martial arts' techniques and grappling

[Devil_Dante]

hi guys. Need some help with techniques in general, specifically with the martial arts ' ones.

1)How do you act a player who wants to use some techniques that he doesn t have? By RAW, every technique has a default skill but without reading from the book is impossible to remeber every single default skill, and these don t work how the default of the normal skill ( an easy skill has a default -3, and average -4 and so on). So, for example, chop kick has wrestling -2.. there is any particular way to know the default??

2) i v found some grappling rules a bit confusing. For example, grap an opponent means imposing -4 DEX.
When your opponent tries to breack free, you have +5 to quick contest check if you have 2 hands. Does it mean that there is a gap of 9??

3) from another book i red that your opponent has -4 to breack free with a -1 every round after first.. but i can't remember the source.. did i invent it??

thanks for replies

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Devil_Dante

1)How do you act a player who wants to use some techniques that he doesn t have?

I generally allow the player to try any technique they want to (that they can actually do, that is, that they have the basic skill for). Techniques are special tricks that a character can do, and letting players use them makes combat more interesting, in my experience.

That said, I expect my players to actually have some idea of what a technique does. If the player is just going down the list of techniques and going "Ooh, Flying Jump Kick sound nifty, I'll do that!", without having any idea of what it actually does in play, I'll try to discourage that.

Originally Posted by Devil_Dante

By RAW, every technique has a default skill but without reading from the book is impossible to remeber every single default skill, and these don t work how the default of the normal skill ( an easy skill has a default -3, and average -4 and so on). So, for example, chop kick has wrestling -2.. there is any particular way to know the default??

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here. Are you asking how to know what the default penalty is? If that's what you mean, it's written before every technique. Acrobatic Stand, for example, lists its default as "Acrobatics-6". That means that a character trying to use that technique rolls their Acrobatics skill, -6. If a technique defaults to several skills, use the best default the character has. So, for example, Armed Grapple defaults to "Cloak, or other prerequisite skill-2", and defines what qualifies as another prerequisite skill in the technique. So someone with Cloak skill-15, and Broadsword-16 would roll against the Cloak skill to use Armed Grapple, since their Cloak skill -0 is better than their Broadsword skill -2. On the other hand, a character with the same Cloak skill but Broadsword-18 would roll against Broadsword, since Broadsword-18 -2 is still better than their Cloak.

Of course, all that assumes you've got the right tools to use the techniques too - the characters trying Armed Grapple have both a cloak and a broadsword, for example. If you only have a broadsword and no cloak, you've got to roll against Broadsword, at the appropriate penalty, regardless of how good your Cloak skill is.

If you're asking how the penalty was actually determined, that's more complicated - Martial Arts has a whole technique design system that lets you re-create the techniques in the book (mostly, barring some fudging for balance), but going through that for all the techniques is kind of a big project. However, I don't think you need to do that, and certainly not in play! Just either allow the technique at the listed default penalty, or say "sorry, I don't think that one's balanced, I'm going to disallow it for now".

Originally Posted by Devil_Dante

2) i v found some grappling rules a bit confusing. For example, grap an opponent means imposing -4 DEX.
When your opponent tries to breack free, you have +5 to quick contest check if you have 2 hands. Does it mean that there is a gap of 9??

No, because the attempt to break free is a Quick Contest of ST, not DX. The DX penalty for being grappled doesn't apply.

Originally Posted by Devil_Dante

3) from another book i red that your opponent has -4 to breack free with a -1 every round after first.. but i can't remember the source.. did i invent it??

I don't know that penalty, so you may have invented it, yes. It might come from a book like Technical Grappling, which I don't have. In that case, though, I strongly suspect it's not intended to stack with the -5 for two-handed grappling, or the general -4 to DX.

[Devil_Dante]

really thanks for answers.. you have pretty much covered everything..

break free is ST based.. my gosh.. i had red that part 100 times and havent realized it..

About the default part i was asking for.. i was only trying to figure out if does exist any way to know the default malus of techniques without using the MA book..
but it s probably my desease to have everything ready in my mind :D

really thanks