Unarmed Fighting 5e
Your unarmed strikes can deal bludgeoning damage equal to 1d6 + your Strength modifier on a hit. If you aren't wielding any weapons or a shield when you make the attack roll, the d6 becomes a d8.
At the start of each of your turns, you can deal 1d4 bludgeoning damage to one creature grappled by you.
Unarmed Fighting 5e: Fighting Style Revievw
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
There are two reasons to take Unarmed Fighting.
You want the pugilist fantasy with a fighter subclass, and refuse to play any monk, or
You want to go all in on a low level grappler
That’s it. There are no other reasons to commit to this Fighting Style, as it does nearly nothing.
1d6 or 1d8 unarmed strikes are just short or longsword attacks. They don’t get any special weapon properties like light to enable multi-punching. You get the equivalent of a club attached to you, and that’s not good enough for your Fighting Style. They don’t qualify for any other fighting styles that care about you wielding weapons, as they don’t count as weapons from a property perspective, only from an attack roll perspective, which is weird. If you want to play a martial punch based character, the monk class actually rewards you with more punches, and is definitely more of what you should look to to bring that fantasy out.
This leaves the d4 bonus damage to grappled creatures. Paired with Tavern Brawler on variant human, this is actually kind of cute at 1st level. You make a punch or strike somebody with a chair, grab them, and get a bonus d4 damage for your troubles. Good? Certainly not! Could be pretty fun for the first few levels before the d4 just becomes nearly obsolete and you start caring more about your bonus action.
Unarmed Fighting is a joke of a Fighting Style. At least even something as bland as Defense gives you a perk above everyone else. If you pick up Unarmed Fighting, you’re going to feel like people using unaltered weapons are outperforming you, and that’s not where the master of arms classes are supposed to be. I wish it was better, I wish it actually led towards a path of being the boxer style character, but with where it is now, there are almost no reasons to consider this.
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