Urpriest
2013-01-26, 05:25 PM
In 3.5, it's generally acknowledged that as long as a creature is reasonably intelligent they can make unarmed strikes. In particular, having natural weapons does not disqualify one from making unarmed strikes, and one can make a full attack with unarmed iteratives alongside natural weapons as secondary attacks.
However, there are people who believe that natural weapons replace unarmed strikes, so that a creature with natural weapons cannot also make unarmed strikes. There isn't a huge amount of support for this in 3.5, but it's a somewhat understandable subject of confusion, since you would expect a creature with claws or the like to simply be making more effective unarmed attacks (if you weren't familiar with how the natural weapon rules work, anyway).
Now the meat of my question: in Pathfinder, these sorts of misunderstandings are occasionally enshrined into the rules (see, for example, the Flurry is now TWF and Zen Archer doesn't work anymore screwup). I'm considering making a character with natural weapons, and I'd like to make sure they still work in Pathfinder as they used to in 3.5. Are there any rules stopping Pathfinder characters with natural weapons from also making unarmed strikes?
However, there are people who believe that natural weapons replace unarmed strikes, so that a creature with natural weapons cannot also make unarmed strikes. There isn't a huge amount of support for this in 3.5, but it's a somewhat understandable subject of confusion, since you would expect a creature with claws or the like to simply be making more effective unarmed attacks (if you weren't familiar with how the natural weapon rules work, anyway).
Now the meat of my question: in Pathfinder, these sorts of misunderstandings are occasionally enshrined into the rules (see, for example, the Flurry is now TWF and Zen Archer doesn't work anymore screwup). I'm considering making a character with natural weapons, and I'd like to make sure they still work in Pathfinder as they used to in 3.5. Are there any rules stopping Pathfinder characters with natural weapons from also making unarmed strikes?