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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 4018338" data-attributes="member: 51942">There is no in-game definition of "effect".  That term is used extremely frequently in D&D, and with various meanings derived from the plain english dictionary definition.  There's no meaningful distinction I can find between supernatural abilities, spells, skills, skill tricks and feats from the perspective of an "effect" - they all have some game-mechanical "consequence" after all.Traps - you "receive a saving throw to mitigate its effects" (DMG 67)Aging - "Aging Effects" (PHB index)Poison/Diseases - "Poisons, Diseases, and other effects can temporarily" (PHB10)Races - Half-Elf, PHB18 - "For Effects related to race, a half-elf is considered an elf" and "can use magic items that are only usable by elves" (prerequisites?)Class Abilities - Smite Evil - "...that is not evil, smite has no effect..."In plain English, the feat Improved Natural Attack simply "improves" natural attacks.  That's its effect.  How then, could a monk's unarmed strike fail to benefit - since it's considered a natural weapon for such purposes?A spell, just like a feat, is not by itself a single effect.  It can have prerequisites (i.e. a "Target:" line), and it can have multiple consequences.  The difference between an instantaneous spell effect and a feat is slim-to-nonexistent.  Is a supernatural ability an "effect"?  An extraordinary ability?  Assuming these abilities actually have consequences - yes.Effects which specifically improve natural weapons are those which the monk gains access to. If they weren't specific to natural weapons, the monk's exception would have no effect.  Any effect which is specific to natural weapons, and thus limited to effecting natural weapons (as opposed to everything else), clearly requires a natural weapon to have any consequence, and thus has a natural weapon as prerequisite.  So, the monk's exceptional ability to benefit from effects which apply to natural weapons is equivalent to saying that a monk's unarmed fist is considered a natural weapon if the consequence ("effect") is beneficial.The monk's rules ask the reader to interpret an effect and judge whether it is an improvement or not. The rules are only relevant for those effects which apply only to natural weapons.  In these relevant cases, the effect is permitted if and only if you judge it beneficial. It's disingenuous to distinguish between the prerequisite and the effect, for that would mean that no prerequisites would be waived, since any effect deemed beneficial would nevertheless have the separate requirement that it applies solely to natural weapons.  Specifically, Magic Fang (which can be cast on any living creature) would not apply, since although the rule would allow the Magic Fang's beneficial effect, it would not allow you to choose the unarmed strike to apply it to, since the unarmed strike would be considered a natural weapon only for purposes of the effect (the +1 enhancement bonus), and not for purposes of choosing which weapon to apply it to.  This interpretation of the rule applied to Magic Fang comes down to absolutely nothing, and is in direct contradiction with the PHB - and yet, you're proposing to apply exactly that logic to Improved Natural Attack!The only way the monk's unarmed strike rule can ever have effect is by waiving the requirement for a natural weapon.  The rule doesn't limit the requirement nor the effect in any way other than that the effect must be an improvement to the natural weapon, and that the requirement to be waived must be a requirement for a natural weapon.<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Any effect of limited applicability has a prerequisite by definition.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">There's no basis to assume that a feat is not an effect.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The PHB2 (RAW), its errata, the FAQ (potentially RAI), and the RotG support the notion that INA is applicable to a monk's unarmed strike.</li> </ul>Probably you'll agree that some prerequisites (namely those in some way "part of the effect") should be addressed by the rule, but perhaps that other, more external prerequisites should not be.  This distinction would allow Magic Fang (whose "more external" Target: line only mentions a living creature), but disallow Improved Natural Attack (whose "more external" prerequisites section does mention natural attacks).  There's no basis for choosing which prerequisites can so be waived an which cannot, however, so that makes this interpretation problematic.  Furthermore, beyond being ill-defined, such an interpretation leads to odd results:  consider a warforged or any other creature with a natural attack and +3 bab (which thus clearly satisfies the prereq. of INA).  Assuming your interpretation that a feat is not an effect but can have several effects, this would then perversely imply that a warforged can take the feat because of his slam, but then apply the feat's beneficial effect to his unarmed strike (assuming he is a monk)!My take: there's plenty of evidence that INA should be applicable to a monk's unarmed strike.  There's an extremely short rules blurb which indicates a monk can benefit from "stuff" that improves natural weapons, and it's possible to simply apply that to all parts of the game without difficult distinctions.  In other words, there's a straightforward interpretation, and a number of explicit examples, and all these work fine.  Alternatively, there's a considerably less straightforward interpretation which requires a very specific literal reading - without any examples supporting it, and without any argument as to why this reading of "effect" should be more valid than any other, and without any precision as to what kind of prerequisites can be waived and which cannot.In the face of that choice, my choice isn't formed so much by the fact that the rules distinguish clearly between these two options - but by the preference for the simpler, less complex (since it doesn't require implying specific rules-meaning to common words such as effect, and since it doesn't require distinguishing between prerequisites) and less controversial (since WotC has multiple publications using it) interpretation.</blockquote>

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