I'm playing my first hand to hand spec and after reading the boards it seemed to be a good idea to get the brawling skill. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if I have understood the skill wrong. But I haven't gotten a single gain in the skill and I have been fighting using my hands for say 25 hours about 20 levels.
Now to the question. Its in two parts

1.
Does hand to hand fighting help in practicing brawling or is it just using kick/knee/elbow that will give skill improvements

2.
Does brawling help in hand to hand fighting at all or is it just the extra skills that get a bonus?

You need to have H2H, elbow, knee and kick at 86% before being able to learn brawling. Then after you gain the brawling skill, all it will ever do for you is enhance the damage of elbow, knee and kick.

When it first came out, I was under the assumption that it might raise the damage of H2H a little bit, but I don't think it does now, having experimented with it. Also, I think I've read somewhere before on the forums that it in fact does not raise H2H damage (whether by more hits or overall damage).

I thought Nep recently said that it actually does increase h2h damage, but that the increase is very small?

I think it would be a neat little bonus, if brawling acted as a auto-proc for the brawling skills. Give warriors a little flair, as it does make sense that trained and skilled fighters will be able to utilize their knees and elbows in certain situations. The damage they actually do must be very minor though.

This is correct.

If you're a hand spec warrior or someone who genuinely will fight with hands a lot on purpose, getting brawling is worth your time in my opinion, even though it is a very small increase.

Thank you all for your replies.

And about the second part of the question. (infact the first part but who is counting)

Does hand to hand fighting help in practicing brawling or is it just using kick/knee/elbow that will give skill improvements for brawling?

I can't remember.

Right well for future reference for other players I think we can assume that it dosn't aid with hand to hand usage. Because if that was the case then my character is the most unlucky I know =)

Thanks for the quick replies.

Would you entertain the idea of an edge that would allow for some extra skills for the hand-to-hand brawler type warrior. I was thinking along the lines of extra punch attacks. All would have 1 round lag and would deal damage, less than backhand or jab, but more than knee/elbow. Maybe one round of lag to punchee associated with each. Would require brawling to be at 100%. Not sure how expensive they should be....

Cross: Small chance of jaw-breaking=no singing/casting, one tick
Hook: Small chance of disorientation=confusion/less powerful forget, one tick
Jab: Small chance of broken nose, similar to swordspec cross without the heavy damage

To me that's not really in the scope of edges. Generally they don't provide new skills or commands.

OK, would you entertain the idea of someone who reached 100% in brawling having something like that be available to them? Like replacing elbow/knee/kick or maybe a choice of one? Or are you of the opinion that the bonus is good enough as it is?

I'm pretty happy with the way it is. It's not a mandatory skill that every character that can get brawling is forced to to be competitive, yet, it's definitely worthwhile for characters who will fight that way.