Talk:Master of the Surprising Fist

I'm guessing this improves your attack/removes the penalty for fighting unarmed. I'm getting the option to "Attack with your suprising fist" instead of the usual weaponless attack button. Lord kobel

• My guess is that it calculates your damage and defense as if you had a weapon and a shield equipped. Of course, the trick is figuring out what power weapon your Surprising Fist is equivalent to (and what power shield). I would guess 100, since it's a solid mid-range number that almost every Softcore-usable weapon from Mr. Store has had, but this is mere speculation. --Southwest 19:56, 16 August 2011 (CEST)

Does this activate Hero? --Darkwolf 23:48, 16 August 2011 (CEST)

the only effect I can see so far, is about 10 dmg added to my bare handed auto attacks. (Went from doing 47 phsyical dmg a round to 57 dmg a round, with the +30 kung fu buff and about 100 muscle. I did not see any defensive benifit or noticeable drop off in dmg taken. --Darkwolf 06:48, 17 August 2011 (CEST)

Summarizing a brief discussion in /hc about this: Possibly gives +21dam@L13, does NOT give you the equivalent of Hero, only fumbled once in 90 rounds, crits only do +1 extra damage, did the same damage to knob goblin chef as it did to scarab Beatles. (Thank you to Pyren for reporting on the results of experimentation.) --Aoi 11:01, 17 August 2011 (CEST)

If the guess is that this makes the game treat your bare hands as if you were wielding a weapon, has anyone tried using the DemonStar game in the Arcade to figure out the weapon power? --Phantomreader42 05:39, 18 August 2011 (CEST)

I used my now-debuffed self to go punch some bunnies while naked. 96 muscle, 0 ML, +39 damage from Kung Fu Fighting. No other effects besides the 4 Kung Fu intrinsics. Consistently hitting them for 73 damage, which seems to imply an extra +10 damage if my maths is correct. --Lizardking 17:07, 18 August 2011 (CEST)

• Oh, and no, I don't have any passive +damage skills permed either. --Lizardking 17:54, 18 August 2011 (CEST)
• Aaaand it was exactly 73 damage over 6 combats, so that probably rules out it being from weapon power (which would vary somewhat) --Lizardking 17:57, 18 August 2011 (CEST)

This is really quite disappointing...  :( --Hollowleg 06:00, 19 August 2011 (CEST)

Could it be a to-hit bonus? Maybe it's just me, but I think I'm hitting things with defense higher than my Muscle way more often than usual without critting. Edir

• I'm thinkihng there's a to-hit bonus involved. I fighting in the bathroom and the airship with MCD at 11 and 83 buffed muscle and hitting consistently. The Giant Castle I have to use techniques though. I do have Kung Fu Hustler with all intrinsics active. Projected monster defenses of 100 fall easily to my Surprising fist without missing. The Irritating Series of Random Encounters (defense of 105) take a few misses before I hit. Maybe a +20 muscle bonus to-hit?--Fluxxdog 16:16, 20 August 2011 (CEST)
• Little more info: Buffed muscle now 84, in the haunted ballroom against zombie waltzers and platters (defense 109), almost always missing, but I can rarely hit them without a critical.--Fluxxdog 16:24, 20 August 2011 (CEST)
• I'll have some spare turns tomorrow before I ascend, what would be a good way to test for a to-hit bonus? My character has 151 base muscle. Plenty of ML gear available. HitS isn't unlocked, but could be relatively easily. I'm not sure what monsters have well-established defence, and what ones are still quite vague (and therefore unsuitable). What about scaled monsters? --Lizardking 18:29, 20 August 2011 (CEST)

Well I went ahead and beat up some Hamburglaris Shield Generator monsters, while unarmed, with various +ML active.

	alien hamsterpus	mutated alielf	mutated alielephant
25 ML	0/81	0/80	0/32
24 ML	5/84	0/11	0/37
23 ML	18/104	1/18	0/54
22 ML	13/45	12/76	0/87
And a quick sanity check
15ML with weapon	0/54	0/52	0/58

Although a few results are a little odd (like the alielf getting hit earlier than expected), it appears to be basing chance to hit while unarmed on having +20 muscle, which would also be in line with Fluxxdog's comment further up. I didn't notice any interesting results in how much they were hitting me for; I had ~50% DA and they hit for ~22, which I think would be correct since I had ~110 moxie. --Lizardking 17:55, 21 August 2011 (CEST)

Can you LTS with a surprising fist? How about shieldbutt? Given that the "shield" doesn't seem to count for hero, I'm guessing no on both counts, but it's worth checking. --Stannius 22:32, 19 August 2011 (CEST)

• Using LTS while unarmed is nothing new. Useful though. And you can't shieldbutt. --Lizardking 03:38, 20 August 2011 (CEST)
  • Misread the dates, but it seems LTS has been usable while unarmed since September 2009. The more you know. --Lizardking 03:47, 20 August 2011 (CEST)
• Does the +20 virtual muscle with Master stack with the 25% virtual muscle from LTS (or the +20 bonus muscle from e.g. Kneebutt)? --Stannius 23:50, 30 November 2011 (CET)
  • Yes. I didn't spade it rigorously, but I did a TT weaponless run buying Kneebutt for level 10+ to see kneebutt's plausibility for muscle runs. I could hit all the time things that had defense 30 greater than my buffed muscle. --Top1214 17:21, 5 December 2011 (CET)

Defensive Bonus

Is anyone seeing a defensive bonus? I'm right now fighting in Barney's Bar, and when I get my Moxie shrunk down to 86, without any other enhancers, it seems like I'm not getting hit as often as I would expect. Qaianna 20:20, 25 August 2011 (CEST)

I don't see a bonus to your effective defense -- at 250 moxie, vs. a sabre-toothed ferret (base attack 250), I get hit about half the time. Unless it is a really small bonus to defense, I think the DR is the only defense this skill gives you. (Certainly, that's all that shields give you.) --Starwed 22:52, 13 September 2011 (CEST)

With the skill, I'm taking a bit less damage while unarmed. Against gremlins whom I outmoxie by a fair margin, with 360 DA, I take about 5 less damage. With 0 DA, about 10 less damage, with the same range as if I had no DA. Seems like just DR 10? Might be DR 11, of course, accounting for monster variance or something. --Starwed 22:09, 13 September 2011 (CEST)

I fought some fluffy bunnies with ML=145, set my moxie to 1 at level 32. My DA was 60 and DR was 15 from passives, and I ended up taking 103 damage every round. Seems to me the DR is 10. --Deadned 06:07, 6 November 2011 (CET)