Well, for one thing, it breaks the dueling fighting style. And I don’t mean it “breaks it” in the sense that it makes the fighting style overpowered, I mean it literally prevents the fighting style from functioning. “When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons, you gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.” If your body is a weapon, you can never be wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons.
That’s the thing, a lot of people are assuming that this change was made to protect the monk’s niche and/or prevent characters from magically enhancing their unarmed strikes, and that assumption has largely gone unchallenged. But I don’t think it’s accurate at all. If that were the case, it wouldn’t have made it through both the open and closed play tests, as that’s when the niches that needed protecting were identified and the protective measures drafted, edited, and settled upon. I think the reason was to avoid situations like the above, where unarmed strikes would interact in game-breaking ways with the natural language of 5e. And again, in this instance I’m using “game-breaking” to mean that it actually causes dysfunction, not the vernacular “overpowered” meaning.
I can understand that point, but I think that ruling on it is a matter of logic that is pretty apparent IMO. The style could have been clarified in the errata if there was any misunderstanding. Here's a stab at rewrites for Dueling that would solve the problems others have brought up.
Dueling (aka Single Weapon Style)
If you make all of your melee weapon attacks with the same weapon during your turn, you gain +2 bonus to damage rolls with that weapon.
OR
Dueling
When you make a melee weapon attack on your turn, you gain +2 bonus to damage with that weapon. Any additional weapon attacks you make on your turn must be with the same weapon, and also have the same +2 bonus to damage.
The second version is a bit wordier, but prevents potential abuse. Also, with these versions it doesn't matter what you have in your hand (empty, shield, torch, another weapon, etc.).
D&D features creatures that cannot be harmed without magical weapons. Without some kind of magical or spiritual way of turning its fists magical such a class would not be viable in a standard D&D game.
True, but the designers have said repeatedly that the game was designed to be played without magical items at all. There are spells which make weapons magical, and no reason why those spells can't affect unarmed strikes. Monks already have the feature at 6th level that makes their unarmed strikes magical. Builds without the monk class would have to find alternative means (a spell or something).
Another way to look at it is such creatures become scarier (not a bad thing IMO) and maybe the only way to deal with them is magic.
Finally, while my point was to make a "non-monk" brawler for my character (I am leaning towards Valor Bard at the moment), that doesn't mean he can't
use other weapons. Be assured, he will have weapons for throwing at range, and might one day have a magical sword or something for those times when brawling
isn't a good option.
