Empirate
First Post
It's actually really easy to get sky-high unarmed base damage as a Monk. Instead of the feat, he could go for a Necklace of Natural Attacks enchanted with bad things. Or for a custom item of Expansion or Giant Size or Greater Mighty Wallop (or Expansion/Giant Size AND GMW...). It's not the damage itself you should worry about, but the ease with which it can be dealt, at pretty good range, and the fact that most monster's defenses won't withstand that kind of beating for too long.
Still, let's assume you allow the feat as written up by your player.
We're talking about roughly 67 points of damage per attack, on a PC that can make ranged touch attacks at +15/+15/+10/+5 or so (assuming Dex 16 for no particular reason; he seems Str-focused). That's probably going to hit around thrice per round, for 200+ points of damage/round (less with DR). Against level-appropriate foes (CR 16 sound about right?), he'll do between 60% and 100% their full HP total in damage. Note that he can't move if he's doing this, and he takes AoOs if something's already threatening him, since it's a ranged attack. Range is pretty good, though, coming out to 120' for this guy. This means he can one-shot or two-shot a level-appropriate foe a lot of the time, if the beastie doesn't kill him first.
Actually, this doesn't sound too bad to me; at this level, most PCs have methods of one-shotting or two-shotting a lot of level-appropriate stuff. It's basically expected, since most level-appropriate stuff can do similar bad things to PCs. What's more, if the Monk didn't have such a tool at his disposal, he would be hard put to it to contribute much in combat. Since he's mostly useless out of combat, that'd be rough on the player.
However, I'd still prefer my reworking of the feat (btw, I didn't look into prereqs at all, just copied them over), for a number of reasons. First off, the wonky mechanics and wording are entirely unnecessary, since what the player wants is a relatively straightforward effect. Second, I think my version is actually more flexible a lot of the time: you don't have to keep still, and you don't have to take a full-round action, which can be a big boon. Force damage is also a very nice perk. Third, I think the cost of using the original feat was too low (a Stunning Fist use per full attack, by my reading), while the Wis times/day thing seems arbitrary and unneeded if there already IS a cost. So increasing the cost while granting more flexibility seemed the way to go. Fourth, the huge range seemed excessive to me, as it has the potential to make movement irrelevant, thus boring. A shorter range mixes things up a bit.
I feel that my version of the feat is more readily understandable, more usable, and forces more interesting tactical decisions on the player, while maintaining similar power levels. Now, the PC CAN go nova and expend a lot of Stunning Fist uses to do lots of damage at once. He doesn't get freebies, though, and he needs to be pretty close to the action (which is probably where he should be anyway). This version is a nice option, but not an automatic go-to in every combat. Which is what a feat should be IMO.
Still, let's assume you allow the feat as written up by your player.
We're talking about roughly 67 points of damage per attack, on a PC that can make ranged touch attacks at +15/+15/+10/+5 or so (assuming Dex 16 for no particular reason; he seems Str-focused). That's probably going to hit around thrice per round, for 200+ points of damage/round (less with DR). Against level-appropriate foes (CR 16 sound about right?), he'll do between 60% and 100% their full HP total in damage. Note that he can't move if he's doing this, and he takes AoOs if something's already threatening him, since it's a ranged attack. Range is pretty good, though, coming out to 120' for this guy. This means he can one-shot or two-shot a level-appropriate foe a lot of the time, if the beastie doesn't kill him first.
Actually, this doesn't sound too bad to me; at this level, most PCs have methods of one-shotting or two-shotting a lot of level-appropriate stuff. It's basically expected, since most level-appropriate stuff can do similar bad things to PCs. What's more, if the Monk didn't have such a tool at his disposal, he would be hard put to it to contribute much in combat. Since he's mostly useless out of combat, that'd be rough on the player.
However, I'd still prefer my reworking of the feat (btw, I didn't look into prereqs at all, just copied them over), for a number of reasons. First off, the wonky mechanics and wording are entirely unnecessary, since what the player wants is a relatively straightforward effect. Second, I think my version is actually more flexible a lot of the time: you don't have to keep still, and you don't have to take a full-round action, which can be a big boon. Force damage is also a very nice perk. Third, I think the cost of using the original feat was too low (a Stunning Fist use per full attack, by my reading), while the Wis times/day thing seems arbitrary and unneeded if there already IS a cost. So increasing the cost while granting more flexibility seemed the way to go. Fourth, the huge range seemed excessive to me, as it has the potential to make movement irrelevant, thus boring. A shorter range mixes things up a bit.
I feel that my version of the feat is more readily understandable, more usable, and forces more interesting tactical decisions on the player, while maintaining similar power levels. Now, the PC CAN go nova and expend a lot of Stunning Fist uses to do lots of damage at once. He doesn't get freebies, though, and he needs to be pretty close to the action (which is probably where he should be anyway). This version is a nice option, but not an automatic go-to in every combat. Which is what a feat should be IMO.
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