I am currently playing a human warrior and just graduated from the academy. I am playing an all out hand to hand warrior and am wondering if this is a good idea or not. I know you can specialize later in hand to hand but is it any good? Since I am new and am just getting into the real world I don't want to take a ton of time going into a skill that is no good when I could be using a sword.

By the way Carrion Fields is awesome and so is the community. Just reading all the guides has been helpful as well as the forum. Makes carrion fields very easy to get into. THanks.

Expect to lose a lot of fights. A LOT. You will do yourself the greatest of services to not give up merely because you aren't winning. Everything that tools you will seem a lot stronger and better than the choice you've made, but the cruel truth usually is that the other player is that much better than you, not that their particular race, class, weapon spec choices are inherently stronger.

The lessons you can gain by sticking it out a while even if things seem bleak are invaluable. My first "successful" character had a record of 22 wins and 79 losses. That wasn't to say I had never had a character before that with a better win/loss ratio, but it was the first time I really felt I started to learn things and improve as I went along, instead of just giving up when things weren't working.

Hand to Hand as a specialization definitely has deadly potential.

Without getting into the specialization's unique skills, the main advantage and disadvantage of being a hand spec, as stupidly obvious as it sounds, is that you fight with your hands.

For example:

Pro: Skills like disarm, entrap, hook, grapple, and strip can't knock your weapon out of your hands. Skills/spells/communes like poison, weaken, plague, crimson scourge, wither, boneshatter, kotegaeshi, and impale can't make you too weak to wield your weapon. You always have the "best weapon" for your spec; no worries about that part of selecting gear.

Con: On the other hand, you're stuck with your hands. You can't, for example, switch to a flaming weapon in order to capitalize on a felar enemy's vulnerability to fire (at least, not while using your specialization). You can't switch to an axe to land more strikes against an invoker opponent who doesn't learn how to fight with axes. (Again, at least not while using your spec.) You'll never have a rare weapon that heals you, poisons your enemy, inflicts bleeding wounds, and the like.

Hand might be a good choice for a newer player. Because you don't (and mostly can't) worry about all the strategy involved in choosing weapons for a fight, you might be more free to focus on learning other aspects of CF.

Have you ever thought about creating gloves with the power to alter the attack type of punches? For example, flaming gauntlets will attack on fire, icy gloves attack on freezing bite.. I have never played a serious h2h character but it would give them more options. Perhaps even have a choice (once you choose h2h as a spec) as to which focus (ie elemental attack) you want to go and allow the warrior to toggle it off and on.

And considered imbalancing.

I'm not sure if it's imbalancing for me so much as uninteresting. It eats into the uniqueness of hand vs. other weapons.

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However, there are no benefits (and in fact several drawbacks) until you reach level 20 when you can specialize in hand to hand. Until then, you won't be able to parry or dual wield with your hands. I'd recommend using a mixture of swords, axes, and maces until you reach level 20, then go barehanded.

Weapon skill plays a part in a couple crucial skills - how well you can parry the attack, and how well you can disarm it. So even as a hand specialist, you don't want to completely ignore practicing the other weapon types.

Finally, there are going to be times (for example fighting thieves & assassins) when the best approach is to throw on a couple of axes and bash the little buggers into the ground.

Thanks I will go with swords for now then. Thank you very much. Can't wait to be squashing assasins and Thieves.

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