A new player by the name of Magnus is skilled in martial arts so he sent me a list of related skills and a description of them. I attempted to put them a little bit into Multiverser style, and thought it might be interesting to MJ who might be able to offer some advice as well (the list is quite extensive which is why I limit my request.)
===========
My school mainly teaches you how to fight with combinations of punches and kicks.
The punches are like those in boxing: jabs, crosses (A strait punch from the rear hand), hooks and uppercuts. We are taught to use combinations extensively, and to use them to lead into kicks or to use them after kicks or to put a kick in the middle of a combination.
The Kicks:
Roundhouse Kick: You swing your rear leg so that it strike the target (usually the opponents midsection) from the side. This is a very strong kick but it advertises that you are going to do it.
Side Kick: you raise your front leg and extend it towards the side (you usually face your opponent with your front 40 to 80 degrees off from where they are, so this usually goes strait toward them).this kick is also strong and advertises itself less the than the roundhouse kick. And, if the distance is right you can slide toward your opponent to make it hit harder.
Flip Kick: This is the jab of the kick world. You raise your front leg and strike like a roundhouse kick
Crescent Kick: A quick kick aimed at the side of the face. It hits with the outside edge of the foot. It named that because the motion resembles a crescent. It is strong enough to knock someone out if it hits the jaw.
Front Kick: you raise a leg and kick towards your front. This kick can be as fast as a jab or as strong as a side kick. You can use it very easily after running towards your opponent.
Ax Kick: you raise your leg like a crescent kick but at the apex you bring your heel down on their head or collar bone. The shorter the opponent the better.
Back Kick: you raise a leg and kick strait back. They teach you how to shift you stance to kick someone in front of you with this. This kick is strong and it is easy to put in a combo with roundhouse kicks.
Hook Kick: You raise your front leg and strike with the heel from the side. This kick is about as strong and fast as a flip kick. There is a version called the back swing kick. You move like a back kick but you swing your leg around and strike like a hook kick.
There is also jump versions of a few of these kick but I cant do these very well.
These are usually aimed at the head or upper body but the highest I can go is about the center of mass (the dead center of the chest)
We also do a shout (It is called a Kiai) that is used to intimidate the opponent or cause him to flinch and to give you a physiological boost. You use it in the beginning of a fight and increase the physiological impact of a strike
We were also taught a bit with grappling. A few throws, arm bars and how to get out of mount (they're on top of you) or reverse it
We were taught a few ways to disarm people with knifes or guns. I could probably extend it a bit to include swords (this would be hard to do)
I was taught a few weapons skills:
The bo staff or quarterstaff:
I can block many swinging and trusting strikes with this.
I can parry a few trusts. I can strike from the sides and high or low with the last 6" of both ends of the staff
I can also trust like a spear.
The tonfa or police baton:
I use one in each hand
I can use them to block and or parry as if I am unarmed (I.E I use what know with TKD and apply it to the tonfas)
I can strike with them like punches ("")
I can switch grips to extend my punches or to strike by swinging them around
About how I do it
It been commented that fight based on instinct. I control my body i with simple and quick thoughts such as “his head is open, go after it” or “I wont to do a 1-2 punch and then a roundhouse”. So the high brain is free to note the changing situation and come up with combos to get through the opponents’ defense and the low brain worries about how to kick and move.
The advantage is that I’m only as predictable as I as I let myself be.
The disadvantage is that I have to learn a move so that it feels natural to do or it will be clumsy and easy to block or dodge
This extents to all things that rely mainly on moving the body. (and video games)
The relative level of the moves
I’m a lot better than a average person with punches but a pro boxer would kill me.
My punches hurt, this is partly because of my strength and partly because I’m punching in a manner the maxes the force delivered
On average, my kicks are only a bit worse (slower, less technique, and less power)
Than some one who does martial arts tournaments professionally.
I’m very good at the roundhouse kick. If I’m not carful it can cause a 150 Ib. man with a kicking shield to stumble, or if I kick a hard as I can it will knock him off his feet. (This is significantly reduced if he braces himself a lot)
My sliding side kick is as strong as or a bit stronger than my roundhouse
My teacher commentated that my crescent kick has a nearly perfect form. I can do it very quickly so that my training pants (also called the dobok pants or the Gi pants) make a popping sound when I do this kick.
I’m not very good at the hook kick but my back swing kick is good
I tend to move around slower than most people but I can move fast for I little bit(to get close or to move to a better angle on my opponent). This results in me slowly advancing and when I’m close I rush in.
I really don’t know how I compare with the other skills
Mystic? Skills:
You can say yes or no to these as you see fit
I’ve read a few books about chi gung and tai chi. And, I’ve tried my hand at manipulating chi. The most I can do is gather energy from some source (the Sun, the Earth, or the air around me) and hold it in a spot for a few minutes. I can sometimes hold it in multiple spots or all over my body, but this cuts down the time I can hold it. This doesn’t seem to do must besides producing a very pleasant sensation or psyche me up so that I can break boards easier.
I can (in a quiet place) still my mind into a zen-like state (I don’t know if it is zen because I don’t have a zen teacher). I usually do this by focusing on a repeating series of numbers (1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4…) and ignoring my other thoughts. It's still a little noisy
Sometime when I’ve exhausted myself sparing, I block a combo that is to fast for me to block in my state. And, sometimes I block without being aware of what move is next in the combo.
</quote>
My reply does not wholly deal with all of his remarks.
======================
Very informative and quite interesting.Lets see if I can roughly get some of this into Multiverser terms...
Your martial art style is Fast, Aggressive, Weapons-Utilizing (the two opposites would be Slow, Defensive, Weapons Averse or Weapons Only).
I'm not quite sure how to deal with the combinations.
But I think I'll bounce this off MJ's head as I expect he will find it interesting as well.
Roundhouse Kick, Increased Damage Level, -5 Situation Modifier (for being slow)
Side Kick...I'm going to say the deceptive nature of this and the fact that its a high kick balance each other out, although it might be possible to really catch a newbie off-guard. I'm going to call the Sliding into Opponent an extra skill with the result of Increased Damage Level, +2 Relative Skill (which means how well you do this skill can variably bonus the side kick skill.)
Flip Kick...your basic kickCrescent Kick...I'm a little familar with this as my brother took Tae Kwon Do. I'm going to make this a -10 DM with a chance of knock-out as a contingency.
Front Kick...sounds like you need a scale that slides between speed and power for this one.
I'm going to stop there for the kicks for now...
Kiai Shout: Improve Morale/Reduce Morale. I'm trying to decide if this is a magic or psionic skill. Does the energy for it come from inside you, or flow through you from outside?
I'm going to make your skill levels for your kicks from 1@9 to 2@3. 1@9 is High Amateur and 2@3 is Low Professional. A typical pro boxer would have 2@5 Punch as a skill. Of course, Someone like Sugar Ray might have 3@6 Punch.
The 'punching in a way that maxes the damage' sounds like Increased Damage Skill precisely.
Chi Energy 1...Produce pleasant sensation (which might be useful if you ever get dropped into freezing waters by British Communist submariners infiltrating the Canadian Empire) and Improve Board Breaking skill.
Chi Energy 2...as above but half the time with a +4 SM, +4 DM.
My methods are loosey-goosey, but I think I have a good idea of what's going on. There is a lot here, and I'm not sure what MJ will feel up to adding (although I'm sure he will find it quite interesting.). I will say that a current major opponent are fifty pound Kobold legionairres (Roman style), and that if you can knock over a hundred fifty pound buy with a kick to a shield, you should have fun with the Kobolds...although they are armed with gladius...PT
I agree that he has a fast aggressive weapon-utilizing style. It's the combos that make me think that; the fact that he is trained to follow A with B in rapid succession means he is trained to land a second blow in the minute. Since it's weapon-utilizing, it can't be faster than RF2; since it's RF 2, we have more bonus points to distribute than we would with an RF3, but fewer than we would with an RF1, something like 15 points more or less for sitmods; they double if they're used for damage mods. I would probably give this style a +10 attack sit-mod and a +10 attack damage mod, the damage mod mostly because it is so reliant of kicks (which tend to be harder than punches but also slower). I would also say that it is foot-based--I think he would be significantly hampered in the basic attacks and defenses were his feet nailed to the floor or his legs bound. He could still use the weapon and hand attacks, of course, but we would take away at least some of the core sit-mods in those circumstances. I'm giving no defensive mods, partly because I am now out of points and partly because his description was so clearly about attacks.
Regarding the attacks, you have to be mindful of this: that stuff about being trained to intensify the damage of a punch is already inherent in the style. When an untrained person of ordinary attributes attempts to hurt an opponent with a strike from a body part (punch or kick), he does annoying damage--it rarely results in real injury. The training gives all such attacks a damage category bonus, so that an "ordinary" punch or kick becomes damaging. You don't then add more damage to such a strike, because it's already got maybe ten times the potential (1-5 instead of 0-1) of the same attack by the untrained.
That means sorting out which attacks are actually intensified damage versus which ones are ordinary damage.
It helps that I have a web site on which a sorted through some of these kinds of attacks; you can find analogous attacks under Summary of Special Martial Arts Maneuvers. An intensified damage is almost always expressed as an increase in base damage category. (For weapon skills, it is expressed as a damage category bonus, and thus the maximum number of increases is limited and any additional increases converted to damage points, on the fly during combat. Body-based attacks can be increased in base damage, which means that all the damage category bonuses including those for style, skill ability level, and strike value still apply.) Thus the first question is whether something is an intensified damage attack, the second how intensified it is, and the third, tied to the second, what it costs to do it.
That last is important, and often overlooked by the martial artists themselves. The Axe Kick discussed above is a very powerful attack; but why doesn't the fighter use it every time? Apart from the fact that it makes him too predictable, the answer is that there is a price to pay for such attacks. He recognizes this in describing the roundhouse kick: it advertises itself. What does that mean? It means that the price is that the opponent gets some sort of advantage from recognizing what is about to happen. The one we have on the web site reads:
Spinning Kick, B7@3 intensified damage damaging, standard attack success roll, lose next attack on failure.That makes it a relatively low damage attack--the base is damaging so in style it gains a damage category bonus to dangerous (1-10). The cost in that description is that the character will lose his balance if he misses such that he loses the next attack. There are other options, though. He could sacrifice initiative; he could take a -10 sit-mod; he could give up his next attack. He could give the opponent a bonus on his next attack--probably +5 (+10 would be sufficient for a dangerous base attack).
I am inclined to think that the side kick, flip kick, front kick, and back kick are all basic attacks, and the only one I would list as its own maneuver would be the back kick, a B7@1 ordinary attack behind. If the player thinks that he hits harder in the back kick then he does in one of the "standard" front attacks, figure out what he's sacrificing to get that. (Obviously it doesn't make sense for him to stand with his back to his opponent to get that damage; maybe he gets an increase of one damage category but pays for it with a -10 sit-mod because he is less certain of the position of his target.) The Roundhouse kick is probably damaging base as discussed, and the Crescent Kick, Axe Kick, and Hook Kick are dangerous. I would look for penalties on these which express the fact that he has momentarily left himself open--maybe +10 on opponent attacks. If the player thinks that one of these is particularly more powerful than the others inherently (not merely that he is better at it, but that anyone who knew all of them would recognize the increased power of this one), make it base lethal and increase the cost accordingly. You'll find guidelines in the description of B7@3 Intensified Damage Attacks, p.318 of the referee's rules.
As to the running versions, you've got two possibilities. One is that these are distinct maneuvers, that he learns them both. The other is that there is a separate skill, something analogous to the B4@9 Aggressive Tumbling, but probably a B3@10 Aggressive Running. I think the way I would handle it is that it creates an RS-10 sit-mod on the attack it favors, and uses an attack to perform it. That would mean that if he runs into an attack, you roll to see whether he succeeds in the run part; if that is successful, you subtract ten from whatever the roll was, and add that to his chance of success at the attack (if the roll minus ten is negative, this reduces the chance of success on the attack slightly). That lets you treat all of them the same and reduces the number of separate skills, but you might want to consider whether "running into a front kick" and "running into a side kick" are likely to have very different chances of success not tied to the skill at the basic kicks themselves.
I'm inclined to think that the Kiai is a P8@0 Posturing skill. If it is successful, it intimidates the opponent and penalizes him, -10 or maybe something RS based, for the first minute. Whether those sit-mods affect the defender's attacks, defenses, or both, would have to be decided.
You'll find some detail on martial arts weapons under Martial Arts Weapons As Used in Multiverser, but the bo stick (quarterstaff) and tonfa are both very straightforward damaging weapons with no special features. You should consider whether he has disarming with and without weapon maneuvers, B7@5. Also, he might have some sort of improved defense B7@4 or advanced parrying B7@5 for the weapons. The primary distinction is that the former usually creates a fixed relatively low advantage (-10SM on incoming attacks) at little cost, while the latter involves using an attack against an attack, and so puts the full force of the defending roll against the incoming attack roll.
Hope that helps.
--M. J. Young