So, deadly simplicity is a feat that's basically there to allow clerics of gods with simple weapons to fight with them as if they were martial weapons. Cool. No problem. It's not generally a balance issue because in general, everyone who cares about weapon combat is using martial weapons anyway, but... well there are some folks for whom that's not the case.
Unarmed weapons are simple, and monks use them by preference. There's a number of gods who have favored weapon: Fist, and a number more who have favored weapon: Jaw. That brings in the beast barbs. As far as I can tell, it would work for combat forms with jaw attacks as well - meaningful for wildshape druids and dragon-barbs.
So... it looks like for each of these types, a two-feat dip into cleric (and the right god) gives what is potentially a lasting damage boost to their primary attack that stacks with everything, and in a way that stacks on top of an existing solid choice, rather than making an otherwise marginal choice playable. That seems... antithetical to much of the design intent I've seen implied throughout the rest of the game. Am I missing something here?
I'm trying to figure out who could actually benefit from this. Monks get d6 fists by default. The only Barbarian attack smaller than d6 is frog tongue and I can't find any deity with favored weapon (tongue).
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A couple problems with this. First, unarmed attacks are not simple weapons, or any kind of weapon. The blanket die increase does not work for them. Luckily, the feat has a specific clause which allows it to work with unarmed attacks, but that brings us to our second problem.
"If your deity’s favored weapon is an unarmed attack (such as a fist, if you worship Irori) and its damage die is smaller than d6, instead increase its damage die size to d6."
Since the only normal die smaller than a d6 is a d4, that greatly limits the number of unarmed attacks that can benefit from this, as Squiggit alludes to.
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I also agree. There doesn't seem to be any reason for a Monk (who has "Powerful Fist") or Martial Artist (who effectively gets Powerful Fist) to dip into cleric simply to take this feat.
Going in the other direction, a cleric whose favored weapon is fist who has this feat still isn't as good as a monk's Powerful Fist. Their damage die increases to d6, but unlike Powerful Fist, they don't get the ability to do lethal damage without taking a -2 penalty to attack.
So a truly dedicated cleric of Irori might still want to multi-class as a Monk or take the Martial Artist archetype!
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Isn’t there a rule that says you can’t increase a weapon’s die more than one step?
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That is correct.
They explicitly have to call it out in the Inventor, who have two ways to increase die size (at 1st and 15th levels, respectively).
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Ah. Okay. That explains. Thank you all. I had though that I had run into a bit in the rules that said that unarmed attacks were simple. I suspect that I may have been reading PF1 rules instead, and gotten confused.
The "can't increase die size more than one step" rule is also worth knowing about.