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Okay, so select Withdrawal Strike (simple) and mount a bayonet on your rifle. Your opponent can't withdraw. If he moves away, you can shoot him with your rifle (provided you have "Shoot from the Hip")




Add in Maniacal Charge (UR page 27) and your journey to crazy in-your-face rifleman is complete.

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You take -5 on the attack for firing a rifle one handed regardless of its size, so if you want to take that penalty on all your AOOs just so you can keep a hand free to activate Withdrawal Strike, I'm okay with that.

It's assumed that a weapon is in a hand, so I see no reason to break that assumption for Unarmed.

And hey, this is fine, there's no heat involved. We're just chatting. No worries.

Why can't you just kick them for your unarmed strike?

That's what we're discussing. The unarmed attack rules never address this in anyway. There is not a stated rule that unarmed attacks can only be made with hands. However, there are many times it is implied. The droids chapter is one, where a droid's unarmed damage is based on what type of arm appendage it has. Combat gloves are another: wearing them gives a bonus to all unarmed attacks. It wouldn't make much sense for your kicks to do extra damage because you are wearing gloves.

Combat Anklets!

Right, and what I was saying is that it's simply taken as granted throughout the book that "weapons go in hands". Weapons are light, one handed, or two handed, to take only the most obvious version. There's no rule that says unarmed is different from that standard, so you really have to assume that unarmed requires a free hand.

Maybe. The rules just aren't very clear on this matter, so I don't think there is an official right answer either way. I posted a question in the docking bay about this.

But look at it another way. Suppose a character did not have any hands (or natural weapons either). It's a rare situation, but could happen. Would you rule that they are incapable of making any unarmed attacks?

I think this whole speculation gets into some dodgy territory. Can you make unarmed attacks without using your hands? Realistically, yes, that much is clear. But I think that this might be a situation where the game mechanics don't reflect real life (or even Star Wars life) completely accurately. Like you said, BDG, there are plenty of instances of things that show using hands for unarmed, like combat gloves, but nothing for feet. There aren't any combat boots for instance.

So I think that the general assumption is that you need hands. This might have been done simply for KISS reasons to avoid having to complicate things by having to figure out how using feet or whatever would interact with things and I have to agree.

As has been established, there's no hard and fast rule that says either way, so I think it's going to come down to how each GM wants to rule it.

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Gotta disagree on that one.

Setting aside the fact the the Devs (Rodney, on his first show appearance, no less...) have clarified that unarmed strikes can be made with any part of the body; it also appears in the book.

First sentance of the "Unarmed Attacks" section, pg. 163, CRB: "Striking for unarmed damage with punches, kicks, and head butts is essentially like attacking with a melee weapon..."

What's confusing is this rules contradicts with some of the other minutia elsewhere (such as a droid's unarmed damage being dependent on their appendage size). [shrug] So YMMV.

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I think you meant appendage type, but yes, that's one example.

I guess I'm not actually opposed to being able to make AOOs with unarmed when your hands are full, but I think I kinda object to using that to bypass the normal limitations. Like, for example, making AOOs while using a rifle. Normally a rifle (assume an extended/solid stock) can't make AOOs. If you just have your hands full of gun, I don't specifically object to making AOOs with unarmed, but I think I kinda do if you were firing the gun the previous turn.

On the other hand, you can overcome that limitation really easily with several talents (Gun Club and Shoot From The Hip) or one of several cheap bits of equipment (bayonet, retractable stock) if the goal is just to be able to make AOOs (such as for the purpose of Withdrawal Strike), so I guess unarmed isn't that big a difference there. "Hip" is obviously the superior way, because you get to apply all your nifty gun-based abilities, where the rest are much like MAI in just giving you something you can use, with little regard to the damage output or attack bonus.

The stock has its own limitations since it requires an action to swap between long range and short range modes, but an affixed bayonet doesn't seem to have any penalties. Is there any reason you WOULDN'T want to use one, apart from the usual "walking through downtown" issue? (And in that case I'm not sure a bayonet is really going to attract any more attention than your huge blaster rifle already does...)


I guess I would say my suggested fix is to Withdrawal Strike itself -- instead of just negating withdrawal, it should say "if an enemy withdraws, you may make an AOO with a weapon in the selected group". The target could move away and take the AOO anyway, but by withdrawing they force you to use a less effective weapon, like a lousy bayonet or an unarmed strike, and various "use gun for AOO" abilities wouldn't help at all.