I'm curious about the interpretation of the wording of the Feral Combat Training feat, namely the last part:

Benefit: Choose one of your natural weapons. While using the selected natural weapon, you can apply the effects of feats that have Improved Unarmed Strike as a prerequisite, as well as effects that augment an unarmed strike.

Would the Monk's increase in unarmed damage be classified as an "augment" to unarmed strikes for the purpose of the feat? My initial inclination was "no", but now I'm not so sure.

The wording implies feats that augment unarmed strikes is meant as feats which enhance/alter unarmed strikes. It is meant so that you could, for instance, add *bleed damage to a tail/hoof/etc. attack should you have Belier's Bite, for example.

* = edit
This message was last edited by the user at 23:28, Sun 02 Feb 2014.

Yeah, it includes unarmed damage. There's a FAQ on their website to that effect.

http://paizo.com/paizo/faq/v5748nruor1g1#v5748eaic9rbe

Ah, thank you very much for the link. Certainly makes a Catfolk monk with claw blades pretty good.

Wow, I would have ruled against that. That's quite powerful for a lot of builds, though the Nat Attackers have been looking for ways around that for a long time.

In reply to NineWillRule (msg # 5):



Please note, the bold portion was done for my emphasis.  The feat allows you to treat a single natural weapon, basically allowing you to use that single natural attack as part of a flury of blows, or using it to preform functions normally requiring the use of a monk weapon.

This effect doesn't specify it allows the monk to use all natural attacks, only one.  The SRD also points out that this allows the weapon to be used as 'PART' of a fury of blows, but does not increase the number of attacks the monk gets.  If, with this feat, a monk gets 4 attacks in a normal flurry of blows, she could use one with her knee, one with her foot, one with her natural weapon and one with her shuriken.  All of these attacks can do the monk unarmed strike damage except the one where the shuriken was being thrown.  In theory, if the natural weapon to begin with has a greater damage, it would be able to do the greater damage.  (but not both)

The feat wouldn't seem to do that much for a catfolk monk right off the bat?  They could do the same amount of damage, with or without their claws, so I am uncertain the significant advantage this is suppose to open up?

In theory, a catfolk could use one claw to do their unarmed strike damage, but they could do the same amount of damage with their knee if they so choose. (bludgeoning damage though) trying to use two weapon fighting or multi-attack, the feat only would affect (as defined above) only applies to one natural weapon's attacks, so you would only get the boost to one of the attacks (and any iterative attacks using that same weapon) so you would have been better off using a Flurry of blows, which would have allowed the use of it for all the attacks.

I suppose the most significant impact would be for some race which has some kind of special damage it produces, poison, disease, etc. of which HP damage is normally far less significant.

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Nothing about Flurry of Blows says that every single attack in it has to come from a different source. A Monk could, theoretically, use all his attacks in a flurry of blows to head butt, or with a single sai. Therefor, a Monk with claws selected for Feral Combat Training could make a Flurry of Slashes if he so chose.

What makes this powerful for a catfolk monk is more long term, namely if they are use the item claw blades. Claw blades are not weapons in and of themselves, but effectively treat your claws as though they were a masterwork weapon, and can be enchanted like weapons to augment your claw attacks. That gives a higher level monk the full unarmed attack dice, higher than any weapon dice for the size at end game, and the full potential +10 weapon enchantment (+5 enchant, +5 abilities) where the Amulet of Mighty Fists is limited to a total +5 bonus, and they can use that neck slot for something else entirely, like for an Amulet of Natural Armor.

I'm pretty sure it works with one type of natural attack. So if you pick claw, it works with all your claws. It the way I've always seen it done.

Two, if you're a human that took catfolk heritage, you can take that martial versatile feat to allow the feat to work with all natural weapons. Then it'll work with your gores, bites, claws, hooves, tail slaps, slams ect...