unarmed knight questions

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I am playing a unarmed knight in my party (level9). His attack is gimped due to 1d3 base attack. Are there no claws or other ways to augment fist fighter base damage and attacks per round?

Thanks!

[Tiavals]

The only thing that helps is the Improved Unarmed fighting feat, which prevents enemies from getting free strikes if you try to punch them, and makes grappling easier.

Attacks per round is always the same(except for Speed weapons or haste), and the damage is always 1d3. Only thing that will help is increased strength.

In other words, it's a really bad idea to go around punching monsters instead of using a weapon.
Grappling is another thing, it's pretty useful in many cases.

[Doctor Sbaitso]

I think its unfortunate. The feats are in the game but it seems completely unviable. Every punch is for 10 points regardless of the monster because of the bonuses (basically damage is capped at 10 if you are unarmed.

[Tiavals]

That's how SRD works, and KOTC1 is based on a pretty basic version of it. For KOTC2, there's the Monk class, which is an expert at unarmed fighting.

I suppose it would have been better to name Improved Unarmed fighting to just Improved Grappling, since the name does imply something different than what it's actually useful for, or to make explicitly clear that being unarmed is not the way to go in any d20 game without a Monk.

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Thanks for the info. Good to know they weren't wasted feats. Grapple is handy. I have been using striding boots to get to magic users an neutralize them while the others tamw them out. I will work on swords now. I thought I read that shields weren't particularly useful. Would you suggest I stick with 2 handed swords? Is dual weilding gimpy?

[Tiavals]

That totally depends on your character.

If you don't have the dual-wielding feat(s?), you'll be pretty bad with two weapons. Dual wielding can be extremely powerful in the end, not so great early on. Depends on what you're fighting and what your weapons are.

Using a weapon with two hands(or a two-handed weapon), gives you 1.5x the strength bonus to your damage.(for instance, strength 18 = 4, so with 2 hands, you get +6 to damage from str alone). Therefore, the higher your strength, the better a two-handed weapon is for damage-dealing. As for shields, that depends on what you're fighting and what part of the game you're in. Later on when you can afford it, a shield with good magical enchantments is easily worth the half-more damage from strength, since your strength won't be that big of a deal in the maximum damage you do(due to your weapon being enchanted too).
But for, say, levels 5-9, I'd probably use a two-handed weapon. Of course, that depends on what enemies I'm fighting, and so on.

Now that I think of it, isn't Improved Grapple a feat separate from Improved Unarmed? Which means Improved Unarmed is mostly a pre-requisite to get the +4 grapple bonus from Improved Grapple(which I suggest if you already have Improved Unarmed). Not totally sure though, since KOTC does differ from SRD in some respects.

[Doctor Sbaitso]

Yeah I have all the Grapple feats. I imagine the only real wasted feat is the improved criticals on fists, which is no biggie. I imagine though that seeing as I am almost level 10 now that I should focus on two handed swords instead of dual weild. I'm not sure how many more feats I will get before lvl 20.

[Tiavals]

It's not really wasted as such, you can get plenty of use out of it if you grapple and punch people, instead of pinning them, I think?

Supposing you're level 9, you'll get:
10 - 1
12 - 3
14 - 4
15 - 5
16 - 6
18- 8
20 - 9

Unless my calcuations are wrong. You get 1 "any feat" for every 3 levels, and 1 "knight feat" for every 2 levels.

In SRD in general, to get the dual wielding feats, you need a high dexterity(I think 15 to begin with, 17 for the better, and maybe 19 for the best?). So if you don't have high dex, I would actually advice, say, Bastard sword(exotic weapon so it costs a feat). This is because you might want to use a shield now and then, especially at this high level. If you do want to use it as a two-handed sword, the base damage of a bastard sword is 1d10, compared to a greatsword 2d6, so the difference isn't that big, but it gives you a lot of versatility. If you need damage, use it two-handed, if you need defense(or resists), use a well enchanted shield.

[BlueSalamander]

Here's the list of KotC feats: http://www.heroicfantasygames.com/ListofFeats.htm
Improved Unarmed Strike is just a pre-requisite for Improved Grapple.
In KotC you don't need more than 15 Dex to get all the two-weapon fighting feats, and the Bastard Sword isn't treated as a two-handed weapon when you lack the proficiency.

[Tiavals]

What I meant was that you can use normal one handed weapons with two hands to get the 1.5str bonus to damage. Like, I have a warhammer and a shield. If I drop the shield, I deal more damage with the warhammer per strike. So if you fight a foe with large DR, you can drop your shield and get some damage through.

I didn't mean the exotic becomes martial with 2h part that KOTC doesn't have, as you said.

The point was, that might as well use a feat to get Bastard Sword as a useable weapon, then depending on the situation, you can use it to mimic a greatsword(in that you use it with two hands, and the damage of a bastard sword, while lower than a greatsword, is higher than a longsword), or use it with one hand(or dualwield it with huge penalties). For one extra feat, you can get a weapon that can do many things. If you just used feats to make your greatsword using better, you could never use it with a shield as the game doesn't have Monkey Grip as a feat.
And I believe the ability to use weapon in several ways is valuable, especially if you're lacking in feats. Just use all your feats on Bastard Sword, and it can perform many functions. While lesser than a greatsword normally(as a 2h weapon), it is better if you have a weapon focus and spec and crit for it(than if you used greatsword without feats). Thus, you save the feats you'd otherwise have to use to get a two-handed weapon that performs well, if you also want to use a single weapon sometimes. Not to mention you don't need to waste gold and exp to forge different weapons, you can perform all functions with the same weapon.

Of course, if you'll never be using a shield anyway, then greatsword is the way to go.

Me, I like my versatility.