Powerful Fist and Natural Attacks

[Draven Torakhan]

I've dug into this a little, but I haven't gotten any 'legal' answer; and considering I'm looking at this build for Society, a clear ruling would be very helpful.

Powerful Fist reads:
You know how to wield your fists as deadly weapons. The damage die for your fist increases to 1d6 instead of 1d4. Most people take a –2 circumstance penalty when making a lethal attack with nonlethal unarmed attacks, because they find it hard to use their fists with deadly force. You don’t take this penalty when making a lethal attack with your fist or any other unarmed attacks.

So, we know that the ability removes the -2 penalty for any unarmed attack. But it also says the damage die for your -fist- increases. If I'm playing a Beastkin, for example, with a 1d4 unarmed/natural attack, would that get bumped up to 1d6 when I get Powerful Fist?

[shroudb]

"Fist" covers the general unarmed attacks with your body like punching, kicking, and etc that are NOT specifically something else.

If you have a specific unarmed attack like a bite, claw, horns, etc attack, that is not a Fist attack. It has different traits and dices.

In the case of Powerful Fist, the damage die increase is specific to the Fist attack.
Although the second benefit of making nonlethal attacks to lethal without a penalty would indeed carry over to any nonlethal unarmed attack you can make and not only Fist attacks.

Relevant rules:

Quote:

Unarmed Attacks lists the statistics for an unarmed attack with a fist, though you’ll usually use the same statistics for attacks made with any other parts of your body. Certain ancestry feats, class features, and spells give access to special, more powerful unarmed attacks. Details for those unarmed attacks are provided in the abilities that grant them.

[Karmagator]

Powerful Fist, as you correctly pointed out, increases only the die size of your "fist" unarmed attack (which has it's own "weapon" entry). The beastkin unarmed attack is a "jaws" one. That isn't the same thing, ergo Powerful Fist doesn't apply.

[breithauptclan]

Well, Powerful Fist partially applies to the other specific unarmed attacks - if they have the nonlethal trait, Powerful Fist will allow you to remove that trait without penalty.

[Super Zero]

Which is why monk stances have it. Since monks can ignore it when it's inconvenient, the nonlethal trait is always an upgrade for them.

[Draven Torakhan]

Mm. So no real way to bump that d4 natural attack up, kinda disappointing. It occurs to me that the advice people offer for Beastkin/Animal Instinct Barbarians of taking Monk or Martial Artist archetypes wouldn't work either, several of those specifically say "fist attack."

[YuriP]

The natural attack varies from each ancestry/heritage:

Clawed Catfolks do 1d6 agile and finesse claw attacks and Aggravating Scratch feat can also add 1d4 poison persistence damage.

Lizardfolks do 1d4 agile and finesse claw attacks and Razor Claws feat can improve it to 1d6 and add versatile (piercing) and also has Sharp Fangs feat to add that do 1d8 piercing and Envenom Fangs feat can add 1d6 poison at cost of 1-action until the end of your next turn and the feat
Tail Whip add 1d6 bludgeoning damage and has the sweep trait.

Tengus can do beak attacks that do 1d6 piercing damage and has the finesse trait and Dogtooth Tengu heritage add deadly d8 trait and Dogfang Bite feat add versatile S to it

Orcs can take Tusks feat to do 1d6 piercing finesse attacks and Bloody Blows feat can add 1d4 persistence bleed damage.

Changeling heritage can have Hag Claws feat to add 1d4 agile and finesse attacks that can be improved by Accursed Claws adding 1d4 persistence mental damage and further improved by Spiteful Rake feat to make target dazzed for 1 round and if critical hit turns to blinded for 1 round + dazzed that endures until restored to maximum hit points.

All these Strikes are lethal so there's many options to do more than d4 unarmed Strikes without even need to take an archetype. But you need to take some ancestry or heritage who had it. You can inclusive combo some of them (a changeling catfolk can add Accursed Claws and Spiteful Rake to it's claw attacks).

Ps.: I have a playtest warpriest lizardfolk that does 1d8 envenoned jaws and 1d6 agile claws attacks and uses a Handwraps of Mighty Blows to improve them and works fantastically well.

[HammerJack]

Draven Torakhan wrote:

Mm. So no real way to bump that d4 natural attack up, kinda disappointing. It occurs to me that the advice people offer for Beastkin/Animal Instinct Barbarians of taking Monk or Martial Artist archetypes wouldn't work either, several of those specifically say "fist attack."

The increased die size of the basic Fist atrack is not the main reason those archetypes can be handy to an Animal barbarian (though those can be useful if you're fatigued and unable to rage, or something). It's things like Followup Strike or Flurry of Blows that work with any unarmed attack that are great for an animal barbarian. Wrestler is similarly great for them, because it's full of feats that are "make an unarmed Strike and do something else on top" which work just great with an animal barb's beefy unarmed attacks.

[aobst128]

You can boost your D4 jaws attack specifically if you have jaws as a favored weapon as a cleric or champion. If you're multiclassing, cleric has deadly simplicity that is easy to pick up that will do it for you. Apsu and a few other deities are applicable.