Archmortal

Lol dang, that explains even more about why people don't like directly messing with the perk. Still, just getting it to work like in my last post would be a massive improvement, and imo more satisfying than the other available mods. So hey, if you do end up trying that out with your own overhaul lemme know. Having the changes for this specific perk as standalone would be ideal for me, but I'm always willing to try out new perspectives on perks in general.

The Fists of Steel Expanded mod has a nice idea, I think. It's the closest I've seen to accounting for smithing differences, by taking the base value and multiplying it with each point of investment up to 5. But iirc the mod has an issue where it doesn't apply to mod-made equipment without going in and manually adjusting it Since you said the biggest issue is capturing tempering enhancements, would it prove feasible to pick up on the base value as increased by your skill in Heavy Armor and Juggernaut, etc and apply the same idea as Fists of Steel Expanded to account for lack of tempering involvement (although probably only double the value, 3-5x would be excessive at that point)? Picking up on that value alone would solve most of the issue, and implementing additional point investment into the perk to double it would already be far and away more organic and in line with other weapon power curves than any of the other solutions I've found. Checking in-game with the Unofficial Patch installed, no tempering, maxed out Heavy Armor skill/perks and a full suit of the same set, the gauntlet armor values come out like: 69 for Ebony 72 for Dragonplate 78 for Daedric that would be the additional unarmed damage from 1 point in the perk with everything maxed. Add the value again with a second point at let's say 80 skill requirement the way Fists of Steel Expanded does to the base value. With two point investment, 22 from being a Khajit and 14 on a ring and gauntlets each with a full suit of Daedric, it comes out to 206. That seems perfectly acceptable as a vanilla-equipment peak to unarmed damage. So long as it picks up on the equipped value as adjusted by skill/perks, then even without tempering it should create a smooth power curve throughout most of the game (early Unarmed would still be the bees knees for a Khajit anyway) and allow unarmed to stay competitive into level 60+ against tempered/enchanted weapons.

Fair enough, that does explain why it hasn't been done already. Wish I could've found details like that sooner. Thanks for the explanation. c:

Okay so, I looked through the searches, and through a lot of the related mod files on the nexus, but the only solutions everyone seems to have come up with are a little bloated and at times extremly script-heavy like with complete overhauls to unarmed as a whole. None of them really tackle the actual problem with the perk itself, which is that it only accounts for base armor value of the gauntlets and ignores what the value should be at after factoring in your armor skill, Juggernaut, Well Fitted, and Matching Set. What I'm looking for is just a fix to allow Fists of Steel to use the armor value that a given set of gauntlets has when equipped by your character, including increases from things like smithing and the Juggernaut, Well Fitted and Matching Set perks. Out of fairness I guess an ideal mod would add an equivalent perk to the Light Armor tree, but with none of the extra bonuses that other mods tend to give, as accounting for smithing and existing perk bonuses would make anything extra redundant. I can't seem to find a single mod related to Unarmed combat that makes this fix so the perk matches its description. The closest I could find is "Fists of Steel Expanded" which multiplies the base-armor value used by the vanilla Fists of Steel perk up to five times, but even that's just a stopgap that pales in comparison to smithing weapons, enchanting them, or spell mods. I couldn't find any discussion about what might make it difficult to mod the perk to account for the actual armor value while the gauntlets are equipped. There's also the issue where the perk and most mods made to change it don't interact with mod-made armor. If anyone feels up to making a mod like this, I would appreciate it. Or if anyone has insight as to why it doesn't seem like anyone has made such a fix instead of doing things like creating entirely new perks and scripts around it, I would love to know about that too. I've found several requests for pretty much exactly what I'm describing going back to near the game's release, but no one seems to have created a matching mod, nor discussed why if there's more reason than just not wanting to. The only mods I can find are stopgaps or complete overhauls to unarmed, nothing that actually fixes the perk so it matches the description. If such a mod already exists and I just haven't been able to find it, I'd also love to get a link to that too.