The Karate skill is the strongest and fastest of the physical barehanded melee skills, being much stronger than the weak Punching skill, and slightly stronger as well as faster than the Clawing skill. Damage is based on the user's STR and level.

This is the default “hand-to-hand” fighting skill for Monks and Ninjas and is a useful ability for characters that can't wield weapons (generally any Monks, or Gaea worshippers) as it deals the highest physical damage and has the highest attack speed out of the unarmed attack skills. Though keep in mind that weapons generally are better, if available, due to giving you various stat bonuses, elemental attack types, slaying properties, and so on, so a Ninja typically won't want to resort to using this.

Note that Dragons, who are typically one of the best races suited to playing Monks, won't want to bother with training the Karate skill. Clawing is far more useful to them as their elemental forms allow them to eventually hit with multiple attack elements all at once with their claws, which is far more useful than Karate's pure physical damage tends to be. For other races playing as Monk, or worshipping Gaea (who denies the use of weapons), this should be your primary melee skill.

Other non-weapon based attack skills include flame touch, clawing and punching. If you want to adjust which skill you default to when barehanded, use the unarmed_skill command.

Nothing

Makes karate your active attack.