D&D 5E PHB Errata Nerf Unarmed Strikes!? WHY??? :(

[Enevhar Aldarion]

And yet enchanting ones fists - whether you're a monk or not - seems a very fantasy world type thing to do....

In my games you better be wearing something on your hands if you want something like this. Gauntlets, gloves, a prosthetic arm, or a pirate hook even. Stuff like that just does not work on bare skin, not unless there is specific text making an exception, of course.

 

[Li Shenron]

Considering how little damage unarmed strikes do under most circumstances, why the heck did WotC decide to make them even less appealing???

It's a case of the dreaded sacred cow, niche protection, that somehow made it past the previous editions. They wanted it so Monks, and only Monks, had exclusive rights to effectively punch people. Any possible damage boosting loophole (such as Sneak Attack) was denied by making unarmed strikes not count as a weapon. Additionally, this arbitrary designation future-proofed any later printed material that might have circumvented this ban (such as Greenflame Blade).

It's a thematic decision IMO. D&D is more about the adventures of characters hackin' and slashin', rather than punchin' and kickin' and headbuttin'. And at least I am one of those on board with that, as the latter sounds too modern and not enough epic for my tastes. It would be epic if given a superhero or wuxia flavor, both of which are again too modern or at least not classic D&D enough for my tastes.

In addition, I also think that the idea of regularly touching monsters with your bare body, even if it's for the cause of killing them, somewhat removes part of the appeal of monsters being scary, evil and "wrong"... stuff you wouldn't want to get in contact with.

So for me the "unarmed attacks suck" is very much a wanted feature of the game (and if it was for me I would have left the Monk out of core too), and I'd leave changes to that within the scope of genre-specific sourcebooks or house rules.

 

[Blue]

Is this news to anyone? This errata came in 2015, and IIRC, even then it was a clarification, not a change.

2015, yes. Clarification only, no.

Unarmed Strikes used to be on the weapon list under equipment - they were explicitly, no-doubt-at-all weapons.

 

[Fenris-77]

WotC's "clarification" of unarmed strikes is goofy. There's no other way to slice it. We can spitball reasons why they might have done it, and certainly give specific examples of situations where it might seem weird, but as part of the 5E rules set it's a steaming pile of trash. No second attack, no sneak attack, no use of special abilities blah blah blah. WotC might be good at writing rules for the most part, but this isn't one of those times.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In my games you better be wearing something on your hands if you want something like this. Gauntlets, gloves, a prosthetic arm, or a pirate hook even. Stuff like that just does not work on bare skin, not unless there is specific text making an exception, of course.

Anyone who is wearing heavy armour is probably wearing gauntlets, and if you punch someone whilst wearing gauntlets you aren't making an unarmed strike, you are making an attack with an improvised weapon (gauntlet).

And there are spells that are specifically designed to work without weapons: Shocking Grasp, Cause Wounds; and spells that are specifically designed to work with weapons: it's not a coincidence that Booming Blade lists a weapon as it's material component.

 

[Wiseblood]

I am likely to ignore this. As I usually ignore errata. If someone DMing for me enforces such a rule that’s fine. I have better things to do.

 

[Jer]

I think they could have done it clearer, but I think the intent was to make sure you didn't enchant your fists (with weapon properties, or other things) , or add fire damage to them etc, etc.

Vicious Flaming Fists of Radiance!

Ah, so it's to make the default the boring option so that those of us who think that's cool have to houserule it away. "Whoopsadaisies - our rulings not rules approach accidentally let some fun shenanigans slip in there - we better come up with an overly complicated errata to make this go away!"

It's "rulings not rules" unless people are having too much fantasy in their fantasy game, I guess. Then we need a rule to make them knock it off

 

[DND_Reborn]

No, I get your point, and while it is confusing a bit, I don't think it's as confusing as you're making it out to be.

As someone stated, there are only 4 categories, so Unarmed strikes have to fall into one of them. They fall into melee weapon attacks because that is the only bucket they can realistically fall into (not being ranged or spells), but they are not in fact "weapons"

From the Sage Advice Compendium:

The game often makes exceptions to general rules, and this is an important exception: that unarmed strikes count as melee weapon attacks despite not being weapons.

So any time you see "weapon" or "weapon attack", Unarmed strikes don't work. Any time you see "melee weapon attack" you can use unarmed strikes just fine.

If what you want is a melee brawler that is NOT a monk or someone without the Tavern Brawler feat... you're going to have to house rule or home brew. That is specifically the Monk's wheelhouse and right now RAW they don't want others treading on it. Let the fighters fight and the monks brawl with unarmed strikes. It's what they're best at.

You could probably get away with a Barbarian (Berserker) as I noted above, though without the Tavern Brawler feat you're limited in what damage you can deal.

Heck, now I want to do a Barbarian (Berserker)/Monk multiclass with the Grappler feat, a more controlled Monk/Fighter (Battlemaster), or Monk/Paladin for those unarmed smites.

Those actually sound fun, or some combination of them

Some of those fun combinations is what got me in this spot! The Frenzy Berserker was one of the first that got me wondering about it all. Ideally, even if it is only a couple ways, there should be ways to make a brawler without having to dip into monk. Why an official Rogue subclass "Thug" has never been made is beyond my understanding.

Anyway, I definitely planned to take the Tavern Brawler feat (level 1 as human variant). To me allowing anything that could apply to attacks with a weapon apply to unarmed strikes won't disrupt game balance or take away from monks. Since monks unarmed damage improves, I am not concerned with another class pugilist stepping on their toes.

So, I have to disagree with the SAC though because some of it doesn't make any sense to not include unarmed strikes as weapons. Something like Horde Breaker says "weapon attack". I think the reason it says weapon attack was so people understood it could be used with either a melee weapon or a ranged weapon, but not a spell. To me this was a simplification so when a feature was applicable to any form of weapon attack, they didn't have to write "melee or ranged weapon" each time.

I'll discuss it with our DM and table, but we will probably stick with the original unarmed strikes rules. For one thing, not everyone is proficient with unarmed strikes--a lot of people can't fight to save their skin. I like keeping them on the weapon table under Simple Weapons. The only classes who would not be proficiency would be Sorcerers and Wizards. This also allows Tavern Brawler to keep the "you are proficient in unarmed strikes" feature. At the very least, we will probably augment Tavern Brawler so your unarmed strikes are now considered weapons. Monks will also gain that feature. This way a player who wants a brawler can take Tavern Brawler and use TWF to gain a second attack with the bonus action if they want. And just to note when Monks use the bonus action for an unarmed strike, they do get to add STR or DEX to damage. Other characters won't unless they used the Fighter Two-Weapon Style.

I just watched Gladiator this weekend as well. While the movie isn't "great", the combat and fights in the arena show how (in most cinema and in historically as well) combatants using weapons often made unarmed strikes as part of their routine. In 5E there is no reason why anyone would normally do this as weapons deal more damage (in general) than unarmed strikes. But then the game doesn't reflect what we commonly see on screen and also how people fought historically.

This revision for unarmed strikes IMO only made things worse and more confusing. When unarmed strikes were listed under simple weapons, they were weapons and it was simpler. (No pun intended...)

I would not question your time playing, but the age of the copy of the PHB you bought. This was official errata from 4 years ago, so it would appear this way in probably any printing of the PHB after the 2nd or 3rd printing So if you bought your copy new a year ago, it should have been at least a 5th or 6th printing. If you really have that old a copy, you may want to check the rest of the errata against your book.

Actually, I bought two copies online about a month apart, the second for when new players show up or for the guys who don't own a copy. Here is the strange thing, one copy is older and has the original rules and the other is obviously newer because it has the revised rules. By chance, I've been using the older one and didn't even think about it. In fact, I never realized they were different versions until all this. I guess when I bought the older copy the store simply had it on their shelves for a while...

 

[Arnwolf666]

I really like the rules as presented for reason many people have already stated. I would change them on a case by case basis depending on the type of game i am running.

For example I may house rule them
As weapons and possibly even increase the damage to 1d3 if I was running a wuxia type game like airbender. But as written i have no problem with it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Ah, so it's to make the default the boring option so that those of us who think that's cool have to houserule it away. "Whoopsadaisies - our rulings not rules approach accidentally let some fun shenanigans slip in there - we better come up with an overly complicated errata to make this go away!"

It's "rulings not rules" unless people are having too much fantasy in their fantasy game, I guess. Then we need a rule to make them knock it off

You make it sound as thought putting in a table rule is worse than using a rule from the book? Why is that? To my mind book rules and house rules have no value judgement as to be better or worse than the other.