Pummeling Style's interaction with Style Strikes

[CagedWalrus]

Hello all,

I've poked around google and the Paizo forums and haven't yet come across a direct answer to how pummeling style interacts with Style Strikes. I suppose this same question can be extended to the interaction of other modified attacks such as stunning fist, extra strikes from medusa's wrath, etc.

Is there currently any consensus on how Pummeling style is intended to work with Style Strikes, Stunning Fist, etc? For example, if using a Pummeling Style attack with Shattering Punch cause the entire attack to ignore hardness/DR? Are Style Strikes even allowed to be used with Pummeling Style? Does the Style Strike only count for the single attack roll within the whole sequence?

I'm curious to see everyones thoughts on the matter.

[Protoman]

Quote:

Pummeling Style

Benefit: As a full-round action, you can pool all your attack potential in one devastating punch. Make a number of rolls equal to the number of attacks you can make with a full attack or a flurry of blows (your choice) with the normal attack bonus for each attack. For each roll that is a hit, you deal the normal amount of damage, adding it to any damage the attack has already dealt from previous rolls (if any). If any of the attack rolls are critical threats, make one confirmation roll for the entire attack at your highest base attack bonus. If it succeeds, the entire attack is a confirmed critical hit. You can only use Pummeling Style with unarmed strikes (see errata at right).

Quote:

Style Strike (Ex)

At 5th level, a monk can learn one type of style strike. Whenever he makes a flurry of blows, he can designate one of his unarmed strikes as a style strike. This attack is resolved as normal, but it has an additional effect depending on the type of strike chosen. At 9th level, and every 4 levels thereafter, a monk learns an additional style strike. He must choose which style strike to apply before the attack roll is made. At 15th level, he can designate up to two of his unarmed strikes each round as a style strike, and each one can be a different type. The monk can choose from any of the following strikes.

They don't interact at all.

Pummeling Style uses a full-round action in order to grant a player to make as many attack rolls he can with a full-attack or flurry and he can apply it as one attack, but Pummeling Style while using flurry-amount of attacks isn't flurry of blows. Style Strike specifically only works during a flurry of blows.

No idea how Pummeling Style would interacty with Stunning Fist, but since Stunning Fist can only be used once per round, I'd say one still has to declare which attack roll is the Stunning Fist applied to; so if some attacks hit and the Stunning Fist attempt doesn't, the Pummeling Style goes off as normal but no Stunning Fist.

Quote:

Medusa's Wrath

Benefit: Whenever you use the full-attack action and make at least one unarmed strike, you can make two additional unarmed strikes at your highest base attack bonus. These bonus attacks must be made against a dazed, flat-footed, paralyzed, staggered, stunned, or unconscious foe.

Medusa's Wrath won't work with Pummeling as Medusa's Wrath requires a full-attack action which isn't the same as Pummeling's full-round action.

[Ichthyodactyl]

Protoman wrote:

No idea how Pummeling Style would interacty with Stunning Fist, but since Stunning Fist can only be used once per round, I'd say one still has to declare which attack roll is the Stunning Fist applied to; so if some attacks hit and the Stunning Fist attempt doesn't, the Pummeling Style goes off as normal...

Medusa's Wrath won't work with Pummeling as Medusa's Wrath requires a full-attack action which isn't the same as Pummeling's full-round action.

I would agree with that interpretation of how Stunning Fist works with Pummeling Style, given that Stunning Fist doesn't designate any kind of action required in it's use, merely that you must declare you are using it before the resolution of your attack roll (which Pummeling Style does still make).

I think people are reading the interaction between Medusa's Wrath and Pummeling Style wrong though; I've seen that same interpretation quoted a few times and here's the issue I have with it; Medusa's Wrath doesn't require activation to take place, it merely requires that the conditions are met and if they are, you get 2 more attacks when you use the full-attack action whether you use them or not. That is to say that if the conditions are met, your full-attack action will have those two extra attacks available. In addition to this; Pummeling Style says that you get a number of attacks equal to your full-attack action or flurry of blows which, if the conditions of Medusa's Wrath are met, would be 2 more than otherwise would be. Rather than determining whether or not Medusa's Wrath can modify a Pummeling Strike (due to the designation of specific actions, it can't), I think Medusa's Wrath modifies what a full-attack action would look like if you took one and that is what Pummeling Strike is basing its number of attacks on. This is pretty much the way that I assume Haste is intended to work with Pummeling Strike because Haste modifies what a full-attack would look like albeit in a much less conditional way than Medusa's Wrath does.

I don't think that Pummeling Strike could be used with both at the same time, however, given that the conditions which allow Medusa's Wrath to proc would technically have to be applied on the same attack that Medusa's Wrath would proc, I'm guessing there's precedent somewhere about an ability not being able to happen on the same attack as the conditions that would then allow said ability. If so, it begs the question, how would you reliably get Medusa's Wrath to proc while using it with Pummeling Strike anyway?

[Joe M.]

<Relevant>:

Mark Seifter wrote:

Sparn wrote:

Alright, I know you aren't giving "official" answers here, but there's an aspect about Unchained Monk that's been bothering me since I saw one of your posts in the general thread. I've sort of tried looking for any clarification on this, but I'm not very good at digging through these forums.

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2s6s8&page=18?Unchained-The-Monk-Unchained# 866

Mark Seifter wrote:

AndIMustMask wrote:

extra attack that is nonlethal only, no? and cant be used with the apparently popular flying kick until 15th, correct?

Both correct. Still, you can flying kick in on the first round and then do an elbow smash later when you don't need to move (or with Pummeling, you can just elbow smash all the time). Those limitations don't exist on hammerblow, which doubles your dice on a single attack just like Vital Strike, but that does less damage. May be worth it though, especially since it can add to a high accuracy attack.

I was already wondering as soon as I read through the class whether Pummeling Style would still somehow qualify as a Flurry of Blows for allowing Style Strikes. I was leaning towards "probably not", since a lot of the interactions seemed like they would be kind of messy. But then this post jumped out at me, since it sounds like you're implying that usage of Pummeling would allow you to make use of Elbow Smash on the Pummeling charge (the "any time" situation flying kick doesn't allow). A lot of your posts were made with warnings of the things you suggested being your own houserules, but there doesn't seem to be that disclaimer here.

In short, do Pummeling Style and Pummeling Charge allow access to an Unchained Monk's Style Strikes? If so, how does Elbow Smash actually apply? Would it be part of the combined pummel attack, or would it still be a second follow up strike?

On a similar but more contrived situation, how would a successful Pummeling Headbutt interact with the Medusa's Wrath feat?

My post will make more sense with the ACG errata, which will hopefully be very soon (Erik posted a guarantee that it'll be before Gencon!)

So it looks like the Pummeling Style errata (which Mark has suggested elsewhere will be ... extensive) might allow it to work with style strikes.

[Protoman]

Interesting...
I can't wait!

[Jackson 7th]

Pummeling style has been updated, I'm digging up because I have the same question.

Pummeling style:

Benefit: Whenever you use a full-attack action or flurry of blows to make multiple attacks against a single opponent with unarmed strikes, total the damage from all hits before applying damage reduction. This ability works only with unarmed strikes, no matter what other abilities you might possess.

Unchained Monk Style Strike: Shattering Punch:

Whenever [the Monk] makes a flurry of blows, he can designate one of his unarmed strikes as a style strike. This attack is resolved as normal, but it has an additional effect depending on the type of strike chosen.
[...]
Shattering Punch: The monk delivers a brutal punch that can penetrate defenses. If the attack hits, it bypasses any damage reduction or hardness possessed by the target of that attack.

So I'm confused here. On the one hand we have Shattering Punch that will bypass any DR if the attack hits. And on the other hand we have Pummeling style that will add up all the damage of all the hits before applying any DR.
So will all this count as one big attack hit, and therefore will all the benefits of "special" attacks (like stunning fist or any style strike included in the FoB) count for all the damage?
Because all the damage is grouped up, will shattering punch apply its effect to all the damage, or do I need to count the shattering punch damage separately (which kinda goes against Pummeling style, tbh)?
It's uncleeeeeeaaaaaaar.
Pls halp.