Perking the Barbarian's combat skills

[Daedalus]

That would still make unarmed combat dangerous. Barbarian can still cause 3 skulls of damage unarmed. Scary.
I prefer this simple unarmed rule.

Roll 1 combat die when unarmed

Barb hits on
Elf/Dwarf hit on
Wizard hits on

You're not alone with that mod. I personally would stick with skulls to hit for all Heroes and monsters as that's a constant for hitting in Hero Quest combat. Here's a less scary option that also keeps black shields for monster defense:

When attacking without a weapon, a Hero rolls his starting combat dice to attack. Hits must be rerolled.