Drunken Martial Arts
 

How would you represent a martial artist skilled in one of the real world drunken styles, such as Drunken Monkey or Tsui Pah Hsien (which I'm sure I misspelled)? I'm not referring to the "Drunken Fighting" cinematic perk from Martial Arts.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Those styles have always sounded to me like ones that make heavy use of Retreat and Defensive Attack. Parries are less common than big whole body Dodges in depictions I'm familiar with, they might get Enhanced Dodge (Only on Retreats) or make liberal use of Acrobatic Dodge.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

There's a Move and Attack (Evasive) option in the recent Pyramid issue (#3/57) that might also help you out. No reason it can't be applied, with modification, to a hand-to-hand style.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Evaluates, Defensive Attacks, Retreat Dodges, and plenty of Deceptive Attacks.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

there's also a perk in martial arts that turns the penalties to dexterity from being drunk into bonuses.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Yes. Get the perk, and use the +2 bonus you get for drinking too much to make all of your attacks Deceptive (-1 to defend, -2 to hit). Whenever possible, make them even more Deceptive. Use Feint, as well, since your +2 works there, too. You're drunk, but your attacks are harder to stop. At least cinematically.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

That works for cinematic, but the OP is talking about the actual style, I think, which is not practiced drunk. I never learned it (I was a vanilla tiger-crane guy), but the man I knew who did use it demonstrated a style that looked off balance, erratic, and generally deceptive. I'd say it used something like All out Defense (Dodge), Feints, and tons of Retreats- I would almost call them Acrobatic Retreats, as there was some tumbling. I wish I'd seen him do it more, but he was actually trying to teach me less exotic fighting styles.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

My Drunken Monkey style is in this thread.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

True. But my research pretty much put it down to what Blood Legend said - lots of Feints and Deceptive Attacks. It's not clear if it's demonstrably better than fighting without all of the "drunken" aspects. Its proponents claim it is so, but there isn't a firm body of actual evidence that this is true.

It might be extra-effective against people who've never encountered it before, but Style Familiarity deals with that - it's no more or less dangerous for being "drunken" than any other unfamiliar style would be.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

That's true of every style of systemic martial arts, and it's practitioners. On the other hand I am pretty confident that under most circumstances what GURPS Tactical Shooting calls the "Assaulter" style is better than Drunken Kung Fu. :)

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Well, my point is that it doesn't seem reasonable to assign it any bonuses or penalties, just to describe its tactics. Depending on the "base" style, it's Techniques and Style Perks might change a bit, too. But GURPS Martial Arts takes the approach that all of this stuff must work pretty well, or at least it should when you give it to a character.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

What about a Perk that makes you seem less skilled than you are? Like your attacks and dodges succeed due to sheer luck, rather than actual skill, at least initially? That seems to me to be a component of "drunken" styles, that you can rely on being underestimated by anyone who doesn't know you can fight or who haven't seen you participate in a fight that lasts more than a few rounds.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

I would call that the acting skill, along with the general deceptive attacks of the style.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Do Deceptive Attacks affect the impression your enemies, and any onlookers, get of your fighting ability?

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

I don't know. Generally if anybody has a 15+ in a combat skill I tell any players who have even 12+ in their combat skill that "That man walks like a fighter."

The better the character is, the more precisely they can tell if somebody is good.

I usually use a Per roll modified by their highest relative combat skill.

I don't think this is RAW, but it works for me.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

A Perk that gives a bonus to Acting for that purpose would seem to be fair. It might even be a fairly substantial bonus, since it only affects one very specific use of Acting. I'd allow at least +2 and might be persuaded to go to +3 or +4, given that Off-Hand Weapon Training allows an effective +4 to a very specific use of a particular weapon skill.

Combine that with the Perk One-Task Wonder (Can use Acting to pretend to be unskilled at fighting) and you get a character who doesn't have Acting, but can pretend to be a worse fighter than he is at IQ+4.

I'd call the Perk 'Crouching Monkey, Hidden Badass', but that's just me.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Could also be an Easy technique of Acting skill.

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

Sure, we could go that way, but that seems to make what is essentially shtick of fairly limited versatility (compared to Acting as a whole) rather expensive. Especially as Average and Hard are the only difficulties of techniques that I'm familiar with.

Paying 1 CP per +1 to it might be worth it, but I'd argue that this is Perk-worthy and that 1 CP ought to buy you more than +1. Pretenting to be clumsier and less skilled than you are when using a particular style for unarmed attacks in combat feels more like it ought to merit a bonus in the style of Honest Face or Penetrating Voice than necessarily having to buy every level of skill.

Of course, nothing prevents us from making an Average Technique for Acting that would cover all forms of non-verbal deception designed to make one look harmless, i.e. stance, gait, posture, etc. A character that specialised in such methods could then have fairly high Acting, a technique he used to seem harmless and then a Perk to give a bonus to rolls to hide his level of expertise when using a particular martial art style ('Crouching Monkey, Hidden Badass').

Re: Drunken Martial Arts
 

I've often thought that GURPS could use an "Evasive Parry" option of some sort. That is, you have to opt in against a specific attack, you roll it against your skill/2+3, it uses up a parry (probably for all of your limbs), but the result is to avoid interposing something in the path of the attack - i.e. it *looks* like a Dodge. It seems balanced enough - yes it allows you to avoid the Hurting Yourself rules or effects that trigger on contact, on the other hand it doesn't work with Aggressive Parry, set up throws etc.

For the rest of it Feint and Deceptive Attack seem to work fine. You could allow a feint based on Acting or Performance ("he's too drunk to be a threat") if you think that actually applies. One Task Wonder (Acting, to appear staggering drunk) would synergize nicely with that.

Oh, and if you wanted to go halfway toward the cinematic version, I've allowed a Drunken [skill] perk that doesn't give you any bonuses at all but does negate the intoxication penalties for that particular skill - for skills that don't involve any deep thought or fast reflexes it might even be borderline realistic. The RAW perk is seriously unbalanced - it's essentially a Talent (applies to a bunch of skills) with a preparation required limitation (get drunk), that ought to be worth about 8 points.