Ranger Variant and Unarmed fighting feats

[Savevsdeath]

A friend of mine who is an excellent DM but a terrible homebrewer needed a way to put playable and not-weak unarmed combat back into 4e, so i decided to take some advice from WotC and others and came up with this simple Ranger variant and these feats to serve that purpose. Give me your honest observations and any constructive criticism folks, especially in regards to balance.

Ranger Class Feature
Fighting Style
Brawler Fighting Style: You focus on fighting unarmed and either lightly armored or completely unarmored. When you are wearing cloth armor or no armor you gain a +3 bonus to Armor Class. In addition, you are proficient with unarmed attacks and your unarmed attacks have a +3 proficiency bonus and deal 1d6 damage, and when using knuckles you increase their damage die size to a d8 and proficiency bonus to +3.

Unarmed Feats

Heroic Feats

Martial Artist
Prerequisites: Dex 13, Str 13
Benefit: When you make an attack with a weapon from the unarmed group and are only wielding weapons from the unarmed weapon group, you gain a +1 bonus to damage rolls with your main hand.

Empty-Handed Defense
Prerequisite: Dex 13
Benefit: While you are not holding a weapon in either hand or when you are wielding two weapons from the Unarmed weapon group, you gain a +1 shield bonus to your AC and Reflex defenses.

Paragon Feats
Knockdown Blow
Prerequisites: Str17, Dex 15
Benefit: If you score a critical hit with an unarmed attack or a weapon from the unarmed weapon group, you knock the target prone.

Epic Feats

Unarmed Mastery
Prerequisites: Str 19, Dex 19
Benefit: When you make a melee attack with a weapon from the unarmed weapon group, you score a critical hit on a roll of 19 or 20.

Equipment

Simple Melee Weapons
Knuckles
Prof +2 Damage: 1d6 Cost: 5 gp Weight : 1 lb Group: Unarmed Properties: Off-hand

 

[Kzach]

Been done before.

High crit and 1d6 are way overpowered for a class talent. The +3 unarmed proficiency bonus should be enough.

Allowing leather or even hide armour to be worn is probably a better idea as there is really nowhere one can make up that AC difference.

Upping damage can be done through feats. Before Adventurer's Vault, two feats to get to 1d8 was pretty reasonable and balanced. But now they've gone and put in 1d12 bows so you probably need to make 3 feats to get up to 1d10.

Although, then that's three whole feats spent on increasing damage range. Bleh. It might have to be made 1d6 with the class talent after all. Still think that's overpowered for a class talent though.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Since the ranger is balanced around 1d8 weapons, and this is a hack of the ranger, I would say just give them a class property that mimics one of the 1d8 weapons entirely when they fight unarmed. You could use the longsword as a start. +3 proficiency bonus, 1d8 damage. This is not overpowered when you think avout it, you compare the class capabilities to the ranger class, not the damage this class does unarmed compared to what normal people can do unarmed.

The bonuses that are intended to make up for not using magic are too low. By second level, other characters could have access to +2 items. This guy waits til level 5. Look at the PHB and see what characters can get by certain levels. Make this guy comparable.

I'll check back later.

 

[Kzach]

Balanced around 1d8? Erm... you're off by a die-type there mate. Bow rangers are 1d10 as are broad sword wielders. And with a feat, both can up that to 1d12.

Oh and as for the magic item thing, just make gloves that give damage and hit bonuses.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Yeah, I was being conservative, and using the scimitar and scimitar dance as the standard of balance. It is not necessarily the standard, but it does pump out the highest damage without MCing to fighter.

I still like my monks to not need magic weapons.

 

[Savevsdeath]

Interesting thoughts from everyone. Now that i've gotten some initial feedback, let me share my reasons for some of the design decisions:

First off, i realized that in order to make unarmed combat viable as a ranger fighting style, it needed to stand up to established patterns the class as a whole has while still playing a little differently in some ways and not requiring new powers.

Particularly, it had to keep up a steady level of DPR, comparable to TWF and Archer rangers, and do it without having to wear anything heavier than cloth. I also needed to make sure the class feature compared favorably to the other three currently available, which was why i gave it high crit, though people seem to be in agreement that high crit is too much for unarmed strikes, and just letting unarmed strikes mirror magical weapon advancement as the character levels is unpopular, so im probably going to remove high crit and increase the die size to a d8.

I didn't want to have to invent a whole new class of item just so a brawler could have magic weapons; part of the idea is that you don't need weapons and armor. The +3 AC bonus is enough to keep a cloth-wearing brawler on par with other Rangers defensively, so that part i have pretty much set in stone unless someone else has spotted a potential problem there.

Anyone else have solutions for the magical enhancement problem, other than creating new magic items just for that purpose? Or will i just end up designing some items for the Arms and Hands slots that add special effects like flaming, frost, etc. to unarmed attacks anyway?

 

[Savevsdeath]

I changed the class feature to better accomplish its goal and altered the wording on the feats to be less abusable, and also added a new weapon, Knuckles.

 

[Kzach]

Oh, I forgot to mention that you may as well consider unarmed attacks to be two-weapon fighting, meaning you don't have to reinvent the wheel with feats.

 

[Savevsdeath]

Oh, I forgot to mention that you may as well consider unarmed attacks to be two-weapon fighting, meaning you don't have to reinvent the wheel with feats.

I did this to avoid some potential issues with stuff like TWF and TWD which explicitly require you to be holding two melee weapons. I suppose i could add something into the class feature like 'you are always considered to be wielding/holding two melee weapons', and problem solved.

 

[FireLance]

The +3 AC bonus is enough to keep a cloth-wearing brawler on par with other Rangers defensively, so that part i have pretty much set in stone unless someone else has spotted a potential problem there.

I would set the AC bonus at +2 instead of +3. Hide armor (+3) carries an armor check penalty while leather armor (+2) does not.

Anyone else have solutions for the magical enhancement problem, other than creating new magic items just for that purpose? Or will i just end up designing some items for the Arms and Hands slots that add special effects like flaming, frost, etc. to unarmed attacks anyway?

Depends on the flavor you want to have for the character. If it's a religious-type monk, you could allow a holy symbol's enhancement bonus and properties to affect the character's unarmed attacks.

If it's a more martial-type pugilist, you could reflavor it so that the character finds and uses manuals of fighting styles that are otherwise identical to magic weapons (including a minor action to switch between "styles").