One of the characters I currently play is an inquisitor with the Redemption inquisition (Pathfinder Player Companion: Faiths & Philosophies)
At level four, I'll be gaining the following ability from this inquisition:
Redeemer's Mercy (Su): At 4th level, any weapon you wield gains the merciful magic weapon special ability. The weapon immediately reverts to its original abilities when you cease to wield it.
The way that's written, I'm not entirely certain whether this effect would apply to natural attacks my inquisitor has (since natural attacks count as weapons for the sake of things like weapon focus) or not. I've done a bit of poking around--and admittedly could be missing something--but I haven't been able to find anything clarifying this one way or another.
Seeing as a lot of my threads lately have been about animate dead, its time to engage in some necromancy (Sorry):
I have the same question as illyume, does Redeemer's Mercy make my natural attacks gain merciful?
One last bump for an unanswered question :)
One last bump for an unanswered question :)
RAW, I'd say no:
Redeemer's Mercy (Su): At 4th level, any weapon you wield gains the merciful magic weapon special ability. The weapon immediately reverts to its original abilities when you cease to wield it.
Redeemer's Mercy requires you to wield a weapon, and it's the weapon itself the one that gains the merciful property, not your character.
Per natural attack description:
Natural Attacks Most creatures possess one or more natural attacks (attacks made without a weapon)
Since you're using no weapon when using natural attacks, then Redeemer would not apply snce it states you have to wield one.
I'd say the skill only works when using manufactured weapons.
|
This raises the question of the difference, if there is any, between wielding and armed. Natural Attacks are weapons though, going off all the abilities you can use with them, so I'd say if you have a NA you are wielding it as well, unless you're appendage is otherwise occupied.
We do have this post by SKR when he was a designer where he gives us the closest game definition of wield, "actively trying to us".
This raises the question of the difference, if there is any, between wielding and armed. Natural Attacks are weapons though, going off all the abilities you can use with them, so I'd say if you have a NA you are wielding it as well, unless you're appendage is otherwise occupied.
We do have this post by SKR when he was a designer where he gives us the closest game definition of wield, "actively trying to us".
If you take the rules wording, then, as written on Universal Monster Rules description, Natural Attacks are attacks made without a weapon, thus, per RAW, claws, bites, slams... would not considered weapons. Main issue is, in many other locations, descriptions and wording both mix natural weapons and natural attacks indistinctly, so it can perfectly lead to controversy.
Still, I'd stick with the Natural Attack description stating that they're not weapons, since is more specific (like in many other games, specific ruling usually beats generic Ruling).
Finally. As SKR stated in that post:
Wielding means "actively trying to use the item," and is normally only used in the context of weapons or weapon-like objects such as rods, wands, and so on.
... he seems to state that "wielding" normally refers to inanimated items like weapons, rods, wands... you can hold and use with a limb, not permanently "attached" body parts.
|
|
I'd say Natural Attacks fall under "weapon like objects".
The problem is they use weapon to mean all weapons, such as "any weapon", and then weapon to mean specifically "manufactured weapons", which is what the Natural Attack falls under.
You can also take Weapon Focus with Natural Attacks and the later feats and they also have their Weapon Group for Fighters to pick from. Saying they don't qualify as a weapon at all would completely screw with any build or creature that has invested feats and abilities into their Natural Attacks.
Well the term "natural weapon" appears a lot in the rules (just do a quick search), so it's safe to assume they're weapons (hence why weapon focus etc works with them), and the ability clearly doesnt state "manufactured weapons", so the only issue i can see is the matter or whether or not a character really "wield"s them...
I'd assume the ability does work with natural weapons, but they just didn't really have them in mind when they were writing that sentence. (Because lets face it, most characters use manufactured weapons) When just looking at the ability, by RAW nothing outright excludes natural weapons, it just seems to have a little strange wording. But hey, I don't like to assume anything, and i didn't know whether this had come up previously, given how discussed natural weapons are in these forums.
---
Edit:
Think I might have found the answer while looking for an answer to a different question: I was looking up slashing grace and natural attacks, stumbled across a few threads all saying that slashing grace works with natural attacks, and it uses the same "wielding" wording, there's even FAQs that mention slashing grace being used with natural attacks.
Given the use of "wield" is the same, and unless anything has changed / there's other things specifically stating that you only "wield" natural weapons for the purpose of certain effects/feats, I'm going to say yes, it works with this ability - But let me know if you know otherwise :)