Proposal: Advanced Martial Arts

[Trax]

I think I'm almost done.

Should the difficulties for Elbow Smash and Headbutt be reversed, or maybe Elbow Smash upped from Very Easy to Easy?  I kind of think none of these moves should be considered very easy, they are supposed to be advanced moves.

[GM Craig]

I wanted something accessible for characters first starting out. That's why I made Elbow Smash DC 5.

Headbutt is intended to be used while bound or otherwise held, hence the higher DC.

[Trax]

Assuming a base attribute of 2D+2, anything very easy will be successful unless 2 1's are rolled.

That's if I'm reading this right and each power is used at your Martial Arts skill dice and they don't each have their own set of die values.

[GM Craig]

All the moves on the list will use the new Advanced Martial Arts skill (I'm not sure about the name, but it needs to be different from the Martial Arts specialization under Brawling). It is not tied to any attribute, costs 10 CP for your first 1D, and increases independently of any other skill or attribute, just like Force Skills.

All the Advanced Martial Arts skills should either do bonus damage or provide a bonus effect over a standard brawling (or Brawling:Martial Arts) roll.

I see an issue about defending against these moves. These are advanced moves, so I'm tempted to say you must defend against these moves using the Advance Martial Arts dice (with appropriate MAPs). If you're not an advanced martial artist, there's no defending against these specials and you have to rely on the attacker failing the roll.

However, that seems a little too powerful to me.

What do you guys think?

An alternative is to use an Advanced Martial Arts roll as the opportunity to throw a special attack using your Brawling:Martial Arts skill. So, you want to elbow smash, you roll your Advanced Martial Arts dice. If you're successful, you can then make a Brawling:Martial Arts attack, but apply the bonus damage to the attack if successful. Defending against that attack would follow the typical rules for attack and defence.

I'm not sure how to handle it. What do you think?

[Trax]

I don't like the idea of not being able to defend.  NPCs and characters can now be built (and maximized) with these rules in mind, for those of us who've been operating without them all this time, it puts us at a major disadvantage.

I like the alternative you've proposed.

[Niil Spaar]

Works for me, too.  And just remember, there's always the Indiana Jones solution to a Bruce Lee character coming after you.   

[Nightshade]

Maybe allow defense for characters without the advanced skill but at a penalty to show the disparity in abilities?

[Niil Spaar]

Maybe allow defense for characters without the advanced skill but at a penalty to show the disparity in abilities?

Yup, that works for me.  There should always be some sort of chance for someone without the advanced skill to"luck out".

[Trax]

Maybe allow defense for characters without the advanced skill but at a penalty to show the disparity in abilities?

Again, not really a fan because it hurts current PCs the most.  At best I could possibly see a penalty applied to someone who doesn't have any brawling skills, that would mean they're not trained in hand to hand combat at all but I'm not much of a fan of that either.

As an example, Bill has 7D in Melee Parry: Martial Arts but no advanced skill.  Ted has 6D in Brawling: Martial Arts and 1D in Advanced Martial Arts.  So when Ted rolls an attack it's at 7D and Bill Parries at 7D.  To me, they're both equally skilled, it's just that Ted has decided to focus on a specific discipline while Bill has decided to work on (possibly) multiple different disciplines.  Bill could easily combine and use what he's learned from his different disciplines to offer equal defense to Ted's offense in that one specific discipline.  The only difference being that if Bill fails to block, Ted uses his advanced skill to get something extra out of the hit.

The net result of adding a penalty to the defender isn't much different than lowering all the difficulties.

[GM Craig]

So lets look at the alternate I proposed above. John has 5D Brawling Parry. Ted has 6D in Brawling: Martial Arts and 2D in Advanced Martial Arts.

Ted wants to launch an Elbow Smash. He rolls 2D and gets 7, so he succeeded. Ted then rolls 5D (6D-1D MAP) on his attack, and Bill rolls 7D on the parry. If Ted is successful, his attack will do STR+1D damage.

Another example:

John has 6D in Brawling. Ted has 6D in Brawling Parry: Martial Arts and 5D in Advanced Martial Arts. John attacks, and Ted wants to perform a Power Block as a reaction roll. Ted rolls 16, and succeeds in the move.

John rolls his attack, and Ted will roll his parry. If Ted's parry is successful, Ted will inflict damage on John (as per Power Block). If Ted does not succeed in the parry, John hits normally.

[Trax]

I'm happy with the proposed alternative.  I think it strikes a good balance between new characters that can be built around the new rules as well as current characters not getting hosed by them when they come up against PCs or NPCs that use them.

[GM Craig]

I've updated the master chart at http://karvis.altarka.org/index.php?topic=120.0

Can everyone have a look? I've added some new abilities, and there are some still listed in red that I'm seeking comment on.

[Nightshade]

It seems now with the new way of gaining the advanced skill that the Teras Kasi moves are a bit off...you can spend less CPs to gain attributes with no chances of failure.  Once you get your skills up, then you could keep them up with no real noticeable penalty in the MAP and buff yourself pretty quickly.  At least that's how I am seeing it, but maybe the numbers in my head aren't right...anyone else chime in on this?

[Trax]

Being very new to how force skills work, I'm thinking they would work the same way in that 'keeping them up' equals an action and thus MAPs apply each round the power is in effect.

Although re-reading Defensive boost, it reads like MAPs would only apply when the power is activated.

[GM Craig]

Being very new to how force skills work, I'm thinking they would work the same way in that 'keeping them up' equals an action and thus MAPs apply each round the power is in effect.

Although re-reading Defensive boost, it reads like MAPs would only apply when the power is activated.

Correct. Keeping a skill up counts as an action.

Defensive boost is a little different in that it gives you a time-limited pool of temporary CP to use for defensive purposes, and only generates a MAP when activated.