"Unarmed" Weapons

[October]

This idea comes from an online game I played for a while called "Dragonrealms."  With the usual sword and crossbow type skills, there was a skill called Brawling, which was unarmed combat.  For a long time, brawlers were left to their pure physical attributes to fight, whereas those who fought with swords and other weapons were using not only their physical attributes, but the bonuses the weapons could give.  To give the brawlers something to make up for that perceived inequality, the GMs came up with "brawling weapons."  These were things like brass knuckles and elbow and knee spikes, worn on the body and never held in the hand, that gave a weapon bonus, but still relied on brawling moves to execute.

I didn't see brass knuckles or the like on the weapons table, so I thought there was room in Chimera for something like this.

Brass Knuckles, Knee Spikes, Elbow Spikes, Clawed Gloves, Spiked Gloves/Gauntlets, Spiked Boots.  All considered "small," and the gauntlets could give a +1 Parry bonus.  Requires an Athletics roll (of course). Damage could be done in one of two ways:

1. Either take the normal unarmed damage based on size up a step - 1d6 becomes 1d8 and so on, and still calling it fatigue damage, or, 
   
2. Keep the normal unarmed damage based on size and treating it as regular wound damage.

I'm in favor of #2.  What do you think?

~O

[October]

Thinking more on it, Brass Knuckles would still give Fatigue damage and fit into the table like so:

Weapon

TL

Ability

Size

Parry

Damage*

Range**

Rate of Fire

Enc

Cost

Brass Knuckles

1

Athletics

Small

–

! (F)

1"

–

–

$10

! Damage based on attacker's size, plus one size step. (1d6 becomes 1d8, etc.).