Hypersmurf said:
For excluding kicks from dealing lethal damage with gauntlets. No inference is required for "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed" to mean "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed".
Actually, that section almost certainly cannot be read to imply that it's impossible to make off-hand attacks. Notice that the flurry of blows does not say this, but the unarmed attack. Normal unarmed attacks (and certainly anyone using IUS) can use TWF. It's counterintuitive to suggest that the monk's "Unarmed Strike" class feature is actually a reduction in power since it forbids TWF. Reading that paragraph to mean that even when not using flurry, a monk cannot TWF is possible, but counterintuitive. The context of the line you quote is a description saying how a monk can even strike from elbows, knees and feet, and is illustrating the flexibility of the monk's unarmed strike as the reason a monk always gets full strength bonus. In other words, a monk can't make an off-hand attack not because he can't make an attack with his off-hand, but because there's nothing "off" about either hand
. Cameron's inference that this means a monk can TWF with full STR bonus to off-hand attacks is thus far more logical than the inference that he is forbidden from doing any off-hand attacks.
The above discussion is independent of flurry, however, which is what the FAQ allows as well. That's the only questionable part here; can flurry of blows be combined with other attack-sequence enhancements such as TWF and natural weaponry, as the FAQ says?
The flurry text wasn't written with anything out-of-the-ordinary in mind (as so much of the PHB). It would be odd to not allow a monk to use natural attacks in addition to the normal iterative attacks when a fighter can use them in addition to a normal iterative attacks, but if you take small sections of the flurry's descriptive text and interpret them without context, that's definitely a logical conclusion. However, the text is trying to explain how the normal flurry of blows works, and in the normal case, there aren't any attacks outside the iterative set, and certainly no natural attacks. From the perspective from this normal case, it makes perfect sense to say that a flurry can only use monk special weapons.
Since the monk's rule text simply doesn't cover corner-cases at all, you'll need to infer your own interpretation. Does the rule which allows natural attacks in addition to iterative attacks take precedence, or does the flurry-blurb disallowing non-monk weapons take precedence? Can a monk TWF?
The FAQ's interpretation is particularly lenient, allowing a monk to combine everything in the most positve fashion. I can clearly image drawing the line far earlier, and if I had to come up with an interpretation on the fly by myself, I would choose a more conservative interpretation just to make sure I'm not allowing all kinds of unintended consequences. This discussion, however, has cleared up to me that allowing these extensions is not a game-balance issue, and with that important issue aside, going with the FAQ simply makes sense. You can try to make all kinds of rules, but the FAQ is the closest thing we have to designer intent at the moment, and I try to avoid all rules which contradict written rules unless there is some clear reason to do so.
There is no game-balance reason I can see to ban natural attacks and TWF from flurrying monks. There is no rule-intent clear in the blurb; on the contrary, the FAQ states the intent as best we can determine.
Without the FAQ, I would agree with you Hyp, and choose a conservative, minimal-impact ruling. With the FAQ (and realizing that more character options is a good thing), I can't help but lean the other way.
