[RPG] RAW, Is the “Finesse” trait incompatible with unarmed attacks

Replacing a claw attack with an unarmed strike

Sorry, but no. Unarmed strikes use a weird hybrid of the rules for manufactured and natural weapons, but for the purposes of full-attacks, they work like manufactured weapons. That is, you get iteratives with them, but if you can only combine them with natural weapons by making those natural weapons secondary (−5 attack penalty, only ½Str to damage).

The first rule that you quote is specifically about spells and effects. A full-attack is not either of those.

Claws and lack of offhand unarmed strikes

Feral Combat Training does mean that anything from the monk’s unarmed-strike-improving class features can apply to natural weapons, and that can include the bit about never being offhand.

However, claws and other natural weapons are never “offhand” to begin with. The term “offhand” only applies when using two-weapon fighting, and that combat option does not interact with natural weapons (aside from the attack penalty, which applies to all attacks). So the fact that the monk class feature, combined with Feral Combat Training, says that natural weapons are never offhand does not do anything because that was already true.

Instead of “main hand” and “offhand,” natural weapons are either “primary” or “secondary.” These are different. When combined with manufactured weapons (or unarmed strikes) in a given full-attack, all natural weapons are secondary: they receive the −5 penalty and get only ½Str to damage. Neither the monk class nor Feral Combat Training does anything about treating them as secondary or removing or reducing the penalties for being secondary.

So whether you have Feral Combat Training or not, your full-attack using unarmed strikes is:

Unarmed Strike, Claw (−5), Claw (−5), Claw (−5)

If you have Feral Combat Training, the claws do benefit from the improved base damage dice of unarmed strike, however, even if they’re still stuck with ½Str to damage.

Two-Weapon Fighting, Feral Combat Training

If you are actually using two-weapon fighting, the provision about monks never having offhand unarmed strikes meaningfully applies only to the unarmed strike. It “applies” to the claws, but does nothing for them.

So, for example, if your two weapons are a sai and an unarmed strike, and you have the Two-Weapon Fighting feat, your attack routine would be:

Sai (−2), unarmed strike (−2), claw (−5), claw (−5)

The unarmed strike would add your full Strength to its damage, however. Note that I assumed that the sai took up one of your claw-hands. I did not wish to get into the debate about whether one can use two unarmed strikes as part of two-weapon fighting.

You didn’t ask, but about Flurry of Blows

All of the statements above about full-attack apply equally well to flurry of blows, except that you need Feral Combat Training to use natural weapons in a flurry at all, and flurry of blows cannot be combined with two-weapon fighting because of Paizo nonsense.

Personal recommendation

For the record, monks, natural attacks, and how they combine, these are some of the worst things in Pathfinder. The rules are confusing, complicated, and the result works very poorly. I suggest you save yourself a headache and just... not.

Attack roll for unarmed strikes = d20 + proficiency bonus + Strength modifier.

Unarmed strikes are, in fact, melee weapon attacks - even though they're not made with a weapon. This is clarified in the Sage Advice Compendium:

What does “melee weapon attack” mean: a melee attack with a weapon or an attack with a melee weapon?

It means a melee attack with a weapon. Similarly, “ranged weapon attack” means a ranged attack with a weapon. Some attacks count as a melee or ranged weapon attack even if a weapon isn’t involved, as specified in the text of those attacks. For example, an unarmed strike counts as a melee weapon attack, even though the attacker’s body isn’t considered a weapon.

Here’s a bit of wording minutia: we would write “melee-weapon attack” (with a hyphen) if we meant an attack with a melee weapon.

This is also supported by the fact that the rules on unarmed strikes are stated in the the "Melee Attacks" section of the rules; the wording is simply clarifying that if you want to make a melee weapon attack without a weapon, you can use an unarmed strike to do so.

As such, the attack roll is calculated as follows:

• d20 + proficiency bonus + Strength modifier