Stunning Fist: The Swiss Army Strike

[Kevlimin_Soulaxe]

Can anyone list, give me a link to, or at the very least point me in the direction of all the feats that make use of Stunning Fist attempts?

[JaronK]

Google for Crystal Keep and check the feats section. There's actually a catagory for "stunning fist feats."

JaronK

[Kevlimin_Soulaxe]

How often do they update that? It's lacking PHB II stuff...

[JaronK]

Yeah, it's missing a few books, but it's got all the older stuff, including dragon feats.

JaronK

[Portent]

Heh, just a few days ago I was working with a player in my group to create some new style for his Monk character, and went through the books I have to check out the Stunning Fist related feats. There's probably quite a bit missing, but ah well. I don't remember all the books these came from, unfortunately. I'm very sure everything here comes from a WotC source (a book they made or from Dragon magazine), so you should be able to find what book they came from at the Wizards feat index:

edit: Dragon 318, which contains the OA update information to 3.5, doesn't list any of the feats below that come from OA as having any changes, so they should be fine for 3.5 as is. Ah, and I forgot to drop this URL, which has a lot of feat information; just enter the book you want on the right hand side, and there you go: http://realmshelps.dandello.net/datafind/feats.shtml

First, the things that directly affect Stunning Fist:
Stunning Fist (the key to it all, PHB)
Extra Stunning (+3 stunning attacks/day, CW)
Pain Touch (those hit by your stun attacks are nauseated for the round after they're stunned, CW)
Rapid Stunning (can stun or use an attack that uses up stunning attempts more than 1/round, CW)

Now all the tricky stuff you can do with usages of Stunning Fist:
Falling Star Strike (use a stun to blind someone with an unarmed attack, OA)
Fiery Fists (use a stun to gain fire damage to your unarmed attacks, PHBII)
Fiery Ki Defense (can use a stun to cloak yourself in fire, PHBII)
Fists of Iron (use a stun to deal +1d6 damage on an unarmed attack, CW)
Freezing the Lifeblood (use a stun to paralyze someone with an unarmed attack, OA)
Ki Blast (use 2 stuns to make a ranged attack, PHBII)
Northern Fist Mastery (use a stun to make a ranged attack, which can convey a Stunning Fist, Falling Star Strike, Freezing the Lifeblood, Unbalancing Strike, or Pain Touch effect, or forgo this to deal extra damage, Dragon magazine)
Pharaoh's Fist (use a stun to cause the opponent hit by an unarmed attack and all creatures adjacent to that opponent to be stunned, Sandstorm)
Rattlesnake Strike (use a stun to mimic the effects of mild viper venom with an unarmed strike, Sandstorm)
Ring the Golden Bell (1 + Wis mod per day, make a ranged attack; does not spend usages of stunning fist, Dragon magazine)
Serpent Fang (use a stun to make a short range attack, Sandstorm)
Southern Star Mastery (use a stun to knock someone back 10 ft. after hitting them with an unarmed attack, Dragon magazine)
Weakening Touch (use a stun to impose a -6 penalty to an enemy's Strength from an unarmed attack, CW)

Hope this helps you out.

[Were-Sandwich]

I've always wanted to play a nerve-strike focused monk, with all the Stunning Fist feats. Maybe a skarn (for Nieztchian awesomeness)

[AtomicKitKat]

There was a variation printed in Class Acts last year(2006), involving the use of Stunning Fist to cure/inflict disease/poison, among other things.

[Person_Man]

A regular Monk using Touch of Golden Ice (book of Exhalted Deeds, every unarmed attack against an evil foe deals a ravage/poison, save or 1d4 Dex damage) and Freezing the Lifeblood is pretty damn powerful. Just make sure that at least one of your friends takes the Death Blow feat so that they can Coup de Grace as a standard action.

It's particularly fun to play a stunning death monk in a party with a Hexblade or Hexblade/Blackguard using his Dark Companion, Hex, Aura of Despair, and the Frightful Presence feat. It's quite easy for him to wrack up a -6 or better penelty to enemy saves.

[Were-Sandwich]

oooh . That sounds nasty.

You can use Stunning Fist feats on AoOs, right? I got the mental image of some guy running past an unarmed monk, the monk prodding him in the side as he goes past. The guy freezes, the the monk kicks him in the throat.

[Person_Man]

oooh . That sounds nasty.

You can use Stunning Fist feats on AoOs, right? I got the mental image of some guy running past an unarmed monk, the monk prodding him in the side as he goes past. The guy freezes, the the monk kicks him in the throat.

Yes, you can. But you can still only use one Stunning Fist attempt per round unless you have Rapid Stunning, and a Stunned character isn't helpless and can't be Coup de Graced. That's what makes Freezing the Lifeblood so uber - it lasts 1d4+1 rounds and paralyzes your enemy, rending them helpless, and thus susceptible to Coup de Grace. The only downside is that you need +10 BAB to qualify.

[Kevlimin_Soulaxe]

Thanks a lot everybody! That was what I needed and then some.

Feel free to continuing discussing stunning combinations and ideas for more feats...

[Were-Sandwich]

Why do non-monks only get 1 use per 4 levels? It sucks for anyone but a monk, when some of us want to build unarmed focused fighters. Or, for real uber-ness, a fighter who uses a Quarterstaff and Sudden Willow Strike. I like Quarterstaffs

[Person_Man]

Why do non-monks only get 1 use per 4 levels? It sucks for anyone but a monk, when some of us want to build unarmed focused fighters. Or, for real uber-ness, a fighter who uses a Quarterstaff and Sudden Willow Strike. I like Quarterstaffs

Because otherwise pretty much every full BAB class would take it and use it as the first attack of a full attack. Monks have lower BAB despite being a melee based class, so having more Stunning Fist uses and Flurry balances things out.

[Were-Sandwich]

Hmmm. The only way I could see it working would be a gestalt Fighter//Feat Rogue, taking all the stunning feats and Extra Stunning, plus Sudden Willow Strike. Too many feats.

[Dragonmuncher]

Slightly off topic, but how is it that Crystal Keep has like everything in D&D possible? Aren't all of those feats and such OGL?

[AtomicKitKat]

I heard CK was run by a guy who used to work for WotC and the deal was that he could list the feats, but not give the full text of it or something like that. I know the Prestige Class lists only give like the first 2 levels.

[Were-Sandwich]

Is it just me, or is WOTC seemingly against the idea of anyone except Monks engaging in unarmed combat? Stunning Fist: Useless for everyone else, due to lack of uses. I mean, would it really be THAT broken to allow 1/level uses to everyone? I mean you can only use it with unarmed attacks anyway, so it won't be that bad.

[Ikkitosen]

Maybe they limit Stunning Fist, but there's a feat that improves unarmed damage in ToB I think to help the non-monks. Quite nice.

[Matthew]

I heard CK was run by a guy who used to work for WotC and the deal was that he could list the feats, but not give the full text of it or something like that. I know the Prestige Class lists only give like the first 2 levels.

It's the nature of Copyright Laws and OGL, apparently, and what makes OSRIC possible. Tables aren't copyrighted, text is.

[MrNexx]

It's the nature of Copyright Laws and OGL, apparently, and what makes OSRIC possible. Tables aren't copyrighted, text is.

Actually, what makes OSRIC possible is the nature of the OGL. By carefully limiting themselves to language in the SRD, they can create a "new" game with features familiar to an old school crowd... so to speak. If you go through and strip out those things that are allowed under the SRD, there's not much that's left, and certainly not a cohesive whole or anything objectionable.

[Darrin]

It's the nature of Copyright Laws and OGL, apparently, and what makes OSRIC possible. Tables aren't copyrighted, text is.

Tables are 100% entirely copyrightable. Any graphic, image, or text rendered to permanent media is automatically copyrighted by the creator. That would include tables.

There's a few loopholes, such as reviews, educational purposes, and parody/satire, but those quickly lead into a lot of legal grey areas where the most expensive lawyer wins. This is where CrystalKeep toes the line very carefully or rather brazenly dances over it... if they only list a portion of the Prestige class, or if they describe the benefit of a feat using entirely their own wording rather than WotC's, they could claim "fair use". Allowing prospective buyers to look at examples of what's in a book before they commit to buying is a recognized practice of fair use.

The process by which a table was created... such as, "add 0.75 to the previous line, round down" or listing a series of numbers according to a formula (bonus = X / X - 5 / X - 10) is more firmly in the area of "system mechanics", which aren't copyrightable so long as they are fairly abstract. That would fall under patent law, but no one involved in the development of RPGs had quite enough foresight to try a patent application, so most of the basic concepts behind RPGs are actually in the public domain.

A more explicit example:

The actual text of, "Roll four 6-sided dice, and add the highest three dice" is copyrightable, particularly if it's been printed in a book. The concept or activity of using four random-number-generators to generate four values from 1 to 6, and then add the highest three together is not copyrightable. It may have been patentable a few decades ago, but would be nigh impossible nowadays.

Referring to the dice being rolled as "Hit Dice" or a "Saving Throw" is another branch of IP law entirely, Trademark law. Trademarks have to be aggressively protected or they can be diluted or brought back into public domain. This is where you could really reem CrystalKeep pretty hard, if you could prove those PDFs were actually causing WotC damages in lost sales.

[Fax Celestis]

Like "Kleenex" or "Band-Aid".

[Matthew]

As I understand it, "Hit Dice" and "Saving Throws" are OGL, which is what makes them available.

I knew I was running a risk having a go at describing this, but there you go. What you describe is what I meant, albeit expressed poorly. Yeah, tables are copyrightable, sort of, but the mathematic progression they express is not (or at least not under copyright).

anyway, that's my (limited) understanding of it.