If an Undead Slayer has maintained weaponless conduct by the time they get crowned, their skill cap in martial arts is raised to Grand Master.

Monks are given some benefit or ability that enables them to get more benefit out of the ring of increase damage. This could be:

• Letting them multishoot projectiles
• Multiple attacks for martial arts at high levels
• Other rings of increase damage and accuracy are doubled

Two new objects, spiked gauntlets and spiked boots. Both are nonmagical and made of iron. Spiked gauntlets give a large damage bonus to unarmed combat and also give more AC than standard gloves. Spiked boots give a large damage bonus to kick attacks, and allow you to walk on ice without slipping, the same as snow boots do.

Monks with Expert or Master level martial arts can force-fight walls to break them. (Possibly not uncarved rock though.)

Martial artists should be able to use martial arts weapons to use extra abilities, such as:

• Throwing shuriken is a bonus action that costs no time (at least in some circumstances).
• While wielding a quarterstaff, you can jump.
• While wielding nunchaku, you can disarm opponents.

A system for martial arts users in which moving tactically and positioning yourself translates to combat bonuses. Not a flanking system where you get better positioned with allies in place, but things like:

• Waiting a turn in place before throwing a punch makes it hit extra hard. (This synergizes with e.g. allowing a monster to approach you.)
• Jumping or teleporting around a monster before attacking it delivers an extra-powerful blow, with teleporting in particular being a coup de grace.
• Following up a hit with a kick makes it hit harder and/or knock the monster back.

The ideal balance to strike is that the game can be played without mastering this system, but if it is mastered the player becomes very effective in combat.

Monks have ki-empowered strikes, which means they can strike incorporeal beings such as shades bare-handed.

Monks can control whether their strikes cause a staggering blow. This would lend itself to variants that implement technique and combat style systems.

If you aren’t wearing armor or a shield and have high martial arts/bare hands skill, you get an AC bonus (probably a higher one for martial arts). The bonus should probably scale up with higher skill, and should be generally higher for martial arts users than bare hands users.

If your legs are unwounded and free, Skilled or better martial arts has a chance of dealing a kick instead of a punch. This has a small to-hit penalty but has better damage. If you want to always punch, you can either attack with F or set an option which prevents you from kicking.

At some skill level (Skilled or Expert or maybe even Master) martial arts gives you two attacks.

If you have at least Basic in martial arts, you cannot injure your leg by kicking.

Remove the special damage bonus skill tables for bare-handed and martial arts combat. In place of them, scale up the die size based on skill: bare hands damage is a d2 at unskilled, a d3 at basic, etc. and martial arts doubles this die size, for a d4 at unskilled, a d6 at basic, and so on up to a d14 at grand master. Note that this still gives pretty poor damage output. Possibly it should be 2 dice being rolled (with the die size changing as described here).

You can knock monsters into water or lava with a staggering blow.

Monks, and possibly other roles, can learn martial arts techniques out of spellbooks similar to dnethack wards and SLASH’EM bard spells.

Brass knuckles, an item that increases damage done with bare hands and martial arts if you are unarmed. There are multiple takes on it:

1. They are a ring-slot item, possibly occupying both ring slots at once, or just one. In this case, you must also not be wearing gloves in order to get the bonus damage, or else you can’t even put on gloves while wearing the knuckles. Can be charged like other rings to increase the damage dealt by them; however, the damage boost even when they are +0 is significant.
2. They are glove-slot armor. This is nice because it means they can be enchanted with enchant armor rather than charging. While the enchantment increases damage, it does NOT provide any AC bonus.

Grand Master martial arts skill allows you to (attempt to) force-fight boulders and statues to shatter them with your bare hands.

Expert and higher martial arts lets you hit twice, but only if your first attack hits and you are wearing no shield.

Grandmaster skill in martial arts allows you to shatter enemy weapons like two-handed weapons do.

Monks, or anyone skilled in martial arts, can kick weapons out of an enemy’s hand.