I see numerous instances of unarmed attack: ansharan monks, Ssressen, and people using the spells or shapeshifting like “body of the warrior,” “claws of the beast,” or “path of the wolf;” and the talent “form of the predator.” The only one of these that requires the talent “pugilist” to work is the ansharan monk, since all the others grant a natural attack, or just say that your unarmed attack does a certain amount of unarmed damage. But what about the talent “iron fists” that builds off of pugilist? It says, “You gain a Die Bump to your unarmed damage (thus a d4 becomes a d6).” Would that help a Ssressen or a person under the effects of “path of the wolf” with iron claws? That seems odd. But it seems much more reasonable for someone using “Body of the Warrior” (And thus using their fists). What about someone in “form of the predator” – is there a talent stacking issue there? If it doesn’t than what does weapon mastery (unarmed) do in all these situations? It seems to me that that should help with all of these, since all of these use the unarmed attack skill – but “form of the predator” is a talent that already has a method of getting die bumps built into the talent (from bloodrank), can it stack with another talent under the rules?

With the “Path of…” spells you gain the attacks of the creature into which you shapeshift. But what if you already have “claws of the beast” (or body of the warrior, though it makes less sense) up and are able to adapt the attack up to higher damage than that of the form into which you shifted. I assume you still have the claws of the “claw of the beast” spell in effect as well, and thus might just be an extremely well armed wolf/bird/lion/… well “claws” probably won’t give a bigger bonus than a drake already has…

Unless is says that it modifies (die bumps) a damage, you only get the best damage die from all of your spells/talents etc. Stacking working as intended (various AR sources work the same).

So, yes, if you have more than one source of unarmed damage, the extra's are wasted. If one of your talents or spells die bump the damage die, it will stack with the best of your existing unarmed damage sources.

One advantage of Pugilist, is that it is not a spell, so cannot be hit by Unravel the Thread! Not a problem at Tier I, but at higher Tiers, Unravel will become a standard NPC opening spell against obvious shapeshifters.

so a Shaman with the "pugilist" and "iron fists" talents, and four tiers of weapon mastery (unarmed) could "claws of the beast" with adaptations to bring it up to a D12(Mi) (CTN=32), then shapeshift into a "path of the winged raptor" to become a hawk; said hawk would have the D12(Mi) claws, that would go up by a die type due to WM III, and get +2 damage due to WM IV, and +3 to hit due to WM I and Iron Fists. Right? Despite Iron fists having nothing to do with bird claws? Or if you did the same with "Body of the Warrior" it would work despite using the bird's claws rather than than caster's hands that were hardened by the spell?

I think this is right, but wanted to make sure all the spells, forms, and talents stack the way I think. The only really questionable one would be the Val'Dellenov talents stacking with other talents - which if the spells do, it seems like the bloodline talents should, but I think technically by non-talent stacking rules I think shouldn't.

No.

Damage die d4 + Spell Die Bumps: Claws of the Beast (sp)/Body of the Warrior (sp)/Pugilist (ta)/Form of the Predator (ta)/Path of the Winged Raptor (sp) = Maximum of 1d12 (Spell Source)
Die Bump from WMIII = 2d6 (Ta source).
WMIV = +2 static bonus to damage (Ta source)

WMI = +1 Static Bonus to hit (Ta source)
Iron Fists + WMIII = +2 Static Bonus to hit (specific rule, replaces WMI Ta source)

Net result: 2d6+2 (Mi) damage, +2 static bonus to hit.

Throwing all the spells around is a waste, as you get the same result just by casting Claws of the Beast to start with and then charging in.

I was talking about either "Claws of the Beast," or "Body of the Warrior," and then "Path of the Winged Raptor" to be able to do aerial combat. Just making sure that you could use either of those spells to really buff up damage in other forms.

Any idea on the stacking of combat talents with the Val'ellenov bloodline talents?

They're still talents so I would assume it makes no difference if they are bloodline talents or not.

Makes no difference to the attack/damage.

If you want to spend that long buffing up for a melee, go ahead.

Possibly, but since “Claws” only adds one to the speed, and zero to the strain of an advanced spell, and a raptor only has 1d4 claws, it means for a very small cost, if you want to be flying for some reason (aerial combat, etc), it is easy to do both at once and get some more significant weapons on the form.