For discussing changes to unarmed combat in general.

Players not using a weapon should be able to use “shield bashing” if equipped with a shield. While not technically a weapon, it allows damage to be done. Also opens ideas for additional shields types. (spiked shields, etc..) — Euph0ria 2011-08-08 12:24

The page for Brand Proposals has collected some ideas for brands for damage-enhancing boots and gloves, but wearing boots and gloves causes characters to lose their bonuses from claws and talons. It could be interesting if there were a way to brand body parts directly, especially for people with three levels of a body slot mutation. Tattoos are one idea that have been floated before, which could apply permanent branding to attacks made with a single body part. New transmutations spells may be another avenue: think blade hands, but with more variety. For example, a transmuter with magma fists could have a slow punching attack that deals additional fire damage and applies a short-lived sticky flame to the victim. — wensleydale 2010-10-27 03:15

It'd be better to let unarmed use branding spells than to make more unarmed-specific branding spells - why shouldn't this magma brand work with a weapon? And why should unarmed brands have unique mechanics like permanency? Anyway, any unarmed boost would demand a solid base nerfing, what with the damage/speed/attacks it ends up with. — og17 2010-10-27 03:58

Why doesn't blade hands work with a weapon? Because you have no fingers to hold it. Similarly, why wouldn't magma fists work with a weapon? Because your weapon would melt, just as if it had fallen into lava. Why could unarmed have permanency mechanics? Because permanence forces players to make decisions. Why could unarmed have unique mechanics? Because there's no rule that says that all playstyles must be identical. And I'd be all for a solid base nerfing for unarmed combat if new mechanics were added, as long as UC became more interesting on the whole. — wensleydale 2010-10-27 04:13

If magma melts weapons, how are you supposed to coat your hands in it again?

Permanent decisions are poor, as people after minimal wins are going to go for the first good thing they come across, whereas allruners are going to wait for whatever's ideal - there's no “decision” here. It's just making people potentially go through much of the game without any brand/etc at all, which hardly makes things more interesting.

Unarmed isn't a playstyle any more than axes is a playstyle. It's a weapon choice, and as such, any branding should follow the same guidelines as everything else. — og17 2010-10-27 14:46

“New transmutations spells” isn't a good direction direction to go in, either, at least not if you're envisioning unarmed-specific spells - it's bad enough that all the current combat forms are unarmed-centric. This sort of tmut should become useful for non-unarmed characters, if anything, not be further entwined with the one skill. If you're aiming for unarmed-specific spells, you should go with enchantments (or wherever current brandings end up). — og17 2010-10-27 15:10

(1) Magma fists wouldn't melt your hands for the same reason that blade hands doesn't cause cell death in your forearms due to lack of circulation, and the same reason that ice form doesn't just instantly kill you due to being a wedge of ice rather than living flesh: the magic of transmutations protects your body. In any case, magma fists is a hypothetical spell that I made up on the spot; it seems as though your efforts would be better served in reconciling the inconsistencies in spells that currently exist, or are even being seriously proposed.
(2) It is a logical fallacy to say that permanent decisions are necessarily trivial and unimportant. Designed properly, permanent decisions can force players to make decisions that will impact the rest of the game, forcing them to evaluate their current situation and weigh their options in order to determine if they are willing to accept the inevitable drawbacks of such decisions in exchange for whatever new abilities they are granted.
(3) Unarmed very much represents a different playstyle than using axes (or any other weapon): unarmed is penalized more by shields and armor, unarmed fighters damage themselves by fighting acidic creatures, there are a whole class of mutations that cause unarmed combat to be more effective at the expense of gear slots, and unarmed combat stacks with armed combat to a degree. Your desire to homogenize unarmed combat is misguided. The motive for allowing unarmed fighters to use brands is not “armed fighters can do it so they should do it too.” Rather, it is to allow unarmed combatants to make a wider range of interesting decisions while even further differentiating unarmed combat from armed combat.
(4) I agree that transmutations should have more spells that are attractive to armed fighters. Part of my desire to make new transmutations spells that focus on unarmed combat is to preserve the historical association between transmutations and unarmed combat while at the same time either creating new spells or changing old spells in such a way as to make transmutations more appealing to armed fighters as well. — wensleydale 2010-10-27 17:40

I think this idea is neat but difficult to balance. It's harder to balance limb/head/foot transformations that stack than it is to balance entire bodily transformations, especially since the “cost” (lost armour slot) has already been paid.
The central idea - giving auxiliary unarmed combat moves interesting secondary effects - is a great one, but since level 3 body slots already do ridiculous damage (20 for horns!), I'm not sure elemental attacks are the way to go. I'm also really not sure about permanence - the proposal is basically a mutation, and mutations are semipermanent for a reason. — Minced

— Minced

It would be nice if it were possible to use existing brands such as firebrand on your blade hands so you don't have to mess around with other weapons when facing hydras and such. Balance issues may be a concern since I understand blade hands are already very powerful, and having other brands such as pain and distortion could possibly be over powered, so perhaps a balancer's could be put in place for the more powerful brands, i.e Pain will cause pain on your character when you attack enemies, Distortion will give you similar penalties to unwielding a distortion weapon. — felixnothus 2010-10-27 03:51

Why wouldn't you just use another form here? Or fists or wands or whatever. Blade hands is already a “brand,” stacking an actual brand on top of it on top of unarmed seems a bit unreasonable. (See: confusing touch.) — og17 2010-10-27 03:58

OK, fair enough, instead of sticking a brand on a “Brand”, how about some higher level versions of blade hands which give you fire/ice/whatever, so it's still just one “brand” but with more potential uses? — felixnothus 2010-10-28 02:25

Rather then the current fixed 4, could Unarmed's Strength Weighting be variable? Three possibilities are in my mind:

- Two styles, Striking and Wrestling, with a weighting of 3 and 7, respectively (although Wrestling could be shifted to 6), switched between via 'a'. - An automatic approach, varying between 2 and 8 (or 2 and 7), based on a formula like 10*DEX/STR, perhaps with added bias for certain factors like mutations available. - A combination of the two above.

Is this too complex? — Luc 2012-02-27 18:28