Barehand better combat addon
Better Combat animations for empty hands
Barehand Better Combat
Your fists deserve better. Better Combat gives every weapon gorgeous melee animations and combos — but an empty hand gets nothing, falling back to the plain vanilla swing. Barehand Better Combat fixes that, and goes one step further: a weapon held in your off hand finally joins the fight.
No new items, models, sounds, or textures — it simply reuses Better Combat's own built-in fist preset. Lightweight, configurable, and on by default.
✨ Features
- 👊 Bare-handed combat — punching with an empty hand now plays Better Combat's fist animation, sounds, and hold-to-attack combo. Your bare hands feel like a real weapon.
- 🤜🤛 Dual fists — with both hands empty, attacks alternate into a flowing two-fisted punch combo.
- 🗡️ Off-hand weapon combo — the headline feature. Keep your main hand free and a weapon in your off hand, and attacks alternate fist (main hand) + weapon swing (off hand) — each landing its own damage. Even normally two-handed weapons like swords work.
- 🔥 Torch? Block? Shield? — non-weapon items punch too, so you're never stuck with a dead-weight vanilla swing. Toggle it off if you'd rather only truly empty hands punch.
- ⚙️ Fully configurable and enabled by default. Flip one switch to return to vanilla behaviour at any time.
🥊 How it behaves
| Main hand | Off hand | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Weapon (1-handed) | empty / item / shield | Weapon animation as normal |
| Two-handed weapon | — | Two-handed animation as normal |
| empty / item / shield | Weapon | Alternating combo: fist on the main hand, weapon on the off hand |
| empty / item / shield | empty / item / shield | Dual-fist punch combo |
| Weapon | Weapon | Better Combat dual wield as normal |
It plays nicely with Better Combat's existing behaviour — real weapons and normal dual wielding are left completely untouched.
⚙️ Configuration
Found in config/barehandbc-common.toml (or via a config screen if you have one
installed):
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
enabled |
true |
Master toggle. Set to false to fully revert to vanilla unarmed behaviour. |
presetId |
bettercombat:fist |
The Better Combat preset applied to a weaponless hand. Point it at another fist-style preset from another mod if you like. |
includeNonWeaponItems |
true |
When true, holding a non-weapon item (torch, block, shield…) also punches. When false, only a truly empty hand punches. |
📦 Requirements
- Better Combat 1.9+ — required
⚠️ Better Combat is a hard dependency. Make sure it's installed, or the game won't load.
❓ FAQ
Does the off-hand weapon deal its real damage? Yes — the weapon swing uses the weapon's own damage (with Better Combat's normal dual-wield balancing); the punch deals unarmed damage.
Which weapons work in the off-hand combo? Any item Better Combat recognises as a weapon — vanilla swords, the trident, and anything that weapon mods register with Better Combat.
Does it work on servers? Yes. Install it on both the server and the client.
Will it conflict with other combat mods? It only touches Better Combat's weapon-attribute lookup and dual-wield decision, so it stays out of the way of unrelated mods.
Open source under the MIT license. Built with NeoForge.
The Barehand better combat addon Team
