Do Symbiotic Entity + Hand of Harm stack damage?

Question

I am working on a multiclass starting with a few levels of way of mercy monk dipping into circle of spores druid to get that kind of cycle of life and death flair. Before I commit I wanted to make sure the symbiotic entity (1d4 necrotic to any melee attack that hits [based on what I've seen that includes unarmed strikes]) would stack with using a ki point for hand of harm. Not sure about the action economy of it all but it would be sick to do 1d4 necrotic (symbiotic entity) 1d4 necrotic (hand of harm) and 1d4 bludgeoning (unarmed strike) on a bonus action.

Answer 1

These stack.

Here are the requirements for using Hand of Harm:

• you hit a creature
• with an unarmed strike
• you spend one ki point

And here are the requirements for Symbiotic Entity:

• The feature is active (requires your action to turn it on)
• melee weapon attack
• hits

The only potential issue here is whether or not unarmed strikes count as melee weapon attacks, which they do. The rules for melee attacks state:

Instead of using a weapon to make a melee weapon attack, you can use an unarmed strike

This is further clarified for us in the Sage Advice Compendium:

Can a monk use Stunning Strike with an unarmed strike, even though unarmed strikes aren’t weapons?

Yes. Stunning Strike works with melee weapon attacks, and an unarmed strike is a special type of melee weapon attack.

The game often makes exceptions to general rules, and this is an important exception: that unarmed strikes count as melee weapon attacks despite not being weapons.

So as long as you have activated your Symbiotic Entity feature, you hit a creature with an unarmed strike, and you spend a ki point, the damage from Hand of Harm and Symbiotic Entity woud both occur.