Natural attacks and Class attacks confusion

[Cameron]

Didn't this tangent start with an argument about whether you could use your unarmed strike as two weapons for TWF? It certainly isn't 'generally accepted'.


glass.

Unless you are saying that a gauntlet gives you a lethal kick, then you'd have to accept that unarmed strike is a *class* of weapons, not a single weapon.

Ball is in your court.


(And you might want to read through the posts, as this one is done and Hyp lost)

 

[Hypersmurf]

(And you might want to read through the posts, as this one is done and Hyp lost)

How so? I agreed that, read literally, a gauntlet allows your kick to deal lethal damage.

-Hyp.

 

[Cameron]

How so? I agreed that, read literally, a gauntlet allows your kick to deal lethal damage.

-Hyp.

You had a different opinion initially, and argued for it, until it was pointed out that you were using double standards.

It is not a shameful or bad thing to admit a loss. That's how you learn.

 

[Hypersmurf]

You had a different opinion initially, and argued for it, until it was pointed out that you were using double standards.

Hmm? I still have a different opinion of how a gauntlet affects a kick, but not if the text is read literally.

If only I'd realised that simply declaring victory was sufficient, we could have saved pages!

-Hyp.

 

[Cameron]

Hmm? I still have a different opinion of how a gauntlet affects a kick, but not if the text is read literally.

If only I'd realised that simply declaring victory was sufficient, we could have saved pages!

-Hyp.

And yet, you advocate reading the text literally for Monk unarmed strikes, etc.

Make up your mind, yo!

 

[Hypersmurf]

And yet, you advocate reading the text literally for Monk unarmed strikes, etc.

I've said - more than once - that I can sympathise with a non-literal reading of Monk unarmed strike... your reading, in fact, wherein a monk's off-hand unarmed strikes gain full Str bonus to damage.

But there's a difference between reading non-literally, and outright contradiction, and the FAQ's answer crosses that line and leaves it off in the dust somewhere.

-Hyp.

 

[RigaMortus2]

If only I'd realised that simply declaring victory was sufficient, we could have saved pages!

-Hyp.

You didn't know that? You can even declare you won... IN YOUR MIND!!! It's freakin awesome!

I won the thread

 

[eamon]

I've said - more than once - that I can sympathise with a non-literal reading of Monk unarmed strike... your reading, in fact, wherein a monk's off-hand unarmed strikes gain full Str bonus to damage.

But there's a difference between reading non-literally, and outright contradiction, and the FAQ's answer crosses that line and leaves it off in the dust somewhere.

Well, the way I see it either you just read the sentence literally (which, as I pointed out, means the text is quite misleading), or you don't. If you choose to read "off-hand" in the monk's blurb to be semantically different from "off-hand" in TWF, then there's no particularly convincing reason not to apply their respective mechanics independently - that is, the monk's text clarifies that merely striking with a different appendage doesn't warrant a penalty, but isn't referring to TWF when stating that, and TWF, when speaking of penalties to off-hands is only referring to off-hand as those extra attacks it grants, and doesn't distinguish more precisely simply because it too was written for the general case and not the monks specific case.

So if you're willing to postulate that the text wasn't written so precisely that it can be literally (almost programmatically) interpreted, and thus need to interprete the intent of the rule non-literally, it's not very odd that the rule texts are written from the point of view of the common use, and that they're mostly indepentant when interacting.

It's definitely grasping, granted, but if you don't ban the combination of TWF and monk unarmed strike, then you'll need to interpret the combination somehow, and mechanically the safest is to consider them independent. I mean, if I came across an aberration that used its legs instead of arms to wield weapons, I'd apply the same conceptual approach to TWF as for the monk.

 

[eamon]

I think I've figured out why the monk +TWF is so screwed up: it's a mistake WotC made from the 3.0 to 3.5 conversion.

If you remember, a 20th level monk in 3.0 had an odd iterative attack progression: +15/+12/+9/+6/+3.

The familiar flavor text is in a slightly different order, but very similar. For instance the second paragraph reads:

A monk's attacks may be with either fist interchangeably or even from elbows, knees and feet. There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed.

And what's the very next sentence read?

A monk fighting with a one-handed weapon can make an unarmed strike as an off-hand attack, but she suffers the standard penalties for two-weapon fighting (see [...]). Likewise, a monk with a weapon (other than a special monk weapon [1]) in her off hand gets an extra attack with that weapon but suffers the usual penalties for two-weapon fighting and can't strike [2] with a flurry of blows (see [...]).

First off, note that the old monk's attack bonus closely resembles the new monk's flurry-of-blows, and that the old monk's flurry of blows was nothing more than exactly TWF but then only for monk-special weapons. Without the old flurry, a monk using TWF and a weapon is very very similar to the new monk with TWF and flurry, and similarly, a new monk with TWF (for unarmed attacks) and flurry is very similar to an old monk simply with flurry.

I think what happened is that they botched the conversion. The old special unarmed attack progression went the way of the dodo, and in those reforms, the specific two-weapon fighting text got lost. But note: the 3.0 monk explicitly said both that "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed" and "A monk [...] can make an unarmed strike as an off-hand attack, but she suffers the standard penalties for TWF"

The old situation was clear: the monk could make up to five unarmed attacks, and use off-hand weapons with TWF (and by extension, ITWF and GTWF) for up to 8 attacks per round. The new situation simply fails to precisely specify what is and what is not possible, but I think it is clear that the sentence "There is no such thing as an off-hand attack for a monk striking unarmed" was copy-pasted to the new revision from the old, where it definitely wasn't meant literally. I don't think it is meant literally in 3.5 either.

If that's so, then I think the FAQ's interpretation is the most balanced one, for although it does add rules (which should properly be in an errata), I think the rules added are consistent and within the spirit of the written rules, and finally fill a gap in the PHB - i.e. they don't contradict it.

 

[glass]

Unless you are saying that a gauntlet gives you a lethal kick, then you'd have to accept that unarmed strike is a *class* of weapons, not a single weapon.

Ball is in your court.

(And you might want to read through the posts, as this one is done and Hyp lost)

I have read through the thread. The ball's gone, Hyp already knocked it out of the park (to slightly mix metaphors).


glass.