Grimrock

A Dex-focused unarmed fighter can wear the Lurker set and survive pretty much anything. Putting armor on him instead doesn't really make him harder to kill; it might make him easier to kill due to the foregone evasion bonuses from the Lurker set. High evasion is decent, but really high evasion makes you nigh-invulnerable. Going for Unarmed and the Valor set on the same character is definitely sub-optimal. Not only is the Lurker set better for keeping that character alive, you don't have to dump a ton of skill books into him to get the strongest tank in your party.

Unarmed Combat gives you a ton of evasion due to Dex bonuses and the +20 evasion bonus at 30 ranks. That's your character's strong point. Stats should be allocated to complement that, meaning a high Dex build to start with (Strength doesn't contribute to damage all that much; Dex is a much better stat for a character who evasion-tanks).

I would go with a Minotaur Unarmed Fighter.

Head Hunter. Fist Fighter.

20 in Strength.
19 Vitality.

That's a character who will run out of energy after about twenty seconds of combat. Minotaurs are not the best choice for unarmed combat fighters because their weaker stats (Will and Dex) are both vital for unarmed fighters, and because Strength is relatively unimportant in the final damage calculation. You can get away with 10 Will, but if you're compensating for the attribute penalties you'd probably be better off just going with another race and using a Minotaur on the back row (Head Hunter plus ranged weapons is awesome, since the combination of multiple shots and attack speed bonuses means they outpace even Unarmed Combat once they get double shot/throw).

Empyrean wrote:<stuff>

I agree with everything. That's my experience as well.

You can actually have 2 frontliners with high evasion rather than just one (I had set up a party like that, the low evasion value was 70, using Swords and full Lurker, and the high one was 88 with Unarmed and a shield, although I actually had him hold a torch instead). I think that works better in practice, but you can get ridiculous values if you pile everything on a single char.

King Semos wrote:I would go with a Minotaur Unarmed Fighter.

Head Hunter. Fist Fighter.

20 in Strength.
19 Vitality.

Put your first skill into Athletics, then with your first level up, pump all 4 into Athletics for the bonus vitality and strength.

After that, I would get 8 into Armors for Light Armor.

The rest put into Unarmed. If you use two tomes of infinite wisdom, you will have 50 points in it at level 14.

Or if you want to fully invest into this character, you could alternatively use three tomes of infinite wisdom and instead of going for the bonus health in Athletics, go for the Heavy Armor in Armors.

That's how I would do it personally.

Donno about athletics. Don't really think that's worth taking on any char. If it floats your boat, then do it, but i think it''s a waste.

Chiller wrote:

Empyrean wrote:<stuff>

I agree with everything. That's my experience as well.

You can actually have 2 frontliners with high evasion rather than just one (I had set up a party like that, the low evasion value was 70, using Swords and full Lurker, and the high one was 88 with Unarmed and a shield, although I actually had him hold a torch instead). I think that works better in practice, but you can get ridiculous values if you pile everything on a single char.

muun wrote:Donno about athletics. Don't really think that's worth taking on any char. If it floats your boat, then do it, but i think it''s a waste.

If you want loads of HP but not a Minotaur, take Healthy and Skilled, and take Athletics on your first level. Then it nets you level+4 hp, making it better than Tough and most +Health skill entries.

If you take it at level 2, you'll see your first extra Health at level 3, so it nets you level-2 hp, making it much less optimal. It's still a tiny bit better than +10 Health, once you are level 13, but subpar before that.

So take it at level 1 (Requires Skilled), or don't take it.

As mentioned, I finally started with a Lizard rogue for my unarmed character.

I'm at level 5 of the dungeon, my lizard is lvl 6 I think, with Dodge 2 and Unarmed 28.

With 2 pieces of the lurker and a shield he has 40+ evasion, almost 50, his accuracy is through the roof, around 40-50, and his attack power is 28 or so, close to 30.

He pales in damage next to my axe wielding minos warrior (though said minos warrior misses a lot), but he's a pretty good tank/front liner. He does good damage, never misses, attacks fast and has enough evasion to survive toe-to-toe most rounds, can't imagine what he will do when he finally hits unarmed 30 and gets that juicy +20 to evasion

I played side by side fighter and rogue unarmed and I vote rogue because of dodge. with the dex stats from unarmed and the evasions from dodge especially at 24 I hardly got touched where as my fighter had to rely on protection and it was by far lower than my rogues evasion near the end game.

sapientCrow wrote:I played side by side fighter and rogue unarmed and I vote rogue because of dodge. with the dex stats from unarmed and the evasions from dodge especially at 24 I hardly got touched where as my fighter had to rely on protection and it was by far lower than my rogues evasion near the end game.

So if I understand correctly you had two unarmed characters? I would strongly advice against that as there is only one evasion armor set in the game.

Poomermon wrote:So if I understand correctly you had two unarmed characters? I would strongly advice against that as there is only one evasion armor set in the game.

Nah, in terms of evasion it's easily the most powerful setup you can have. The reason I'd still advise against it it's because it's boring.

try 4 unarmed characters with assassinate from the back.
With the bonuses from unarmed and with a rogue dodge evasion bonuses with the light armor. Its a potent party and the cool down on my abilities are so quick I can stand toe to toe with most anything and only get tagged a few times because I am knocking them around so much. also the resists from dodge and added dex for more resists. Its actually a power team but yah... kind of boring as you pass up all the items mostly