It always bothered me how a properly specialized [unarmed] character got weaker after equipping weapons like [brass Knuckles] and [Armoured Gauntlets]. Isn't the point of equipping such items to improve one's punches? Drawing inspiration from <Exalted>, I wanted to create a small set of house rules to make Unarmed Combat more logical and viable:

UNARMED COMBAT

Unarmed attacks made without Martial weapons or cybernetic assistance are considered Low-Tech for modifiers that apply to Low-Tech weapons.

NEW WEAPON QUALITY: MARTIAL

Martial weapons follow the body's natural movement when punching, chopping, kicking, or stomping. If a character's unarmed Damage would be lower than a Martial weapon's Damage, use the Martial weapon's profile instead. Otherwise, Martial weapons replace the unarmed attack's profile entirely with a +1 bonus to Damage. Martial weapons benefit from unarmed attack modifiers.

SAMPLE MARTIAL WEAPONS

FORCE

-*NEW* Force Gauntlet/Force Boot (1d5 I; 0 Pen; Force, Martial)

LOW-TECH

-Armored Gauntlet/Iron Boot (1d5 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-Brass Knuckle/Mirker's Greaves (1d5-1 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-Daggered Vambraces/Daggered Greaves (1d10 R; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-Lightning Gauntlet/Lightning Boot (1d10 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive, Shocking)

-Moon Blade (1d10 R; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-Punch Dagger (1d5+1 R; 2 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-*NEW* Tiger Claws (1d5+1 R; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

-Truncheon (1d10 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Primitive)

SHOCK

-Shock Glove (1d10 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Shocking)

-Shock Knuckles (1d10 I; 0 Pen; Martial, Shocking)

The idea here is to let unarmed attacks benefit from weapons they should logically benefit from. One can use the same thrusting motion to attack with a fist, a brass knuckle, or even a punch dagger. A hook could be used for weapons like tiger claws or a truncheon. The possibilities go on, such as stomping someone's face with a leather boot vs. an iron boot. Armour pieces can be treated as Martial weapons per GM fiat, e.g., a carapace glove becoming an armored gauntlet.

You may have noticed that I excluded the [Power Fist] from the sample list, and you're right. Power Fists are so departed from normal punching that they don't deserve the Martial quality. Emperor knows Power Fists don't need extra help anyway.

The usefulness of these house rulings is gated by the limited application of unarmed attacks. A character might boost their natural unarmed damage to (1d10 I, 0 Pen) with [unarmed Specialist]. Maybe she could later get it up to (1d10+2 I, 0 Pen) with a little help from Cybernetics and such. Equipping a Martial weapon might make the final unarmed profile (1d10+5 I, 4 Pen). That profile isn't anything to write home about, but it at least brings unarmed attacks a little closer to "proper" melee weapons. Daring players may request weapons like Chain Knuckles or Power Knuckles; I would grant them with proper justification.

You list things as being Primitive, but as of OW Primitive has a rating, being the opposite of Proven. Other than that nothing jumps out at me as being glaringly ill-advised.

My house rule for using weaponry + unarmed is simply to check how much the weapon increases the standard attack by and applying the same increase to martial artists. Brass knuckles, for example, would be a simple 2 damage increase.

You list things as being Primitive, but as of OW Primitive has a rating, being the opposite of Proven. Other than that nothing jumps out at me as being glaringly ill-advised.

Omitting Primitive values was a personal choice since most players, I imagine, would immediately pick up a fairly common Mono upgrade. Also, a good number of weapons were pulled from the first <Dark Heresy>, when Primitive was flat. I did not want to place my own arbitrary numbers. Like, a [Knife] in <Dark Heresy Second Edition> is Low-Tech but not Primitive, yet a [Truncheon] is Primitive (7)? I'm not quite sure when the Primitive tag should kick in, and I don't think it's particularly relevant to my house ruling. I just slapped the Primitive tag on without a value and called it a day.

My house rule for using weaponry + unarmed is simply to check how much the weapon increases the standard attack by and applying the same increase to martial artists. Brass knuckles, for example, would be a simple 2 damage increase.

My main issue with only increasing the Damage is that unarmed attacks are still going to have a Pen of 0. Assuming a Mono'd brass knuckle, only increasing the damage makes the character lose out on 2 Pen. I did toss around the idea of having a +2 Damage bonus, though I went with +1 to stay conservative.