves is this:
What role do I want the monk to play in combat?
I have seen many different answers to this question.
Are they damage dealers?
Are they "battlefield control" (via CM's)?
etc...I would also like to hear what the developers ideas are on what role they want the monk to fill. It may help people to better understand what the RAI for monks was, and help with suggestions to better fill that role.
Just wanted to add this:
We have this form the Core, but what do you expect:
Role: Monks excel at overcoming even the most daunting perils, striking where it's least expected, and taking advantage of enemy vulnerabilities. Fleet of foot and skilled in combat, monks can navigate any battlefield with ease, aiding allies wherever they are needed most.
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I'm not really arguing the monk's effectiveness in combat, just explaining where I believe the cost for the amulet came from.
It's going to take a lot more than a weapon cost reduction to make the monk a good class.
Yes. But the outrageous price of weapon enchantments for monks is one of many things that contribute to them being crap.
And the twf fighter can get all his attacks with one enchanted weapon by making sure that weapon is the one in his off-hand.
I'm not really arguing the monk's effectiveness in combat, just explaining where I believe the cost for the amulet came from.
It's going to take a lot more than a weapon cost reduction to make the monk a good class.
You obviously haven't compared the price of the Amulet to magical weapons.
Amulet:
5,000 gp (+1)
20,000 gp (+2)
45,000 gp (+3)
80,000 gp (+4)
125,000 gp (+5)
Weapon:
2,000 gp (+1)
8,000 gp (+2)
18,000 gp (+3)
32,000 gp (+4)
50,000 gp (+5)
As you can see, for the price of an equivalent Amulet of Mighty Fist, you are paying more than double the price for a weapon enchantment. So at any point in time, you can purchase two magical weapons and still have money left over when you purchase an equally enhanced Amulet and the Amulet tops out at +5 while the weapons increase to +10.
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Thanks for pointing that out, I was not aware of that caveat.
Also, it sounds like an error to me. The whole point of two-weapon fighting should be that you're fighting with two weapons.
I agree with you. But a while back someone wanted to make a Two-Weapon Fighting character without taking the feats, and the official ruling was that while TWF allows you to make additional attacks with your off-hand, so long as you dont want the additional attacks, you can use any attack you want for your iteratives; and a character with two-swords who has no two-weapon fighting feats can freely mix and match them in his iterative attacks. If he takes two-weapon fighting, he can get extra attacks with his off-hand.
I may be wrong about the all-left hand sword example, but I know the one before that is right. It depends: Do you declare what your primary weapon is, or is that determined by what the first attack you make in he round is?
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As you can see, for the price of an equivalent Amulet of Mighty Fist, you are paying more than double the price for a weapon enchantment. So at any point in time, you can purchase two magical weapons and still have money left over when you purchase an equally enhanced Amulet and the Amulet tops out at +5 while the weapons increase to +10.
AND you're giving up your amulet slot to fill the void made by your nonexistant weapon/shield slots.
I repeat, buy an allying weapon and transfer the bonus to your fists every round. +5 is 72,000 and it is completely legit(maybe).
make 2 amulets then. Amulet of Mighty Fists works only for UAS, and drop the cost to 50k. then have an Amulet of Natural Power for the natural attack bonuses and charge it to 75,000. fixes some of the problems.
That's what they should have done. Unfortunately, Paizo isn't going to do this now because they simply don't want to release an option that is flat out better than something in the core rulebook.
I guess I can see their argument, but I don't like that monks are stuck with absurd weapon costs just because of an early design mistake that got printed...
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make 2 amulets then. Amulet of Mighty Fists works only for UAS, and drop the cost to 50k. then have an Amulet of Natural Power for the natural attack bonuses and charge it to 75,000. fixes some of the problems.That's what they should have done. Unfortunately, Paizo isn't going to do this now because they simply don't want to release an option that is flat out better than something in the core rulebook.
I guess I can see their argument, but I don't like that monks are stuck with absurd weapon costs just because of an early design mistake that got printed...
isn't that what errata, retcons, and supplemental material releases (Ult Equip) is all about :)?
I have pointed out in many threads that the cost of an amulet is because it has 2 seprate fucntions. It enhances Unarmed strikes (which benefits monks) AND it enhances Natural Attacks (which benefits druids or monsters such as Hydra).
So for a +1 item, 2000 for first enchantment (+1 Unarmed strike) and (2000 * 1.5) or 3000 for (+1 Natural Attack) total of 5000.
At +5 you get 50000 for first enchantment + (50000 * 1.5) for second enchantment = 125000.
We know this, Ughbash, but the problem is the monk is then paying to enhance something he hasn't got. We aren't complaining that the AoMF for what it does is overpriced, we're complaining that the monk has no other option but the AoMF to improve his unarmed attacks, and for what it does for the monk, it's overpriced.
It certainly doesn't help that Paizo ruled that Improved Natural Attack could not be taken by the monk because unarmed strike is not a natural weapon, so they cannot even up the damage on the few attacks that might hit.