Unarmed Strike Questions

[Xetheral]

I'm a DM still considering whether or not to move my group to 5e. I have three questions regarding unarmed strikes that I haven't yet decided how to rule on, and would appreciate any relevant rules I may have missed or developer tweets on the topic.

1. Can a monster ignore its listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

2. Can a wildshaped druid ignore its animal form's listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

3. Is an unarmed strike a valid form for a warlock's pact weapon?

Thanks!

[Beige]

I'm a DM still considering whether or not to move my group to 5e. I have three questions regarding unarmed strikes that I haven't yet decided how to rule on, and would appreciate any relevant rules I may have missed or developer tweets on the topic.

lets see if I can help :smallsmile:


1. Can a monster ignore its listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

yes, but it will deal 1 + str damage unless it has some reason for not dealing so


2. Can a wildshaped druid ignore its animal form's listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

again yes, but again unless it has something that changes it, 1 + strength. a monk/druid could rock it however, but then you'd loose mutli-attack, which might suck


3. Is an unarmed strike a valid form for a warlock's pact weapon?

I'd say no - it's not something they can summon (I hope, unless you plan to use someone else's unarmed strike :smalleek:). I suppose if it was already a magic item...

Thanks![/QUOTE]

[Shadow]

I'm a DM still considering whether or not to move my group to 5e. I have three questions regarding unarmed strikes that I haven't yet decided how to rule on, and would appreciate any relevant rules I may have missed or developer tweets on the topic.

1. Can a monster ignore its listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

2. Can a wildshaped druid ignore its animal form's listed attacks and instead take the attack action to make an unarmed strike?

3. Is an unarmed strike a valid form for a warlock's pact weapon?

Thanks!

One of the major perks about 5e is the fact that many upon many thing are left up to the DM. If you want to allow these things, then feel free to do so.
With that in mind, I answered your questions in the manner that I would personally rule.

1. "When you are unarmed, you can fight in melee by making an unarmed strike, as shown in the weapon table in chapter 5."
The weapon table lists unarmed strike as doing 1 point of bludgeoning damage. So unless the monster had Monk levels (or the Tavern Brawler), then it's basically useless. Plus the monster may not be proficient with unarmed strikes, which is a simple weapon (ala wizards not getting simple, etc). Just because it knows how to fight with its claws doesn't mean it knows how to ight without them.
That would be my ruling.

2. That would absolutely be the DMs call, but my ruling as DM would be: see #1. Your combat block changes to match that of the beast (in most cases). "You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them if the new form is physically capable o f doing so."
So basically, see #1, and that would only apply if your new form had appendages useful enough to make the unarmed strikes in a manner at least vaguely similar to how you would as a humanoid.
But again, that would be my ruling. You'd have to decide for yourself.

3. I would rule No, but that's just me.

[Edge of Dreams]

An important question to ask whenever you get into rules things like this is, "Why does it matter?"

Are you specifically thinking about Druid/Monk multiclass?

[Yorrin]

3. Is an unarmed strike a valid form for a warlock's pact weapon?

Beige covered the first two pretty well, but I want to address this one real quick. RAW unarmed strike is on the weapon table as a melee weapon, and therefore should be a viable choice. That being said, it would be up to the DM and the player to work out together how this happens. Perhaps your pact blade manifests as brass knuckles, or perhaps your hand starts glowing with power, or something along those lines. In any case as a DM I'd personally rule that there would need to be some visual manifestation, but some DMs might be more lenient on even that.

Of couse DnD has always failed to define the edge cases for unarmed fighting (see CaptnQ on the 3.5 boards for some of the ambiguity taken to it's logical extreme assuming a permissive DM). So for this and probably many other questions that will arise, ultimately the answer is "talk to your DM." Or if you are the DM in question "what makes sense" and/or "how much will this player abuse my answer?"

[DrLemniscate]

I would be concerned with trying to punch something with a Strength of 9 or lower.

Imagine a mighty warlocks fists glowing purple as he lashes out for a magical strike and deals ... 0 or less damage.

[Xetheral]

An important question to ask whenever you get into rules things like this is, "Why does it matter?"

Are you specifically thinking about Druid/Monk multiclass?

Monsters with monk levels or abilities, monsters with warlock levels or abilities, Druid/Monks, Warlock/Monks, Druid/Warlock/Monks, Tavern Brawler, and Alter Self all come to mind. (Basically, anything that requires one to make an unarmed strike or offers benefits for doing so.)

Also, as Yorrin pointed out, unarmed combat created substantial rules-interpretation problems in 3.5, which in my experience crop up fairly frequently, so I'm trying to get a sense of how such situations are handled in 5e.

Thanks for the input, everyone. So far it looks like I didn't miss any rules-related reason 1 and 2 wouldn't work. 3 seems more controversial. If anyone else has anything to add, great. Otherwise I'll make a note of these and decide which way to rule if I end up switching editions.