wilcoxon wrote:
val Holryn wrote:
On the other hand I've built a few characters as experiments tha centered on unarmed combat. I did not find it THAT onerous to spend the two talents on weapon training & pugilist.
It's a little worse than that. To be effective at unarmed damage-dealing, you need:
- Weapon Training - much harder to get than for most weapons
- Weapon Mastery - pretty much a wash because you need this for weapons too
- Pugilist
- Iron Fists
- Grand Master Path (for Mighty Swing) - you need this for some weapons but quite a few get Mighty Swing
I don't think there's any other weapon that requires that many feats to be fully effective (even Steel Whip and Double Spear require less).
I agree with you on the weapon training argument, it seems that should be easier in general for a martial to get than it is right now (especially since this is an odd case of an expert having a starting advantage over a martial character in a fighting style), but on the rest I disagree.
It makes sense to me that it should take some additional training to be as deadly with unarmed combat as most people are with a dagger - that is reflected in the talent requirement pugilist. After that, you are as deadly as a dagger wielder. You have to remember that unarmed is a speed three weapon, so it isn't going to pack the damage a great sword will.
The fact that there even is an iron fists talent I think is great, and generous of the campaign design to support unarmed fighters with a useful talent when they want the campaign to reflect that unarmed combat is uncommon. The fact that unarmed combat might be suboptimal for large single blow damage dealing (no mighty swing) is true of many weapons, and is easily countered by the numerous advantages inherently given to unarmed fighters- never unarmed, is what is used in grapples, etc. Plus, it's easily gotten around by putting on a gauntlet - which is also a big advantage unarmed has - it has numerous weapons that can all be used, and whose weapon tricks can all be used, off of one base weapon training talent - between the basic unarmed, the gauntlet, and the cestus with just weapon training (unarmed) you can get access to 7 weapon tricks (shielding, grasp the blade, mighty swing, stunning strike, from earth to sky, rapid strike, and hamstring), which is significantly more than any other weapon provides.