[Martial Arts] Superhuman martial arts?

[WaterAndWindSpirit]

Hello everyone.

So, in a setting with people with superhuman abilities, how would martial arts designed around said abilities look like?

Say some people are born with or can train a magic based DR 5. What possibilities does that open to them?

What about a martial arts based upon Enhanced Time Rate? If you are a speedster moving at twice the speed of everyone else, surely this opens some unique techniques to you.

Or if you have pyro/cryokinetic powers? How would that affect your approach to martial arts?

I'd be more leaning to a Krav Maga approach to this (as in, pragmatic techniques that inflict maximum damage, fair fights be damned), but if you want to make a more mystical martial arts based on the same thing, feel free.

[Refplace]

It really depends on the Super.
If your stronger and tougher than most you may go for more of a Wrestling or Sumo style. If your agile a softer style might be more fitting. With ATR you might go for some All Out Attack strikes then switch to more defensive ones.
An Acrobatic would involve lots of jumping and Flying Leaps.

[whswhs]

I did a look at this, at a low level, in GURPS Thaumatology: Chinese Elemental Powers, though its primary focus was on giving a worked example of "magic as powers." And Pyramid 3/70 has an article by PK on fitting higher-level elemental xia into a Monster Hunters campaign, which illustrates one possible approach to this, with heroes who are somewhere in between streetlevel and four-color.

[Phantasm]

I can see a lot of martial artists unlocking the more mythic abilities of their styles via chi in a superhuman type setting. While this includes skills like Flying Leap and Immovable Stance, it can also justify the Iron Fist and DragonBall types. I could also see it justifying a whole bunch of chi-based Imbuements.

In fact, Imbuements can be wickedly awesome for any elemental or psionic type that has studied martial arts.


And as a side note, aesir23's DCU thread has a "Trained By Batman" martial arts style that's worth looking into.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by WaterAndWindSpirit

Hello everyone.

So, in a setting with people with superhuman abilities, how would martial arts designed around said abilities look like?

Say some people are born with or can train a magic based DR 5. What possibilities does that open to them?

What about a martial arts based upon Enhanced Time Rate? If you are a speedster moving at twice the speed of everyone else, surely this opens some unique techniques to you.

Or if you have pyro/cryokinetic powers? How would that affect your approach to martial arts?

I'd be more leaning to a Krav Maga approach to this (as in, pragmatic techniques that inflict maximum damage, fair fights be damned), but if you want to make a more mystical martial arts based on the same thing, feel free.

I think allowing super's access to improving cinematic techniques will cover some of that, as the addition of super powered people will make such techniques not only "realistic" but eminently pragmatic as well.

E.g back breaker for normal people isn't a very pragmatic or realistic technique because it involves physically lifting your opponent up and bringing them down onto you knee. And well unless you make a habit of fighting very light people relative to your lifting strength that's really not a very efficient way to go about winning fights for the vast majority of likely real life match ups. But well bring in a human sized person with a ST of 30 and that changes significantly.


(as a general point if you really want to see higher ST shine in martial arts check out technical grappling it has many ways for the very strong to fold, mangle and mutilate the comparatively weak, and has skill value adding to that in a couple of ways)

There's also the point that "normal" attacks and techniques will likely look suitably super when done by supers. A flying tackle or move and attack slam by a ST10 Mv5 normal person doesn't look very super, but imaginee one from a ST30 Mv10 person, or by someone who can fly or otherwise has enhanced Move 4 etc!

Similarly wrench limb with ST30 is a rather more pragmatic and spectacular fight ending move at ST30 vs. ST10 opponents than it is at ST10 vs ST10!


High ST high Move supers will do well with the general substitution for slam damage for thrust move & attack damage in MApg107.

And as stated those with multiple actions will do well by attacking with AoA or move & attack, and still keeping active defences. or even doing full move and then an attack in the time their opposition can do either


Super based extra attacks will allow you to feint and attack or string set ups together better and so on.

Or put it this way superman punches not only look way more super when done by superman, but are also more broadly applicable when done by superman.

In terms of weaponizing ice powers in hand to hand combat etc I agree imbuements seem a natural way to go, but there's are also enhancement on innate attacks e.g follow up (not forgetting additional attacks points discounts if you end up doing multiple versions)

This is just using the stuff from Characters, there are other options as mentioned by other posts here as well!

If you want to wrap all this into a super martial style you can make these innate attacks or enhancements on them as optional traits of such a MA style

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

I think allows super access to cinematic techniques will cover some of that, as the addition do super powered people will make such techniques not only "realistic" but eminently pragmatic as well.

E.g back breaker for normal people isn't a very pragmatic or realistic technique because it involves physically lifting your openet up and bringing them down onto you knee. And well unless you make habit of fighting very light people relative to your lifting strength that's really not very efficient way to go about winning fights for the vast majority of likely real life match ups. But well a human sized person with a ST of 30 and that changes significantly.

(as general point if you really want to see higher ST shine in martial arts check out technical grappling it has many ways for the very strong to fold, mangle and mutilate the comparatively weak, and has skill value adding to that in couple of ways)

Oh, yeah. Sir Michael Carragher has ST 20 and Wrestling at DX+14 (Brawling at DX+14 and Judo at DX+9); with a magical belt that gives him ST +10 and magical gauntlets that give Arm ST +6. His ST 30/36 and maximum Training Bonus for nearly any technique he tries means that he can absolutely savage even supernatural opposition with his Combat Wrestling / Kampfringen.

In a recent battle, he used Backbreaker against a 500 lbs., SM +1 wereboar in boarman hybrid form. And jumped 13 yards, landing on a frail old man (powerful shaman) with a Flying Tackle, which terminated in a grapple + Neck Snap. He also got the backspike of his halberd stuck in the eye socket of a four ton SM +3 demon who looked like a ManBearPig and decided that a Judo Throw using the stuck weapon as the axis was his most practical move.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Onto a halberd already stuck in their eye socket.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Icelander

Oh, yeah. Sir Michael Carragher has ST 20 and Wrestling at DX+14 (Brawling at DX+14 and Judo at DX+9); with a magical belt that gives him ST +10 and magical gauntlets that give Arm ST +6. His ST 30/36 and maximum Training Bonus for nearly any technique he tries means that he can absolutely savage even supernatural opposition with his Combat Wrestling / Kampfringen.

In a recent battle, he used Backbreaker against a 500 lbs., SM +1 wereboar in boarman hybrid form. And jumped 13 yards, landing on a frail old man (powerful shaman) with a Flying Tackle, which terminated in a grapple + Neck Snap. He also got the backspike of his halberd stuck in the eye socket of a four ton SM +3 demon who looked like a ManBearPig and decided that a Judo Throw using the stuck weapon as the axis was his most practical move.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Onto a halberd already stuck in their eye socket.

heh, nice (and yep exactly)

[Tomsdad]

picking up on something else a super with DR5 is largely immune to most unarmed attacks by most non super people, and assuming that DR5 is along side high ST then the repercussions of the reduced damage that does get through will be proportionally reduced as well.

This means that such a super MA style can be hugely aggressive, sacrificing defense for attack (that itself will further add value to the supers advantage in attacking as per above). On top of that their opponents are more likely to need to resort to AoA's in order to increase their chance of having any effect, which means the Super MA style can double down on being aggressive because of not having to defeat active defences!


So for instance lets say we have ST25 super with DR5 and karate +2 (so not a very powerful one) and they are facing off against some ST12 goons with brawling +2

Now those goons will be punching at 1d-1 damage on a basic attack, so they need an AoA (strong) and a roll 5 or 6 to inflict a maximum of 1 or 2 pts of cr injury!


Only even if they do say do the maximum 2pts of damage that's a 2pt cr injury coming off a starting HP of 25. If they were hitting anther ST12 DR0 goon that would 7 pts off of 12HP and major wound.

(they can kick with heavy boots and do better, or use fist loads or other weapons of course)


Going the other way our super is punching at 2d+4 and almost dropping our ST12 goons to 0 hp on an average punch to the default torso, and that's without going more aggressive with Committed strong or AoA strong, or leveraging other bonuses at the cost of defence to hit higher value targets.

If you want a pragmatic Krav Maga "finish the fight and the opponent in as quick a blur of aggression as possible" feel, have your Super MA style write up include the technique:

TA (Karate Punch/Skull): Defaults to Karate-7; cannot exceed Karate-3.

You throw that aggressively with an AoA(D) or even a Telegraphed attack if your opponent has just gone AoA, and you're not even getting a penalty to hit!

2d+4 vs DR2 skulls with x4 injury multiplier in on average a 36pt injury and HT-10 knockdown test, that's a one hit fight ender on most human level targets.

DR5 also protects you from damage when striking harder objects.

[AlexanderHowl]

You can easily acquire DR 5 (Tough Skin, -40%) in realistic campaigns in GURPS using Special Exercises, so you would need something better than that to differentiate a super from a mundane. A TL8 mundane martial artist can also purchase DR 60/30 for their torso for $5600 and 25 lbs using advanced body armor and trauma plates, and they can augment their fists with guns, so the superiority of a super to a mortal is questionable (which is the whole point of people like Batman). At that point, superhuman characters need something else than damage or protection to make them superior to mundanes.

I think that a supernatural martial art should provide structured powers using the Chi modifier and using a separate unique Talent for each supernatural martial art. In my mind, the average supernatural martial art would consist of 10 abilities, with each ability with 10 levels, with each level costing 10 CP, meaning that a master of the supernatural martial art will have to spend 1000 CP. Since it would be associated with a specific martial art, I would suggest having minimum relative skill level of (Attribute)+1 for level one and +1 relative skill level for each additional level. I would also suggest having prerequisite chains of abilities.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

You can easily acquire DR 5 (Tough Skin, -40%) in realistic campaigns in GURPS using Special Exercises, so you would need something better than that to differentiate a super from a mundane.

No, you can't.

Special Exercises allows one level of DR with Tough Skin. No trait in GURPS allows as many levels of DR with Tough Skin as you want or can afford, the GM always makes a determination of how many people in his setting can have.

In a realistic setting, that number will usually be DR 1 (Tough Skin) with a Special Exercises Perk, though it is conceivable that a given GM would require that it be limited to Crushing Only as well.

It might be allowable to take DR 1 (Crushing Only; Tough Skin) and combine it with DR 1 (Tough Skin) with two different Special Exercises Perks, but mileage on that will vary. At the very least, such a character would have obvious visual indicators that he is hard to hurt seriously, having lots of fat, muscle or both over any really important part of his anatomy.