Pretty sure this is rules as written or at least as interpreted by Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s been a while since my playthrough but I’m pretty sure I was doing this with Astarion the whole time. Knife in one hand unarmed strike with the other. Warrior monk rogue kicked ass.

People desperately need to understand that mechanical rules are there for balancing and taking them so painfully literally just isn’t necessary.

You only get one unarmed attack on the dice, but if you want to say you did the damage in two or three hits instead of one then go for it, it literally does not matter. You can even say you missed one attack and them wound up for a sneaky second one!

Follow the rules for number related things and roleplay and tell a story for being cool related things.

… and this is why I don’t play D&D. It’s all abstract. It’s more like a board game than an RPG.

[Obviously, this is just my opinion, and it’s subjective, and it’s probably wrong. But, we are where we are.]

In BG3, you have to multiclass into rogue for the off-hand attack. But yeah, I think it would let you “dual wield” with a single light weapon.

thought that just let them add their modifier to the second attack

If that was the case, it’d be phrased more like Two Weapon Fighting from the fighter’s fighting styles. But instead of saying you can add your modifier, it says you can make an unarmed strike. Which means you couldn’t before.

As DM, I’ll have you roll the dice, tell you if it succeeded or not, and then have YOU describe what happens based on the roll.

But with this particular thing, it’s not really about the story. It’s the player trying to maximize their bonuses so the dice will be more favorable. In which case, sure. You can dual wield your hands. But you’re still taking a penalty with your off-hand unless you have the feat that removes it. You ever try to punch someone with your non-dominant arm? You definitely take a penalty IRL, unless you’re ambidextrous.

Unarmed Strikes are not just punches, they have nothing to do with how many hands you have. You can even Unarmed Strike with a weapon in each hand. If you want to “dual wield” Unarmed Strikes, go Monk.

There are other games with fewer mechanical rules where you can go crazy with this kinda stuff. D&D is one of the most mechanically crunchy ones out there

So there’s a few issues here:

• Unarmed Strikes do not require an open hand. Punches, kicks, and slams all count as the same Unarmed Strike
• If you were to allow this, there would be no reason to allow someone with two Shortswords or a Greataxe to do a BA strike
• …which would then render the BA attack from Polearm Master moot since they no longer need a feat to do that
• I’ll also note that the fighter with a sword in one hand and nothing in the other is likely using the Duelist fighting style, so that sword attack is effectively two die sizes larger. A Duelist Longsword is roughly equivalent to a Greatsword to put it in perspective

At the end of the day, allowing martials to perform a BA Unarmed Strike wouldn’t be game breaking, but it needs to be applied universally which has secondary implications

An Unarmed Strike without modifier would also be literally 1 point of damage, barring Monk or Unarmed Fighting Style

I am directly talking about the Monk, though

Yes.

That’s incorrect, if you are able to dual wield you can bonus action attack, the issue is that you get only 1 offhand attack and it doesn’t get your str/dex to damage without the feat. Also, after lvl 5 other classes get to multi attack with the mainhand, but the offhand gets only 1 attack. 2 if you get the extra bonus action from thief.

You need to use light weapons though.

You need to be trained in some sort of unarmed fighting style to be able to throw a kick in between slashes. If you did it untrained, it would leave you unbalanced and prone to get hit.

Makes sense to let a monk with a quarterstaff do it and not a barb with a great axe.

You have to abstract something for a game, though. So are you saying you want it less abstract in that you want less of it to rely on dice (and thus more role playing), or do you want it less abstract in that you want more crunch and mechanics for, like, pooping?

Read it as dual welding and was quite impressed by the concept.

Instead of using a weapon to make a melee attack, you can use a punch, kick, headbutt, or similar forceful blow. In game terms, this is an Unarmed Strike

D&D isn’t a real world simulator. It values them all equally.

As far as I remember the rules, unarmed strike damage is 1 + Str modifier (i.e., a 1d1 damage die). And anyone untrained in unarmed strikes (not monk, not having the Tavern Brawler feat or similar) couldn’t add their prof bonus to the attack roll. This makes it significantly weaker than a proper dual wielding build or something like PAM, where the attacker typically gets a proper damage die and prof bonus. Which is why it doesn’t seem like a big deal to allow it.

Unarmed strikes can be done for flavor with kicks, elbows, etc. But mechanically I’d allow it as a proper bonus action if the character were wielding a single weapon without a shield. Anyone can describe anything however they want for flavor, I’m just talking about balancing the action economy.

I was more thinking about the abstraction of things like character classes and levels. “I’m a knight and can only more in L-shapes.” or “I’m a seventh level human.” That’s what I mean about it being more like a board game than an RPG. Compare “I’m a third level barbarian” to, eg, Call of Cthulhu and “I’m a pilot who was a POW in WWI which is when I picked up fluency in German.” One of those is a potential character, the other is just a playing piece.