Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Unarmed, Throwing and Improvised Weapon Improvements

Really loving playing my unarmed Berserker character, and picked up Tavern Brawler in order to improve the experience, but I cant help but feel without multiclassing into Monk, unarmed isnt viable for other classes as a main focus.

I think there needs to be a few improvements to Unarmed, Improvised Weapons and Thrown objects to ensure it can keep up with other playstyles, and be accessible and rewarding for other classes besides Monk, but without making Monk less appealing.

So with that in mind, I would like to suggest a few changes that I feel would be welcome additions to the game and do not deviate too much from the 5e system its based off.

Unarmed Strike: Characters without any weapons can only make a simple Unarmed Strike. However, I feel as though Unarmed Strike should also be available to anyone without an offhand weapon or shield.

Unarmed Slam: Characters with no weapons or shield should be able to perform an Unarmed Slam. Unarmed Slam deals more damage and can potentially knock a target prone.

Unarmed Proficiency: Monks, and anyone with the Tavern Brawler Feat, should have "Unarmed Proficiency", allowing them to make weapon attacks with unarmed and changes unarmed damage from 1 to 1d4.

Deft Strikes: With the above changes, Deft Strikes will be changed so it allows you to add your Dexterity Modifier as normal, but does not increase damage.

Unarmed Fighting: Add this fighting style to Fighters, Rangers and Paladins. This adds Unarmed Proficiency to the character, and when fighting without a shield or weapon you can make an unarmed strike as a bonus action.

Archery: This should apply to weapons with the Thrown quality (but only when thrown, obviously).

Grappler: Add this feat from 5e. Grappler allows you to pick up Medium Creatures with the Throw and Improvised Weapon actions.

Grappling Strike: Add this manoeuvre from 5e. Grappling Strike adds your manoeuvre dice to damage and attack rolls when using the Throw or Improvised Weapon actions on Creatures.

There are some items in Act I that support the playstyle you are describing. Are you making use of them to unlock the full potential of your build?

So far I have Gloves of Kushigo and Ring of Flinging, there's a staff that improves Unarmed but it only really works for Monks as it doesn't allow for standard unarmed attacks when equipped.

Other than that, I have a ring, amulet and boot slot free for anything I might find, but I've not found anything else yet, any ideas?

I'll have to second the notion of supporting unarmed fighting as a non-monk.

Tavern Brawler by RAW gives improvised proficiency, 1d4+str unarmed damage (instead of 1+str base) and allows bonus action grapple after unarmed or improvised weapon hit. Since grapple isn't implemented the secondary property is not that useful and the double str the BG3 version gives is better than the default after 16str and keeps a lot better after so there doesn't need to be too many changes there.

Unarmed Fighting style of fighter would work, making unarmed attacks 1d6+str, 1d8 versatile.

Other than that, I'd suggest adding grappling as is, reduce enemy movement to 0 and prevent them from standing up. No need for any particular animations and should be simple enough. That combined with properly implemented Tavern Brawler might make a brawling character viable. Though would require a fighter level for all non-monks to function.

I do feel that compared to standard 5e, BG3 has really limited options for unarmed playstyles.

Monk unarmed damage does not increase with level as it does in 5e, Unarmed or Improvised Weapon proficiency simply does not exist so it doesn't scale too well, and as far as I'm aware there are no artefacts that give a boost to unarmed (though throwing and improvised weapon ones do).

I can appreciate that Monk was a late addition to the game, so there may not have been a lot of time to develop around Unarmed as a concept, I'm just hoping in a future update unarmed gets a looking at.