[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by Skarg

This seems to me like a separate (and interesting) idea from the rest of what you wrote.

...

I also hope if there are more cinematic martial arts abilities added, that they'd also be added for armed characters.

It seems to me too that armed fighters have several abilities that could be added that I would think were more realistic than continuing not to have them, such as:

I'm not particularly opposed to this idea. However, the talent point cost should be high - higher than unarmed combat because armed figures can do much more damage, wear heavy armor, etc.

At the end of the day, it's hard to break an unarmed combat system where the average martial artist does 1d of damage and can only wear cloth.

But you can quite easily break a system with a fine plate wearing, greatsword-wielding figure.

* ability to wear armor without large penalties to their ability to hit things

If you do that, you will make DX even more important and very quickly break the 3d6 bell curve. The distance between hitting rarely (16%) and hitting most of the time (84%) is only 6 points.

* ability to defend themselves while still attacking

This is another system that will require a LOT of playtesting. If it's active (i.e., a parry roll) I oppose it on the grounds that it slows play to a crawl. If it's
passive - i.e., it imposes a to hit penalty, it has to be very carefully calibrated. A -3 to hit will cut the chance of an average opponent (DX 10) from 50% to 16%. Yet it will have little effect on a high DX opponent. (It will reduce a DX 16 opponent from 95% chance of success to 84% chance.)

The system that worked in my campaigns effectively restricted a figure to leather armor or less, and required a high DX to be useful. You doubled the DX penalty for armor and shields then got a point of defense for each point of DX over 12 (I think). It was designed to allow swashbuckler types to be viable and worked fine in my campaign. Swashbucklers were NOT common characters, but I always had one in my campaigns. But I have no idea how it might work in other campaigns.

* ability of their skill to avoid attacks entirely (especially with shields) not just reduce the damage they take slightly

That would seem to require an active system (i.e., defender makes a roll). Again, I'd oppose it because it slows the game down to an unacceptable level.

* ability to increase their chances to deny being tackled in HTH

Sign me up. Anything that reduces the chance of HTH happening gets my vote.

* ability to not be immobilized by engagement (at the cost of suffering an attack)

Interesting notion. A lot of playtesting would be required, though. It would make it much harder to screen weaker members of the party (like wizards). But that cuts both ways.

I would add doing extra damage to your list. I'd make the extra damage somewhat proportional - i.e. +1 for ST 9-10 weapons; +2 for ST11-13 weapons, +3 for two handed weapons of ST 13+.