trying to remember

[mehs]

Half remembering a thing from a funny 3e fanfiction. Did monk's get improved unarmed strike for free in 3e?

[JNAProductions]

Yes. Despite not being proficient in Unarmed Strikes.

[mehs]

ok so that is what it was.

[RSGA]

It also doesn't matter too much because an unarmed strike isn't a normal weapon type to need proficiency. It's also not a natural attack/weapon. The monk's ability just lets the character treat it as a manufactured weapon or a natural weapon for spells and effects that enhance one or the other.

And several feats that improve weapon attacks also allow for selecting unarmed attack as a choice, but they also allow rays in that same sentence. Rays are notably not a weapon that anyone has proficiency and there's not really a way to get proficiency, so it's good for those two that they're allowed in by the feat.

[JNAProductions]

It also doesn't matter too much because an unarmed strike isn't a normal weapon type to need proficiency. It's also not a natural attack/weapon. The monk's ability just lets the character treat it as a manufactured weapon or a natural weapon for spells and effects that enhance one or the other.

And several feats that improve weapon attacks also allow for selecting unarmed attack as a choice, but they also allow rays in that same sentence. Rays are notably not a weapon that anyone has proficiency and there's not really a way to get proficiency, so it's good for those two that they're allowed in by the feat.

I'm not seeing anything on the SRD that treats Unarmed Strikes as not a weapon. Everything seems to treat it just like an axe or a mace.

[RSGA]

I'm not seeing anything on the SRD that treats Unarmed Strikes as not a weapon. Everything seems to treat it just like an axe or a mace.

Certainly, there's little explicitly there for that purpose, but there's lots and lots of implicit things that show that it was treated as something different. For instance, in the weapons section it's the only one that says that damage from it is considered to be damage from a weapon for the purposes of things that grant bonuses to weapon damage. Nothing else says that, so it's a strong but still implicit thing saying that it's not a weapon. I checked both the SRD and the player's guide for this, so did you know that they're in different places in both? But back to text, p 134 of the player's guide reiterates this benefit, which would be very odd to do if it were a weapon.

Also going back to what I used earlier, the Ray is given the same explicit in for Weapon Focus " You can also choose unarmed strike or grapple (or ray, if you are a spellcaster) as your weapon for purposes of this feat" which if you take Strike, Unarmed as a weapon for that means Ray is also and notably because no class gets Ray as a proficiency means you have to then decide. Is that statement allowing two non-weapons in to be chosen or is it giving two choice that are then impossible because nobody has proficiency with them.

And of course you have the part at the end of light weapons, where it says that an unarmed strike is considered a light weapon which means that it is not one, but is treated as one. Also notable, it gets an exception along with natural weapon attacks for Power Attack. And on 139 of the player's guide it's given a different section with lots of additional explanations separate from a melee attack or ranged attack and including the oxymoron of an armed unarmed attack.

Because of how 3.0 and 3.5 were done a lot of things didn't get defined even thought they should have. To go a bit further afield, drowning is never defined, just how you become it. Diehard as another example, makes a pig's ear purse of suffocation, in addition to drowning, because it is not well defined. Unconscious is not 0 HP and we don't know what having suffocated may mean when you decided to take an action to heal in turn 2 of suffocation since Diehard allows that and now you have positive HP (hopefully) and are suffocated without at any point actually being in the state of dying.

What I am saying, in short, is that 3.X and PF are very fine sandcastles, but that means that their grounds as also sand and you should always be careful to find the explanatory text that's not in the SRD and even more than that have to often consider what they left unsaid because it was either defined elsewhere or "of course everyone knows what this means." As a parting example of perhaps both of those, Magic Fang will let a natural weapon (and it makes a reference to both fists and unarmed attacks in it) will not make the weapon a magical weapon because it is not masterwork. However it will penetrate any DR/magic because that defines what weapons pierces it as any weapon that has a magical enhancement bonus, not a magical weapon despite saying that they're vulnerable to magic weapons. Oh, and the text in the player's guide for damage reduction does explicitly put unarmed attacks in a different category than most weapons and natural weapons.