Fighting from a Handstand?

[Christopher R. Rice]

How exactly would you represent the ability to fighting while doing a handstand on two hands (or one hand). Obviously you're kicking, but is this just an unusual posture of some variety? Making a martial arts style for a wuxia game and I was stumped. Ideas welcome.

Thanks all who reply!

[johndallman]

Assuming you're completely used to doing this, the obvious problems are that your vision is somewhat limited by your head being so close to the floor, and you're extremely vulnerable to knockback. It would seem best to keep both hands on the ground whenever you kick, or are at risk of being hit, to stay at "extremely vulnerable" and not make it any worse.

The upside is that there's no problem with kicking and missing, since you aren't using your legs to stay upright. Also, nobody will complain about being penalised for not having Style Familiarity with this style.

[Flyndaran]

I think capoeira has some kind of cartwheel kicks which kind of fit your description. How effective they are in real fights not mattering in this context of course.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

How exactly would you represent the ability to fighting while doing a handstand on two hands (or one hand). Obviously you're kicking, but is this just an unusual posture of some variety? Making a martial arts style for a wuxia game and I was stumped. Ideas welcome.

Thanks all who reply!

I'm afraid you're going to need to watch (re-watch?) Kurt Thomas' Gymkata for your sins.

[Varyon]

I'd be strongly tempted to keep it simple. A handstand-kick is a decent example of an Acrobatic Attack (indeed, possibly one that uses the Acrobatic Kicks Perk, using Acrobatics in place of Brawling/Karate). Doing handstands and cartwheels and the like may well be appropriate for an Acrobatic Dodge (or Leg Parry). Of course, doing a handstand rather limits your mobility, so you probably can't Move more than a Step, although this largely avoids the benefit of an Acrobatic Attack... but someone on handstands doing kicks isn't really something most people have prepared for, so the kicks might be harder to avoid.

With all that in mind, I'd be tempted to simply allow the character to take a Perk, call it Handstand Combat or similar. This allows you to switch to a handstand as a free action (or maybe Change Posture, adjust to taste) on your turn. While in a handstand, you need to make an Acrobatics check each round. On any Success, all Deceptive Attack kicks impose a further -1 to the enemy's defense, kicks no longer require a roll to avoid falling on a miss, and all defenses are treated as Acrobatic (for +2). On a Failure, you fall prone, must make an HT roll to avoid Stunning, and all of your defenses are treated as you having attempted and failed an Acrobatic defense (for -2). On a Critical Failure (and, optionally, any Failure by 5+), you also take damage as though you fell from 1/2 your height (and, optionally, the roll to avoid Stunning is at -5).

[Imbicatus]

Maybe a cinematic ability of the style would be to purchase extra legs to represent ‘walking’ on on your arms. Several styles allow you to purchase strikers on existing limbs, so why not extra legs for arms?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

I'm afraid you're going to need to watch (re-watch?) Kurt Thomas' Gymkata for your sins.

Make sure the adventure includes a trip to Karabal, on the Caspian Sea.

And when reviewing character builds, be sure the PCs have a few levels of Serendipity, because they're going to need to coincidentally find pommel horses or overhead bars scattered around ancient backward villages.

[Christopher R. Rice]

This has been mostly useful. Thank you! Varyon I'm going to use your idea for a perk and see how it runs. Might need to be a technique instead, but with its suggested drawbacks I think it's probably worth a perk at most.

[The Colonel]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

I think capoeira has some kind of cartwheel kicks which kind of fit your description. How effective they are in real fights not mattering in this context of course.

Last I heard Capoeira was precisely about this - allegedly because it was designed to be used by people with manacles on. But I've never seen much analysis on how it works as a fighting style … never heard of it coming up in UFC/MMA style events though so I'm guessing it might not stack up all that well with conventional styles.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Christopher R. Rice

This has been mostly useful. Thank you! Varyon I'm going to use your idea for a perk and see how it runs. Might need to be a technique instead, but with its suggested drawbacks I think it's probably worth a perk at most.

Gymkata aside, seems like something like this might also take a page from "use the lower of Acrobatics or unarmed combat skill" like fighting while mounted.