Feral Combat Training + Vicious Stomp

[RaizielDragon]

Does Feral Combat Training allow you to use a bite, claw, hoof, gore, or other natural weapon to make the attack allowed by Vicious Stomp?

Vicious Stomp says it must be an Unarmed Strike. But Feral Combat Training says that while using the chosen natural weapon, you can apply the effects of feats that have a prerequisite of Improved Unarmed Strike (which Vicious Stomp does).

So, it would seem that FCT allows you to use the chosen natural weapon with VS, but maybe not. It does say "while using the chosen natural weapon...", but you aren't using the natural weapon until you go to make the attack, and you can only make the attack with the Unarmed Strike.

So it would almost seem like a chicken/egg issue. You can't apply FCT until you go to make the attack, but you can't make the attack with your natural weapon unless you apply FCT.

This leads me to believe it does not work, but wanted to see if I was wrong.

[Saethori]

An interesting conundrum. As this was asked in the Advice forum, my thought process leans towards permissive, and says that yeah, of course you can claw them.

If it's a rules issue you were concerned with, however, and you inadvertently posted in the wrong forum, then I would bring up the following:

Feral Combat Training wrote:

Benefit: Choose one of your natural weapons. While using the selected natural weapon, you can apply the effects of feats that have Improved Unarmed Strike as a prerequisite.

Special: If you are a monk, you can use the selected natural weapon with your flurry of blows class feature.

Vicious Stomp wrote:

Whenever an opponent falls prone adjacent to you, that opponent provokes an attack of opportunity from you. This attack must be an unarmed strike.

What qualifies as the effects of the feat? Obviously, things like Stunning Fist are meant to qualify. So the spirit of the rules are clearly that you are permitted to count your natural attack as an unarmed strike for these feats.

However, a more literal reading does highlight the issue: you're not applying an effect to your natural attack. The feat allows you to gain an attack of opportunity from tripped (or those that fall prone for other reasons) targets, and specifies the attack of opportunity must be made with an unarmed strike. This isn't something you can apply the benefits of to your natural attack, since it says nothing about other prerequisites.