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Does a ring of fangs just change what it explicitly say it changes or does it change what a bite attack should change?
Specifically does it
-make you always armed
-make your attacks non archaic
-require a free limb (as an unarmed strike)
I think the idea that the raw can be clear follows from the idea that you can argue from A to B to C with confidence. That requires a system that's either reality or a computer program level of consistent. I love starfinder, but it's not that tightly written.(i don't know if anything in english is) Just because you can argue A B C D doesn't mean there isn't a better argument Z Y X ---> Not D. You absolutely have to compare and contrast the two different arguments for evidence, sense, reason, balance, and precedent. Nothing is QED no matter how much it seems to make sense.
When you wear this ring, your teeth become long and sharp, giving you a powerful bite attack. You can choose to have your unarmed attacks deal lethal piercing damage, and if you are 3rd level or higher, you automatically gain a special version of the Weapon Specialization feat that adds double your level to the damage of these unarmed attacks (rather than adding your level).
The more restrictive way of reading it is to say that it only alters your unarmed strike where it explicitly mentions it altering your unarmed strike. 1) Lethal damage 2) Piercing damage instead of bludgeoning 3) 2 X specilization instead of 1X specialization.
The more (usually) expansive way of reading it is you have a bite attack. A bite attack nests a lot of properties into the attack that I think make a lot of sense for it.
-Always armed. Without being a bite attack your unarmed attacks don't count as armed. You're just as unable to make AOOs as John Q public.
-Not archaic. Bite attacks aren't archaic, both as a specific clarification and a general trend for natural weapons.
-Doesn't require a free limb. If the ring doesn't alter anything beyond what it explicitly says you need to drop your laser rifle to bite someone. That... seems really weird.
While these do make the ring absurdly powerful for 350 credits, they all drop out of a pretty straightforward reading of you gain a bite attack.
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Lets see now....
When you wear this ring, your teeth become long and sharp, giving you a powerful bite attack. You can choose to have your unarmed attacks deal lethal piercing damage, and if you are 3rd level or higher, you automatically gain a special version of the Weapon Specialization feat that adds double your level to the damage of these unarmed attacks.
So to me, it reads like the following.
1) You get a Bite Attack that you don't need hands to use, like any other Bite attack.
2) You can CHOOSE to (Not must) have ANY of your Unarmed Attacks deal Lethal Piercing Damage, bite or not. If they are Lethal Attacks, they deal Piercing Damage, you cannot decide to make them Lethal but NOT deal Piercing Damage.
3) After level 3, these OPTIONAL Piercing Lethal Attacks (And ONLY these ones) benefit from Wpn Spc that deals 2x Character Level to damage instead of the normal effects of Wpn Spc.
2) You can CHOOSE to (Not must) have ANY of your Unarmed Attacks deal Lethal Piercing Damage, bite or not.
Not that that does anything horribly game breaking with anything I'm aware of in the game but... how/why would growing big sharp pointy teeth suddenly make your fists all pointy?
I think someone tried to combine the ROFs with a playtest shield using that logic and.. it just really doesn't work.
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2) You can CHOOSE to (Not must) have ANY of your Unarmed Attacks deal Lethal Piercing Damage, bite or not.Not that that does anything horribly game breaking with anything I'm aware of in the game but... how/why would growing big sharp pointy teeth suddenly make your fists all pointy?
I think someone tried to combine the ROFs with a playtest shield using that logic and.. it just really doesn't work.
I tend to agree that it doesn't make a ton of sense RAI wise by by RAW the fist part of the benefits are separated by punctuation meaning the benefits are entirely separate and unrelated since the item does not specify that it applies to only the Bite Attack.
How I'd justify it in game is that while the flavor of the item and name suggests via "fangs" that it's all related to the Bite, the magic of it essentially gives you a Bite attack by dint of making you more bestial in general, sharpening your teeth and strengthening your fingertips/nails/digits/tentacles/whatever you make any of your other Unarmed Attacks with.
I tend to agree that it doesn't make a ton of sense RAI wise by by RAW the fist part of the benefits are separated by punctuation meaning the benefits are entirely separate and unrelated since the item does not specify that it applies to only the Bite Attack.
RAW it says "these unarmed attacks" not all unarmed attacks. Between that and common sense I think that's a better raw argument than reading the tea leaves of punctuation.
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RAW it says "these unarmed attacks" not all unarmed attacks.
That's just not true at all, it word for word says "You can choose to have your unarmed attacks deal lethal piercing damage..." and the bit that notes "these unarmed attacks" is referring to the unarmed attacks that deal Lethal and Piercing damage, nothing more nothing less.
is referring to the unarmed attacks that deal Lethal and Piercing damage, nothing more nothing less.
You can't call something not true just because it disagrees with you. You certainly can read these unarmed attacks as the ones made with your big sharp pointy teeth and it would make the most sense to do so. RAW having one true objective answer isn't a given and it doesn't seem to here. If you can read raw so that it's nonsensical or sensible the sensible reading is usually right.
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I mean, I don't want to be like this, but interpreting these things is literally part of my dayjob.
That period separating the first and second sentences makes all the difference in the world and the blanket "... your unarmed attacks deal..." statement means it applies to all of your unarmed attacks, not just the Bite attack you gain from the item.
I'm not projecting anything, I'm reading the words as written, you seem to be inserting interpretation where there is no room for any to be had. The item doesn't state "...your Unarmed Bite Attacks" ..." We can agree to disagree I suppose, but that doesn't mean the RAW does anything different than what it says it does.
That period separating the first and second sentences makes all the differences in the world and the blanket "have your unarmed attacks deal..." statement means it literally applies to all of your unarmed attacks, that's how RAW interpretation works.
It's not. English writing isn't nearly as objective as you're making it out to be. Once you accept that (or at least accept that paizo doesn't write it as objectively as you'd like) the more sensible reading is obvious.
-I grammared the deflector shield and it absolutely says ____- tends to get the wrong answer more often than not.
you seem to be inserting interpretation where there is no room for any to be had
There is definitely room when "these" refers back to something else.
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The item description reads as 2 parts to me.
Part 1: What does the Ring do?
"When you wear this ring, your teeth become long and sharp, giving you a powerful bite attack."
Part 2: But there are no rules for what a PC bite attack is! How do I use that?
"You can choose to have your unarmed attacks deal lethal piercing damage, and if you are 3rd level or higher, you automatically gain a special version of the Weapon Specialization feat that adds double your level to the damage of these unarmed attacks (rather than adding your level)."
Reading the 2 sentences as uncoupled from each other, so that what it item is has nothing to do with what it does, or how it does it makes no sense.
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I'm not going to waste time arguing for any particular interpretation, because I've already had this argument about 30 times and I'm pretty sick of it. I just want a FAQ for this so we can call it a day and move on, because the table variation is crazy.
For reference, here are the rules for each piece in this puzzle:
When you wear this ring, your teeth become long and sharp, giving you a powerful bite attack. You can choose to have your unarmed attacks deal lethal piercing damage, and if you are 3rd level or higher, you automatically gain a special version of the Weapon Specialization feat that adds double your level to the damage of these unarmed attacks (rather than adding your level).
Your unarmed attack damage increases to 1d6 at 4th level, 2d6 at 8th level, 3d6 at 12th level, 5d6 at 15th level, and 7d6 at 20th level. You threaten squares within your natural reach with your unarmed strikes even when you do not have a hand free for an unarmed strike. If you are immobilized, entangled, or unable to use both legs (or whatever appendages you have in place of legs, where appropriate), you lose the ability to make unarmed strikes without your hands. When making an unarmed strike without your hands, you can’t use such attacks for combat maneuvers or similar abilities—only to deal damage.
NORMAL
You don’t threaten any squares with unarmed attacks, and you must have a hand free to make an unarmed attack.
Vesk are always considered armed. They can deal 1d3 lethal damage with unarmed strikes and the attack doesn’t count as archaic. Vesk gain a unique weapon specialization with their natural weapons at 3rd level, allowing them to add 1–1/2 × their character level to their damage rolls for their natural weapons (instead of just adding their character level, as usual).
(Note, other PC races with natural attacks have very similar wordings)
An unarmed strike can be dealt with any limb or appendage. Unarmed strikes deal nonlethal damage, and the damage from an unarmed strike is considered weapon damage for the purposes of effects that give you a bonus to weapon damage rolls.
You can imbue a weapon with a magic sigil, the rune of the eldritch knight, allowing the weapon to act as a magic weapon for the purposes of bypassing DR and affecting incorporeal creatures. This takes 10 minutes, and you can imbue only a single weapon at a time. If you imbue a new weapon with the rune of the eldritch knight, any previously imbued weapon loses this benefit. When calculating the Hit Points and hardness of a weapon imbued with the rune of the eldritch knight, treat its item level as 5 higher.
When wielding weapons with the archaic weapon special property, the damage you deal is never reduced as a result of that property. Archaic weapons you wield gain bleed 1d8 as a critical hit effect (Core Rulebook 182). If the weapon already has a critical hit effect, when you score a critical hit, you can apply either the weapon’s normal critical hit effect or this bleed effect. The bleed damage increases by 1d8 at 11th level and every 4 soldier levels you have beyond 11th (maximum bleed 4d8 at 19th level).
Add an additional bonus equal to half your Strength bonus to damage rolls with melee weapons.
Your weapon exerts a pull that makes objects cling to it and can even stymie opponents with strands of force. As a move action, you can grant a weapon you wield, including your solar weapon, the disarm weapon special property. This benefit lasts for 1 round or until you leave graviton mode.
From these rules, the list of contentious questions I've seen come up are:
- 1 Is the attack from Ring of Fangs, by itself, archaic or not?
- 2 Does the Ring of Fangs, by itself, make you 'always armed' with a natural attack?
- 3 Does the Ring of Fangs stack with Improved Unarmed Strike, and if so, how?
- 4 Does the Ring of Fangs affect the natural attacks from the racial features of Vesk (and other races)? If so, How?
- 5 How, if at all, does the Ring of Fangs interact with things like Hammer Fist or Power Armor punches?
- 6 Do Unarmed Strikes count as weapons for the purpose of Rune of the Eldritch Knight and other class features (like Raw Lethality, Melee Striker, or Attractive Force all listed) that affect weapons you wield?
So far, in my experience, if you ask those questions of any GM, you'll get a different set of answers. Under the most permissive set, the combination of Racial Natural Attack + IUS + RoF is one of (if not the) highest DPR options in the game from ~4-12. Before Soulfire and Armory, it was the highest DPR in that range. Under the least permissive set of answers, it's probably one of (if not the) weakest strength based melee option in the game. It's a pretty big swing to go from Magic attacks that deal an average of ~35 damage and have a crit effect or two at level 8 to non-magic attacks with no crit effect that deal maybe 18 (and you can't even AOO with them).
My opinion, that's too much variation. It's been almost 2 years and there has yet to be a consensus formed. We need one master interpretation, and preferably a FAQ.
Ditto ! °£°
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Vote bigsharppointyteeth 320 AG
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62 if you count that that 30 people also FAQ'd my set of questions a couple posts up.
I'm glad I'm not the only one tired of having this argument. It came up again yesterday and I was like, "Please, for the love of Weydan, go and FAQ this thread."
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It would be good to discuss the questions you brought up, too, in an effort to help the Designers craft a thorough FAQ:
1 Is the attack from Ring of Fangs, by itself, archaic or not?
The bite attack granted by the Ring of Fangs is treated as an unarmed strike, which is classified as a Basic Melee Weapon with the Archaic and Nonlethal special properties.
I believe the default would be that this bite attack counts as archaic, because nothing in the ring's description tells us otherwise, but that the bite attack is obviously not nonlethal, because the ring's description tells us it is lethal.
2 Does the Ring of Fangs, by itself, make you 'always armed' with a natural attack?
Since it is simply an unarmed strike, you would need an ability that modifies all of your unarmed strikes (such as Improved Unarmed Strike) in order to threaten with your bite attack.
3 Does the Ring of Fangs stack with Improved Unarmed Strike, and if so, how?
The Ring of Fangs simply gives you an additional option when using an unarmed strike. Any ability that modifies ALL of your unarmed strikes (or similarly, ALL of your melee weapons or ALL of your <insert common quality here>) should work with it.
4 Does the Ring of Fangs affect the natural attacks from the racial features of Vesk (and other races)? If so, How?
The racial natural attacks of Vesk, Nuar and so on give you an additional option when using an unarmed strike. The Ring of Fangs gives you an additional option when using an unarmed strike.
If you are making an unarmed strike, you could choose to apply your racial features, or the Ring of Fangs, or whatever other alternative unarmed strike options you have, but you couldn't combine them all.
5 How, if at all, does the Ring of Fangs interact with things like Hammer Fist or Power Armor punches?
Hammer fist would definitely not work, because of its clause that "These unarmed attacks don’t benefit from other abilities that apply specifically to unarmed attacks (such as the Improved Unarmed Strike feat)".
Powered armor seems to be a replacement effect: "When you make an unarmed melee attack with the powered armor, it deals damage equal to the armor’s listed damage value plus its Strength modifier".
6 Do Unarmed Strikes count as weapons for the purpose of Rune of the Eldritch Knight and other class features (like Raw Lethality, Melee Striker, or Attractive Force all listed) that affect weapons you wield?
I believe "wielding" is what matters, so if you are attacking or threatening with your unarmed strikes, they gain the benefits that any "wielded" weapon would.
Raw Lethality should definitely work, otherwise the class feature is incredibly limited. There are only two archaic weapon listed in the Core Rulebook: unarmed strikes, and the club.
Melee Striker should definitely work, because unarmed strikes are classified as basic melee weapons.
Attractive Force should work for the reasons that Raw Lethality and Melee Striker work.
My Ring of Fangs character has the Gloom Gunner Fighting Style, and my (biased) opinion is that it also works with unarmed strikes, for the same reasons.
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A bite attack is also a natural attack.
Natural attacks aren't archaic
Every ability to give an NPC big sharp pointy teeth/claws/whatever the heck it is vesk are doing calls them out as not archaic. It appears to be only puny humanoid fists that are archaic. The ring gives you big sharp pointy teeth, not puny humanoid fists.
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See, the thing is, I think I know the answers to all of my questions too.
And, yet every time I say what I think the answers are, I get told by at least two different people that I'm wrong. They may say I'm wrong about one of them or three of them or all of them, and the two of them (and it's a different two people every time) may each say I'm wrong about different answers (and right about others), but it never fails to cause an argument.
I see this happen to other people that also think they know the answers to those questions. It feels like a constant.
I'm purposely not posting what I think my answers are, because I am sick of going through this turkeybowl.
The only other thing that comes up anywhere near as often is how Drone Mechanics with the Riding Saddle work, but at least I know mount rules are supposedly coming in AA3 so I hope that will get resolved shortly.
Without a FAQ or a full writeup of Unarmed Combat rules in COM, this argument is just going to repeat itself ad nauseum.
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Without a FAQ or a full writeup of Unarmed Combat rules in COM, this argument is just going to repeat itself ad nauseum.
You could look at it that way. It sounds like most of your experience has been arguments.
But the purpose of this discussion is to bring everything up for the Design team to consider.
If they don't think there's a conflict, they'll answer this thread as "No response necessary".
That has been the answer to the majority of FAQ requests.
That has been the answer to the majority of FAQ requests.
For a while that was the only way they could clear anything off of their FAQ quque.
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A bite attack is also a natural attack.
A bite attack given by MAGIC is not a natural attack! It's an Unnatural Attack!
What are the rules on Unnatural Attacks?! NOBODY KNOWS!
Pedantics!
You are technically correct.Thank you ^_^
didn't say that.
That wasn't the answer from the devs that's just what the forums posted in liue of
-we don't care
-we added it to the next round of faqs
-i'm tired of seeing this one what else do they have
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A bite attack is also a natural attack.A bite attack given by MAGIC is not a natural attack! It's an Unnatural Attack!
What are the rules on Unnatural Attacks?! NOBODY KNOWS!
Pedantics!
I agree that it is not a "natural attack" in the sense of Alien Archive natural attacks.
I believe this because the text explains to treat this bite attack as an unarmed strike.
If it wasn't meant to be treated as an unarmed strike, that text wouldn't have been put there.
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Imagine another magic item, the Glove of Spikes, that grants you a claw attack. This claw attack is treated as a though it was made with a Tactical Sword Cane.
Someone argues that they can use their Dexterity to-hit with this attack, because a Tactical Sword Cane has the Operative special property.
Are they right?
Okay, so lets go with that idea. The ring of fangs is an unarmed attack except where the ring called it out specifically.
You have big sharp pointy teethbut...
-You're not armed. You can't use the teeth to make AOOs.
-You require a free hand to bite someone (because they're unarmed strikes)
That... doesn't seem right.
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Okay, then here are my answers to my own questions...
1 Is the attack from Ring of Fangs, by itself, archaic or not?
Yes, it's Archaic because it's an unarmed strike, and it doesn't say that it removes the archaic tag in the item description.
2 Does the Ring of Fangs, by itself, make you 'always armed' with a natural attack?
No, because it doesn't say you are always armed, and that is the default state with an unarmed strike.
3 Does the Ring of Fangs stack with Improved Unarmed Strike, and if so, how?
Improved Unarmed Strike makes you count as always armed (per the feat description) and increases the base damage for all unarmed strikes, of which this is one. So they stack.
4 Does the Ring of Fangs affect the natural attacks from the racial features of Vesk (and other races)? If so, How?
The racial description says all your unarmed strikes count as lethal and non-archaic, of which this is one, so they stack in that way. This removes the archaic tag from RoF.
5 How, if at all, does the Ring of Fangs interact with things like Hammer Fist or Power Armor punches?
It does not, nor does it impact unarmed strikes made with a shield (under playtest rules, anyway). ((I'd also prefer if shields had fixed damage rather than being considered unarmed strikes. I feel the same way about pistol whip, and think that is likely at least part of why it wasn't SFS legal.)
6 Do Unarmed Strikes count as weapons for the purpose of Rune of the Eldritch Knight and other class features (like Raw Lethality, Melee Striker, or Attractive Force all listed) that affect weapons you wield?
Yes. Unarmed Strikes count as weapons.
You'll see that I disagree with both BNW and Nefreet on at least one question. I'd go over all my reasons for why, but I seriously don't want to.
What if the rules in the backmatter of APs were often written by less experienced freelancers and they resulted in light, barely there development passes from a single Paizo employee, resulting in bad rules that the actual Starfinder development team never endorsed and doesn't want to burn the energy to fix, yet the SFS team didn't do the right thing by more freely banning these options? What would that bizarre world look like, I wonder?
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All I know is that I based Dragonbot's entire 3rd level on the least permissive, rules-as-written version of how the RoF works (feat is Improved Unarmed Strike, Gear Boost is Raw Lethality).
I'm set if they rule it textually.
If they rule it permissively and it isn't Archaic, I'll basically have wasted my Gear Boost (if it isn't Archaic I don't get the 1d8 Bleed crit). I guess I can hope for more archaic weapons in the future.
If they retroban the RoF, well I can still attack without a hand free (good since I'm packing heavy weapons), with scaling nonlethal damage dice, and with 1d8 nonlethal bleed crit.
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What if the rules in the backmatter of APs were often written by less experienced freelancers and they resulted in light, barely there development passes from a single Paizo employee, resulting in bad rules that the actual Starfinder development team never endorsed and doesn't want to burn the energy to fix, yet the SFS team didn't do the right thing by more freely banning these options? What would that bizarre world look like, I wonder?
Funny thing in this case: John Compton wrote Book 2, and he's the Organized Play lead for Pathfinder Society.
But, generally, Starfinder differs from Pathfinder v1 in that instead of introducing new supplements back-to-back-to-back, the APs serve the purpose of introducing new material to the game. You'll occasionally have a new Alien Archive or something like the upcoming Character Operations Manual, but by and large the APs are the avenue for introducing new feats, spells, items and so on.
What if the rules in the backmatter of APs were often written by less experienced freelancers and they resulted in light, barely there development passes from a single Paizo employee, resulting in bad rules that the actual Starfinder development team never endorsed and doesn't want to burn the energy to fix, yet the SFS team didn't do the right thing by more freely banning these options? What would that bizarre world look like, I wonder?Funny thing in this case: John Compton wrote Book 2, and he's the Organized Play lead for Pathfinder Society.
But, generally, Starfinder differs from Pathfinder v1 in that instead of introducing new supplements back-to-back-to-back, the APs serve the purpose of introducing new material to the game. You'll occasionally have a new Alien Archive or something like the upcoming Character Operations Manual, but by and large the APs are the avenue for introducing new feats, spells, items and so on.
Yes, and they’re often written by freelancers and only going to get a single developer looking at them, so they are going to have more problems.
Somebody needs to make a "What does Improved Unarmed Strike actually do?" thread. Seems to me there are tons of questions pertaining to the following, how they are each defined, and how they all interact with one another.
- hammer fist
- improved unarmed strike
- natural attacks
- polymorph
- ring of fangs
- unarmed attacks (such as with powered armor)
- unarmed strikes
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A bite attack is also a natural attack.
Natural attacks aren't archaic
Every ability to give an NPC big sharp pointy teeth/claws/whatever the heck it is vesk are doing calls them out as not archaic. It appears to be only puny humanoid fists that are archaic. The ring gives you big sharp pointy teeth, not puny humanoid fists.
Is the bite attack also a natural weapon? It doesn't say in the Ring of Fangs that it's a natural attack, it says it's an unarmed strike.
Looking through the CRB and AA1, I actually don't find anything that says that all natural weapons count as unarmed strikes. It's only the playable races boxes that say that, along with text overriding many of the properties of unarmed strikes. It seems that non-player monsters just use natural weapons that are just natural weapons and have nothing to do with the unarmed strike rules.
So you can't draw too many implications one way or the other. An item says it grants a bite unarmed attack. Some monsters have bite attacks that aren't unarmed strikes.
I'm just shocked no one has said, 'this will be addressed in COM' yet.
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If it re-releases the ring of fangs and has a blurb about racial unarmed strikes, power armor unarmed strikes, and potential shield unarmed strikes it could address all of this.
I'm not holding my breath for it though.
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If COM had cleaned up unarmed strike rules that sorted everything out, and laid a clear basis for the next options that will be piled on top, I would consider it a good use of the page space it occupied.
But I would be shocked to see it.
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No one has a link, because that is not a thing that has been said. I think Lithia was just talking about how a lot of people have hyped COM as probably having solutions for any number of things, based on nothing but pure speculation.
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It would be on-point to have unarmed revisions in COM, though, especially since the Vanguard has been cast as a sort of martial artist (though their abilities do not use unarmed rules per se) and tactical shield bashes used Unarmed Strike rules in the playtest.
It would be a pretty elegant solution to have a brief section on clarifying unarmed combat, re-introduce the Ring of Fangs in the inevitable magic item section, and include other unarmed options (unarmed Soldier styles, a martial arts archetype, etc.).
I don't really expect that to happen, though, unless their metrics say that a lot of people are going the unarmed route.
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No one has a link, because that is not a thing that has been said. I think Lithia was just talking about how a lot of people have hyped COM as probably having solutions for any number of things, based on nothing but pure speculation.
That is what I was saying.
Though, I do have some hope for more unarmed stuff, since we know that Vanguards have some tie to unarmed strike and there is also a 'martial arts' archetype (battle flower?) in the book.
It's not necrobumping if it has been less than two weeks, right? That should still be within the timeframe of Raise Dead.
In looking through the various postings here, I see a couple of sticking points that are due to vague or incomplete rules. There are also a handful of things that people don't like because it doesn't make much sense.
For vague rules, I see:
A) Do limbs and such count as weapons?
B) Do limbs and such count as weapons if the character has a feat (like Improved Unarmed Strike) or other ability or equipment that makes their unarmed attacks do lethal damage naturally?
C) Does having an ability or equipment that improves your unarmed strikes mean that you are considered armed just by having your unarmed strike available?
If A) is ruled that limbs always count as weapons as long as you can do any damage with them, then a characters hands and such are valid targets for features like Rune of the Eldritch Knight and Attractive Force. Similarly for B) if the character has the appropriate feats or equipment. If not, and limbs are not counted as weapons, then they would not be valid targets for such things.
However, the rules for unarmed strike says that the damage that it does is weapon damage and is modified by things that change weapon damage. I am seeing Melee Striker and at least parts of Raw Lethality falling into this category. Melee Striker looks like it should work RAW. Raw Lethality is less clear.
And of course the ruling on C) would clearly answer the question of if you can use your fangs from the Ring of Fangs in an attack of opportunity.
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So for anyone keeping score on how many points of disagreement with pithica42 we have:
1) Yes, the ring of fangs attack is still archaic.
2) No, not always armed. Fangs from Ring of Fangs cannot be used in attack of opportunity.
3) Yes, Improved Unarmed Strike changes the damage dealt and causes the 'armed' status. Ring of Fangs removes the nonlethal trait and adds the 2xlevel weapon specialization damage.
4) Yes, Ring of Fangs would change the damage of natural attacks from Vesk or other races. Weapon Specialization damage does not stack, the player must choose either the race's normal weapon specialization or the weapon specialization damage from the Ring of Fangs (in the case of Vesk, it would be better to use the 2x from Ring of Fangs).
5) Hammer Fist causes you to be treated as using an actual weapon when making the attack, so Ring of Fangs would not apply since the attack is no longer unarmed. Powered Armor strikes by themselves are still unarmed attacks and so would be changed by the Ring of Fangs. The damage does not stack, the player chooses either the damage values of the armor or of the Ring of Fangs.
6) The abilities that change the damage caused by an unarmed strike (like Melee Striker and Raw Lethality) do affect unarmed strikes. Abilities that target a weapon (like Rune of the Eldritch Knight and Attractive Force) do not.
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Now as far as things that I personally don't like: I don't like how if a feat or equipment adds a new form of unarmed attack, then it typically changes all of the other unarmed attacks that the character has. This leads to silly things like having a Ring of Fangs causing a shield bash or powered armor strike to deal lethal piercing damage.
I also don't like that some abilities can't be used with unarmed strike. Why can't I make a fisticuffs-based Eldritch Knight?
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Now as far as things that I personally don't like: I don't like how if a feat or equipment adds a new form of unarmed attack, then it typically changes all of the other unarmed attacks that the character has. This leads to silly things like having a Ring of Fangs causing a shield bash or powered armor strike to deal lethal piercing damage.
One doesn't lead to the other. The ring is very clear in both rai and raw that "these attacks" = the ones you make with big sharp pointy teeth. It wouldn't effect a shield bash or hammer fist in anyway. I don't see how people can equate "raw" with "not going to read more than one sentence at a time".