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Time for some number crunching.

If you put 30 points into Unarmed Combat, you get +3 Dex (which means +3 accuracy and about +6 more Evasion, plus a dozen or so Fire/Shock resistance), +30 Health and +20 Evasion. If you put 30 points into Dodge, you get +30 Health, +10 Evasion, +5 Fire/Shock resistance, +20 Poison Resistance, and double evasion bonuses from clothing and cloaks.

The point I'm making here is that Dodge is not noticeably better than Unarmed Combat at boosting your defense until you get the big +50 evasion at the end, and considering that Dodge doesn't do anything to help you kill things faster, you'll probably take a lot less damage with a straight Unarmed Combat build than if you mixed Unarmed Combat and Dodge.

Dodge gives at most 20 points of evasion until you cap it out and get the big +50 evasion at the end. Unarmed Combat gives +20 evasion just past halfway through the skill line, and a number of Dex increases for a total of +10 Dexterity means another +20 evasion on top of the +20 you got from 30 points in the skill.

I've got a front line Rogue using only Unarmed Combat and no points in Dodge (or any other skill). She's a hardcore facepuncher and tanks just fine wearing only normal clothing. Once she's capped her Unarmed Combat skill I'm definitely going to go for Dodge, but in the meantime there just doesn't seem to be any reason to. Unarmed Combat keeps her alive, and it helps the rest of the party survive as well by bringing an unholy beatdown upon the heads of anything that gets in front of me.
Interesting. Please do keep us posted how your rogue fares on the later levels. I'd like to know how an unarmed fighter dishes out against heavily armored knights without being a D&D-style monk.
Unarmed is completely viable, I've got an Insectoid rouge with the natural armor perk specializing in unarmed and dodge. She does as much damage as my sword using warrior and almost never gets hit. That's what I like about this game, even though there's only three classes there are multiple ways to build them.