Unarmed strike - a solution

[blargney the second]

Every class already gets all simple weapons for free, with a few exceptions. That means they're proficient with unarmed attacks. Nothing to solve here.

Technically monks don't get all simple weapons, but it's no big deal because they can basically treat their unarmed strikes as natural weapons or manufactured weapons, whichever is more advantageous. As a natural weapon, they're automatically proficient in it. Nothing to solve here.

Unimproved unarmed strikes provoke AoOs - it's simply an exception to the rule that melee attacks don't provoke. In a game that's built on exception-based design principles, it's totally normal. Nothing to solve.

 

[moritheil]

Some observations:

First, no one in this thread has bothered to note the mechanical differences between monk attacks and natural attacks, which usually constitute a large part of the argument that monk IUS is not the same as natural attacks.

Second, there seems to be an alarming lack of distinction between monk IUS and regular unarmed strike (which provokes AOOs and which anyone can do).