Is an Unarmed Strike a Natural Weapon?


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Would you be able to use an unarmed strike as a natural attack?

For example, a half-orc with the Toothy alternate racial trait gains a bite attack. If a half-orc monk made a full attack, could he consider his unarmed strike as a primary/secondary natural weapon, allowing him to attack with both it and his bite attack without taking a -5 to attack for the bite? (This is while not using Flurry of Blows.}

Scarab Sages

No. An unarmed strike is not a natural attack. It is not a manufactured weapon, but it follows the rules for them and it uses iterative attacks as if it were. If you make an attack with an unarmed strike, all natural weapons you have will be treated as secondary.


So just take two levels of ranger/slayer, take the natural attack style, and grab aspect of the beast to get claw attacks.

That will bring you to 3 natural attacks, which is fine until BAB +10 or so. Maybe find a way to grab some more after that.

It is usually easier than trying to mess around with stacking unarmed strikes and natural attacks.

Scarab Sages

It can work though, especially if you are a tengu and can TWF a kick/kick/claw/claw/bite routine at first level


Imbicatus wrote:
It can work though, especially if you are a tengu and can TWF a kick/kick/claw/claw/bite routine at first level

...with a ton of negatives, the need to spend a lot of feats (unarmed strike, TWF tree, multiattack, and maybe more... it means you can't even enjoy those kicks at level 1, since you are likely hitting at -2/-2/-5/-5/-5, compared to just 3 natural attacks at +0 each), and also need to take care of the dex prerequisite on your attacks (which means you either seek dex to damage, you just split dex and str, or you do a lot with ranger/slayer).

You also have to worry about the fact that the offhand kicks and natural attacks (which are treated as secondary for this) all hit for 1/2 str and power attack. So you are also forced to pick particular classes, such as sneak attackers, which have good bonuses to every hit.

Just going for regular natural attacks is far simpler. Just grab strength, look for items and such later on to get more natural attacks to keep up your damage. Don't really worry about it. It is enough to be comparable with 2 handing without the need to go with the sneak attack classes and such.


Hoo boy I can see this exploding. I saw a thread for this way back that went crazy. If I remember right, unarmed strike or improved unarmed or whatever, is treated as both and neither and it is really weird. Logically, yes they should be natural but by RAW it can cause a headache.

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