Combat (Skyrim)

Unarmed Combat
Unarmed combat in Skyrim is fighting with fists as your weapons. Most of the time this is used in brawling.

Damage
The base damage of unarmed combat is 4, except for Khajiits and Argonians, in which case it is 10.

Fists of Steel
Fists of Steel is a perk from the Heavy Armor Perk Tree. To get this perk your Heavy Armor skill must be at least 30, and you must have Juggernaut. When you have this perk, the base armor rating of your Heavy Armor Gauntlets will become additional damage for unarmed combat.

Gloves of the Pugilist
Gloves of the Pugilist are unique light armor gloves, which give you 10 points of additonal damage or unarmed combat. You can get them by defeating Gian the Fist in the Ratway Vaults. Gloves of the Pugilist are the only item in the game to have the Fortify Unarmed enchantment. They can be disenchanted, but the enchantment can only be placed at rings, gloves and gauntlets.

Using the Alchemy/Enchanting Loop exploit, the Fortify Unarmed enchantment can be increased high enough to kill any enemy in the game in a single hit, or to increase unarmed damage to levels comparable with other forms of end-game melee attacking.

Khajiit
As a Khajiit you also have 15 (or 12) additional points of permanent damage. With the normal unarmed base damage you will have 25 or 22 damage in unarmed combat. Early in the game, this may be better than using a weapon.

A Khajiit normally has a gross unarmed damage of 25. If you have Juggernaut maxed out, which raises the heavy armour rating by 80%, have Fists of Steel, are wearing the strongest non-unique heavy gauntlets in the game- Dragonplate Gauntlets- your unarmed damage would be 45. If you disenchant the Gloves of the Pugilist, use Grand Soul Gems to enchant a ring, the Dragonplate Gauntlets with the Fortify Unarmed effect, max out the Enchanter perk, and put a point on Insightful Enchanter, the total damage is brought up by 37, making your unarmed damage 82.

None of this takes into account the raising of enchanting power, or heavy armour rating achieved by leveling the skills alone (which could theoretically double the damage when both heavy armour, and enchanting are at 100) as the algorithm for such is still unknown, but it shows that if you put the time into it, you can have an effective unarmed fighter.