The Pugilist

Quote from fanewsomdnd >>

"The Pugilist deals 1d8 damage when using an unarmed strike or a pugilist weapon, which is defined as any simple melee weapon or improvised weapon. Since the brass knuckles are a simple melee weapon, a pugilist would deal 1d8 damage with them."

My pugilist deals 1d8 damage with or without brass knuckles, so he gets no benefits from then. So, why buy them? 

There isn't much reason to beyond flavor with things as they're currently written. There's some evidence that the Pugilist was meant to have more weapon mastery features at some point in its development, and if you could use the brass knuckles' mastery property, that'd be one reason to prefer it over a straight Unarmed Strike.

But the reality may be that it's just not particularly well thought out or designed. This is a common problem with the third-party content published on D&D Beyond; much of it does not seem to have gone through the same level of testing and editing that the official WotC stuff does.

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from fanewsomdnd >>

"The Pugilist deals 1d8 damage when using an unarmed strike or a pugilist weapon, which is defined as any simple melee weapon or improvised weapon. Since the brass knuckles are a simple melee weapon, a pugilist would deal 1d8 damage with them."

My pugilist deals 1d8 damage with or without brass knuckles, so he gets no benefits from then. So, why buy them? 

There isn't much reason to beyond flavor with things as they're currently written. There's some evidence that the Pugilist was meant to have more weapon mastery features at some point in its development, and if you could use the brass knuckles' mastery property, that'd be one reason to prefer it over a straight Unarmed Strike.

But the reality may be that it's just not particularly well thought out or designed. This is a common problem with the third-party content published on D&D Beyond; much of it does not seem to have gone through the same level of testing and editing that the official WotC stuff does.

 Almost like Third-party devs don't have multiple Third-Party devs' worth of people to do testing with.

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Quote from fanewsomdnd >>

"The Pugilist deals 1d8 damage when using an unarmed strike or a pugilist weapon, which is defined as any simple melee weapon or improvised weapon. Since the brass knuckles are a simple melee weapon, a pugilist would deal 1d8 damage with them."

My pugilist deals 1d8 damage with or without brass knuckles, so he gets no benefits from then. So, why buy them? 

There isn't much reason to beyond flavor with things as they're currently written. There's some evidence that the Pugilist was meant to have more weapon mastery features at some point in its development, and if you could use the brass knuckles' mastery property, that'd be one reason to prefer it over a straight Unarmed Strike.

But the reality may be that it's just not particularly well thought out or designed. This is a common problem with the third-party content published on D&D Beyond; much of it does not seem to have gone through the same level of testing and editing that the official WotC stuff does.

 Honestly the same could be said about the Monk, it can use unarmed strikes or the very vaguely defined "Monk Weapons" but use the same damage dice for either, so singling out this feature on the Pugilist as being badly designed when it's virtually cut and paste from an official class is a bit strong (of course the Pugilist *is* badly designed but not for this feature)