What about make something like the brass knuckles that will enable hand to hand users to have something other then a basic punch attack? It would enable them to switch weapons for any situation just like you could with any other type of weapon.

A few examples:

a set of envenomed-spike knuckles: poison attack
a set of smoldering steel handguards: fire attack
Blessed whitesteel knuckles: wrath attack

Just a idea to help because it seems hand to hand specialists could use something that would make their fists not virtually useless against many shifters forms and giant folk. With any of the other weapons you at least have some sort of versatility to change your damage type to adjust for certain situations.

nt

...and a pain in the ass for a lot of combos that exist. If anything, I'd say tone down dumb #### like stun (which can just be done over and over and over and over and over again).

If items like what you suggest were to be introduced, I'd suggest they be extremely rare (like 1 in the game). Can you imagine a decked out maran pummeling a duergar with your whitesteel/wrath knuckles? That'd be a nightmare. Likewise, a fire giant busting out iron knuckles on an elf would be equally ridiculous.

Yeh but how many hand to hand wielders do you know that use hands for anything other then pummel or to stun, maybe the occasion vital. And your duergar argument would be no different then a duergar fighting a mace wielder or sword wielder and getting drum/flurry to death. My statement was merely that with any other weapons you could switch. It might be something to be considered to expand on hands to be used for something more then just stunning or fighting gnomes.

When it first went in.

Hand to hand is a tier below all other specs in start-to-finish fight viability. It is not designed to put out the damage of an axe spec over the long term, maladict like a dagger spec over the long term or anything else. It is, from it's most basic design, a backup plan, a very versatile one.

It's possible to use hand to hand as a viable main spec outside of stun, vital, pummelspam, but it is not for the novice player to attempt. Hand spec suffers similar weaknesses to the ram form in that many hero level mobs for exploring, and some rare mid-range ones are immune to blunt attacks. You aren't intended to be able to change this attack type around with the exception of going felar, so I don't see the need for brass-knuckles.

You don't want to see hand to hand specs before ironhands to-hit bonus got toned down and the -stat penalties reinstated for that spec properly. I would take that spec as a half-drow warrior with minimum of preparation and rip orcs or axe specs a new one despite the fact that they had savage feeding to fire on most of my attacks, and that's basically what brass knuckles to change attack-type are going to do tenfold. You already can't be disarmed. I would take a bard with 100% hand to hand, one hundred percent parry, and the hand to hand spec would spam bash me and win in under five rounds, on occasion without even using pummel.

Hand to hand spec is right where it should be and should not be viable as a main spec at hero without some clever tricks. (it's perfectly viable as a middle-range spec but not the ideal choice, especially since the races best able to use it at mid-range have an int penalty and difficult-to-learn skills to overcome.)

And your duergar argument would be no
>different then a duergar fighting a mace wielder or sword
>wielder and getting drum/flurry to death.

Sure there is, a duergar fighting a mace wielder or a sword wielder can use any one of several skills to get that vulnerability hitting mace/sword out of their hands.

>Yeh but how many hand to hand wielders do you know that use
>hands for anything other then pummel or to stun, maybe the
>occasion vital.

So, that's it in a nutshell. I've played several hand specs, and you're spot on. Three very nice spec skills that can be used situationally to great effect, and throw in a defensive skill that helps keep you alive while executing them. In terms of % of useful skills, it's right there with all of the others. The bottom line though, is that it's a utility spec, and very good at what it does.