It says you must be wielding a melee weapon. Do unarmed strikes qualify for the purposes of this feat?
I ask because Thlipit gets Lunge as an option, but if it can't be used with the lash, then I question why it was included as part of the archetype.
unarmed attacks aren't melee weapons. Guessing whoever wrote Thlipit Contestant forgot that.
Several of the Fighter feats, if skimmed, would seem to work with Strikes in general when they only work with weapon Strikes.
If found in a unarmed-themed Archetype or on an NPC that used unarmed attacks, I'd likely swap that so it works with unarmed only. In PFS, it'd be a dead feat so I'd allow this anyway.
Thlipit Contestant Dedication describes your lash as a "formidable weapon" that is in the flail weapon group.
Are we sure it's not a weapon, at least in the case of the archetype?
Yes, we are entirely sure it is an unarmed attack.
The handwraps add a frustrating wrinkle to this that was not clarified in the Remaster. I personally think the item enables using runes and talismans, and that one key phrase is not intended to be the blank check that would be required for Lunge and other "wielding a melee weapon" requirements.
As you invest these embroidered strips of cloth, you must meditate and slowly wrap them around your hands. These handwraps have weapon runes etched into them to give your unarmed attacks the benefits of those runes, making your unarmed attacks work like magic weapons. For example, +1 striking handwraps of mighty blows would give you a +1 item bonus to attack rolls with your unarmed attacks and increase the damage of your unarmed attacks from one weapon die to two (normally 2d4 instead of 1d4, but if your fists have a different weapon damage die or you have other unarmed attacks, use two of that die size instead).
You can upgrade, add, and transfer runes to and from the handwraps just as you would for a weapon, and you can attach talismans to the handwraps. Treat the handwraps as melee weapons of the brawling group with light Bulk for these purposes. Property runes apply only when they would be applicable to the unarmed attack you're using. For example, a property that must be applied to a slashing weapon wouldn't function when you attacked with a fist, but you would gain its benefits if you attacked with a claw or some other slashing unarmed attack.
The entries below list the most typical combinations of fundamental runes.
IMO, that bolded bit is missing "for the purposes of rune functionality."
If you match with that reading, then it means that unarmed strikes are definitely not weapon attacks.
Annoyingly, there is a reading of the handwraps that allows the item to generally turn strikes with the item into melee weapon attacks.
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Not an honest reading. Only a "pull a single sentence out of the surrounding context and try to pin things up on it that way" reading.
Not an honest reading. Only a "pull a single sentence out of the surrounding context and try to pin things up on it that way" reading.
I agree in that I am 100% confident in the handwraps **not** granting unarmed --> weapon attacks as the rules as intended.
However, there was no reason for the devs to word it like that.
"making your unarmed attacks work like magic weapons."
That phrasing is transformative, turning one existing thing into another thing.
Instead, the devs are usually pretty careful to write in a more additive manner, granting a new property to your existing blank.
This is the kind of vague rule that may be easy enough to interpret for someone familiar with pf2e, but it is also the exact kind of example I would point to where someone new to the rules could easily, and honestly, misinterpret the rules.
As evidenced by this entire thread's creation, it is not intuitive to many people that unarmed attacks are intended to be excluded from so many actions.