Path of the Pugilist

This class is meant to be an adjacent subclass to the monks of D&D. Monks tend to be very swift acrobatic fighters. The pugilist may be swift but they meet their foes with brute force in the end. One doesn't win a fight by slapping their foes in the eyes of a pugilist. A fight is won when your enemy is knocked up into the air and their body is splayed out on the floor. This subclass has mechanics for a fist fighting barbarian who is capable of dishing out a high ammount of damage but risks his own health by doing so. 

Fists of Steel

A true Pugilist uses their fists and nothing else. Upon choosing the path of a pugilist you must accept that fists are the best weapons. You will become the blade, the hammer, and the spear. 

When you make an unarmed melee attack your fists extra damage along with your strength modifier. This damage upgrades from 1d6 at lvl 3, 1d8 at lvl 6, 1d10 at lvl 11, and 1d12 at lvl 17. 

At level 3 your unarmed attacks are counted as heavy melee weapons in terms of mechanics.

Full Force

Beginning at 6th level your attacks become magical and you can deal extra damage. Once per attack action if you land a hit you are able to add a burst of damage to your attacks, but this will cost you HP to perform. The HP used to fuel this attack can not be reduced or negated in any way. The damage and cost can be upgraded at 9th and 12th levels, but the weaker version can always be used instead of the highest version. 

5HP for 1d10 Force lvl 6

10HP for 2d10 Force lvl 9

15HP for 3d10 Force at lvl 12

Float like a Butterfly Sting like a Bee

At 10th level you gain the ability to harness your rage and focus it into your fuel. While raging you can sacrifice the resistance of the rage to enter a focused state. In this state you lose your resistance granted by rage but deal double the rage damage per hit. All attacks against you are at disadvantage, and you can use your bonus action to make an extra unarmed attack. This lasts for up to 1 minute or for the remainder of the rages duration whichever is shorter. 

Blow for Blow

As a true pugilist, you don't let any hit land without retaliation. When an enemy lands a melee attack you can immediately retaliate as a reaction. This attack is with advantage and cam be repeated as additional reactions in the same turn up to your Strength modifier per short rest. These can be used all in the same round of combat or spread out as you see fit. but using at least 1 of them consumes your reaction. 

 

example: if a foe attacks you twice in 1 turn and you have a strength of +5. You can retaliate against both landed hits for the same reaction and have 3 more uses for later. If 3 foes make 6 attacks you can retaliate against 5 of them total, but you no longer have any uses of this feature left.