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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bacon Bits" data-source="post: 7829204" data-attributes="member: 6777737">Calling a cestus "just hand wraps" is rather disingenuous. You know what a cestus looks like. They evolved from leather wraps to include metal plates or weights so they would be more useful as a weapon. That point really isn't debated from a historical perspective: they were the way they were because they were intended to be used as weapons. That's what made them a cestus instead of "just hand wraps." It's the equivalent of boxing with loaded gloves or fighting with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weighted-knuckle_glove" target="_blank">sap gloves</a> or using brass knuckles. They're all modified specifically to cause more damage.Metal gauntlets, while less expressly intended to be used as weapons, are, by their nature, constructed similarly to a cestus. They're padded or worn over padding, and the armoring necessary to provide the protection against lethal attacks means the have extra weight and hardness you'd find with a cestus. Further, they were historically known to be designed with features that make hand strikes more effective because the opportunity cost of doing so is so low relative to the cost of the armor itself.Er, that's not the point. The ultimate point is that Crawford's justification for the errata doesn't make sense. The argument where this point comes from, as far as I remember, is trying to determine if a character wearing metal gauntlets can benefit from the Duelist fighting style ("When you are wielding a melee weapon in one hand and no other weapons..."). If you say that using a wielding longsword and wearing (not attacking with) gauntlet allows you to benefit from Duelist, while wielding a longsword and a wearing (not attacking with) a cestus does not allow you to benefit from Duelist, then you're being arbitrary in your distinctions. There's very little distinction practically between a cestus and a gauntlet.The whole point is that the ruling that "Unarmed strikes aren't a weapon" is not required for the rules to make sense, which is kind of what Crawford implied when he made the errata and others here claimed. If the rules are just completely arbitrary and not remotely based on reality, that's extremely gamist and will break immersion for some people because the game world stops making sense. I'd even go so far as to say that 5e generally takes steps to avoid gamist interpretations that break immersion.The point isn't about trying to draw a line between a gauntlet and a cestus, separating or dividing them as you see fit. It's that there are lots of corner cases like Battlerager spiked armor, races that have natural weapons, polearm master with a spear, staves as spellcasting focuses, improvised weapons, striking with the pommel of a weapon, etc. where you "have a weapon" and "don't have a weapon" at the same time. These corner cases make it a lot more muddied to say "unarmed strikes aren't weapons," particularly if you want to argue that the game rules require that rule to function. The whole "is a weapon"/"isn't a weapon" distinction doesn't make much sense in general and unless you marry yourself to the strictest most literal reading of the rules, and that just isn't necessary if you're not an armchair DM.Bottom line, if what players are doing is mathematically less powerful or makes sense based on what the mechanics are supposed to represent, why are you making rules against it? If the rule has no meaningful goal, what are you fixing? Why do you want more rules that don't have a point? Why do you care if magic weapon can target the Monk's or Fighter's fists? Is that really a meaningful restriction for balance purposes? It really seems pretty unlikely. "Because I want it like that," is a pretty poor justification for a rule, even coming from Crawford and Mearls.</blockquote>

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