Non-Monk Unarmed Fighting and the Improved Unarmed Strike feat.


Homebrew and House Rules


I was having a conversation with my best friend/GM the other night, and he expressed his frustration with what he perceives to be the weakness of unarmed combatants other than monks. I suggested one simple change to an existing feat that I think would go a long way towards making unarmed combat a lot more useful for non-monks. Here is the original feat, with my proposed change in bold:

Quote:

Improved Unarmed Strike

You are skilled at fighting while unarmed.

Benefit: You are considered to be armed even when unarmed—you do not provoke attacks of opportunity when you attack foes while unarmed. Your unarmed strikes can deal lethal or nonlethal damage, at your choice. Your unarmed strikes count as melee weapons for the purpose of applying melee weapon combat feats and other melee weapon-related abilities.

Normal: Without this feat, you are considered unarmed when attacking with an unarmed strike, and you can deal only nonlethal damage with such an attack.

If that seems a bit too much, you could also take the addition and make it a tree feat under unarmed strike, calling it Greater Unarmed Strike.

Thoughts?


Too much? It's hardly anything. Other than (Greater) Magic Weapon, is there anything that can only be applied to a manufactured weapon and not a natural attack?

The real reason other unarmed combatants seem weak compared to the monk is the boost monks get to their base unarmed damage. They start at 1d6 and go up vs a fixed 1d3.

To make unarmed fighting useful for non-monks, you would need something like the Superior Unarmed Strike Feat from Tome of Battle which granted non-monks a similar but reduced damage progression and let monks with the feat count as 4 levels higher for their unarmed strike damage.


It is possible to build a unarmed fighter that does decent damage. Your best bet is to take the Two Weapon Fighting tree. The normal fighter feats and class abilities will also be needed. Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, Greater Weapon Focus, and so on. Probably also want Improve, and Greater Grapple.

A weapon based Fighter will still be doing more damage at high levels. I tested a build and got up to 1d3 +30 damage at 20th level. Also had around 7 attacks per round. Considering that the reason humans have dominated the earth is because of tools kind of makes sense that all things being equal a weaponless fighter will be at a disadvantage.


Freesword wrote:
Too much? It's hardly anything. Other than (Greater) Magic Weapon, is there anything that can only be applied to a manufactured weapon and not a natural attack?

Not sure an unarmed strike counts as a natural attack, even with the feat RAW. But if you're right, yeah, never mind.


MultiClassClown wrote:
Freesword wrote:
Too much? It's hardly anything. Other than (Greater) Magic Weapon, is there anything that can only be applied to a manufactured weapon and not a natural attack?
Not sure an unarmed strike counts as a natural attack, even with the feat RAW. But if you're right, yeah, never mind.

It counts as a natural attack for the purposed of spell like magic fang. A fighter can out damage a monk if it focuses on unarmed combat

Silver Crusade

If you are using 3.5 sources, there is the Superior Unarmed Strike feat, Combinded with the Improved Natural Attack feat, you can get the Unarmed strike damage scedule of a Halfling, for three feats: Improved Unarmed Strike, Superior Unarmed Strike, and Improved natural attack.

I hope this helps

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