Martial Arts Workshop
Hello everyone, and welcome to Extraordinary Feats, where we bring you new and exciting feats every week to improve and modify your character. For this week I’ve decided to look at some exciting feats to make unarmed combat more accessible and more enjoyable. Enjoy!
Blocking (Combat)
The best offense is a good defense, and you know how to keep your foes’ fists from landing.
Benefit: When taking a total defense action while unarmed, you gain an additional +2 dodge bonus to AC.
Boxing (Combat)
You prefer to do battle solely with your hands, forgoing flashy martial arts or deadly weapons.
Benefit: As long as both your hands are free, you gain a +1 dodge bonus to AC and deal an additional +1 point of damage to attacks made with your unarmed strike.
Brawler (Combat)
While you lack training in more refined martial arts, your skill at throwing haymakers and talent for clobbering your foes over the head with your fists have made you a force to be reckoned with in any tavern brawl.
Benefit: Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 points of nonlethal damage (for a Medium creature).
Flying Jump Kick (Combat)
With a shout, you leap through the air and deliver an extremely powerful strike to your opponent.
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, +6 base attack bonus
Benefit: Whenever you charge a foe with your unarmed strike, you may make an Acrobatics check with a DC equal your target’s CMD. If successful, you gain a +2 bonus on the attack roll and deal an additional 1d12 points of damage.
Knee Strikes (Combat)
When you have your foe in a grapple, you know how apply the pressure with powerful knee strikes to the gut, head, or other sensitive area.
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, Improved Grapple
Benefit: When you choose to do damage in a grapple using your unarmed strike, you can make a combat maneuver check. If successful, you automatically do maximum damage. (For example, if you would ordinarily deal 1d8+2 damage, you automatically deal 10 damage, instead.)
Offensive Blocking (Combat)
When you block a foe’s strike you take control of him, putting him in a deadly hold.
Prerequisites: Blocking, Improved Grapple, Improved Unarmed Strike
Benefit: Whenever an opponent misses you in melee while you are gaining the benefits of a total defense action, you may attempt to start a grapple with that target as a free action. If you succeed, you lose the benefits of the total defense action.
Open-Handed Strike (Combat)
For you, choosing unarmed attacks is a means of subduing your foes in a wholly nonlethal fashion, and that philosophy has given rise to an improvement in your striking technique.
Benefit: You gain a +1 bonus on all attack rolls made to deal nonlethal damage with an unarmed strike.
Shoulder Throw (Combat)
When locked in combat with an opponent, you effortlessly fling him over your shoulder, slamming him into the ground.
Prerequisites: Improved Grapple, Improved Unarmed Strike
Benefit: When you gain control of a grapple, or maintain control of a grapple, you may choose to throw your opponent down, dealing damage equal to your unarmed strike +1d6, ending the grapple and leaving your foe prone in any adjacent square.
Throat Punch (Combat)
Even though it’s considered dirty fighting, you know that a quick jab to your opponent’s throat is the best way to end a fight quickly.
Prerequisites: Improved Unarmed Strike, +6 base attack bonus
Benefit: As a standard action, you may attempt a single unarmed attack against an adjacent target at your highest base attack bonus, which, if successful, causes that target to become dazed for 1 round.
Wild Swing (Combat)
It may not be elegant, but you know how to put the most power into one of your blows.
Benefit: As a swift action, you may choose to use this feat, causing you to suffer a -2 penalty to all attacks until the end of the round. While using this feat, your unarmed attacks deal an additional 1d4 points of damage, and have their critical multiplier increased to x3.