You can lash out with a portion of your previous self. You gain a melee unarmed Strike depending on your heritage, described below. You can use this unarmed Strike in either your humanoid form or your yaoguai form. These Strikes are in the brawling group. Like other unarmed attacks, you can improve this attack with handwraps of mighty blows.
- Animal [one-action] claw (agile, finesse), Damage 1d6 slashing
- Celestial [one-action] spirit touch (magical, sanctified, spirit), Damage 1d4 spirit
- Elements [one-action] elemental current (magical), Damage 1d4; this ability deals the same damage type and gains the same elemental traits of the cantrip you gained from your heritage
- Object [one-action] striking surface (sweep), Damage 1d8 bludgeoning or slashing (chosen when you gain this feat)
- Vegetation [one-action] root (reach), Damage 1d6 bludgeoning
This is a 1st-level ancestry feat and amazing for Monks (and others)!
The Vegetation option gives you a reach unarmed strike, so no more monastic weaponry needed for reach monks!
And the Celestial option is a bit low on the damage side, but borderline overpowered in campaigns where spirit damage evades all the issues with enemy resistances, like in Abomination Vaults. Meanwhile the sanctification means you can just nab a cheap Faith Tattoo and have all your strikes be (un)holy; and since monks get free cold iron on their unarmed attacks too, this triggers two weaknesses on all demons – perfect for campaigns like Spore Wars!
Meanwhile the sanctification means you can just nab a cheap Faith Tattoo and have all your strikes be (un)holy; and since monks get free cold iron on their unarmed attacks too, this triggers two weaknesses on all demons – perfect for campaigns like Spore Wars!
I know that the rules for Instance of Damage are not very well defined, but Cold Iron is literally the example given for the rule that only one weakness applies.
If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing.
Cold Iron and Holy are two separate effects that both trigger their respective weaknesses. It's how Mark Seifter described it and it's also how it's implemented in Foundry VTT.
Meanwhile the sanctification means you can just nab a cheap Faith Tattoo and have all your strikes be (un)holy; and since monks get free cold iron on their unarmed attacks too, this triggers two weaknesses on all demons – perfect for campaigns like Spore Wars!I know that the rules for Instance of Damage are not very well defined, but Cold Iron is literally the example given for the rule that only one weakness applies.
If more than one weakness would apply to the same instance of damage, use only the highest applicable weakness value. This usually only happens when a creature is weak to both a type of damage and a material or trait, such as a cold iron axe cutting a monster that has weakness to cold iron and slashing.
The issue that has never been resolved is at what point a rune or spell effect "attached" to a weapon becomes part of the same instance of damage on a hit. We know that cold iron is the same instance regardless of whether it's sharp, blunt, or pointed. If you infuse it with holy essence or fire or electricity flowing around it that's (probably) separate instances.
It gets real dumb this way when you get into a magus spell strike with their stance and a couple of other spell options to theoretically stack something like four potential separate instances of fire damage on one strike. I'd also like to know if an instance of damage when moving through hazardous terrain is per square (so potentially 5+ weakness triggers from one move action) or per move action. But they refuse to address it.
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It's how Mark Seifter described it and it's also how it's implemented in Foundry VTT.
Both of which are irrelevant.
They need to change the RAW if they want to settle this. Errata or official clarification on the FAQ page. YouTube videos, forum posts, 3rd party VTT implementations, and 'I heard it from my friend who heard it from their neighbor who learned it from a note attached to the collar of a developer's dog' don't count.
This isn't really the topic of this thread...
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Make sure DM allows this type of exploitation. The damage source rules are not clear at all and the book and the designers with yet another Mark Seifter fun ruling to create problems at your table don't concur.
I don't allow multiple weaknesses to activate off a single hit. I think weaknesses are set far too high as it is. When you have hasted melees getting 20 to 40 or more extra damage per round from hitting targets with weaknesses, you don't want it set any higher. It's too high as is.
I see what they were doing making abilities like the Champion's Smite do extra damage using a different mechanical method, but when you see runes doing the same thing and every martial in the group has them it starts to make fights against creatures with weaknesses trivial.
It would be even more trivial if multiple weaknesses are activated on a per hit basis. As a DM turning the most fearsome monsters into a joke is not something I love.
Since this is not a rules thread, I'd advise to check if your DM wants this kind of weakness activation in their game.
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This isn't really the topic of this thread...
Right.
The point of this thread is you giving advice for some cool interactions that you found for an ancestry feat. Which is fine.
I agree that the reach option at level 1 is pretty cool. For a player that wants to play a Yaougai Monk that is a pretty good option to use an ancestry feat for reach instead of a class feat.
But your other option relies on dubious rules adjudication that is not going to be consistent across all tables. I think it is completely relevant to bring that up. That is something important for people wanting to follow this advice to know about.
And if you then try to push back and argue that the rules are not ambiguous and will be consistent across all tables, then expect me to respond to that.
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But your other option relies on dubious rules adjudication that is not going to be consistent across all tables. I think it is completely relevant to bring that up. That is something important for people wanting to follow this advice to know about.
And if you then try to push back and argue that the rules are not ambiguous and will be consistent across all tables, then expect me to respond to that.
My other option merely says that you can get holy/unholy strikes for your monk without an 11th-level Holy rune on your handwraps. That it triggers both weaknesses is just the cherry on top.
You're still hijacking this thread for another tangential topic, that has absolutely no bearing on gaining either A) reach or B) holy/unholy unarmed strikes – i.e. which this thread is about.
This is not the rules forum. Go make your own thread to complain about Mark Seifter's "dubious" explanation.
Note that this feat's Strikes only exist during their specific action/Strike. They aren't Strikes you can use w/ Flurry for example or Reactive Strike. So most PCs based around unarmed attacks will have beefier options and/or routines. And when my PC builds could use a backup unarmed Strike, it's typically for a specific feat-action that requires one (i.e. Rogue's Head Stomp). So this feat wouldn't work. Together that makes this feat niche, albeit as noted re: Spirit damage & Sanctified, sometimes that's a useful niche to fill.
So yeah, the feat gives a better unarmed Strike than most Ancestries do, but there's a hard cap on its use; just a simple Strike.
(And it's a Rare Ancestry; hardly worth it in PFS unless you need something more than this from the Ancestry.)
They are not regular unarmed attacks, quite irregular in fact. They are actions that perform a specific Strike (which yes, is an unarmed attack, etc.). These unarmed attacks only exist while taking the Morphic Strike action, then they're gone. If the action tags were missing (or if there were a duration), I'd completely agree with you. It became clear to me when I followed the link and saw the diamonds. The feat's not providing an ongoing effect.
So the feat really is giving you what it says, one Morphic Strike when you take the action provided. That might be why it lacks the Morph trait.
Morphic Strike isn't a distinct action by itself, It lacks the Action Diamond in the feat title. It grants you a melee unarmed Strike. Capitalised to show that it specifically refers to the Strike action and not any other separate action.
Further more, the words "root,claw,spirit touch and striking surface" arent capitalized and therefore arent distinct actions or gameplay elements according to the format of rules. Same as any Strikes from Monk, Clawdancer and other ancestries. The words before the diamonds are but those also refer to the actual heritages.
Granted the list of strikes available are written exactly as they would be on a battleform or monster stat-block, or akin to the Stances which grant strikes. all of which is unconventional and does not follow previous formatting when used specifically for strikes.
For example;
Naiad's Battleform: "Melee [one-action] aqueous fist (water), Damage 1d8+8 bludgeoning."
Yaoguai's Morphic Strike: "Vegetation [one-action] root (reach), Damage 1d6 bludgeoning"
Both of them are explicitly the Strike action.
They might've done this to save on page space, Considering that the other examples of granted strikes are rather wordy, Using Fleshwarp as an example
You've learned to use part of your form as a weapon. When you select this feat, you gain a claws unarmed attack that deals 1d4 slashing damage and has the agile and finesse traits; a horn, jaws, or tusk unarmed attack that deals 1d6 piercing damage and has the versatile S trait; or a tail unarmed attack that deals 1d6 bludgeoning damage and has the backswing trait. Each of these unarmed attacks is in the brawling weapon group
As noted Living Weapon is the standard format, lacking any action tags, simply giving you the attacks in your toolkit, like weapons. Morphic Strike is the only exception I know of. Putting the action tags beside each variant says (to me), "here's the action you spend, giving you the Strike mentioned above with the traits listed here."
Why else include the action tags? Until that's solved/removed, the feat's giving you an action. Not one action, or the feat itself would have an action tag, but one from a set of actions (w/ separate traits), hence the list (though I find no issue w/ calling them all Morphic Strike X). Them being an action also explains why Paizo added the clarification about Handwraps, which would be unnecessary if the ability simply gave you an unarmed attack.
Hmm, Battle Forms do make an interesting example.
It's unfortunate that the language around unarmed attacks overlaps w/ itself. We have unarmed attacks we make unarmed attacks with. And we take a Strike action, but can be given (types of) Strikes too.
Hopefully Paizo will rewrite that feat (if a Rare Ancestry even is on their radar) to where you gain the unarmed attacks period. (That is if they intend it to be like you're saying.) As of now the language supports both interpretations, and yes, is a mediocre feat at best under mine. But the extra language re: Handwraps seems unnecessary otherwise...but that's also occurred before. Oy. Yay that it's Rare, nothing I'll have to adjudicate!
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Yikes, the text of Morphic Strike is rather rough.
I agree w/ Castilliano that the text does unambiguously present each variant as a specific action, which would seriously limit their usefulness.
However, I also think the text contradicts itself, allowing the GM to rule the action diamond as a formatting error from someone used to writing monster blocks.
The above text before the option list unambiguously adds a new unarmed attack, and fills in more than enough gaps to let it work as a normal (and Flurry, etc, compatible) unarmed attack.
.
To rephrase a bit, listing a bestiary style special attack with an action diamond contradicts the text saying "You gain a melee unarmed Strike depending..."
This leaves the reader needing to look for the RaI.
In my opinion, it is rather easy to say the actual meaning of putting an action diamond in the bullet list was overlooked. And not that the above text incorrectly discussed the feat's function.