[Basic] Skills of the week: Blind Fighting and Invisibility Art

[johndallman]

Blind Fighting is Per-based and reduces or negates vision penalties for darkness, blindness or an invisible opponent for attacking and defending in melee combat. If you have Zen Archery or a corresponding skill for other ranged weapons, you can use it with Blind Fighting to attack at a distance without being able to see your target.

Invisibility Art is the IQ-based art of passing unseen without actually being invisible, apparently based on a combination of hypnosis and stealth.

Both skills are esoteric martial arts skills with prerequisite advantages: Trained by a Master or Weapon Master for Blind Fighting, Trained by a Master for Invisibility Art. They also have a special connection; possession of Blind Fighting appears to make you immune to Invisibility Art. It's unclear if that only works if you're deliberately using Blind Fighting, or you just get an immunity along with the first point in Blind Fighting. Either way, Blind Fighting is very worthwhile if it's available and you qualify for it.

Martial Arts doesn't actually add much detail to Blind Fighting or Invisibility Art, although it adds two chi-based talents, Inner Balance and Forceful Chi, which affect these skills and show up in several other books. The skills, naturally, appear in many martial arts styles. It also adds two even more esoteric skills, Sensitivity and Hypnotic Hands, which work with Blind Fighting and Invisibility Art respectively.

High-Tech and Gun-Fu have a lot of material on using these skills with gun-based martial arts, with Gunslinger replacing TBaM and WM. Powers provides hooks for associating them with various power sources. Magic suggests them as possible core skills for Ritual Magic. Supers has a form of Invisibility Art for use against telepathic powers. Underground Adventures makes Blind Fighting useful in moving without light. Power-Ups 2: Perks has the Chi Resistance perks for resisting esoteric skills.

It is possible to be too mindless to be affected by Invisibility Art, as Zombies points out. Psionic Campaigns suggests esoteric martial arts skills with psionic prerequisites, rather than exotic training, and Horror has ways to use them as Dark Arts.

I've never played in a campaign where these skills were available. My only formidable martial artist was an construct with high skills, HT and DX, but mundane training. They seem like good fun, though; what have you done with them?

[ericthered]

I've only seen blind fighting used once: It was a TL10 space opera where the players had access to goodies their foes did not but faced bad odds every time. One character decided to go melee and his tactics revolved around prismatic smoke grenades, blind fighting, and some very nice knives. It was crazy to watch him at work-- and I've never seen mooks with guns go down to blades so easily and so fast.

[Flyndaran]

Blind fighting is a simple, though enhanced, way to deal with the realistic ability of some people to navigate through vague echolocation.

[whswhs]

It bothers me that Invisibility Art has Hypnotism as a prerequisite, as I think of that as a historically and culturally specific skill, and not to the same culture. In my current fantasy campaign, I allow one of the races access to Invisibility Art, but I eliminate Hypnotism as a prerequisite; in fact, I put Blind Fighting in its place!

Bill Stoddard

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by whswhs

I... I allow one of the races access to Invisibility Art, but I eliminate Hypnotism as a prerequisite; in fact, I put Blind Fighting in its place!

Seems plausible to me.

Another alternative prerequisite could be Psychology, for knowing how your target's perceptions and reactions to them work.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It bothers me that Invisibility Art has Hypnotism as a prerequisite, as I think of that as a historically and culturally specific skill, and not to the same culture. In my current fantasy campaign, I allow one of the races access to Invisibility Art, but I eliminate Hypnotism as a prerequisite; in fact, I put Blind Fighting in its place!

Bill Stoddard

I'd use meditation because meditation is fundamentally hypnosis.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

I'd use meditation because meditation is fundamentally hypnosis.

Doesn't seem specific enough. Meditation could plausibly be a prerequisite for every single one of the cinematic martial arts skills!

Besides, the reasoning for hypnosis seems to be "I'm making myself invisible by controlling other people's minds so they don't pay attention to me; Hypnotism is the skill of controlling other people's minds; so this is a specialized application of Hypnotism." But Meditation is the skill of controlling one's own mind, if anything. The connection's far less easy to make. I mean, "I'm going to control my own mind so I don't pay attention to myself"?

Bill Stoddard

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by whswhs

It bothers me that Invisibility Art has Hypnotism as a prerequisite, as I think of that as a historically and culturally specific skill, and not to the same culture. In my current fantasy campaign, I allow one of the races access to Invisibility Art, but I eliminate Hypnotism as a prerequisite; in fact, I put Blind Fighting in its place!

Bill Stoddard

Actually if you read Japanese and Chinese mythology/old stories, hypnotism (or something like it) is in there. It's just called a magical or chi ability rather than a normal skill. If you go back a century or so in the Western world, what is now called hypnotism was called Animal Magnetism.

Things change. Even today there are many people who believe that hypnotism works via strength of will or by some psychic means. As long as you get rid of the image of the psychiatrist with a pocket watch, hypnotism is just impressing your will onto somebody else.

[Flyndaran]

And those that don't believe it exists at all as a separate mental state.
Though I wonder how a hypothetical alien with more extreme reactions to Hypnotism and forms of tonic immobility might develop.