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?

[Dwarf99]

Personally a Style isn't possibly less than a Wildcard Skill. Fist! is less versatile than that style because as far as I know it doesn't include grappling. If it does, my bad.

[the_matrix_walker]

Originally Posted by Dwarf99

Personally a Style isn't possibly less than a Wildcard Skill. Fist! is less versatile than that style because as far as I know it doesn't include grappling. If it does, my bad.

Replaces Boxing, Brawling, Judo, Karate, Parry Missile Weapons, Sumo Wrestling, and Wrestling as well as "eastern" weapons AND esoteric martial arts skills with TBaM or WM.

[Dwarf99]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

Replaces Boxing, Brawling, Judo, Karate, Parry Missile Weapons, Sumo Wrestling, and Wrestling as well as "eastern" weapons AND esoteric martial arts skills with TBaM or WM.

Aah right, so mundane versions are equally versatile. I still don't think I'd do a talent.

[Þorkell]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

He's going to want his best combat skills at DX+2 or more. Just one pt in other DX-based skills might well be enough. If that's still too much use Dabbler.

As to why custom Talents are bad it's not so much that they're "bad" as they are _whiny_. "I want a character who's good at a lot of DX-based Skills without having a high DX and I want it to be cheap too! So change the rules until I can get what I want!" irritates me.

There's usually a better, simpler answer elsewhere in the rules.

So a character, such as the aforementioned Barristan Selmy, who has a reputation (which he can back up) as being one heck of a swordsman (and not too shabby at other weapons) has his best weapon skill at DX+2? What DX stat would you give him? 12? 16?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

So a character, such as the aforementioned Barristan Selmy, who has a reputation (which he can back up) as being one heck of a swordsman (and not too shabby at other weapons) has his best weapon skill at DX+2? What DX stat would you give him? 12? 16?

Perhaps DX 12 and Skill+4 as a minimum. Even Skill-16 can have dramatic effects. It doubles your chances of crit success and halves your chances of crit fails even compared to just Skill-15

The +2 is just to reap the full benefits of Weapon Master and you would have to buy that much even if some Talent was involved. Talent is treated as adding to the Attribute rather than the Skill. Base Skill at DX and 4 levels of Talent gets you nothing from WM.

As to final levels that depends on how good the people he is compared to are. If most armsmen in the setting are Skill-12 (at best) then a 16 beats the crap out of them.

Skill over 16 is for absorbing Hit Location penalties and Deceptive Attacks. The need for this can be reduced through Techniques such as Targeted Attack and Counterattack. Also Balanced Weapons, Weapon Bonds and of course, magic.

All these desirable things would also have to come in addition to any Talent.

So Talent by itself would not be enough and might even be not truly on target. It's not really likely that Ax/Mace needs to be at the same level as Broadsword. It probably doesn't need more than token presence. Not much more than that for other supplementary weapons either.

Now you would need to buy up Riding to a high level for a classical Knight character but that wouldn't be in a weapon-only Talent. Other things like Savoir Faire too.

Perhaps you could sell me on a "Knight" Talent with Broadsword, Lance, Shield, Riding, Games (Tournament Law) and Savoir Faire but not a 5pt "Master of all weapons I want to carry around". A Talent should have a theme and not a cp advantage scheme.

[Christopher R. Rice]

You know, you could just use Job Training. The warrior template from Martial Arts (p. 41) includes points for a specific style in the template which should let you get the effect you want - for a Selmy-type anyways. That said, I'm going to blog about this I think, it's an excellent topic.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As to final levels that depends on how good the people he is compared to are. If most armsmen in the setting are Skill-12 (at best) then a 16 beats the crap out of them.

Well, depends on your scale for 'beats the crap out of'. If we assume combat reflexes, hit probability for skill 12 vs parry 12 is 20.6%. Hit probability for skill 16 vs 9 parry is 67.7 (with deceptive attack 1). A better than 3:1 advantage is quite substantial, but that's still pretty likely to get unlucky and lose. You want more in the range of skill 20 (parry 14; hit probabilities 9.6% vs 83%) to really seem unstoppable.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by the_matrix_walker

Replaces Boxing, Brawling, Judo, Karate, Parry Missile Weapons, Sumo Wrestling, and Wrestling as well as "eastern" weapons AND esoteric martial arts skills with TBaM or WM.

Personally I think adding in esoteric skills makes it a little over-powered (and I rarely say this about Wildcard skills) but it's a good skill to easily represent "guy who's trained in a wide range of martial arts" while keeping things simple. Don't forget it includes limited Acrobatic and Jumping abilities.

[Infornific]

Originally Posted by Þorkell

So a character, such as the aforementioned Barristan Selmy, who has a reputation (which he can back up) as being one heck of a swordsman (and not too shabby at other weapons) has his best weapon skill at DX+2? What DX stat would you give him? 12? 16?

At a minimum, DX 12 and skills in the 16-18 range. Selmy upon being retired from the King's Guard declares he could cut down all the men facing him if he wanted - boasting but there was a sense he could back it up. I'd use High Medieval Knightly Combat as his main Martial Art with Quarterstaff added in. You're looking at easily a ten point Talent which sounds about right. A high DX would be the most efficient way to buy appropriate skills if you don't use Talents - DX 16 would be appropriate there. But the sense in the books is that Selmy is highly skilled with many arms because he trained a lot.

As a side note, for GoT, I would use the Guard template from DF: Henchmen to represent combat skills of merely competent knights, the Squire template from DF: Henchmen for skilled knights and start with the Knight template from DF: Adventurers for the top knights of Westeros. This is before counting in various Social Advantages.