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Message: <blockquote data-quote="3d6" data-source="post: 2859493" data-attributes="member: 12715">Well, a search of the SRD reveals that the phrase "melee damage roll" occurs in 3 places: bull's strength, solid fog, and the Power Attack feat itself.Bull's strength says that modifying melee damage rolls is a "usual benefit" of a bonus to a creature's Strength score. The actual entry for Strength says that you add your Strength modifier to "damage rolls when using a melee weapon or a thrown weapon (including a sling)". From that text, I would conclude that a melee damage roll is a damage roll made when using a melee weapon.An unarmed strike is not a melee weapon. It is listed as an “unarmed attack” on the weapons table in the equipment section, while everything else is listed as a light melee weapon, a one-handed melee weapon, etc. Further more, the “unarmed attack” section states that “Striking for damage with [an unarmed strike] is much like attacking with a melee weapon”, implying that an unarmed strike is not a melee weapon. Weapon Focus and Weapon Specialization also imply this. However, the entry for the unarmed strike in the equipment section states that "the damage from an unarmed strike is considered weapon damage for the purposes of effects that give you a bonus on weapon damage rolls". I would conclude from this that although an unarmed strike deals “weapon damage”, it does not deal “melee weapon damage”, as it is not a melee weapon.Now, from this text alone, I would conclude that Power Attack never grants bonus damage to unarmed strikes, as an unarmed strike deals “weapon damage” not “melee weapon damage”. Power Attack grants a bonus on melee damage rolls, but unarmed strikes do not make melee damage rolls. However, Power Attack explicitly works with unarmed strikes. From this, I conclude that Power Attack grants a bonus to two things—melee damage rolls and weapon damage rolls in the specific case of an unarmed strike. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if it is a “melee damage roll” when dealing with unarmed strikes, an unarmed strike never makes a melee damage roll.Regarding the "normal" question, if normal for a Medium creature is defined as 1d3 + Strength modifier damage, then normal is 1d3 + Strength modifier damage and if you deal normal damage you deal 1d3 + Strength modifier damage, regardless of any other circumstances (like being a high-level monk). That's taking the text much too literally, but that is what it says. If I had my way, we'd just throughly thrash any game designer who used "normal" in rules text.</blockquote>

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