IUA is not limited to attacks with hands (fists). So, while it may be silly for hyper intelligent horses to take IUA, it seems entirely legit. The horse might be smacking baddies with its head or knees.
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I'm not completely sure as to the exact nature of the question, but if I had to guess, I'd answer that there is no need for an animal companion to ever take Improved Unarmed Strike, because animals attack with "natural weapons" and are therefore always considered armed when making their attacks. Even your hypothetical ape will make natural attacks with bite and claws. One could argue the real world "accuracy" of a claw attack vs. a slam attack, but either way, it would be a natural attack and, therefore, considered armed.
No IUS required for animals...they're always armed.
What an animal should really look to take is Improved Natural Attack, to boost its damage. This feat is in the Bestiaries.
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I'm not completely sure as to the exact nature of the question, but if I had to guess, I'd answer that there is no need for an animal companion to ever take Improved Unarmed Strike, because animals attack with "natural weapons" and are therefore always considered armed when making their attacks. Even your hypothetical ape will make natural attacks with bite and claws. One could argue the real world "accuracy" of a claw attack vs. a slam attack, but either way, it would be a natural attack and, therefore, considered armed.
No IUS required for animals...they're always armed.
What an animal should really look to take is Improved Natural Attack, to boost its damage. This feat is in the Bestiaries.
The reason that people want to take Improved Unarmed Strike on their companions is so that they can take feats that require it, like Improved Grapple or Dragon Style, or to be able to use the animal's natural attacks with feats that require IUS, using Feral Combat Training, such as the 1.5x damage granted on your first attack using Dragon Style.
There are definitely reasons why you'd want your companion to have IUS, and there's no reason that a companion with Int 3 or higher can't take it.
And FYI, there's nothing saying that you need to use limbs for IUS at all. You can use your head, you can use your butt, you can use pelvic thrusts. All are valid uses of IUS.
Animal companions with an Intelligence of 3 or higher can select any feat they are physically capable of using.
IUS, sure. Combat style feets? Not a chance.
If you think you can teach a horse to use "acrobatic footwork" of dragon style, you are crazy and trying to cheat.|
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Animal companions with an Intelligence of 3 or higher can select any feat they are physically capable of using.IUS, sure. Combat style feets? Not a chance.
If you think you can teach a horse to use "acrobatic footwork" of dragon style, you are crazy and trying to cheat.
It says "physically capable", not "mentally capable". Strictly by the rules, I can teach my spinosaurus companion, or even something like a hippo, how to use that "acrobatic footwork". We're in the rules forum here, remember, not the "that sounds stupid" forum.
Animal companions with an Intelligence of 3 or higher can select any feat they are physically capable of using.IUS, sure. Combat style feets? Not a chance.
If you think you can teach a horse to use "acrobatic footwork" of dragon style, you are crazy and trying to cheat.
cheating by using a completely legal feat chain that seems counter intuitive.
You are absolutely correct. My shark companion is going to take monkey style.
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You are absolutely correct. My shark companion is going to take monkey style.
While I'm all for this personally, cuz it's awesome, some GMs might rule that you can't be prone while underwater, so you wouldn't actually get much out of this one. Technically, though, it works. :)
EDIT: If you had your shark companion on land with a bubble of water around his head to breathe, then he'd ALWAYS be prone, and so this would be an excellent feat! LOL
Just finished looking through over 570 entries in the bestiaries, and there are only two things that have IUS and they are a Jiang-Shi vampire (has levels of monk) and a Vanara (0HD race with a level of monk), both from Bestiary 3. Only a handful of monsters have feats that have IUS as a prerequisite, and Bestiary 3 had just come out after UC. No monsters have style feats.
If the creators of the game had no desire to give any monster IUS or any feat that requires it, then there must be a good reason. And that reason is good enough for me.
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Just finished looking through over 570 entries in the bestiaries, and there are only two things that have IUS and they are a Jiang-Shi vampire (has levels of monk) and a Vanara (0HD race with a level of monk), both from Bestiary 3. Only a handful of monsters have feats that have IUS as a prerequisite, and Bestiary 3 had just come out after UC. No monsters have style feats.
If the creators of the game had no desire to give any monster IUS or any feat that requires it, then there must be a good reason. And that reason is good enough for me.
Well I mean, the creatures in the bestiaries are supposed to be generic examples of their race, for the most part, not specific creatures. And we're not really talking about a monster here, we're talking about a (relatively) intelligent creature being trained by another intelligent creature.
I have no doubt that if I had the patience to do it, I could teach my dog to run through an obstacle course that included caltrop-style things on the ground, and avoid them while still running very fast. The idea of a companion creature learning a feat like Dragon Style isn't as far fetched as that, even, because we're talking about an abnormally intelligent version of the animal. An animal companion with an Int score of 3 would be at least as intelligent, or even more so, than the average dolphin.
Can an animal companion take Improved Unarmed Strike? For something like an ape, fine, this makes sense. But a quadruped with natural attacks (it is never considered unarmed!)? As a GM, I think I'd generally lean towards not allowing IUS for anything that doesn't have hands and is capable of using them... My guess this is likely to annoy some of those players out there though.
I'm focusing more on the "physically capable of using" part. To me any primate with reasonable intelligence could learn to use style feats with no problem. Things like quadrupeds, serpentine, or fish-like animals, no matter how smart, would have trouble executing some forms.
As a GM, I would probably not allow animal companions to take IUS especially if it were for the sole purpose of exploiting the rules.So, I agree with the OP.
My general philosophy is to try and say yes to players as often as I can. I've yet to have to answer this question. Looking at some of the feat options even though the path is weird (IUS on my horse?) the final abilities seem cool and even believable. A horse trained to charge through any kind of terrain? A wolf doing "crane wing", which amounts to it using its snout to guide an attack away.
This is, after all, a fantasy world with animals as smart as most 8 year old kids. You can teach them almost anything!
The way to these cool abilities is strange, but the end result is fun, flavorful and has a steep cost (animal companions do not get as many feats as a PC).
YMMV, but I say allow it.
Most creatures possess one or more natural attacks (attacks made without a weapon).
Some fey, humanoids, monstrous humanoids, and outsiders do not possess natural attacks. These creatures can make unarmed strikes, but treat them as weapons for the purpose of determining attack bonuses, and they must use the two-weapon fighting rules when making attacks with both hands.
If a creature that possess natural attacks attacks without a weapon, it is a natural attack.
If a creature does not have natural attacks, it uses unarmed strikes.
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Most creatures possess one or more natural attacks (attacks made without a weapon).
Some fey, humanoids, monstrous humanoids, and outsiders do not possess natural attacks. These creatures can make unarmed strikes, but treat them as weapons for the purpose of determining attack bonuses, and they must use the two-weapon fighting rules when making attacks with both hands.If a creature that possess natural attacks attacks without a weapon, it is a natural attack.
If a creature does not have natural attacks, it uses unarmed strikes.
That's just incorrect. A Barbarian can get a natural attack from Rage Powers, and can still choose not to attack with that natural attack and use an unarmed strike instead. Why would it be any different for any semi-intelligent creature?
Because that is what the rules say?
I sited a rule that proves my point. Feel free to site one that proves yours.
Cartmanbeck implied the result of applying the quoted rules would be contrary to his taste.
That isn't an argument that his tastes are what the RAW is dictating.
Btw, adding class levels or feats to a creature (e.g. granting nat. attacks)
should not change the outcome of creature type-dependent effects/rules.
It seems more than reasonable to say that the RAW on 'certain creature types without natural weapons' is not perfectly written here.
But that doesn't leave one with a clearly indicated RAW function there, one way or another.
Regardless of that rule, UAS is still only defined as:
Most creatures with discernable anatomy shouldn't have a problem with qualifying for one of those, Oozes, not so much, although there is always Feral Combat Training (Slam) for Monk Flurry/Stun/etc.
Even if you believe they cannot use unarmed strike, they can still take the Improved Unarmed Strike feat.
No doubt, there is definitely no problem with pursing Improved Grapple or Style Feats, etc.,
although things contingent on using UAS aren't magically enabled by having the Imp UAS Feat.And I certainly support that not all the RAW here is 100% up to snuff and thus the intent may diverge from RAW,
the list of UAS attacks for Monks adds knees and elbows but does not list head butts (which are in the standard UAS), which just seems bizarre.
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Quandary, I'm really not getting your quandary here. It seemed like earlier in the thread, you didn't think that UAS on any creature with natural weapons was okay. I cited that humanoids can have natural weapons too, so that argument fails. Now are you saying that it's okay to give your tiger animal companion UAS to qualify for Improved Grapple or a Style feat, but they can't actually use it because they have their own natural weapons? I don't see how that's the case, though obviously unarmed strikes are going to be generally inferior to the creature's natural attacks, so most people won't actually use them unarmed unless they need to deal bludgeoning damage or something...?
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Hate to perform a Raise Dead on a thread, but it seemed better than creating my own thread for the same topic, and this one is relatively recent.
Weather you can perform an unarmed strike as an animal companion is irrelevant. It is a feat with no prerequisites, so an AC with an into of 3 or higher is able to take it. There's plenty of reasons you may want to do this, since IUS is the prereq for a list of feats as long as my arm. Nawtyit says there's no animal in the bestiary with IUS, I counter that most animals in the bestiary also aren't int 3 with a creature that they have bonded with at a spiritual level to teach them how, also so with style feats.
What I want to do with an AC isn't even that much of a push. I want to have an AC bear that can actually grapple. I don't think anyone would argue with me that wild bears aren't good grapplers, yet they don't have a grab ability as an AC. therefore, to take Improved Grapple, I have to take IUS. I just wanted to make sure, if it ever came up, how IUS works for an animal companion. I assume it would work the same way as attacking with a weapon - You'd get a number of attacks with IUS based on the companion's base attack bonus, then any additional natural attacks with limbs it didn't use at BAB -5, as if attacking with a secondary natural attack.
Does that make sense. or rather, is that how the rules would support it?
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Hate to perform a Raise Dead on a thread, but it seemed better than creating my own thread for the same topic, and this one is relatively recent.
Weather you can perform an unarmed strike as an animal companion is irrelevant. It is a feat with no prerequisites, so an AC with an into of 3 or higher is able to take it. There's plenty of reasons you may want to do this, since IUS is the prereq for a list of feats as long as my arm. Nawtyit says there's no animal in the bestiary with IUS, I counter that most animals in the bestiary also aren't int 3 with a creature that they have bonded with at a spiritual level to teach them how, also so with style feats.
What I want to do with an AC isn't even that much of a push. I want to have an AC bear that can actually grapple. I don't think anyone would argue with me that wild bears aren't good grapplers, yet they don't have a grab ability as an AC. therefore, to take Improved Grapple, I have to take IUS. I just wanted to make sure, if it ever came up, how IUS works for an animal companion. I assume it would work the same way as attacking with a weapon - You'd get a number of attacks with IUS based on the companion's base attack bonus, then any additional natural attacks with limbs it didn't use at BAB -5, as if attacking with a secondary natural attack.
Does that make sense. or rather, is that how the rules would support it?
Honestly, if I were you I'd stick to the bear's natural attacks at full BAB and just pick up Feral Combat Training later on to be able to use those natural attacks with more interesting combinations of feats.
Edit: In other words, I'm suggesting that you use IUS simply as a prerequisite feat, and not make use of it in combat. (It's still worth taking to get Improved Grapple though)
But yes, if you really wanted to make use of the unarmed strikes, that's how it would work.
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Just checking. Yeah, no, I probably wouldn't actually use the unarmed strikes, but it's good to know the option is there.
(Sidenote, why the heck don't bear animal companions get grab? Or become large? What kind of bear is Paizo thinking of here, Koala?)
Yeah I never got why they started out Small. Oh well.