I was curious about your thoughts on how balanced they are.

Currently, they tank very well, for their circumstances (i.e. no shield, though they do imply an increasing percentage in the hth skill which helps against the majority of mobs when ranking, so yes almost any class can take advantage of that), They can deal damage with pummel, lag with crushing blow. They have vital area for maladictions, hell they can even knock people out with stun.

I was wondering if the damage on their skills or in general might be a little steep. Pummel in my experience, often regularly gets more hits than drum. It also has nasty side effects in addition to the damage, that ALSO land more often than mace spec's drum's fifth hit the unusual 'telling blow'. They are unable to be disarmed, and the maladiction that seems to affect them most is only -dex.

My point is, they are nasty well rounded ####ers, maybe a little too well rounded IMHO. I can understand them utterly overpowering bards and thieves and maybe unprepped shapeshifters (save stoneskin/haste)

But warriors and anti paladins wearing weapons that they are masters at and lethal with? Huh?

Anyway, I'm just wondering if hand to hand is a little bit too competitive with the other specs in all aspects. It's a jack of all trades spec in some ways, moreso than flail. Of course this is all in my humble opinion.

But they can't even be disarmed to negate the wide variety of things they can do. They are hard enough for other classes to parry. Imms, Can you just tone the damage down a wee bit so that they aren't outdoing people that are actually wielding weapons in that aspect, like maybe decimates-mutilates average on pummel instead of dismembers to ***demos or something similar? It isn't rational that they are as powerful and versatile in CF as they are in Final Fantasy Tactics honestly, and that's what it looks like, heh. (You'll know what I mean if you've played the game. Those dudes can outdo most melee classes in damage early on and make up for the equal damage to the other classes by almost replacing white mages and chemists later in the game.) If not the damage, than are any other balance tweaks in the works that you can at least say, "We're thinking about it"? I hope I didn't exaggerate too much.