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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenobi65" data-source="post: 2783041" data-attributes="member: 1515">I'll grant you everything you say about that combat (which, BTW, I've used as an example of D&D melee for my non-gamer friends).  However...the core D&D rules don't do a good job of capturing the "fog of war" that you describe.Using a battlemat, it's very hard to avoid having all the players know where everyone is, and what they're up to, unless the DM very strictly enforces "no metagaming / no OOC knowledge" (and I've rarely, if ever, seen such).And, while there are rules for poor visibility, they mostly tend to give concealment, which just makes combatants harder to hit.  AFAIK, there aren't rules for mistaking friend from foe in combat, short of magical effects like confusion.You're in love with Improved Unarmed Strike, I think. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  "Brawling" must come up in your games more often than it does in mine.  When I think of "brawling", I think of the stereotypical barroom brawl, in which the goal is not to kill the opponent.  In that case, not having Improved Unarmed Strike doesn't hurt you one bit...you can only do non-lethal damage, which is just fine.  The only time you'd run into trouble is if your opponent either (a) drew a weapon, or (b) had Improved Unarmed Strike himself (and thus, is effectively armed).  In either case, you're probably better off just drawing a weapon, because this is no longer a barroom brawl.It sounds like you're more concerned about being able to attack effectively when you don't have a weapon in hand (e.g., if someone's disarmed you).  That's why I have my PCs carry a backup weapon or two...1d3 with a punch just ain't doing much; even a dagger is a better weapon.  Even so, I've rarely run into situations where it's an issue...it's come up, but not often enough that I'd blow a feat slot on it.Honestly, if you decide to be a Sunder Monkey, you can pretty much break anything, even if it takes a couple of swings.  With Power Attack and a two-handed weapon, you can do a metric buttload of damage once you get to 7th level or so.  And, even powerful weapons don't have *that* many hit points.  A +5 longsword has hardness 20 and 60 hit points.  We have one fighter in our group that's built to sunder stuff, if need be.  If he gets all his bonuses cooking, he routinely does 40+ points of damage with a swing...three swings, and he breaks that +5 sword.</blockquote>

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