Hey there,

Is it me or is Brawl not really viable when comparing it to melee and ranged combat skills?

The damage is just so low (most brawl weapons only grant +1 and at most you'll get to 10 damage once you hit 6 Brawn with a Blast Knuckle [Which is a really wonky weapon to begin with]) and apart from the Doctor and Steel Hand Adept Specializations I have not seen any really useful Talents for it.
The Thing is, that for example in the Gageteer Tree Brawl is kinda misplaced (as Brawl isnt even a Career Skill for Bounty Hunter Gadgeteers).

I'd love to here your opinions on this.
Cheers

Brawl isn't just for punching, it's for grappling and pinning down opponents who are trying to escape. The weapons aren't great for brawl (until the next book at least) but it's good to have a skill for when you don't have a weapon. The characters with high brawl and the ones knocking down guards in a prison escapes or doing cool kung-fu moves in front of a market square of people to earn some much needed credits.

If you want to be a dedicated Brawl character who does their damages with punches, then yes it's underpowered and you've got your work cut out for you, especially if you don't take specs like Marauder, Martial Artist (No Disintegrations), Warden (F&D Keeping the Peace), or Steel Hand Adept (F&D Knights of Fate). Martial Artist and Steel Hand Adept have talents that specifically bolster your unarmed damage, as does Enforcer (Dangerous Covenants) though the talent in question is buried deeper into the spec, so it'll be a while before your Enforcer can bring the pain with their Brawl attacks.

But as MrTInce noted, one of the perks of Brawl-based attacks is the Disorient and Knockdown qualities, since with weapon qualities, all you need to do is succeed on the combat check, not inflict damage, which can give you a bit of battlefield control by imparting setback die or potentially locking an opponent in place as they'd need to spend a maneuver to get back on their feet. A simple set of brass knuckles ups that Disorient quality to last three rounds, leaving foes a bit loopy for longer. Or if you have AoR's Cyphers and Masks, the sap gloves, which are ridiculously underpriced for what they offer, most notably the Concussive 1 quality, meaning that if you succeed with 2 advantage, you can deny your target their next action.

Good insights, using it more for utility rather than damage sounds good, although it still makes the Gadgeteer Specialization kinda weird with its Brawl Career Skill but Skills that need Melee.

Yep the Sap Gloves really are good.

Also consider that Supreme Precision Strike lets you choose a critical from the hard table for three strain this devastating. Essentially breaking off limbs or blinding people in a fight is quite scary!

Think of the enemy morale when they see the ewok martial artist breaking off storm trooper limbs!

Try martial artist with a dip into steel hand adept to get iron body (I think that's the name of it, top row) to get, your crit rating down to 1 advantage (or you could play a green nikto and not worry about that). If you're ok with being force sensitive, start with steelhand adept (warrior book) you'll have pierce equal to force rating and with the enhance power and appropriate upgrades be able to add force dice to brawl checks.

Or go the gadgeteer (deadly accuracy) /doctor (pressure point) route, pressure point ignores soak, does stun damage with bonus damage equal to ranks in medicine (can be 5), with another +5 from deadly accuracy your doing a base 10+brawn stun damage that ignores soak, with a decent roll you can 1 hit ko most characters.

Even basic Precision Strike is helpful, and it's available from Warden, Martial Artist, and Steel Hand Adept. Lets you choose to disarm your opponent, deprive them of a maneuver, stagger them, or increase their next check on a critical hit.

For the most part, characters using blades and (especially) guns should overshadow characters using fists (even metal-covered fists). Exceptions are certainly possible with major XP investment and the right gear, but for most people, nothing beats a blaster and that's why they are the major weapon type of the galaxy.

I think for me the fist-fight on the plane in Raiders of the Lost Ark, illustrates this system's typical brawl better than almost anything.

If you don't have much by way of special talents, you're probably going to be beating each other around for a while. After 6-10 turns one side will eventually go down, either from Crits or finally being WTed.

A more dedicated brawl combatant will have some talents and skill ranks though, which will speed things up. I honestly suspect that Zeb's KOing of Stormtroopers had as much to do with Brawl Crits as Wounds.

By extension putting a serious Brawler next to just some guy with ranks in Brawl will probably look a lot like the Happy/Widow fight into the Hammer offices in Iron Man 2. The guy with a rank or two will hammer away at one opponent inflicting wounds taking a beating in the process, while the Martial Artist will mop the floor with everyone else, largely due to talents like unarmed parry and Iron Body allowing them to absorb more damage and crit like a banana respectively.

10 hours ago, Donovan Morningfire said:

If you want to be a dedicated Brawl character who does their damages with punches, then yes it's underpowered and you've got your work cut out for you, especially if you don't take specs like Marauder, Martial Artist (No Disintegrations), Warden (F&D Keeping the Peace), or Steel Hand Adept (F&D Knights of Fate). Martial Artist and Steel Hand Adept have talents that specifically bolster your unarmed damage, as does Enforcer (Dangerous Covenants) though the talent in question is buried deeper into the spec, so it'll be a while before your Enforcer can bring the pain with their Brawl attacks.

Yes as above there are many talents that are available that can boost unarmed combat. I'd even add the Aggressor and Commando to the list. The real beauty comes from knockdown and disorient,.

11 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

Good insights, using it more for utility rather than damage sounds good, although it still makes the Gadgeteer Specialization kinda weird with its Brawl Career Skill but Skills that need Melee.

12 hours ago, MrTInce said:

Brawl isn't just for punching, it's for grappling and pinning down opponents who are trying to escape.

It sounds like brawl is perfect for a bounty hunter who wants to capture his mark rather than simply blasting him. Or when he get's jumped by someone while on the job.

1 hour ago, syrath said:

Yes as above there are many talents that are available that can boost unarmed combat. I'd even add the Aggressor and Commando to the list. The real beauty comes from knockdown and disorient,.

I've rarely heard of anyone that prized those talents. Why do you think they are "real beauty" or arm I missing sarcasm?

I think that they made it just right. The food chain from best to worst imo is Lightsaber, Guns, Melee Brawl. Light saber is useful at all ranges, guns are useful at a distance and have high killing potential with little risk against a distant melee/brawl opponent, Melee gives you some distance from your opponent/better damage (than brawl), and Brawl is very situational.

2 minutes ago, Archlyte said:

I think that they made it just right. The food chain from best to worst imo is Lightsaber, Guns, Melee Brawl. Light saber is useful at all ranges, guns are useful at a distance and have high killing potential with little risk against a distant melee/brawl opponent, Melee gives you some distance from your opponent/better damage (than brawl), and Brawl is very situational.

For many people, Ranged (Light) is the best close combat option. As for lightsaber being the best, I disagree. I strongly prefer planetary scale weapons, and most of those use Gunnery. Bring the BOOM or go home.

2 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I've rarely heard of anyone that prized those talents. Why do you think they are "real beauty" or arm I missing sarcasm?

Not the talents the weapon qualities. A brawler to me is about battlefield control. At base level though you aren't doing any damage really but throw in frenzied attack, martial grace, precision strike and it's upgrades etc, then damage is less of an issue . As a Warden with FR2 and enhance:brawl my GM has said to me that he had a harder time planning any melee style encounters round me as I countered them quite well. Even early on in the campaign I was fighting an sil 2 Ent style force entity barefisted and with the knockdown quality of brawl I was knocking it down every turn albeit it fell to my friends to damage it without the knockdown though it would have been a lot harder. This was even before picking up goodies like grapple from the spec tree. Precision strike and a set of vibroknucklers and enhance can give you a crit each round relatively easy even at low xp, then if you don't like the crit roll stagger your opponent(albeit only 3 specs get it but those are the three main brawl specs)

3 hours ago, syrath said:

Yes as above there are many talents that are available that can boost unarmed combat. I'd even add the Aggressor and Commando to the list. The real beauty comes from knockdown and disorient,.

I can fully agree on Disorient, as forcing your opponents to eat a setback die on their checks (even better if you've already got a couple points of defense) never hurts, as ups the chances of your target either failing to hit (especially lower-end foes who don't have a very good dice pool to start with) or reduce the amount of advantage rolled if they do hit. It's not as awesome as just doing sheer damage, but it's useful and can be triggered in those cases where you hit but didn't score enough damage to get through the target's soak.

Knockdown's a bit more situational, but still useful, at least against silhouette 1 targets; the utility starts going down as the target gets bigger and bigger though, as you need more and more advantage to activate the quality. Still, against a regular-size target, it's a good set-up for your follow-up attack, especially if for some reason or another the target can't take a maneuver on their turn, or you're able to act before the target can. I've also seen Knockdown be used at range (via the talent of the same name) to slow down pursuers in a foot chase in a few instances, and one instance of the PC using Knockdown at range to set the Marauder up for a nasty vibro-ax swing (there was a PC slot before the targeted NPC could act).

5 minutes ago, syrath said:

Not the talents the weapon qualities.

For a Brawl-based character, I can agree on those talents not being super-useful, unless the GM allows ranks of Disorient talent to stack with the inherent Disorient quality of Brawl attacks to provide a higher Disorient rating than the two would indivdiually; in that case, being able to tag a foe with a setback die for a few rounds can be a handy thing.

Knockdown can be useful for ranged combatants; I had a Wookiee sharpshooter with a bowcaster that enjoyed using Knockdown to limit what rivals and minion groups could do, thus making it easier for our grenade-loving Saboteur to close in and do his thing without quite as much fear of reprisal.

Then again, if you've got players that focus purely on damage output and ignore battlefield control, frankly any talent that doesn't directly contribute to damage values in some way can be "lackluster."

1 hour ago, syrath said:

Not the talents the weapon qualities. A brawler to me is about battlefield control.

Gotcha on the qualities. They can be useful, but I've found that the best way to control the battlefield is to drop your enemies, usually by pushing them over their WT (or ST for Nemeses and PCs). I still find Disorient to be fairly mild (it stacks in duration but not effectiveness, and one Setback that lasts the entire combat has been fairly unimpressive IME), but I can see use in Knockdown. Now Concussive is a real gem, but it is far less common.

3 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Gotcha on the qualities. They can be useful, but I've found that the best way to control the battlefield is to drop your enemies, usually by pushing them over their WT (or ST for Nemeses and PCs). I still find Disorient to be fairly mild (it stacks in duration but not effectiveness, and one Setback that lasts the entire combat has been fairly unimpressive IME), but I can see use in Knockdown. Now Concussive is a real gem, but it is far less common.

To be honest disorient was more a personal thing anyway as I was a warden I was gunning for a lot of Black dice for the attack, so throwing in disorient when I could works usually my opponents were rolling against RRRBBBB with two auto threat. Made triggering overbalance so easy

Just to clarify though and to answer the OP Brawl is the least effective way of fighting unless you get the talents for it. With those talents though it is possible to , with a reasonably small amount of xp expenditure get it possible to punch someone with a base dmg of 20+, and with doctor or interrogator have this bypass soak in a biological entity. This being said it's a bit of a munchkin build , and you should really only need one of the major DMG talents like Wall the Walk or preferably Martial Grace.

Also the Garrote from Cyphers and Masks is really handy, my Infiltrator player makes really epic, spy style scenes with it

You would think that Brawling is a mostly useless skill

But . . .

Last night the PC's in my campaign tried a ruse de guerre that got the team arrested and binder cuffed.

Once everyone realized that this was going to lead to permanent incarceration for the whole team, they started fighting to escape.

The one character with a decent brawl skill was able to break free and make an escape. The other PC's weren't able to escape as well. (And actually one only got away because the scrapper caused a distraction).

So . . . sure. Brawling and Melee combat skills may not seem 'useful' until you need them because that's all you have!!!!

Brawl is an important skill; yes you can have a stun setting on a blaster (Etc), but in the game there is no other real way to deal non-lethal type damage. In the games I run and of course depending on the game and campaign, murdering and maiming in civilized areas can bring harsh punishment. Take DND and the classic bar fight in a town or city, how many players quickly have their PCs go for their sword, dagger, murder tool so they will come out on top? I have had to bring the law down upon PCs many times, some have gotten branded outlaws for killing another citizen or city guard (even if the guard was corrupt, the guard was using his fists and a player had his PC run him through). Depending on how wild west you want the campaign to go, and Star Wars if often displayed as an outer space western, heck even a die hard brown coat knows when not to draw a weapon and use their fists and feet. Laws are things players and in effect their PCs take for granted, not in my campaigns. Fun is fun until an innocent is killed by a PCs use of explosives or haphazard blasting. The best times often are during brawls when you can tell the players try not to pull out a weapon as there are laws against murdering on this planet.

2 hours ago, doktor grym said:

Brawl is an important skill; yes you can have a stun setting on a blaster (Etc), but in the game there is no other real way to deal non-lethal type damage. In the games I run and of course depending on the game and campaign, murdering and maiming in civilized areas can bring harsh punishment. Take DND and the classic bar fight in a town or city, how many players quickly have their PCs go for their sword, dagger, murder tool so they will come out on top? I have had to bring the law down upon PCs many times, some have gotten branded outlaws for killing another citizen or city guard (even if the guard was corrupt, the guard was using his fists and a player had his PC run him through). Depending on how wild west you want the campaign to go, and Star Wars if often displayed as an outer space western, heck even a die hard brown coat knows when not to draw a weapon and use their fists and feet. Laws are things players and in effect their PCs take for granted, not in my campaigns. Fun is fun until an innocent is killed by a PCs use of explosives or haphazard blasting. The best times often are during brawls when you can tell the players try not to pull out a weapon as there are laws against murdering on this planet.

You negated you argument in the first sentence. Blasters make dealing non-lethal damage easy and are widely available. With that in mind, the rest of your post is baffling because "I'll use Stun Setting" just keeps echoing around.

I think the thing with brawl particularly is that not all the combat stats are equal; Ranged Heavy is better then ranged light, Lightsaber always beats melee and melee beats brawl. I guess the main thing is you will always have brawl but never anything else. So that being good at gunnery is great; until you enter a setting that prohibits weapons of that calibre. You don't apperiate how being good at your only "combat stat" is until you can't use it anymore so having a few skill ranks in "less used" combat skills is still pretty useful. I might have 5 ranks in Lightsabers, but I have 4 in ranged light, 3 in ranged heavy, and 1 in most other places. Given I've had a lot of XP overtime, I can apperiate having a little skill outside my main circle of action. Martial arts also has it's role in fighting "soft" targets. Come in with no weapons? A brawl of 3/4 and some skill ranks means a 1v1 fight with the squishy diplomat you managed to get alone should go pretty well.

So yeah, Brawl isn't very good at all unless you spec around it, there's a reason why fisticuffs in a lot of action movies take a while, but it's something you will always have unlike most other items in the game. Aside from martial arts movies which focus on martial arts, most movies will have it quite deliberately a side portion for that reason; going fisticuffs with guns is crazy. It wasn't really a huge thing in star wars until the PT and the movies, OT never showed brawling in any significant capacity side from chewie choking Lando, and we only really see it in the PT after that when both character's are disarmed; and the second time it really doesn't go well for Obi-Wan given Grevious is probably a soak 10 monster. XD Well, unless you take into account Rogue 1, but then again being Asian, blind and a martial artist is literally a force multiple when it come's to Hollywood who can wipe out entire groups of minions in a single activation. So ultimately the question comes down to; are you going full mystical Asian magic where your fists can overcome great odds or is the martial arts of the more realistic kind where you are good enough at it to take down a nemesis with fisticuffs after a long engagement? Or are you more Jackie chan where you are a impromptu fighter who generally starts off a goof but ups his game into overcoming great odds with a mixture of hardy stature and quick thinking? Jackie Chan is immensely successful because he can combine compelling martial arts with humour.

Way I see it, the best way to replicate that effect is steel hand, Warden and either seer/sage (for some actual character beyond martial artist) or a lightsaber style (just for parry/reflect). Pierce 4 with enhance is likely to send anyone to mars and improved Dodge is incredible fun. Being able to move almost an infinite number of times thanks to improved dodge is incredible fun. Did those stormtroopers take a step back to shoot? Nope, punch in face. Shooting at you? Give them the evil eye. Crit? Stagger them. Don't crit? Still stagger them with overbalance. Have a lightsaber? use it, then when they actually disarm you start actually kicking their **** unarmed because up to now you were going easy on them. There are very few lightsaber styles that actually allow you to add success to your attacks so once you get to force rating 3 or greater, your brawl train has no breaks.

Of course if your playing edge your options are much less min-max, but arguably a bit more interesting. Be a marauder and have a high base damage. Go into assassin and use a mixture of destiny points to hit really hard like Qi'ra, who was a martial artist who had the appearance of a subdued character who was genuinely a talented killer and capable second hand man of the big bad. Don't underestimate those Destiny point talents; sometimes stacking a lot of damage against a single target will crush soft characters and if your GM is flexible, he should be as willing to present an antagonist as a non-combatant as a combatant. Sure, Qi'ra or the big bad might not be the kind of guys who can overcome legions with their fist/blades, but they are well versed enough to employ it in sharp bursts and are more akin to a duelist then a melee monster who likely have major's elsewhere but dip into a combat tree to be proficient?

It might sound like a rambling post and I guess it is, but more my point is not whether brawl is prochent, but how far are you willing to go and what flavour of character are you trying to create? The stereotypical martial arts master who has training for lunch, breakfast and dinner? The more grounded occupational "duelist" archetype who techs into hand to hand combat as a self defence measure? A commando in a campaign who just took a few ranks in it and a spare brawl weapon in case he loses his real weapon? It's true that it's far from the greatest skill and it really requires discussion on what your group wants the campaign to be about; is it the A-team in space, a band of smugglers or a bunch of masters looking to avenge their master? Each of those campaigns requires everyone to bring a thematic game to the table.