Here's the situation I'm pondering: two weapon fighting clearly seems to indicate that you should be using two weapons. So, going all the way up the two weapon fighting tree wouldn't grant you any extra unarmed attacks if you were in a fistfight. Now, gauntlets are treated as unarmed weapons effectively, a simple way of doing lethal damage with your fists. However, spiked gauntlets would be pretty much the same thing, just doing 1d4 instead of 1d3 and making it piercing damage instead of bludgeoning. RAW, since spiked gauntlets are listed as actual weapons and regular gauntlets aren't, that would mean you COULD get your 2-3 extra attacks with spiked gauntlets if you had greater two weapon fighting...but you wouldn't with regular gauntlets. Does that make sense to anyone else? Because it seems nonsensical that simply attaching some extra metal to your gloves is essential for getting the most out of unarmed combat with that feat chain.
Sean K Reynolds (Designer): "Brass knuckles should be armed (light melee weapon) attacks. (As should gauntlets and spiked gauntlets.)"
Sean K Reynolds (Designer): "Treating brass knuckles, gauntlets, spiked gauntlets, cesti, and rope gauntlets as "unarmed attacks" doesn't make a lot of sense (because you're not unarmed, you have metal/leather/rope/etc. there).... Making all of these weapons act 100% like weapons and not refer to unarmed attacks at all means these questions go away."
I'm not sure if the intent for these to just be normal weapons and have nothing to do with unarmed strikes would also cause normal gauntlets to no longer provoke when used.