Is Martial Arts now viable?

[Speeder]

I am trying to do a character that is just very smart overall, high-int and whatnot, and when that fails, resort to fists and kicks.

But reading some 2018 posts seemly that was extremely bad idea, with lots of people saying that the game assumes you have guns and anything else is just bad.

So... now with all updates, is viable to do that build? Can you go around punching things to death?

[InEffect]

Depends on what you'd call viable and if you are willing to invest into a second weapon group. Yes, one can beat survival with mainly using melee. No, it's not on par with proper firearms build. Not even close as you'd spend about 2x time on every encounter. No, I wouldn't submit myself to melee only run.

[InEffect]

Boom glove. It's 5AP aimed shots with 50% "free" armor pen, cause it uses bullets, bonus crit chance and good damage. Easy oneshots with no investments outside of skillpoints. It's bladed weapons that are ♥♥♥♥♥ and can't compete at any stage of the game. Quality knuckle, combat glove, boom glove all outperform melee weapons by miles. Also knockdowns are better than fear, just for good measure.

But then again all melee is just a meme cause the game has no movement points. Even if you oneshot everything it's not worth running to your targets and I highly doubt pure melee survival is doable if you do all combat content. At least not in a reasonable time-frame. To be fair, same is true for most games that have both melee and ranged, unless ranged is completely shafted.

[wizard1200]

Free attacks of opportunities against an adjacent opponent who attacks with a ranged weapon or an opponent who moves out of melee range would make melee combat much better.

[InEffect]

Originally posted by wizard1200:

Free attacks of opportunities against an adjacent opponent who attacks with a ranged weapon or an opponent who moves out of melee range would make melee combat much better.

No, they won't. Annihilating whatever is in reach is not the problem that holds melee down. It's the lack of movement points that is the bane of melee. Up until melee would have the same action economy ranged has it won't be decent. And that's if we would also forget that melee takes a trinket slot as well, so that's another 1 stat point less. And you would have to max out str, so that's more stats down the drain. And all that for the privilege of doing less damage per round than any competent ranged build.
Regular AoO's in general are lackluster in any game, cause the enemy is perfectly fine with standing near you. It's not like they will panic seeing your face and run away. Also you don't want to leave things alive and hope they'll die somehow later. You want thing dead, not maybe dead. That and the fact that melee damage without aimed shots to the eyes sucks.

[wizard1200]

If every tile of movement would reduce the to-hit chance of ranged attacks by 5 % moving into melee range would not be 'wasted' action points.

If an AoO would reduce the action points of the target by 2, similar to Age of Wonders: Planetfall, they would be much stronger.

[InEffect]

Why would you reduce to-hit? It's not exactly harder to shoot something point-blank. As to AoO's they won't matter even if they would oneshot the enemy. Enemy simply has no reason to move. Take any game with AoO's. If you have enough damage to hurt AI just stands near you and continues to do damage. AoO's are not a solution to melee at all. You have to have some form of action economy equalizer or it just won't do. Whatever good stuff that's supposed to make melee attractive must come on top of that.

[wizard1200]

Because it is more difficult to hit a moving target.

Perhaps AoO is the wrong description. Interrupt would be probably better, because it could be performed before the attack of the enemy is finished.

[InEffect]

DnD/PF AoO's are nice there only cause you have move actions and combat maneuvers like charge. It still wouldn't matter to mobs. Mob does not care if it dies so long as it deals damage and possibly kills you. It's the same in every game. They would shoot you point-blank even if there is a chance they die. Cause otherwise they move and still get AoO and possibly die. It's a nice bonus to compensate to the loss of full action due to movement in DnD, but if you have to spend full rounds on movement it's not nearly enough. Do the math.