So I'm currently outlining a campaign that is almost entirely underwater, so the PCs will be restricted to aquatic or amphibious characters. One of my players wants to play a monk.
Aquatic Adventures has this to say about making physical attacks underwater:
Creatures with a natural swim speed from the aquatic or water subtype don’t take these penalties with their inherent natural attacks.
It goes on to explain that this includes a Kraken's tentacle attacks, but not tentacle attacks a Kraken gets from being an ectoplasmatist spiritualist.
So my question- Does an aquatic monk's unarmed strikes made with their natural limbs avoid the penalty? If not, should they?
Like it makes sense that a triton, living underwater as someone with a 5' land speed does, who becomes a fighter would focus on weapons that do piercing damage, since those work better in their environment. But if that same triton goes to the underwater monastery to learn underwater kung fu, wouldn't they also focus on ways to punch people that work best underwater?
I mean, certainly there are ways around this (Hamalatsu, Snake Style, Aquadynamic Focus, use weapons instead, etc.) but I'm afraid this might be a tax, since "learned to fight underwater" is something these characters are going to need right out of the gate.
I might just homebrew a tiny archetype that alters unarmed strike to avoid underwater penalties for dealing bludgeoning damage, and changes fast movement to apply to swim speed and not land speed.
Does that seem reasonable?
Yep such an Archetype would be perfect.
Could even make it a swappable ability a la qinggong monk.