Monks & the Improved Natural Attack Feat

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

I'm working on understanding how damage types increase. In my research, I ran across the idea that the following text may interact with a particular feat in an interesting way.

A monk’s unarmed strike is treated both as a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either manufactured weapons or natural weapons.

Comparing that with this feat:

Improved Natural Attack [General]
Prerequisite: Natural weapon, base attack bonus +4.

Benefit: Choose one of the creature’s natural attack forms. The damage for this natural weapon increases by one step, as if the creature’s size had increased by one category: 1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 6d6, 8d6, 12d6.

A weapon or attack that deals 1d10 points of damage increases as follows: 1d10, 2d8, 3d8, 4d8, 6d8, 8d8, 12d8.

This feat may be taken multiple times, but each time it applies to a different natural attack.

It was suggested, elsewhere, that this feat would stack with a monk's unarmed damage. Is that true?

 

[Aus_Snow]

Again?!

For the love of any gods you may or may not love, why.

j/k. proceed. . .

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Sorry, Aus... I didn't realize that this was a commonly asked topic... I usually hang out in house rules and in general.

My apologies.

 

[Cheiromancer]

There were a few threads, but this was the biggest:

Human Monks Can Take Improved Natural Attack?

Happy reading!

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

Thanks, Cheiromancer!

 

[Drowbane]

My group allows it (no, we don't give a damn whether or not its "RAW") cause "monks suck anyways".

 

[Aus_Snow]

Sorry, Aus... I didn't realize that this was a commonly asked topic... I usually hang out in house rules and in general.

My apologies.

Hey, I was only kidding. I wasn't meaning to come across the way I probably did. My bad.

Yeah, it's a common enough debate, but then that's true of many of them.

 

[Hrothgar Rannúlfr]

No problem, Aus.

Our group is trying to "fix" the more martial classes' damage outputs in a non-magical way. The Improved Natural Attack feat seems like a good basis for some house ruled feats that would affect manufactured weapons in the same way. And, monks really wouldn't "suck" (as bad) if they could apply both sets of feats to improving their unarmed damage by two or three die steps.

I'm finding that a lot of the stuff we've been trying to do is already in the rules, but there are so many rules that it's sometimes difficult to sort through them.

 

[Infiniti2000]

IMO, you'd be much better off by house ruling monks to be a martial class, i.e. give them a full BAB like every single other martial class. I guarantee that if you ask a monk whether he'd be happier if treated like a fighter or have bigger hands and feet, he'll say the former.

Once you up the BAB, you'll see how absurd allowing INA would be (for example, try allowing it for the fighter's weapon and see if anyone takes that feat).

In short, fix the cause of the problem (monk's suck), don't add to it.

 

[DungeonMaester]

No, according the Monster Manual pg 312, RAW says no.

It says 'A Natural Weapon is a physical part of the creature.'

How ever in the second paragraph: Creatures can not receive extra attacks from a high base attack bonus.

Monks get bonus attacks from a higher attack bonus, so they don't. However, I'd houserule it in.

---Rusty