Dragon Ferocity and Punishing Kick

[Bronte Bellum]

On a successful hit with Punishing Kick, "the attack deals damage normally and you can choose to push your target 5 feet or attempt to knock them prone." The second option forces a save, just like Stunning Fist, but the first one does not; it automatically knocks back the target.

Now, suppose I have a hungry ghost monk with the Dragon Ferocity feat, which states: "When you score a critical hit or a successful Stunning Fist attempt against an opponent while using this style, that opponent is also shaken for a number of rounds equal to 1d4 + your Strength bonus." Which of the following would be correct?

1) The monk's Punishing Kicks never make the opponent shaken, since Dragon Ferocity only applies to Stunning Fist;

2) The monk's Punishing Kicks make the opponent shaken if they are used to knock them prone; however, this does not happen if the target is merely knocked back, since it didn't fail a save;

3) The monk's Punishing Kicks make the opponent shaken even if the knockback option was used.

What do you think?

[Anomander]

options 4:
The opponent gets shaken on the kick if it is a critical hit, otherwise the dragon ferocity has no effect as it applies to stunning fist not punishing kick.

[EvilMinion]

Umm... not sure why 2 or 3 would even be on the table.
A punishing kick is in no way a stunning fist.

[Killsmith]

The hungry ghost archetype replaces stunning fist with punishing kick, correct? If so, you don't meet the prerequisites for dragon ferocity since one of them is stunning fist.

Now, supposing that you have gained stunning fist or bypassed the prerequisites, a strict interpretation would be that it only works on your critical hits.

Personally, I would lean towards 2) or 3) only if punishing kick attempts and stunning fist attempts use the same resource pool. However, I don't think they do. Nothing stops you from doing a punishing kick to knock them prone and then attempting a stunning fist on the now much easier to hit target though. It might still be hard to pull off though.

[cartmanbeck]

Bronte Bellum wrote:

On a successful hit with Punishing Kick, "the attack deals damage normally and you can choose to push your target 5 feet or attempt to knock them prone." The second option forces a save, just like Stunning Fist, but the first one does not; it automatically knocks back the target.

Now, suppose I have a hungry ghost monk with the Dragon Ferocity feat, which states: "When you score a critical hit or a successful Stunning Fist attempt against an opponent while using this style, that opponent is also shaken for a number of rounds equal to 1d4 + your Strength bonus." Which of the following would be correct?

1) The monk's Punishing Kicks never make the opponent shaken, since Dragon Ferocity only applies to Stunning Fist;

2) The monk's Punishing Kicks make the opponent shaken if they are used to knock them prone; however, this does not happen if the target is merely knocked back, since it didn't fail a save;

3) The monk's Punishing Kicks make the opponent shaken even if the knockback option was used.

What do you think?

Definitely number 1. You're giving up Stunning Fist, so you don't have that class feature. It wouldn't apply to some other ability just because you replaced it with that.