I played Heas, a dwarf hand to hand specialist who became leader of Maran, and was immortal for a brief period of time.

The advice above is good, but there are some other things to consider. First off, h2h is tricky as a new player, but not impossible. The BENEFIT of using it as a new player is that you don't have to worry about finding decent weapons, or even knowing what weapons are decent. In the end h2h ends up being one of the best specs in the game. You will defend decently (not great) and hit a lot. ALL of the h2h skills are great, and stun can really save your ass.

Now the downside you will discover while your in the 20s and low 30s is that you won't be putting out much damage at all. The average damage your punches do is level based, so to start out with it isn't that much at all. Its a good idea to carry a couple backup weapons incase you really need to dish out some damage to save your ass. The second thing is ironhands. What ironhands basically does is 1) increase the average of your hands, and 2) make it possible to parry weapons while barehanded. This makes parrying a hard thing for you to do, because you have to make all the successful rolls for a parry + an ironhands roll. What this equates to is that your not going to tank or hit that well to start out, at least not until you gain some levels and get your ironhands % up. Things do get better!

Make sure you tank as much as you can to improve ironhands, and once you hit about the mid-30s you will see a big improvement in how your doing with the h2h skill. One thing you have going for you is being human, so levelling should be relatively easy. With h2h there is a cost to be paid for its eventual power, and that cost has to be paid in advance.

Good luck, and feel free to post anymore question you might have. You can also email me personally if you want - gfgrillguy@yahoo.com