Somehow, I feel unarmed combat can become too powerful too easy. I was playing around with the following:

Take a warrior with average (35) starting characteristics, and focus on the melee talent tree. I now go for WS50, S50, crushing blow and furious assault talents (at rank 3, including prereqs this is 3900 xp). As I see it, this should be a character who can deal with novice opponents easily, but not all-powerful.

My unarmed attack profile is now as follows:

damage: 1d5+5, RoF = 3.

This doesn't seem too powerful, but with crushing blow I can opt to lower RoF by 1 for Sb extra damage:

damage: 1d5+10, RoF = 2.

Now, I take the called shot action. As precise blows is prereq to furious assault, My RoA is capped at 2 (instead of the usual 1). If I manage to score 2 hits on my next attack, I can combine them into 1 hit (due to furious assault) with (effectively) 2d5+20 damage. Also, because of crippling strike, the attack counts as +5 on the damage table, so effectively 2d5+25. (for every extra point of Sb, this increases by 4)

This is an unarmed attack. Because fighting unarmed is just another weapon profile, and not a "special" attack (as it was in DH1) this has suddenly become extremely deadly.

Note 1: I've got nothing against deadly unarmed combat. This just seems a little too easy.

Note 2: The same with a sword doesn't become much deadlier, except that the 2d5 becomes 2d10. (average 30 damage to average 35) besides, with a sword you need A60 or WS60 (after the errata) to achieve the same RoF (actually, from here, WS60 is not that hard to get; one of the reasons I don't like the change to sword RoF).

I've been thinking about what to do about it this. I think the difference between unarmed and armed should be bigger, and I don't think it should be THAT easy to kill someone outright.

I propose the following, basically borrowed from DH1:

Scale the damage on unarmed down, for example to 1d5+Sb-2.

Impose an attack penalty of (say) -20 for attacking unarmed vs. armed.

There could be (separate) talents for lifting the penalty / improving the damage of unarmed attacks. Not too cheap, I think.

My second (already briefly mentioned) and related point is that I think WSb-3 is too powerful as RoF for swords. With the above combination, I'll never consider using something different again (well, as a melee fighter) - if you go for melee, improving WS and S makes sense in any case, and taking these talents to go with it is not very expensive. With a sword and WS60, you'd get 2d10+27 damage on a succesful hit (with 2 degrees of success). it's not impossible to defend against, but for something which will kill even a master in one hit it is just too easy to get and takes only 2 AP (add penetration 8 to that with a power sword, but otherwise it's the same).

Changing it back to Ab-3 might make Agility an all-important stat again, but since you can have either Agility or WS cheap, at least it's going to cost some serious xp to do so (definitely possible - just not extremely cheap anymore)

I think the RoF should be reduced, and there should be a penalty to attack / block enemies with melee weapons.

I wouldnt lower the damage though. Otherwise it ends useless again.

You could lower it though, if you bring back the talents "Unarmed Warrior & Master" again, to be able to rise it at a cost.

There certainly ought to be something to be said for parrying unarmed or non-power/warp 'natural weapon' types with many of the available weapons.

Oddly enough, though, in games it's rarely ever an issue. It's just as easy to block a spear as a lightsaber beam with your bare hands, and parrying even less so.

How in Khorne's name are you even pulling that off anyways with a Sollex-Aegis or storm-fielded weapon anyways? The latter tends to fry you just for coming close, and you're pulling off Emperor-driven miracles of mercy parrying off incoming fists and feet and headbutts with nothing but the pommel? Because you certainly aren't using the energy parts for the job there.

Evade (Ag) ist one thing, but Evade (WS) should get a -20 or something.

Also, attacking someone who wields a melee weapon should impose a modifier or lead to suffered damage if one is parried.

1. Things such as: +Sb are bad and should be avoided as it will probably end up as an exploit for munchkins. Instead consider that the average Sb is 3, so maybe you want +3 instead of Sb.

2. Maybe +5 for crippling attack is also too high. Be conservative with bonuses, FFG. Clever players will find ways to make things stack (as can be seen here). You are essentially giving +5 to damage! How about you make it +3 too? It's still good enough.

In that case you end up with 2d5+19. Good enough, I say. And if you reduce both to +2, it's... 2d5+16. Still good enough.

So, that's a lesson in conservativism wrt bonuses in RPG design.

Alex

Or you create a special new trait, like "Non-Lethal" that does not inflict real damage or wounds, but 1 Fatigue, if it does more "damage" than defense.

This could be used for unarmed attacks as mandatory "Non-Lethal (m)" and as an optional trait "Non-Lethal (o)" also for batons and stuff, which could chose to hit targets unconscious instead of killing them.

I don't especially have a problem with this. It's only really worth breaking out this combo when you're facing a powerful opponent who you're struggling to beat the Defence of. Otherwise you're as well going for the greater reliability of the more attacks rather than the two Called shots. Especially if you have high WS which any character that has these skills almost certainly has. Quite frankly, I want them to break out things like this when they're battling a Plaguebearer or whathaveyou and I don't care when they do it against some thug because they could hurt him badly already and all they're doing is risking not pulling it off.

The only issue to me is the storytelling aspect of that much damage when they do it unarmed. But there are two counters to that - firstly any player that builds a character like this is also the player that will arm that character to the teeth so they'll hardly ever be unarmed. And secondly, this is the WH40K universe where a highly-melee focused character can literally be a 7' thug from a Feral world and if they want to grab and snap an opponent's neck over their knee in one melee round... that's really quite in keeping with the setting.