Changelog

1.3.0 — for Minecraft 1.20.1 (Fabric)

Requires Better Combat 1.9+, Fabric API and Cloth Config.

⚠️ Read this before updating

/gamerule barehandAttackSpeed is gone. Worlds that set it lose the value. Bare-hand attack speed is now the attribute barehandbc:barehand_attack_speed, which does the same job per player:

/attribute @p barehandbc:barehand_attack_speed base set 2

The punch combo will not turn itself on. Your existing config/barehandbc.json already has presetId written into it from the previous version, and the file does not move, so it keeps pointing at Better Combat's single punch. Set it to barehandbc:fist — or delete the file and let it regenerate.

On a server, the server's settings now win. The config file stays where it was, but its values are sent to each client on join, and the client's own copy is set aside until it disconnects. Before this, every player carried their own excludedItems and no admin could enforce anything.

✨ Added

• A punch combo that looks like punching. Hold attack bare-handed and you now throw a jab, a hook, then an uppercut, each with its own animation and its own pitch of the impact sound. Better Combat's stock fist animation eases in and out across four ticks, which reads as a shove; these land in one to three. Shipped as the preset barehandbc:fist and used by default — set presetId back to bettercombat:fist for the old single punch.

• barehandbc:barehand_attack_range — bare-hand reach as a real attribute, per player.

  /attribute @p barehandbc:barehand_attack_range base set 6
  

  The number is an absolute reach in blocks, not a bonus: 6 means six blocks. 0 — the default — keeps whatever reach the fist preset itself defines (2 blocks for Better Combat's). Capped at 16, which is a performance limit rather than a balance one.

• barehandbc:barehand_attack_speed — bare-hand attack speed as a per-player attribute, a multiplier where 1.0 is vanilla and 2.0 is twice as fast. It composes with Haste instead of overriding it.

• excludedItems — items that must not count as a bare hand, even with includeNonWeaponItems on. Entries are item ids or tags:

  "excludedItems": ["minecraft:torch", "#minecraft:planks"]
  

  Holding one falls back to the plain vanilla swing — no fist preset, no bare-hand speed or reach. A truly empty hand always punches and cannot be excluded.

  Item ids take effect the moment you join a server; tag entries need a second longer, because item tags travel with the world data rather than with the settings. Nothing to do about it — just do not judge a #tag entry by the first second after joining.

• attackSpeedMultiplier and attackRange config entries, server-wide defaults for the two attributes above. They apply as modifiers, so a per-player /attribute ... base set still wins.

🐛 Fixed

• Extra bare-hand reach did nothing past about 6 blocks. Better Combat gathers the entities you might hit before it applies reach modifiers, so a larger swing had nothing left to collide with — measured, reach stopped at 6.35 blocks whether the attribute said 10 or 100. The candidate search is now widened to match the reach it is about to be used with. Client-side only.

• A held item on the exclusion list could still trigger the off-hand fist combo. Such an item is neither a weapon nor a fist, so forcing the combo animated a punch the mod had deliberately suppressed.

• A harmless race at join looked like a config error. Joining a server logged "Fist preset not found ... Check the presetId config value" and never took it back, because Better Combat's weapon registry arrives a moment after the connection does. The message now waits until the registry actually has content to be missing from.

📝 Notes

Attack speed control used to be the barehandAttackSpeed game rule. It is an attribute now for two reasons: custom game rules are never sent to clients, so the client animated at one speed while the server enforced another, and a game rule cannot be set per player.

The version jumps from 1.1.0 straight to 1.3.0 so that this build and the Forge/NeoForge one carry the same number for the same features. There was no 1.2.0 on either.