Back to Blog
Unarmed strike 5e5/16/2023 ![]() Unarmed strikes should be your default weapon only if you are building your character specifically to use them. These features will work with unarmed strikes depending on if the features say “melee weapon attack” or “attack with a melee weapon.” Should You Use Unarmed Strike? These rules are then extrapolated to other class features, such as the Cleric’s Divine Strike or Barbarian’s Rage. Since an unarmed strike doesn’t count as a weapon, just a melee weapon attack, your fists will never get that extra boost as a higher-level paladin. Improved Divine Smite states that you get to add 1d8 radiant damage with all attacks made with a melee weapon. However, the Improved Divine Smite ability would never work with an unarmed strike because of the wording of the feature. Whether it works at your table or not will be up to your DM. However, according to Jeremy Crawford, unarmed strikes don’t qualify for triggering Divine Smite. The wording for Divine Smite states that you have to be making a melee weapon attack in order to smite, and unarmed strikes are melee weapon attacks. ![]() This is a rules question that gets brought up quite a bit. Unless you have a way to treat your unarmed strikes as a natural weapon, such as with a racial ability like the tabaxi’s claws, then you won’t be able to use abilities and features that rely on using a weapon during a melee attack. ![]() This is because an unarmed strike is not a weapon, but rather an attack with your body. While unarmed strikes are listed on the Weapon table and count as a melee weapon attack, they are not considered to be attacks made with a melee weapon. Some weird rules interactions can go on with unarmed strikes. So, unless you have a natural weapon or a class feature that lets you make unarmed strikes with Dexterity, you can only use Strength for an unarmed strike. They cannot be used with Dexterity via the finesse property since unarmed strikes lack that property. ![]() Unarmed strikes also do not have any special properties to them, unlike many other weapons. Sure, nets deal zero damage, but unarmed strikes are the worst at dealing damage without building your character for using them. That means that an unarmed strike deals the least amount of damage of all the weapons that deal damage in the game. For most adventurers, unarmed strikes are done when they are disarmed or unable to get to their weapons, while others will use it as their default weapon of choice.Īccording to the Weapon table on page 149 of the Player’s Handbook, an unarmed strike deals 1 + your character’s Strength modifier in damage when you land an unarmed strike. An unarmed strike is a melee weapon attack that you make using a part of your character’s body, such as throwing a punch, striking with a kick, or landing a headbutt. ![]()
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |