The Claws bonus is 12 extra points of damage in Skyrim. That’s better than a glass sword, and you’re able to attack much faster. You just completely mop the floor with early enemies.

And by the time you have a good enough weapon to potentially outpace the Claws bonus, you also likely have the Fists of Steel perk (because it only requires 30 Heavy Armor). So you’re better off just improving your gauntlets’ armor rating to boost your unarmed damage, instead of using a weapon.

[–] TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Pro tip: only base armor rating matters with that perk, meaning you can't boost it through tempering. Daedric gauntlets have the highest at 18. Additionally, Khajiit actually do 10 damage on top of the 12 damage from their claws as a result of being a "beast" race. Therefore, they do 22 damage at the start and at most 40 with the perk. Without exploits or mods, you can boost damage by 86 points through enchantments for 126 damage total.