Martial Artist's Power Blow Ability

[Polkageist]

Excellent. Makes for a great opening act to a fight.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

Sure. It's an Attack

Sounds good to me. The text isn't clear on whether the "charged up" martial artist can hold the charge and wait or even move about . . . but martial artists are all about moving about and all about punching, so full power-up followed by Move followed by Attack (or Move and Attack) sounds right up their alley.

(I suppose there should be some common-sense restriction on holding the "charge", though. Otherwise: "Okay, I ready Power Blow and Breaking Blow as we set out from Town. I'm ready for the first bandit or dungeon monster we come across.")

[Kalzazz]

I wouldn't allow Charge followed by Move, only by Concentrate or something involving an Attack. Attack, Move and Attack, All Out Attack

[ArchonShiva]

Turns out martial artists aren’t actually that bad, they just have lots of pitfalls.

The basic trick is that they have something nobody else has: [40] that can be spent on (Special) skills. This allows raising a skill by up to 10, to levels outside the proper range of DF. Since neither cares about ST for damage, you can either push foes around liberally or stun them with almost certainty (pick one).

Kiai may be the only thing in the book that nothing is immune to. It costs FP, so it’s not an endless fount, but you can Rapid Strike at some range (-1 skill per 2 yards goes a long way before rule of 16 releases you) and open your foes up while wasting their turn. When faced with stronger foes, you can often afford AOA double for three attacks total with little to no risk of retaliation. It is also unaffected by so many bad modifiers (there is a Kromm post in here about it).

Push is trickier, because you could get your arm cut off, so you need to Feint to make it work. But if you give your foe -15 to parry, they probably won’t try. And you really need insane skill (pick a halfling for skill 28) to reach maximum distance and make sure you can trip a gelatinous cube.

But the Martial Artist isn’t weak: it’s just that the default mental image we have is a very inefficient build. Power Blow is a pretty good example of a trap ability, although getting it to 24 may have potential (uses Autohypnosis for the last 2).

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by ArchonShiva

Turns out martial artists aren’t actually that bad, they just have lots of pitfalls.

The basic trick is that they have something nobody else has: [40] that can be spent on (Special) skills. This allows raising a skill by up to 10, to levels outside the proper range of DF. Since neither cares about ST for damage, you can either push foes around liberally or stun them with almost certainty (pick one).

Another fun way to go: spend 9 points on Mantis Strike to get swing damage 2d-1, then spend 30 points boosting Throwing Art by +8 (Throwing Art-25), and one more point on Kiai just for fun (Kiai-14)[1]. Now you, too, can throw daggers into monsters' eyes even in close combat, as well as throwing 2d+3 boomerangs into their skulls with effective skill 15 even while doing Move and Attack from 70 yards away (-8 for range, -2 for bulk).

Once you pick up Extra Attack you can either fast-draw and throw two knives per turn (or small stones if you're feeling cheap), or Kiai + throw a boomerang (or Woomera-spear for 2d+7 imp if you prefer).

It's a nice alternative to the Scout, with a vastly different endgame involving wall-crawling, and fewer issues against high-ish DR homogeneous foes against whom Scouts may struggle (since bodkin points are piercing, and cutting points have low-ish damage after subtracting DR).

Obviously you can situationally combine this with other things like Light Walk-fueled backstabbing, Knife-18 parries with an orchicalcum knife to lop off attacking limbs, Kiai and Push-17, since you get these abilities for "free" anyway as part of your template. But your go-to schtick of Throwing Art-24 will be something you do in most fights.

(Also available in half-ogre for 3d+5 crushing damage with boomerangs, or 3d+8 impaling with Woomeras.)

[1] Edit: oops, raising Kiai would take two points. Maybe buy a Trademark Move instead (rapid strike, two boomerangs to the skull).

[Kalzazz]

Captain Throwie does need to be concerned with Parry but does sound a fun approach

[corwyn]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Another fun way to go: spend 9 points on Mantis Strike to get swing damage 2d-1, then spend 30 points boosting Throwing Art by +8 (Throwing Art-25), and one more point on Kiai just for fun (Kiai-14)[1]. Now you, too, can throw daggers into monsters' eyes even in close combat, as well as throwing 2d+3 boomerangs into their skulls with effective skill 15 even while doing Move and Attack from 70 yards away (-8 for range, -2 for bulk).

[1] Edit: oops, raising Kiai would take two points. Maybe buy a Trademark Move instead (rapid strike, two boomerangs to the skull).

Captain Throwie also needs to remember the -5/-7 for hitting the face/skull and that TbaM does not reduce the penalty for Rapid Strike for ranged attacks.

[sjmdw45]

Originally Posted by corwyn

Captain Throwie also needs to remember the -5/-7 for hitting the face/skull and that TbaM does not reduce the penalty for Rapid Strike for ranged attacks.

Oops on the hit location thing. I guess he gets to pick range OR skull hits, not both.

On Ranged Rapid Strike with thrown weapons, technically DFRPG has no rules for this at all, but if you're relying on GURPS Martial Arts page 120:

"Cinematic kung fu masters and ninja often hurl multiple throwing weapons with uncanny precision. To simulate this, the GM may wish to let Rapid Strike (p. B370) – including the cinematic version on p. 127 – work with thrown-weapon attacks. For instance, a warrior could toss two weapons at -6, three at -12, four at -18, and so on. Halve these penalties for Weapon Masters. Such a Rapid Strike can target multiple opponents, just like one made in melee combat."

It's true that the paragraph only explicitly mentions Weapon Master, but that's an aside to a "for instance". The general rule given is that you're just extending Rapid Strike to work for ranged combat. I see no logical reason why Trained By A Master would fail to apply to this very cinematic Throwing Art application, so I would just use the melee Rapid Strike rules as written, including the TBaM benefits. (Likewise, I also wouldn't grant the benefits to a Weapon Master throwing a weapon he wasn't a master of--"for Weapon Masters" is just shorthand.)

In any case, even if your GM doesn't allow ranged Rapid Strike at all, you can still pick up Extra Attack in order to throw multiple times per round. (Or e.g. throw a spear via Woomera, Kiai, and fast-draw a Knife for close combat next round. Extra Attack is versatile.)

Thanks for the corrections/contributions. I think Captain Throwie would be awesome fun.

[sjmdw45]

Another fun thing to do with Captain Throwie, if you're using the Dungeon Fantasy Companion supplement: buy some impact items. As far as I can tell they still affect the target even if parried or blocked, although successfully parrying/blocking would avoid taking damage from the impact.

Hindering Clay is only $400 and imposes -4 to Move and Dodge for 1 minute (HT resist). Doesn't appear to cost extra for high SZ.

Hood of Blindness is also $400 and imposes blindness for ten seconds. (HT resist.) Good for helping out squishies in distress. Retch Stone is cheaper ($270) but has a lesser effect and more kinds of targets are probably immune (demons, elder things, undead can likely be blinded but not make to vomit) so I'd prefer Hood of Blindness.

Slow Stone for $550 imposes Slow for ten seconds. If you can manage to land both a Slow Stone and Hindering Clay, that's basically a death sentence against Captain Throwie even for high-move monsters like dragons. (Air move 14/21 degrades to effectively 5/8.5.) The dragon will Dodge successfully 50% of the time if it's a medium or large dragon, and will resist successfully 54.7% of the time, so you'll need to spend about $1600 and four attacks to land a Hindering Clay and another $2200ish and four more attacks to Slow it.

The best option though appears to be Bottle of Imprisonment, so that you can turn big dumb monsters like Electric Jellies into Electric Jelly grenades, at a cost of about $5600 per grenade. $3200 per attempt times a 71.5% success rate vs. the jelly's Will 12, and a 72.3% chance of hitting the jelly with the stone in the first place. If you curse the jelly first, its Dodge drops enough that you hit 82.2% of the time, and win the resistance contest 78.4% of the time, for $4961 on average per grenade.

Most of the time you won't need to use these items, but it's better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them, and they're overall pretty cheap and light. One more arrow in your quiver.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by tbone

(I suppose there should be some common-sense restriction on holding the "charge", though. Otherwise: "Okay, I ready Power Blow and Breaking Blow as we set out from Town. I'm ready for the first bandit or dungeon monster we come across.")

If I'm in a mood to sort of allow that, but want to keep the limits somewhat sane, I call keeping an ability in a combat ready state, or maintaining some ridiculous alertness level or combat move ability, the same as fighting a really long battle (p.B426) - it can't count as rest and every 2 minutes, costs you 1+Encumbrance FP. You can do it for a few minutes without much problem, but try to keep it up for an hour and you'll pass out from the exertion.