New Unarmed Combat Talents

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Shadekeep

Hmm, the more I think about this, the more I like the idea of adding "fighting schools". Basically each school would offer a certain kind of fighting style, with extra abilities purchasable at different UC levels. These would be additional talents beyond the UC ones, so would incur their own costs and have their own requirements. And you could only acquire them by being a member of the school, or by being of a higher UC level and fighting a member of that school (and thereby observing and learning the talent).

Some example schools would be:

Cobra (or Mantis) School:
UC3 - Can learn Stinging Strike, a painful blow that distracts foe for -3 DX on next round
UC4 - Piercing Strike, chance of inflicting bleed damage
UC5 - Blinding Strike, render foe blind for 1d6 turns

Bear School:
UC3 - Absorb Blow, can toughen skin to block some damage on next hit
UC4 - Savage Blow, can strike with an effective +4 ST on next hit
UC5 - Repel Blow, take half damage on next hit and reflect other half back on attacker

Shadow School:
UC3 - Shadow Skin, acts essentially as a BLUR spell
UC4 - Shadow Palm, chance of snatching an item off an enemy in HTH (similar to a Slinker steal chance)
UC5 - Shadow Copy, appear to be in two places at once, works not unlike the ILLUSION spell in practice

Most of these talents would also have a fatigue cost, so they act in effect as "martial arts magic". I've got a number of ideas in this direction if folks would like to see this fleshed out, perhaps as an article or supplement.

That's the sort of thing I had in mind 😊

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

That's the sort of thing I had in mind 😊

Gravy! I'm happy to write it up more thoroughly, if it doesn't step on any toes. And I'm open to make it a collaborative process, too.

[larsdangly]

There is a lot of fun to be had creating rules for schools and styles of armed and unarmed combat that go to that next level of detail and rules volume. I did a bunch of this sort of thing for my house rules, and might circulate updated versions of them once the final form of the Legacy edition is officially published. But I consider these sorts of things better for house rules than core rules. This is one place where I think TFT needs to keep its distance from GURPS. GURPS is essentially infinitely expandable and can be infinitely granular without fundamentally changing how the game plays. TFT isn't really like that. It can stand a bit of stretching around the margins, but if you make the core game a lot bigger than it was ca. 1982 it will lose its coherence. So, I'm perfectly happy that there look to be only 6 talents related to unarmed combat. If there were more than 10 I'd say the whole thing would have jumped the shark.

[Chris Rice]

Maybe the way forward is for someone to write an adventure incorporating these schools of Martial Art into the story. That way, we're not adding directly to the core rules, but the new stuff is there if people want to use it.

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

But I consider these sorts of things better for house rules than core rules.

As do I. The fighting schools stuff is strictly supplemental, for folks who are into that kind of thing. I like the core of TFT to remain streamlined as much as possible.

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

There is a lot of fun to be had creating rules for schools and styles of armed and unarmed combat that go to that next level of detail and rules volume...

But I consider these sorts of things better for house rules than core rules. This is one place where I think TFT needs to keep its distance from GURPS.

Truth be told, while I like UC and the martial arts in RPGs, when it comes to TFT I don't see why UC should have more levels of expertise than any other endeavor. I think it is already overly complicated compared to the rest of the system.

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Tenex

Truth be told, while I like UC and the martial arts in RPGs, when it comes to TFT I don't see why UC should have more levels of expertise than any other endeavor. I think it is already overly complicated compared to the rest of the system.

Not really. Fighters have the option of different weapons; melee, thrown and missile plus armour and shield options. There are also some extra Talents like Two Weapons and Fencing available to them.

The Unarmed combat specialist doesn't have these options available so the extra levels and abilities are necessary and justified, in my opinion.

[Shadekeep]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

The Unarmed combat specialist doesn't have these options available so the extra levels and abilities are necessary and justified, in my opinion.

Pretty much how I lean on this issue as well. Though I do still think the "fighting school" stuff is best left as supplemental rules. Similar to how adding cleric abilities can be complex and contentious, and really should be up to the discretion of individual GMs instead of integral to TFT.

[Nils_Lindeberg]

Originally Posted by larsdangly

Keep in mind that you don't have to have UC V to be a martial-arts focused character. If you want to be a martial artist with a high ST you could go for ST 16
DX 12 IQ 12 (very high by the standards of characters made under the 40 point cap), UC III, and lots of talent points available to learn cool weapons, whatever the new veteran/warrior talent is like, etc. I think I saw a post suggesting they were going to permit 'warrior'-like protection up to 3 points. If you combined this with IC III you would have 5 points of protection bare handed, fight with a pole axe, do cool stuff in unarmed combat, and who knows what else. That's a pretty groovy martial arts master.

Sounds cool, but no. :-(

First off. You are at UC 3, something a starting 32p can get, but you are a 40p character. Your UC talents are not viable as an alternative to fighting with your weapon. In any serious fight you would rather use your weapon. And that weapon is sub par because it could be at expert level and it is not because you have put points in UC talents instead. So I wouldn't call it a viable build comparable to other builds. It is a sub par hybrid build. I am not saying it might not be fun to play, but balance wise it is sub optimal. And it would get beaten by any UC 4 or higher build at UC fighting, and it would get beaten at weapons with just about any build with expert or mastery and a ST appropriate weapon.

What would be fun to see is either that there were synergy between the UC talents and normal fighting so you could combine them with the weapon or armor the character usually uses. Another form of "mastery" than normal weapon expert or mastery. Or that ST 16 could actually be of real use and give some extra damage so that a 16/12/12 UC 3 character could be on par with a 8/18/14 UC 5 character. That would also be great. And that the best UC character was something like 12/15/13 or some such reasonable in the middle mix.

But so far we have no indication that fist damage will increase with ST as far as I have read? IF we do have that I will adjust my sim next week when I am back from a job thing. My guess is that a UC 5 character 12/14/14 or 11/15/14 will then be a top 10 contender for the arena. And double strike might actually be of some use against single opponents. Interesting... If UC also stacks with Brawl it will definitely top the ranking or be very close. UC 5 with Kick is still viable now, but not great. But UC is basically one build per XP level at the moment. And that is boring and therefore a problem in my book.

[Chris Rice]

I feel that Unarmed combat practioners should always be sub-optimal compared to standard fighters because they have so many other advantages. The primary ones are:

* They are effective even without armour.
* They are not dependent on weapons.

These can be major advantages. Trying to give them parity with weapon users is a mistake in my view and makes them far too powerful in wider campaign play.

They don't exist in Melee anyway as the basic game has no Talents. They came to light in ITL which is the campaign supplement.