With the Suli's elemental assault, RAW it should be able to apply to bows. Now, with the Zen Archer flurry of arrows non-sense, that's adding an entire 1d6 to the damage. At early levels this is horrifically broken!
Surely this isn't RAI? And if it is, WHAT?
(I can see the monk+suli threads now...)
"Elemental Assault (Su) Once per day as a swift action, a suli can shroud her arms in acid, cold, electricity, or fire. This lasts for one round per level, and can be dismissed as a free action. Unarmed strikes with her arms or hands (or attacks with weapons held in those hands) deal +1d6 points of damage of the appropriate energy type."
"At 5th level, a zen archer may spend 1 point from his ki pool as a swift action to change the damage dice of arrows he shoots to that of his unarmed strikes. This lasts until the start of his next turn. For example, a Medium zen archer’s short bow normally deals 1d6 damage; using this ability, his arrows deal 1d8 damage until the start of his next turn."
You can't get 2 swifts in a single turn. So yeah, you can start it on one turn, and then at 5th level you can make the bow do your unarmed damage (getting the +1d6) for the remaining turns, by spending a ki point each turn.
Not terribly broken. Not sure if a fire elemental assault would stack with a flaming weapon either.
"Elemental Assault (Su) Once per day as a swift action, a suli can shroud her arms in acid, cold, electricity, or fire. This lasts for one round per level, and can be dismissed as a free action. Unarmed strikes with her arms or hands (or attacks with weapons held in those hands) deal +1d6 points of damage of the appropriate energy type."
"At 5th level, a zen archer may spend 1 point from his ki pool as a swift action to change the damage dice of arrows he shoots to that of his unarmed strikes. This lasts until the start of his next turn. For example, a Medium zen archer’s short bow normally deals 1d6 damage; using this ability, his arrows deal 1d8 damage until the start of his next turn."
You can't get 2 swifts in a single turn. So yeah, you can start it on one turn, and then at 5th level you can make the bow do your unarmed damage (getting the +1d6) for the remaining turns, by spending a ki point each turn.
Not terribly broken. Not sure if a fire elemental assault would stack with a flaming weapon either.
I said nothing about making them as the unarmed strikes, it applies to weapons held, thus the bow.
I said nothing about making them as the unarmed strikes, it applies to weapons held, thus the bow.
Honestly, once per day for a few rounds is not broken.
Also, if you feel it is, I would argue that the power applies to hitting creatures with the bow, but once ammunition is fired, is no longer held in the hand, and loses the bonus. (It is also lacking the wording to confer the power to ammunition such as the flaming magic weapon ability).
Aha! That makes sense.
In addition, I've never been convinced of the RAI that Elemental Assault works with ranged weapons. It makes no darn sense.
I don't really see what the big deal would be if it did work ala Flaming arrows.
This is the same number of attacks with +1d6 as a normal Monk making a melee Flurry.
Suli Monks can clearly do that. Suli's CHA bonus doesn't really help out Monks at all.
Whatever the Monk Archetype that can take Weapon Spec probably gets alot more use out of that than this ability.
+2 dmg all the time, crit-multiplicable, same damage type as arrow,
vs. +3.5 dmg once/day for [level] rounds, not crit multiplicable, different damage type [more easily resistable]
Perhaps it's not 110% clear, but there seems pretty solid grounds to rule it doesn't apply to ranged/thrown weapons, as the weaponis not held in hand for the entire duration of the attack (e.g. when overcoming Armor, etc).