[3.5] Fist of the Forest build with Superior Unarmed Strike

[runescarred]

Hello gents,

Trying to make a brawler using Fist of the Forest(non-monk build) and I'm a bit confused about how the prestige class scales with the feat in regards to unarmed damage.

Fist of the forest:

Level Unarmed Damage
1st 1d8
2nd 1d8
3rd 1d10


Superior Unarmed Strike:


Benefit

You deal more damage with your unarmed strikes, as shown on the table below.

Character Level Unarmed Damage
3rd 1d4
4th–7th 1d6
8th–11th 1d8
12th–15th 1d10
16th–20th 2d6

Special

If you are a monk, you instead deal unarmed damage as a monk four levels higher.


Any ideas?

[Dromuthra]

They don't really work together. The Fist of the Forest sets your unarmed damage, but doesn't give you Monk progression. The Superior Unarmed Strike feat lets you use scaling damage according to a table, but doesn't give you Monk progression. I'm pretty sure they override each other, so which level you take the feat at as opposed to which level you take the first and third level of Fist of the Forest is pretty important. A sane DM would probably let you just use the better of the two, and so until level 16 my guess is that you'd be using the Fist of the Forest progression as you're probably getting it at a lower level where it'd be better.

If you want something good, look into Improved Natural Attack - it'll bump up the damage dice nicely, turning your 1d8 into 2d6 immediately and 1d10 into 2d8.

[AvatarVecna]

Fist Of The Forest upgrades Unarmed Strike damage, but in a way that's completely different from basically every other method of doing so in the game: most things either increase it by a number of die sizes (such as size changes or effective size changes) or they increase your effective monk level for determining Unarmed Strike damage. FotF instead sets your Unarmed Strike damage to a specific die size; you can upgrade it using (real or effective) size increases, but you can't increase it with more (effective) monk levels.

That being said, if you can find get your Unarmed Strike to 1d8 before entering the class, you'll leave the class with 2d6...on top of all those other goodies.

[Âmesang]

I'm sure this is a house rule, but I wouldn't be against letting the two eventually stack with an end result of 2d8 before Improved Natural Attack; not as good as a full monk, buy better than Superior Unarmed Strike by itself.

Of course things get really screwy if you throw in initiate of the draconic mysteries since it increases unarmed strike damage by die step. 1d10 —> 1d12 —> 1d20? :smalltongue:

[The Dark Fiddler]

I'm sure this is a house rule, but I wouldn't be against letting the two eventually stack with an end result of 2d8 before Improved Natural Attack; not as good as a full monk, buy better than Superior Unarmed Strike by itself.

Of course things get really screwy if you throw in initiate of the draconic mysteries since it increases unarmed strike damage by die step. 1d10 —> 1d12 —> 1d20? :smalltongue:

I forget exactly where it's outlined, but d10 --> 2d6

[Jormengand]

I forget exactly where it's outlined, but d10 --> 2d6

1d10->2d8. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/weapons.htm#weaponSize)

[runescarred]

Hmmm..could the Unarmed Strike be considered a Natural Attack for the Fist of the Forest (given the similarity with the monk)? I'm thinking now of Necklace of natural attacks to improve his Unarmed Strike...

My build would be something like Fighter 4/Fist of the Forest X/Fighter X and it would be relaying also on TWF to get multiple attacks.

[Âmesang]

Except the example given doesn't match the weapon size table… or even seems to reference it. :smallconfused:



Increased Unarmed Damage (Ex): At 4th level, the damage dealt by an initiate’s unarmed attacks increases by one die step (such as from 1d3 to 1d4, or from 1d8 to 1d10). At 8th level, it increases another die step.

Otherwise wouldn't a Medium 1d8 become a Large 2d6? Then again a Small 1d8 becomes a Medium 1d10, so I don't know what to think. Granted, 1d20 isn't all that functionally different from 2d10… mathematically it's probably worse; it sounds neat, though. "I roll 1d20 damage!" :smallcool: