Unarmed combat (UAC) is a different combat style. Old style brawling remains and you can still use brawling weapons to ATTACK, you have to for MSTRIKE, only the Voln-fu mechanic was removed.

Paingrips are old style brawling weapons, and as such they are held in the hands. The lighter of the old style brawling weapons are also mechanically compatible with UAC, but you will almost always be better off without them. The main exception is for a low level character that has only managed to acquire a useful flare on a paingrip.

All held items have UAC hindrance. UAC compatible weapons, like paingrips and tiger claws have lesser hindrance and an offsetting benefit. Some, like troll claws are not compatible and are purely hindrance. If you hold anything which is not UAC compatible, whether its a weapon or an acantha leaf, when making a UAC attack you'll get a warning message about it hindering you. Absence of the message does not mean zero hindrance though, just that there is a benefit that is to some extent offsetting the hindrance.

For the same reason you can't bless anything else. Either they have a property like weighting or flares that prevents it, or they are too magical for your blessing ability. If you can bless something else with the same enchantment, you can bless handwraps too.

Hands are used for jab, punch and grapple. Feet are used for kick. There is actually very little reason to ever use kick so a blessing will last a long time on footwraps, though it will run out extremely fast on handwraps because you'll be making two or three times the attacks with UAC that you do with other combat styles. If you have the ability to Voln bless, you can bless non magical handwraps. While clerics go from not being able to bless anything magical to being able to bless any enchantment on hitting the 40th spell rank, Voln blessing ability gradually improves as you step. The more steps you have, the higher the enchantment that is blessable.

To read up on UAC try somewhere like krakiipedia http://www.krakiipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
The official site is only kept up to date for spell descriptions, for other mechanics you need to find places where players have saved the forum announcements. All you'll find in the official guide to combat relates to old style brawling.

>>...As far as blessing I can't even bless the starter wraps. Also why can't I buy 2x to 4x starting wraps at the weapons smith like other weapons?

You have to remove the wraps so that they are in your hands to bless them. You cannot bless them while they are worn.

I am sure some kind soul will steer you in the right direction for where the 4x hand/foot wraps that are sold...

~Contemplar~

<You have to remove the wraps so that they are in your hands to bless them. You cannot bless them while they are worn.>

This didn't sound right to me, so I logged my monk in to make sure:

>wear gau
You slip some ebon leather gauntlets over your hands.
>symb bless gau
A wave of power flows outward from you towards some ebon leather gauntlets.
A brilliant white light wraps around the gauntlets for a moment and then quickly seeps into its surface, leaving a soft white afterglow.

I've never tried to bless UAC gear with the cleric spell, but you certainly don't have to remove it to Voln bless it. I think that the problem may be that the wraps he's trying to bless ARE enchanted and the original poster isn't skilled enough to bless them.

All the UAC gear I could find in the armory of River's Rest has an enchanters marks on it and the lest expensive ones could certainly be mistaken for unenchanted until you LOOK at them (I was actually surprised I was able to enchant the ones I bought for my test because I didn't think I was skilled enough to bless enchanted gear yet). I don't know what UAC gear is sold in other towns, but it's possible what they think isn't enchanted actually is.

Starchitin

A severed gnomish hand crawls in on its fingertips and makes a rude gesture before quickly decaying and rotting into dust. A gust of wind quickly scatters the dust.

UAC wraps will bless under the same rules as everything else. Inspect yours to check they are actually UAC gear rather than fluff. The 0x wraps from the Landing shop will bless if you don't have working ones. (Other store bought ones should work too, but the Landing's is the only ones I have actually blessed myself)

Adding gear to shops in town is down to the town gurus. The selections vary from place to place. You can get intermediate enchant UAC gear in some towns, but its not always in the same shop as weaponry.

I'd ignore brawling weapons until you have a particular purpose for them. UAC is designed to be best with empty hands and normally it is. Look to get mechanical benefit in UAC wraps rather than weaponry.

The designer saw gloves and boots as separate things rather than part of the same suit of armor. The consequence is you need two bits of gear, but thats also double the opportunity for customisation.

For whatever reason I've found ALL starter gear is impossible to bless. Don't ask me why, but it is. Likely the same thing with UAC gloves. Go buy a cheap pair from the weapon shop so you can bless em.

I use kick a lot, actually. After a jab or other strike, one often gets the message that the target is vulnerable to a kick. OK, kick is slower, but can do some nasty damage. I still think it's a travesty that ambushing rogues and rangers using UAC from hiding get far more devastating results than monks using UAC from the open, but that's the way it is.

Even with 3x dodge my monk's DS is poor, but my wizard is in the process of enchanting up some 4x robes for her, which will help.

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

>>You can buy some 4x robes from Icemule for like 30k on the Dwarven Circle cart.<<

But if I buy those, my wizard won't get any experience! She's temporarily stuck in the Landing and there is no place for her to hunt, so she's pumping out some 4x stuff out of boredom. Anyone want to buy some 4x naginatas cheap?

The bells of Hell
go ting-a-ling-a-ling
for you but not for me

<<I haven't tried a cleric bless either but my assumption on wearing/holding the handwraps for blesses is you can aim at your own gear (hence why your voln blessed hit your own handwraps) but you can't aim at other peoples gear. So "cast at my handwraps" hits my handwraps but "cast at poormonk handwraps" would not work. I wonder if you can aim blesses at sheathed gear, never really tried since I'm always holding the weapon I want blessed.

Daemon Ranger>>

Correct. 304 works on any blessable item as long as it's held in the right hand of the char you cast at. It would NOT work on handwraps being worn.

Example, Prep 304/cast Poormon.

Voln blessings have to be held by the blesser.

>You beat me to it. Yes; clerical blesses target the item being held in the right hand of the recipient. Note that if you can find a paladin to cast sanctify on the items prior to getting them blessed, the number of swings will be increased by 50%.

It's purify (1604), not sanctify.

More useful than nitpicking the typo, bless duration is typically doubled (increased by 100%). 50% is the base, but with only 10 ranks of blessing lore, it's a 100% increase.

Morden, player of