Strength-Based Unarmed Brawler Builds in DnD 2024

by Brandon Gregory

(This guide is for the DnD 2024 rules. DnD 5e unarmed builds can be found here.)

Monks are great at what they do, but sometimes you want Mike Tyson rather than Bruce Lee. If you want a strong pugilist-type character who hits like a truck, DnD 2024 has made unarmed characters much easier to build. It also opens up builds that don’t have Wisdom as a cornerstone stat, allowing for a charismatic pugilist or strategic battlefield tactician. If you want an unarmed character that uses Strength rather than Dexterity, here’s how to do it in DnD 2024.

Unarmed Brawler Build Basics

DnD 2024 opened up new features for unarmed brawlers. Previously, the unarmed fighting style was limited to Fighters; it’s now available to any class with a fighting style, including Fighters, Paladins, and Rangers. Barbarians can get the fighting style by multiclassing, but this guide won’t focus on them. Rangers unfortunately have many features that require an attack with a weapon (not a weapon attack), which excludes unarmed attacks.

While unarmed brawlers are viable and fun to play, there are some downsides to unarmed combat. Despite improvements, an unarmed build will do less damage than an optimized martial weapon build. Second, and probably the bigger detriment: unarmed brawlers do not get a weapon mastery. DnD 2024 made martial combat more interesting by giving weapons additional effects, but your fists or feet don’t have these properties. There is a way to compensate for that detailed below. These issues will be fine unless your table focuses heavily on optimization. DnD 2024 is a pretty forgiving system so there’s no need to optimize every character.

Two big things are needed for a good unarmed brawler build. The first is the unarmed fighting style. This is the main source of your damage—without this, it’s hard to make an unarmed brawler work. The unarmed fighting style is available to Fighters, Rangers, and Paladins.

Second is the Tavern Brawler origin feat. While the damage boost is redundant with the unarmed fighting style, the other features (re-roll damage die and push effect) compensate for the lack of a weapon mastery. The Tavern Brawler origin feat is only available from the Sailor background. If you’re playing a human character, you can play any background and pick Tavern Brawler as an additional origin feat at level 1, but any other species will have to pick Sailor.

Magic Damage for Unarmed Builds

Starting around level 6, you’ll run into enemies that resist or are outright immune to non-magical damage. Most adventurers will have magic weapons by this time, but unarmed brawlers don’t use weapons, making this a major problem for them.

Fortunately, even without weapons, a few magic items boost unarmed attacks. With DnD 2024 still in its infancy, magic items specific to this edition are scarce, but some DnD 5e items will work:

• Insignia of Claws - This is basically a +1 weapon for your fists. It does not require attunement. This can easily be flavored as hand wraps or knuckle dusters.
• Eldritch Claw Tattoo - This is the deluxe option, granting a +1 to attack rolls and damage and giving you a ranged attack once a day. Requires attunement.

Beyond those two magic items, many homebrew options are available and future DnD 2024 books will release additional magic items with an expanded focus on unarmed combat. If in doubt, talk to your DM about homebrewing some magic items or using existing homebrew for your unarmed character. Making hand wraps with the same properties as a magic weapon is a reasonable accommodation.

Should I Grapple?

Grappling in DnD 2024 adds strategy and utility to combat. While a grappled creature isn’t as debilitated as a stunned creature (hello Monks), it can’t move and has disadvantage on attack rolls against anyone but the creature grappling it. A grappled creature can also be dragged around, meaning you can drag an opponent into a Cleric’s Spirit Guardians spell or over to a ledge to shove them off.

Shoving and grappling is also a nasty combo. A creature that’s both prone and grappled will be unable to get up without passing the saving throw to escape your grasp. A prone creature is easier to hit with melee attacks, so if you have several melee attackers in your party, you can absolutely pummel a prone opponent.

Unarmed builds have an extra benefit for grappling: the unarmed fighting style grants action-free damage each turn to one enemy you’re grappling. This helps the unarmed fighting style compete with other fighting styles like dueling. Unarmed characters should absolutely be grappling.

New to DnD 2024, grappling no longer uses the Athletics skill—it’s purely based on your Strength. Athletics can still be useful for a strong character, but it’s no longer essential for unarmed builds.

Fighter - Battle Master

The original strength-based brawler from 5e is still one of the best. A Battle Master Fighter makes a great unarmed brawler with high damage and several control options. True to their name, Battle Master brawlers will seem like master pugilists, able to outmaneuver and overpower their targets. They have good staying power throughout long adventuring days with their superiority dice recharging on short rest. Fighters also get more ability score increases than any other class, making it easy to work feats into the build.

Several Fighter subclasses can work for an unarmed build, but Battle Masters are the most effective. Battle Masters have maneuvers that can add damage, knock a weapon out of an opponent’s hand, push them back, trip them, or instill them with fear. The saving throw DC of your maneuvers is based on your Strength stat, so it will be naturally high.

Maxing Strength is a top priority with this build, for damage, accuracy, and the effectiveness of your maneuvers. Fighters can wear heavy armor which is the best choice for this build. Aside from maxing Strength and having a reasonably high Constitution, you can boost your abilities as you want. Battle Masters have no affinity for a particular mental stat, allowing you to choose between Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma. The Battle Master has maneuvers to boost some Intelligence, Wisdom, or Charisma skills, giving them additional utility outside battle.

Best Maneuvers for an Unarmed Battle Master

• Commander’s Strike - This can be useful if you have an ally who can pack a lot of power into one hit. Melee Rogues are a great choice because sneak attack works once per turn, meaning it will work on your turn.
• Commanding Presence - This is a great out-of-combat option for high-Charisma builds.
• Disarming Attack - Very useful when faced with a dangerous martial opponent, but your DM might allow you to target an enemy spellcaster’s spellbook or arcane focus.
• Menacing Attack - Fear is a powerful condition.
• Pushing Attack - Battlefield control can make you a much more strategic Fighter. Push an enemy into an ally’s AOE spell or off of a ledge.
• Riposte - Counterattacks can add much more damage per round.
• Sweeping Attack - Hitting multiple enemies is always useful, particularly without weapon mastery skills that allow you to do that.
• Tactical Assessment - Adds out-of-combat utility with some Intelligence and Wisdom skills.
• Trip Attack - Prone enemies are easier to hit with melee attacks. This is good for you, but it’s amazing if you have allies who are melee attackers. Be careful if you have ranged attackers in your party—prone enemies are harder to hit with ranged attacks.

Paladin - Oath of Glory

Let us rejoice—Paladins can now smite with their fists. Paladins get a fighting style at level 2 and unarmed is an option for them. With those two features, new in DnD 2024, an unarmed Paladin is a viable build. Much like Fighters, Paladins have heavy armor proficiency and do well with Strength builds. While Fighters may be masters of combat, Paladins bring support features and their smite abilities, which can do massive damage when needed.

While any Paladin subclass can work for an unarmed build, the Oath of Glory Paladin has high survivability due to its level 3 feature Inspiring Smite, which allows you to use your Channel Divinity to grant temporary hit points when you smite. Between that and their healing and support skills, Oath of Glory Paladins are the most durable unarmed brawlers and can help their allies be stronger too. Paladins have less staying power than Fighters, though—smites use your spell slots, and when you run out of spell slots for the day, your offensive power decreases sharply. Paladin players must ration their spells and smites for longer adventuring days.

For an unarmed Paladin, maxing Strength is your top priority, but don’t neglect Charisma, which determines the effectiveness of your spells. Your Charisma probably won’t be as high as a Bard’s or Sorcerer’s, so you won’t want to focus on spells that require a spell attack roll or saving throw; instead, look at buffs, utility spells, and spells that boost your regular attacks.

Best Spells for an Unarmed Paladin

Auras and smites all have uses so those won’t be covered here.

• Bless - A great low-level buff.
• Protection from Evil and Good - A fantastic buff if facing enemies affected by the spell.
• Aid - With an 8-hour duration, this is a great spell to buff your party for an entire day.
• Crusader’s Mantle - Boosts damage for several allies.
• Magic Circle - This is great for creating a defensive position virtually anywhere. It’s limited to a few types of creatures, but if you’re facing one of those types, this can be a life-saver.
• Circle of Power - A great buff for a stronger party.

Other Unarmed Fighter and Paladin Builds

While the Battle Master Fighter and Oath of Glory Paladin are the most effective unarmed brawlers, other subclasses can work.

Both Champion and Eldritch Knight Fighters can work well as unarmed characters. Champion is a simple but effective subclass that gives you more critical hits. It also grants an additional fighting style to boost your defense or give you a few extra features. Eldritch Knights get powerful defensive magic, although some of their features will be wasted on an unarmed build.

With Paladin smites working with unarmed attacks, any Paladin subclass can be an effective unarmed character. The Oath of the Ancients has some great control and buff abilities that can make fights difficult for the enemy party. The Oath of Vengeance has powerful offensive features to make you a much more dangerous brawler.

Feats for Unarmed Brawlers

Origin Feats

As mentioned above, the Tavern Brawler feat is mandatory. If you’re able to get a second origin feat (for instance, if you’re playing as a human character), there are some other useful origin feats:

• Lucky - This is useful for any character.
• Magic Initiate - All three options have useful buffs and utility spells for an unarmed brawler.
• Skilled - This adds more utility to your character, bringing you closer to a Rogue or Bard with skill proficiencies.

General Feats

Boosting stats is important to any build, but picking the right feats can add power and strategy to gameplay. Crusher might seem like a good fit, but it has too much overlap with the Tavern Brawler origin feat to be useful. Two other general feats that help with the unarmed brawler gameplay.

• Grappler - This feat, improved in DnD 2024, is amazing for unarmed builds. With grappling being so beneficial to the build, being able to grapple and punch at the same time helps you immensely.
• Heavy Armor Master - Another feat improved in 2024, this feat cuts down on the damage you take and scales with your proficiency bonus. This offsets not being able to use a shield. Note that Rangers cannot innately use heavy armor, so this is a poor choice for them.

About the Author

Brandon Gregory

Brandon Gregory is a web developer and writer in the Kansas City area. He's been playing TTRPGs since 2020 and is involved in the disability-related TTRPG podcast Tales from the Crips. He's into classic movies, mental health, and, of course, DnD. Also, he's in a band. One time, they rocked so hard it killed a man.