Drunken Martial Arts

[Whitewings]

How would you represent a martial artist skilled in one of the real world drunken styles, such as Drunken Monkey or Tsui Pah Hsien (which I'm sure I misspelled)? I'm not referring to the "Drunken Fighting" cinematic perk from Martial Arts.

[lexington]

Those styles have always sounded to me like ones that make heavy use of Retreat and Defensive Attack. Parries are less common than big whole body Dodges in depictions I'm familiar with, they might get Enhanced Dodge (Only on Retreats) or make liberal use of Acrobatic Dodge.

[DouglasCole]

There's a Move and Attack (Evasive) option in the recent Pyramid issue (#3/57) that might also help you out. No reason it can't be applied, with modification, to a hand-to-hand style.

[Blood Legend]

Evaluates, Defensive Attacks, Retreat Dodges, and plenty of Deceptive Attacks.

[crretin]

there's also a perk in martial arts that turns the penalties to dexterity from being drunk into bonuses.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by crretin

there's also a perk in martial arts that turns the penalties to dexterity from being drunk into bonuses.

Yes. Get the perk, and use the +2 bonus you get for drinking too much to make all of your attacks Deceptive (-1 to defend, -2 to hit). Whenever possible, make them even more Deceptive. Use Feint, as well, since your +2 works there, too. You're drunk, but your attacks are harder to stop. At least cinematically.

[Dammann]

That works for cinematic, but the OP is talking about the actual style, I think, which is not practiced drunk. I never learned it (I was a vanilla tiger-crane guy), but the man I knew who did use it demonstrated a style that looked off balance, erratic, and generally deceptive. I'd say it used something like All out Defense (Dodge), Feints, and tons of Retreats- I would almost call them Acrobatic Retreats, as there was some tumbling. I wish I'd seen him do it more, but he was actually trying to teach me less exotic fighting styles.

[sir_pudding]

My Drunken Monkey style is in this thread.

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Dammann

That works for cinematic, but the OP is talking about the actual style, I think, which is not practiced drunk.

True. But my research pretty much put it down to what Blood Legend said - lots of Feints and Deceptive Attacks. It's not clear if it's demonstrably better than fighting without all of the "drunken" aspects. Its proponents claim it is so, but there isn't a firm body of actual evidence that this is true.

It might be extra-effective against people who've never encountered it before, but Style Familiarity deals with that - it's no more or less dangerous for being "drunken" than any other unfamiliar style would be.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

Its proponents claim it is so, but there isn't a firm body of actual evidence that this is true.

That's true of every style of systemic martial arts, and it's practitioners. On the other hand I am pretty confident that under most circumstances what GURPS Tactical Shooting calls the "Assaulter" style is better than Drunken Kung Fu. :)