Talents & Martial Arts

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anthony

By talent (all martial arts) I mean Brawling, Boxing, Judo, Karate, Sumo, and Wrestling. That's even a a rules-legal talent.

DX (no basic speed -25%, no noncombat skills -25%) looks totally reasonable. The additional -25% for only a certain category of combat skills is iffy, but there's granularity issues with talents.

Those look more or less OK, though calling no noncombat skills -25% is a little generous (accessibility 1/3 of the time is -25%, and combat skill rolls are probably more than 1/3 of the DX based rolls a character makes, particularly a character who is going to be taking a Martial Arts Talent) and I would add a couple other skills in (the Sport forms for sure) and bump the Talent to the next category if you are going with pentaphilic granularity on Talents, combat skills feel a little too useful for pushing right up to the edge of the jump with 6.

But either way, I think we're mostly quibbling over which way to round to get an even multiple of 5. A +1 bonus to just unarmed combat skills is somewhere between 5 and 10 points. It's when you start adding all the other skills that are listed under individual martial arts that you are unambiguously over 10 and maybe over 15.

And just to quash one point pre-emptively, yes if you take a Talent for both unarmed and armed skills, it will undoubtably cost more than DX. That's normal for stacking talents. I've always been perfectly happy to let you degrade anything you want to fit your character concept though, so just buy up the attribute with only for (whatever list of skills based on that attribute you like) -0% if that bothers you. No it doesn't save you any points, but so what?