Monk Good Aligned Natural Weapons

[kovoaxp]

I am in a campaign and my character is a monk. The campaign revolves around evil outsiders (devils and demons) and I am running into an issue with my monk's unarmed strikes. To overcome damage reduction, the unarmed strikes would need to be good aligned and/or treated as cold steel. Is there anything out there that could accomplish this? The Bless Weapon spell can not align natural weapons. I am not familiar with anything and I have combed through several resources.

Thanks

 

[Runestar]

BOED has a feat which lets your natural weapons be treated as good. Not sure about metallic drs though.

 

[frankthedm]

I am in a campaign and my character is a monk. The campaign revolves around evil outsiders (devils and demons) and I am running into an issue with my monk's unarmed strikes. To overcome damage reduction, the unarmed strikes would need to be good aligned and/or treated as cold steel. Is there anything out there that could accomplish this? The Bless Weapon spell can not align natural weapons. I am not familiar with anything and I have combed through several resources.

Thanks

This is why you have proficiency in monk weapons. To me it seemed fairly clear there was designer intent a monk in your situation needed to pick up a pair of nunchaku or some other monk weapon. "Align Weapon: You can’t cast this spell on a natural weapon, such as an unarmed strike. "

But since preconceived notions of balance goes out the window to sell books, there probably should be an Align fang spell in the Spell Compendium.

As for a magical means of bestowing the property of cold iron, IMHO that goes against the magic resistant flavor of Cold Iron.

 

[Shin Okada]

Undead Bane Weapon spell (Spell Compendium, Cleric 4/Paladin 3) can make your Unarmed Strike a good aligned one.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

If you check out the link in my sig, you'll see:

1) there are several Feats that let you expand a PC's list of Monk Weapons- mostly from Eberron and DCv1. The OA version of the Monk (even before the 3.5 update in Dragon #318) also had a broader list of Monk Weapons than the PHB version...the only change in that class over the 2 books, as I recall (well, besides relaxing multiclass restrictions).

2) there is a Feat in Monte Cook's AU/AE (if your DM lets you use it) called Hands as Weapons that lets you enchant your unarmed strikes as if they were manufactured weapons (thus avoiding the debate over scope of the "treated as" language in the Monk section). Its not exactly Cold Iron, but you could make them Axiomatic or otherwise aligned.

3) the Kensai class lets you do this as well.

4) there may be other base-class variants or PrCls that may let you do what you want. (Yes, I assembled the database, but I don't have all of that info memorized.)

 

[Starbuck_II]

This is why you have proficiency in monk weapons. To me it seemed fairly clear there was designer intent a monk in your situation needed to pick up a pair of nunchaku or some other monk weapon. "Align Weapon: You can’t cast this spell on a natural weapon, such as an unarmed strike. "

.

Um, you may not know this, but that only applies to non-monks.
Monks get to treat their unarmed strikes as Natural or manufactored weapon when beneficial (thus they can get Align weapon cast on them).

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

There's also an alt class feature in C.Champion to trade ki strike (magic) for a holy ki strike. IIRC, it makes all your unarmed attacks good aligned and deal +1d6 damage against evil creatures.

There's also align fang or something similar spell on the Druid list (Spell Compendium?), but as noted, align weapon works just fine for a monk.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Far as cold iron goes, it's not perfectly defined by RAW, but in the past my groups have allowed unarmed strikes to count as cold iron, silver, or whatever, if wearing a gauntlet made out of such material (and you could probably do similar things for cold iron plated boots or adamantine elbow guards, whatever). Note an unarmed strike can be with any part of the body. So, say for silver, which you'd not want to use unless you had to, if it were on your left hand guantlet, simply don't punch with it at all except when needed.

Note that regular gauntlets (as opposed to spiked ones) are basically just unarmed strikes that do lethal (and a monk would not be able to do non-lethal with a gauntlet hand). So, while not spelled out by RAW, it seems a reasonable interpretation.
Weapons :: d20srd.org
(And no, monks are not proficient with gauntlets, so that means multiclass, spend a feat, or take a -4 attacking with it and REALLY only use it in emergencies.)

 

[frankthedm]

Um, you may not know this, but that only applies to non-monks.
Monks get to treat their unarmed strikes as Natural or manufactored weapon when beneficial (thus they can get Align weapon cast on them).

my, my, I've gotten rusty. Had utterly forgotten that 3.5 addition to the ruleset.

 

[Shin Okada]

For Adamantine and Alchemical Silver there are items in Magic Item Compendium. But I cannot find any item to make your unarmed strike Cold Iron for the purpose of overcoming DR.

As already suggested, Kensai class feature will solve this problem. I will go for Transmuting property. Which will allow you to overcome ANY DR 1 round after you hit the foe. You can even penetrate DR/epic in this way.