Human: Unarmed Fighter
"At 1st level, a unarmed fighter gains the Improved Unarmed Strike feat and any single style feat as a bonus feat. The unarmed fighter
""need not meet all the prerequisites of the style feat he chooses,""
but style feats that grant additional uses of the Elemental Fist feat cannot be taken until the unarmed fighter has that feat."
Q. If the Human, Unarmed Fighter takes Earth Child Style, does s/he gain +6 dodge bonus to AC?
"Benefit: While using this style, your defensive training dodge bonus to AC increases to +6. Further, against creatures of the giant subtype, you can add your Wisdom bonus on your unarmed strike damage rolls."
The dodge bonus from Defensive Training is only against creatures with the Giant subtype.
Wizard bonus spells set a good precedent. Not having something is not the same as having zero of it.
Sitri, wouldn't Paladin bonus spells be a better example? They get actual zeroes in their spell progression.
Anyway, a mechanically similar thing came up in my game. My character was adopted by gnomes and I wanted the Adopted->Naturally Gifted Gnome Trait.
The trait allows you one additional spell (like ability) per day from your Gnome Magic, and since my character wasn't a Gnome we let him use a single spell (like ability) from the list each day, as that is one more than zero.
We did, however, feel like it was stretching the rules to suit our flavor needs. I'd say that you probably shouldn't get the +6 AC against Giants, but even if you did it wouldn't be unfairly powerful.
from 0 to 6 would be an increase...
It would if he got 0 anywhere. But he actuall has nothing. Not zero. As given in the Paladin example you can add to a specified zero but you cannot add onto an ability you do not even possess.
Look at it this way, he does not have '0' he has 'Not Applicable'.
The ability was probably written that way so it didn't synergize with other miscellaneous abilities that also increased Defensive Training by +2. Unlimited stacking is a bad thing, and I imagine this wording pre-empts that.
However, I could see a human getting some use out of this -- just not necessarily so much use that they also squeeze a racial ability out of the bundle, which further allows them to qualify for feats they perhaps shouldn't.
Ask your GM how he feels about perhaps granting your human just a +2 Dodge bonus versus Giants. It's no more than another character would get from the feat.
Sitri, wouldn't Paladin bonus spells be a better example? They get actual zeroes in their spell progression.
They also get "-" in their spell progression, and "-" is not the same as "0". I would say Earth Child Style is not applicable for a human to take in any event - it only says "most" prerequisites, not all of them.
They also get "-" in their spell progression, and "-" is not the same as "0". I would say Earth Child Style is not applicable for a human to take in any event - it only says "most" prerequisites, not all of them.
That was indeed my point.