As discussed elsewhere on this forum, I feel the unarmed combat rules to DH are badly written, and on any interpretation, not fit for purpose. I also feel that it's stupid that unarmed attacks are able to cause fatigue while other attacks (e.g a hit from a club) do not.

So I was thinking about how I could go about fixing it. Here's what I came up with - please critique:

- Unarmed attacks count as primitive melee weapons that do d10 impact damage

- However, after subtracting armour etc, the damage caused is halved (or could consider an even great reduction?)

- Unarmed attacks are otherwise treated exactly like other weapons

- Unarmed attacks no longer cause fatigue

- To replace the effects of fatigue, any time you take a significant amount of damage all in one go (from any attack - not just unarmed), there is a chance you'll be briefly stunned or even fall unconscious

- For a hit to the head, if you take more damage (after reductions) than your TB, you must pass a Toughness check

- For a hit anywhere else, if you take more damage (after reductions) than double your TB, you must pass a Toughness check

- If you fail the Toughness check you are stunned for 1 round

- If you fail by more than 3 DoS, you are knocked unconscious

- Possibly impact (and/or explosive?) damage has more of an effect... not sure if this is realistic or not

I guess fatigue would have to remain as a legacy system to handle things like techpriest abilities, unless anyone has any genius ideas?

Cardinalsin said:

...which makes them better then a knife or brass knuckles and puts them on par with a sword. Sorry, but if you go this way you would have to re-work all damages from all weapons and/or other sources.

Your "second paragraph" might be take down against a sword, but it makes them even more better then knives / brass knuckles: they have much better chance of penetrating armour!

The "hit in the head" rules are nice, however.

But all in all, I think that you can only "re-work" the unarmoured combat rules if you re-work all of it. Hard task that is.

Frankly, I'm not certain this needs house ruling. And I agree with Gregorius, you'd have to rework alot of other weapons as well. IMO Knife is the most underpowered weapon as it is.

If you just want to remodel the unarmed attack, I'd just give it d10-3 I (+ SB) and remove the fatigue altogether. Since it counts as primitive, a man in Guard flak or better is virtually invulnerable to this attack, but strong guys can still cause damage. This is actually more realistic than "disney violence" where people are beaten up and then wake with no permanent innjury later. Unarmed attacks can still break bones, cause massive blunt trauma etc. just like clubs and batons.

To balance things out I'd give daggers/knives 1d10-2, and keep fist irons where they are.

Simple clubs should be 1d10-1, while reinforced clubs, maces etc. at 1d10.

One could just change how the fatigue is applied for unarmed. Removing altogether does have some consequences though. It makes it pretty hard to KO someone and as the damage is typically 0 (assuming evenly matched opponent for SB and TB) that would drag a combat forever. While you could do stun attacks to push the issue towards a KO that would be slow as well.

Maybe instead of auto fatigue with damage have it based off a certain degree of success like it happens in Knockdown attack. You could have it set that you inflict fatigue on two degrees of success or if that's still too good have a toughness test for takin fatigue after two degrees of success.

JMTC...

i think part of the problem is that Fatigue and Wounds are the wrong way around. It's hard to balance suffering Fatigue when the average person will only have around 3-4 of them.

However, if you change Wounds and Fatigue around it makes more sense. Certainly someone can take more of a fist pounding than they can a sword slashing.

Fatigue then represents nonlethal damage (cuts, abrasions, winding, light gashes, slight blood loss etc) whilst wounds represents serious life threatening damage (organ rupture, punctured lung, artery severed etc). Obviously your body cannot take more than a few 'wounds' compared to the many 'fatigue'.

Unfortunately this would require a slight rejigging of the rules. For example, all the crits would have to be rearranged. I also prefer crits to happen within damage, ie I hit you at full health, strike you in the heart and kill you instantly. That would be represented by causing a critical hit and rolling enough Wound damage to instantly kill something.

My thinking is that you can cause a crit if you roll equal to or less than your WS/BS bonus when you hit. ie someone with WS 45 will cause a crit if they roll 4 or less. You then roll on a crit table to see how serious the crit is (perhaps modified by your WS bonus) and apply the result.

When you reach 0 fatigue every hit becomes a crit (following the rules as they are now).

Then certain weapons could increase or decrease the chance of causing a crit (ie bolters double the BS bonus to determine the chance of crits because they are so nasty).

Hellebore

That is definately where you and differ. Fatigue represents your endurance, not bruising and cuts, which is why weather and other non-injury factors can affect fatigue. Coupled with the fact that it's actually hard to inflict wounds when doing unarmed attacks only seem to emphasize the point.

Lets look at it from another view point. Say you have a TB of 3 and 10 wounds. That means you are lightly wounded until you take more than 6 wounds. If i hit you with any edged weapon for 6 or less wounds (after armour and TB) you are still lightly wounded and wound be completely healed in 2 days with medical attention. So looking at that what kind of wound did do? A cut? That would definately take more time to heal. So what does that leave? Maybe his armour prevented an actual cut and your just bruised or some other mild inconvenience.

The point is that we have a system that assumes you are resisting, but no where does it show that your skill is better except when you look at wounds. They improve as you gain experience, but seriously last I checked the body doesn't actually get better at taking a direct damage, you just get better at rolling with the blow and such so that the said blow isn't as lethal.

It's also why I don't apply coup de grace attacks to wounds, I have them straight crits. Can't defend yourself, can't roll with the blow, can't keep that bullet out of your brain.,.