I do not really hope anyone will care to reforge the whole
skill/spec, but I found it interesting to share my ideas on it.

First of all, why boring and unrealistic punches? Restricting to hands
is also strange for an unarmed combat master.
So, my first suggestion is to rename the skill hand-to-hand into
Unarmed. Then, to the punch attacks types, a good deal
of others should be added (felars still would mainly claw), for example:
slap
kick
swing
uppercut
lowkick
stomp
elbow jab
fingerclaw
finger prod
ridgehand
hammerfist blow
shoulder strike
ankle jab
etc.

I am not saying they have to be like this, perhaps people
who have English as their mothertongue and who had some
training in unarmed in RL give better dam nouns. In addition,
some of the attacks would be not blunt, which alone would make
unarmed spec warriors more feasible.

Now, the more doubtful part of it:

I believe even unarmed spec should have little to no chances of striking someone with weapons and parry skill, and shield.
When fighting with armed opponent, your only chance is
catch them on a too broad swing and put them into situation where
they cannot make real use of their weapon.

Rushing to punch a guy with a sword and a shield
is more like a suiscide, since while you approach you
will be open for beating. Now, after you decrease chances of
hitting someone with a fist (maybe as echo a la keeps you at bay with his weapon. No special skill needed to hold a sword.),
Unarmed should work a bit better towards defense. You hover around, waiting your opponent to attack, and then he hits, you use the opponent's mistakes, and that's where
you strike! I believe this should be applied to Unarmed spec warriors
mainly, with slight chance for other Unarmed skilled chars.
I see it as some kind of riposte, but the emphasis is put not on damage, but on autodisarm/shield disarm or disable / maybe some critical strike, since after the opponent is without weapon, you can actually start to land a good deal of Unarmed damage.

Thanks for the ideas, but I think I prefer our hand to hand the way it is in general.

well. I guess, the discussion ends here.

Different damage messages: I've considered doing this before, but it's not a high priority for me. They'd still all be blunt damage. No one is going to chop you open with their hands really.

As far as HTH vs weapons go, a non-assassin non-hth-spec character is already terribly disadvantaged vs. any character with a weapon. I've seen a necromancer who still had a weapon very slowly physically kill a warrior who couldn't wield one many a time. As far as HTH specs go, I think they balance pretty well as-is. Conceptually, they have the training to duck inside blows and find openings in their opponent's defenses. We could change them to be more like you suggest, but I don't see how that makes for a better game. There are already enough disarming-character type matchups that a noremove or nodisarm weapon on their opponent shuts down extremely well. I don't see the advantage to taking something different than that that works pretty well and turning it into another one of those.

Thank you for the detail. I guess you are right all around,
just had some random thoughts to share. As to chopping with hands... well.. pretty true, but who said you cannot hit with wrath when under frenzy :-). I actually never could imagine wrath damage type.

On the side note, with swords you can both slash and pierce,
so perhaps dam different. applies here as well.

I do not say it would make some great improvement, but different nouns
for skills, they reall add that flavor to CF.

You managed to make them for parry, dodge, disarm,
and generally I think this made the game better.