Unarmed Combat

Version 0.30: This article may not be up to date for the latest stable release of Crawl.

The Unarmed Combat skill determines the effectiveness of all attacks made with your character's fists, claws, tentacles, and other forelimbs. It increases the damage, accuracy, and speed of your unarmed attacks. It does not boost auxiliary attacks except for the off-hand punch done without a shield.

Your fists do not normally benefit from weapon brands and definitely don't have artefact properties. However, training Unarmed Combat gives a special bonus to base damage (see Base Damage) instead of the normal skill bonus. And they are one of the few "weapons" to hit minimum delay at the maximum skill level of 27.

High level unarmed combat can be competitive with other weapons, especially when boosted by transformations, though UC is noticeably weaker early on. Some species have natural aptitudes or innate mutations that make unarmed combat a much more tempting choice.

Aptitudes

At	Ba	DE	Dg	Ds	Dj	Dr	Fe	Fo	Gr	Gh	Gn	HO	Hu	Ko	Mf	Mi	Mu	Na	Op	On	Sp	Te	Tr	Vp	VS
-1	1	-2	-1	-1	0	0	0	0	0	1	8	1	0	0	1	1	-2	0	0	-1	-2	1	0	1	0

Attack Delay

Unarmed combat starts out at 1.0 decaAut attack delay, but requires much more skill to improve. You reach the minimum delay of 0.5 at Unarmed Combat 27 skill, meaning that 5.4 skill levels are needed to reduce delay by 0.1. Factors like Haste, Slow, and Statue Form apply as usual.

If delay is a fractional amount of normal aut, then it will be rounded in a weighed manner. For example, a delay of 0.92 decaAut (9.2 aut) has a 20% chance to take 1.0 decaAut and 80% chance to take 0.9 decaAut.

UC	Avg delay	UC	Avg delay	UC	Avg delay
0	1.0	10	0.81	20	0.63
1	0.98	11	0.80	21	0.61
2	0.96	12	0.78	22	0.59
3	0.95	13	0.76	23	0.57
4	0.92	14	0.74	24	0.56
5	0.91	15	0.72	25	0.54
6	0.89	16	0.7	26	0.52
7	0.87	17	0.68	27	0.5
8	0.85	18	0.67
9	0.83	19	0.65

Base Damage

The base damage of your primary unarmed combat attack is determined through the following factors:

Condition	Damage	Special
Base damage	3	-
Claws mutation	+2 × Claws ranks	Wearing gloves negates this Ghoul: Claws 1, Troll: Claws 3
Felid	5	Works well for stabbing
Spider Form	5	Venom
Lich Form	5	Draining
Tree Form	12	-
Ice Form	12	Freezing
Statue Form	12	All melee damage further multiplied by 150%
Blade Hands	22	-
Storm Form	2 + spell power/3	Cleaving, Electrocution
Dragon Form	38	Damage once Claws is accounted for
Pig Form	1	Reduced damage from UC skill
Bat Form	1	60% Attack Delay, reduced damage from UC skill
Vampire Bat Form	2	60% Attack delay, reduced damage from UC skill
Wisp Form	5	Effectiveness based on XL instead of Unarmed Combat
Fungus Form	12	Confusion

Your base damage is then increased by 1 for each skill level in Unarmed Combat. In Bat Form or Pig Form, damage from skill is divided by 5. This base damage is then further modified by your strength, fighting skill, and other factors. The normal weapon skill bonus does not apply.

Offhand punch

Offhand punches are an auxiliary attack. Most species are unable to use the offhand punch unless their offhand is empty, which means not wearing a shield or wielding a two-handed weapon. Octopodes get tentacle slaps instead of offhand punches, and may slap even when their offhand is occupied.

If offhand punches/slaps are available, then increasing Unarmed skill increases the chance of an attack. At 0 skill, you have a 5% chance to pass a punch, at 27 skill, you have a 50% chance. It scales linearly, meaning you are 1.67% more likely to proc a punch per skill level.

Offhand punches are significantly less powerful, using the following calculation:

Condition	Damage
Offhand Punch	5 + (UC / 3) + (1d3 × Claws ranks) + (6 if Blade Hands)

Strategy

Unarmed Combat has three main advantages. You don't need to find a weapon, meaning dungeon RNG can't screw you over. Unarmed Combat scales better with skill, so skill 27 unarmed is one of the strongest things in the game. And unarmed can be boosted further with various Transmutations. The downsides are, as mentioned, the inability to enchant or brand fists, and the poor stats at low skill.

The skill scaling of Unarmed Combat can be overrated. At 16 skill:

• Unarmed Combat deals 19 base damage, and attacks at 0.7 delay.
• A morningstar deals 17 damage (after M&F skill), and attacks at 0.7 delay. However, a morningstar can be enchanted and branded.

At high enough skill, (form-less) Unarmed Combat will outdamage every weapon in the game. But that's a huge chunk of the game where you are weaker or equal to a weapon-wielder.

Many forms have high base damage, so you don't need to train that much Unarmed Combat skill to effectively use them. For example, Dragon Form has 38 + UC base damage. Even at 5 UC skill, that's enough to pulverize your enemies. Of course, you should still train some skill, to boost accuracy and speed of your attacks.

History

• Prior to 0.17, unarmed combat attack delay was penalized by body armour. Also, trolls' claws could inflict the now-removed bleeding status.
• In earlier versions of Crawl, Unarmed Combat improved the performance of your non-punch auxiliary attacks, giving all melee fighters a reason to train it.