Monks, Fists as Natural Weapons, Improved Natural Attack feat
 

Hello, I am playing a monk in a 3.5 game and am trying to follow a build that I thought looked fun as the DM is playing with some psychic and psionic beasties in his world. So I'm trying to build towards a Monk/Psionic Fist combo and the build guide I'm following suggests picking up Improved Natural Attack at lvl 6. We're leveling to 6 after the weekends adventure and so when I went to try and add it, it doesn't allow me to select my fists as a valid natural weapon.

So my question is this. Am I following a busted build, or am I using the PC builder wrong in some way?

Busted build. Unarmed strike doesn't usually get treated as a natural attack. The only exception I know of is the Magic Fang spell.

Ok, thank you for the speedy response.

So I went back to the books after your response and delved into the PHB2 looking for some new build ideas. For what its worth In the "Starting Packages" section for Monk, package 2 (The Destroyer, p51) also identifies Improved Natural Attack as a feat for a monk.

Is there a simple way to add a custom rule that if you're a monk (maybe it's specific to half-orc?) that your hands/unarmed count as natural weapons?

The PH states that a monks hands are treated as natural weapons "for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either manufactured weapons or natural
weapons (such as the magic fang and magic weapon spells)." It doesn't specify feats, but I agree that your example PH2 does suggest it can be done.
If your DM agrees, you could add the Improved Natural Attack and use an adjustment to increase your hand damage.
You could also report a bug to Lone Wolf (mentioning PH2) and get an official answer and/or change to the way the feat works.

Just checked Errata for PH2: "Page 51—Starting Packages; Package 2: The Destroyer [Substitution] The feat section should read: “Improved Grapple,
Improved Unarmed Strike, Power Attack.”
There is suggestion that this was changed because the original forgot about the BA pre-req.

By rule, unarmed strike does not qualify for Improved Natural Weapon. That said, if your DM is cool with it, and you want it to work, create a new .user file in the editor and go to the *Extend Thing sub-tab in "General" and add the following:

Thing unique Id: wUnarmed
Group Id: component
Tag Id: BaseNatWep

Save, recompile and voila.

Thanks for the follow-ups. Will look into making it a house rule option if the DM allows it since it appears not to be a rule set issue.

Just FYI Natural Attack should stack to Unarmed Strikes for Monks. The official 3.5 FAQ (Main35 FAQ v06.30.2008.pdf) says:

Q: Can a monk take Improved Natural Attack (MM 304) to improve his unarmed strike?
Yes. As stated on page 41 of the PH, a monk’s unarmed strike “is treated as both a manufactured weapon and a natural weapon for the purpose of spells and effects that enhance or improve either” which includes feats such as Improved Natural Attack.

Barring multiclassing, the earliest a monk could take this feat would be at 6th level (due to the base attack bonus prerequisite), at which point her unarmed strike damage would improve from 1d8 to 2d6 (which represents an average increase of +2.5 points of damage). The same monk at 20th level would deal 4d8 points of damage with her unarmed strike.

I will add this as to the to do list for d20 core to get fixed.