Generally speaking the benefit of having multiple unarmed attacks are:
-They all scale with hand wraps.
-You can get different damage types or traits. This can help with resistance or weakness, or if you're enveloped or swallowed.
-You might use different limbs for different attacks, so a backup option might help if you're holding things.
But there's no stacking per se.
Also, critically, many of the monk stances (dragon stance included) lock out all unarmed attacks other than the attack that comes with the stance while you are in the stance.
As far as having multiple, though, one of the most straightforward advantages is when you have a high-damage attack that's pretty bare-bones and a lower-damage attack that's agile. You attack with the high damage one first, and then switch to the more agile attacks for your second and third, to keep down the Multiple Attack Penalty effects
Also, if you're one of the rare few that has an unarmed ranged attack, then also having an unarmed melee attack lets you engage both at range and at melee with the same set of handwraps. That's always nice. (Technically you can also shoot point-blank most of the time and it'll work, but unarmed ranged attacks tend to have very small damage dice.)
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Also, critically, many of the monk stances (dragon stance included) lock out all unarmed attacks other than the attack that comes with the stance while you are in the stance.
You are only half correct. There are stances that limit your choice of unarmed attack. But Dragon Stance is not among them.
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Also, critically, many of the monk stances (dragon stance included) lock out all unarmed attacks other than the attack that comes with the stance while you are in the stance.You are only half correct. There are stances that limit your choice of unarmed attack. But Dragon Stance is not among them.
Yep. Dragon Stance is a pretty solid for pairing with an agile claw. You can use back swing if your last attack missed or switch to the claw if it hit.
Huh. You can actually make non-stance unarmed attacks in any of Wolf, Tiger, Dragon, Stoked Flame, or Reflective Ripple. I'd never realized. You all are right. I was totally wrong. I've learned a thing today. (The rest of the first-level stances lock the user to the stance's built-in unarmed strike)
Meanwhile, Stumbling and Gorilla can both be done in armor
...and Gorilla, Mountain, Stoked Flame, and Dragon have their stance attacks not as finesse. Gorilla allows armor, and mountain offers psuedoarmor, but the others do not.
Of the higher-level stances...
- Peafowl and Shooting Star, and Whirling Blade don't interact with any of this stuff. Vitality-manipulating basically doesn't, other than the fact that it has a ranged unarmed strike built in.
- Cobra has a locked-in finesse strike and permits armor.
- Jellyfish and Tangled Forest have non-locked finesse strikes, and require unarmored
- Ironblood has a non-locked non-finesse strike and requires unarmored
- Clinging Shadows costs a focus point. It has non-locked non-finesse strikes, and does not require armor.
- Wild Winds costs a focus point. It has non-locked ranged strikes, and does not require armor.
I had really not realized before that there was such variance.
Those Monk Stances which grant defensive benefits also lock you into the specific unarmed attack for all Strikes so that you can't reap the benefit without paying the cost, which might be going unarmored or having a weaker attack or both.
That said, I like the idea of a caster taking those Stances (albeit with the hefty cost of 14 Str or a high level feat via Half-Elf, though Martial Artist gets you a few too, but w/o all those other cool Monk feats or Resiliency). I have an earth-themed Dwarf Cleric w/ that in mind except they'd have to survive to 4th and Reflex saves would be horrible (even though Monk MCD could get that to Master so there's that, at a cost).