[MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

OK, I like MA though I was disappointed that there is no Cat-Fu Style...
So, I would like your input what should be part of a Cat-Fu Style.

Cat-Fu [6 points]
Prerequisites: Claws and Teeth (This can also be Bladed hand and Steel Teeth or Psi Claws etc.)
Cat-Fu has three offensive elements. Fast claw-strikes to the face (eyes and neck) to test / weaken the prey, strong pouncing / slamming attack to take down the prey and grappling / wrenching (choking / neck snap) to finish it off.
Defensively the style relies on agility (acrobatics). Practicioner of the Cat-Fu style have a strong predatory mentality and therefore rarely wear heavy armor and don't use shields.

Primary Skills:
Karate: For claw attacks to the face and throat + biting attacks.
Sumo Wrestling: For flying tackle (if two legged) or pouncing (if four legged)
Wrestling: For grappling, limb wrenching and chocking
Acrobatics: For smooth and flashy moves, acrobatic attacks and movement
Stealth: To get close to the enemy before pouncing

Techniques:
Karate: Eye-Poke, Eye-Rake, Ground Fighting, Low Fighting, Targeted Attacks (To Face, Eyes, or Neck with the Teeth or the Claws)
Sumo Wrestling: Attack from Above
Wrestling: Choke Hold (Bite), Ground Fighting, Low Fighting, Neck Snap (Bite), Targeted Attack (Grappling Bite / Neck), Wrench Limb (Bite)
Acrobatics: Acrobatic Stand, Break Fall, Evade

Cinematic Skills:
Flying Leap
Light Walk
Lizzard Climb: To scale walls using your claws
Precognitive Parry & Sensitivity: To represent the fabled cast’s seventh sense (sixth for those with only five primary senses ;))
Pressure Points, Pressure Secrets
Roar (aka Kiai): A mighty battle roar to stun enemies.

Cinematic Techniques:
Lethal Eye-Poke, Pressure-Point Strike, Roll with the Blow, Springing Attack

Perks:
Biting Mastery, Ground Guard, Neck Control, Rapid Retraction (Punch), Skill Adaptation (Acrobatic Feints), Skill Adaptation (Acrobatic Kicks), Skill Adaptation (Clinch; Karate)
Shtick (Growl): intimidation roll as free action

Optional Traits
Advantages: Catfall, Claws, Teeth, Combat Reflexes, Danger Sense, Extra Legs (NFM -30%, Switchable +10%, Reflexive +40%)*, Striking ST (Bite Only -60%)
Disadvantages: On the Edge, Impulsiveness
Skills: Jumping
Techniques: Aggressive Parry (Karate), Jump Kick, Kicking
Cinematic Techniques: Flying Jump Kick

*With this you are either two or four legged allowing you to Pounce and stuff...

Things I'm missing (or have overlooked): Raking with hind legs after grappling (or being grappled)

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Why Brawling? None of the listed techniques use it, and it doesn't seem to fit the stereotypical "lithe and skillful" cat-person stereotype. I'd just stick with Acrobatics, Karate, and Wrestling.
Eye Pluck seems a little off. I've never seen or imagined a cat-person pulling out someone's eye. I'd change that to Eye Rake, myself, letting the claws add their "damage" to the roll.
I'd move Flying Leap and Light Walk from Optional Skills up here to Cinematic Skills.
No, this is a feature. See Born Biters under Teeth, p. 115.
That's not a technique -- it's just attacking at a penalty for being grappled, which is something you can't buy off.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

You would also need the "Neko-ken" technique, which is a short, swift and deceptively powerful jab performed while mimicking the posture of the "beckoning cat" (a statue traditionally found in chinese and japanese restaraunts).

Ranma Saotome's father once tried teaching him the Neko-ken technique by tying him up with rolls of fish and dropping him in a pit full of cats.

It didn't work.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Except for Slam/Pouncing which either uses DX/Brawling or Sumo Wrestling, thats why its there as I imagine that this would be one of the prime attacks for a cat-fu warrior... But hey I'm open for suggestion (Maybe I could use Skill Adaptation even though Pouncing is not by default a Technique)
In Addition, I would persume that raking by default would also use Brawling

*Whistling Twisted Nerve* You are probably right...

I primarly collected skills so far and not sorted them well yet... off to Cinematic they go...

Ahh missed that one...

Well if it has a penalty then there should be a technique to remove that penalty. After all its what cats do, grapple with mouth and front claws, rake with back claws...
And if you by any chance would know how much of a penalty we are talking about I would be double plus happy (and try to write a Technique myself)

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

It seems like RPK was confused. He said the penalty *FOR BEING* grappled, not the penalty for grappling an opponent. If you're the one grappling, you can attack at no penalty using any limb not involved in the grapple itself.

Does anybody know if there are rules for grabbing your opponent and then just jumping on them? It seems almost like a Takedown, but I don't think the penalty for failure (falling prone) works for the attacker in this situation... :/

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Not entirely, a cat will rake when grappling or being grappled, both apply.

When grappling: Unmodified roll, does thr-1/-2? cut damage
When grappled: Modified roll, does the same damage

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

I don't understand: how is Fighting While being Grappled different from Fighting While on Ground. If one can be a Technique, why can't the other? Both are penalties to a skill under specific circumstances.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Well, so is Deceptive Attack, and you can't buy that off...same with Rapid Strike, or many other combat options. Sometimes this is for ghame balance at heart - like buying off DA - but it's often hand-in-hand with realism concerns (i.e. if you let people buy off Deceptive Attack, you're saying they can't do a plain vanilla attack any more easily than a really tricky one, which doesn't make sense).

Buying off the penalty to DX while grappled, even on a per-skill basis, was one we rejected on the realism grounds. It's just never as easy to fight when someone is holding you as it is when you're not being grappled at all, no matter how much you train. That was the consensus all the grapplers and strikers who grapple that I talked to, and it also reflected what we found. Not a single striker, even ones who like to strike while grappled, have said that it is easier.

That said, you could a) ignore what I said and make the technique anyway, or b) make the technique but cap it below full skill, so you can get a little better but never as good as if you didn't have an active opponent holding on to you and by his or her actions interfering with your actions. b) is more realistic, although it's still pretty optimistic - even with lots of training you are vastly better off if your opponent doesn't grab you back.

***

And yeah, no Cat-Fu in MA. We didn't have a handy cat race to attach it to, it's easy enough to generate (it's fictional and much of its components are fairly obvious), and it was an easy call as "the first thing people will make for themselves." Those added up to not considering adding one.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

With the differencer to GURPS that all grapplers you asked where human, the anatomy of the grappled person plays quite a role...

Will do that, and consider the suggestion of capping, but then again your assumpions are for humans...

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

umm you did have a handy race, the Felioned rase in Basic Set.

But please tel at least the technique for using claws with karate made it in....

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Clearly, the Felinoid race in BASIC SET was so utterly inspirational that I forget them in my excitement.

And joking aside, no, we didn't interview non-humans. But animals that have been grabbed aren't free from physical laws. My scratchiest cats did more damage to me when they hung on to me with teeth and rended with claws, and less when I held them and tried to stop them - for one example. A valid reaction for a human - or another animal - grappled by an animal or a human is to grab it back (with hands or teeth) and interfere with it. It just didn't seem in line with our reality checking and research that you can get so good with it that it's as easy to fight grappled as not being grappled.

The comparison with Ground Fighting is a bit weak, actually, because Ground Fighting reduces your penalty to attack (potentially eliminating it) and reduces your defensive penalty, but doesn't wholly eliminate the downsides of being on the ground (laying face up, laying face down). A "Fighting While Grappled" technique could easily buy off the entire penalty, so whether you've got a bear biting your arm or a lucha libre wrestler bear hugging you or a knife fighter twisting up your shirt in his live hand while he stabs you, you'd be just as fine as if none of them layed a hand on you. That's...hard to justify, at least. If you make it yourself, I'd apply a cap...default to Skill-4, max Skill-2, Hard, is probably a good way to go - just off the top of my head.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Lack of Cat-fu and skiffulness at grappling does not follow.

Your example of simply grabbing them and pulling them away asummes the user of cat-fu is the same size as the house cat.

The feliod is SM+0, and as BASIC say "Cat people often appear in science fiction, fantasy, and horror setting" make to a prefect exple on how to use Style to give non-humans more flavor.

or are you say it is poitness or ever unballinging for by to Buy and uses in my campain becuse it only befits humans?

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

I don't understand what you mean here at all.

There are two different things going on here - we didn't include Cat Fu for a few reasons, and we didn't include a technique for fighting while grappled for another bunch of reasons.

No, it assumes nothing of the sort, I'm talking about two different things.

I don't follow. I'm saying that as a technique, just because being grappled has a penalty doesn't mean you should allow it to be bought off. I'm saying that it doesn't seem especially realistic based on research and reality checking by me and others, and yes, we did consider animals when we did that research and reality checking. We didn't exempt felinoid humanoids on the grounds that a) there aren't any, furry conventions not withstanding, and b) simply putting fur and claws on a human-shaped fighter doesn't mean they should be able to buy a technique for fighting while grappled if we didn't think it was realistic or balanced for anyone to buy. To put it another way, how was I supposed to reality check that, and what justifies cat-men getting a special technique to fight while grappled when, say, MMA fighters who train to punch and knee and choke and lock while grappling and being grappled in turn don't get one - and our research and reality checking said that it was pretty fair not to allow it?

I'm very specifically talking about two different things here:

1) Why we didn't include Cat Fu.

2) Why techniques for buying down penalties for being grappled are probably not a good idea and why we didn't include on in GURPS Martial arts. And for a sub-heading to this, why "it has a penalty" doesn't automatically mean a technique is a valid and useful and balanced option for it. Some things just shouldn't be messed with because doing so gives odd results at best and defies reality at worst. I offered a couple ways to avoid this with a technique for fighting while grappled if you disagree with us.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

I was thinking they were confusing penalties for being grappled with penalties for grappling, but AFAIK there are no penalties for grappling, just for being grappled, so "Cat People" grappling something wouldn't be penalized anyway.

Not to mention that the to hit penalties are already halved in basic for grappling, so I don't know what they're trying to model.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Okay, I got one definition of a Technique from Kromm, and now, after what you have said, I'm interested in yours. What can and what cannot become a Technique?

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

My definition was just Peter's rephrased. The important element, which I repeated in various words, was this:
In this case, you have the first part but not the second. Reality checking shows that there's no specific training that makes you as good at fighting when restrained as when free. It doesn't exist. Being restrained is inherently bad in a fight. It's a result of screwing up and being hit with an attack, except that where a striking attack costs you HP, a grappling one costs you effective DX. But you can't buy off the DX penalty any more than you can learn Fighting While Wounded to avoid shock penalties when injured.

Ground Fighting is different because it doesn't eliminate the essential flaw of being on the ground (you're less mobile, limited in what you can reach and do, and a target for a dogpile), it just makes use of a firm foundation (the back) and a four-limbed guard position to compensate for lack of reach and mobility. When you're grappled, you have fewer body parts free, not more, and your foundation is shaky, not firm, because it's at your assailant's mercy. And there's no good way to justify that being as easy a position to fight from as not being grappled.

A cat's main benefit is that it has Claws and a good DX, so that when you restrain its upper body, it can score a kick on you and it bleeds. If you want to make a martial art for cats, note that Claws work with Karate (p. 57: "martial artists who gain Claws or Strikers as part of their training – or who belong to races with natural Claws or Strikers – may wield them with Karate to further enhance damage"). Give the cat-fu expert Karate, and be sure to include the Kicking technique, and probably Ground Fighting. Good perks include Biting Mastery (adds Karate bonuses to bites), Clinch (for grappling with a striking skill), Ground Guard (for using all fours when grappling), and Neck Control (for a bonus to hit with, say, that kick after grabbing). For realistic cats rather than anime people, I'd toss in Sumo Wrestling for the intial slam and ensuing hugging and grappling that cats like to use when tussling.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

In retrospect, that would have been a great thing to talk about in the Designer's Notes. Much of what I wrote was explaining why we decided on certain splits in skills or chose the arts we did or modeled them the way we did. What makes a good technique and what makes a bad one would have been a useful paragraph.

Oh well, have to save that somewhere and stick it in Designer's Notes II: The Revenge or something.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Thx, that is very helpful... However, I cannot find the Clinch Perk...

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

See Skill Adaptation (p. 51).

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

It's stuff like this I was expecting to find in the tread, thank you

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Cats also have the ability to look as if whatever disaster they caused was planned all along... "Yeah, I meant to hit my head against the glass door. It was just what I planned. And it's all your fault!" *bites human*

I think this is a perk.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

They look that way, but who believes them? If everyone does, or they get a bonus to pull it off, it's a perk. Otherwise it's a Quirk. Or a Delusion...certainly one of my main joys of owning cats was always watching them screw up on jumps and fall, step on the food bowl and send it flying, fall through thin ice crusts into snow, stuff like that.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

It's so rare for sequels to be worth the effort, but I'm anticipating this even more than the original!

;)

Son of Designer's Notes? No... how about Designer's Notes Returns!?

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

It's a Quick-contest between the cat's willpower and the owner's willpower, so anybody with weak will is catnip in their cat's paws. *grin*

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

So yet again we see toxoplasmosis benefiting it's feline hosts.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

OK, Car-Fu v2.0beta is online see post #1

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

I have a question about Neck Snap (Bite)...

How can you snap someone's neck with a bite? Doesn't Neck Snap require two hands to be used? I'm talking realistically, not just with game mechanics. I just can't see being able to get the force needed to snap someone's neck through a bite. I certainly can't get that much leverage in with my neck and teeth...

Wouldn't you need an exceedingly large tongue? :P

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

No, at least gators use their body weight and wiggel around janking at your limb until it is ripped off... I persume that a man sized cat could do the same, biting your neck and then tearing at it until it snaps...

Game mechanics wise, a bite counts as two handed grapple if your mouth is at least one SM bigger than your foes neck (or other limb you bit)

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

How do you find the SM of the mouth and limb? They don't match the hit location penalties AFAIK . . .

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

That's how lions and other big cats hunt, they launch themselves at the prey, bite and twist snapping their neck, if they fail they can get gored, especially by wildebeests.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

We're not talking SM as in "it's 4 feet long therefore". On most creatures, it's just the SM of the creature. A human has SM zero mouth and limbs. However, there are traits that modify this.

Long Arms gives +1/level SM to your arms. Stretching (limbs only) can vary limb length. etc. etc. Short arms reduces effective SM, etc.

Martial Arts makes "Big Mouth" a 0 pt feature - if I make a human-sized creature with a crocodile head, with Big Mouth +5, you can attack its Jaw and Face hit locations at +5, BUT this crocodile-headed monstrosity would be able to bite, grapple, etc with its enormous jaws as if it were SM +5.

Remember that the gold standard is humans, and apes have very small jaws in comparison to overall body size, and humans are the worst of the lot.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Have you seen a terrier catch a squirrel or a rat? Or even playing with a stuffed toy?

Step 1: Seize victim by the back of the head and neck with your jaws.
Step 2: lift partly or completely off the ground.
Step 3: Vigorously jerk your head back and forth, causing the victims body to "flail" around.
The resulting injury is sort of "reverse whiplash". Instead of having a fixed body, and a (relatively small) loose head bobbing back and forth, you have a small fixed head and a big body, and the leverage point is the creatures neck. That's a LOT of force concentrated in a very important area.
Crunch.

Same head movement when applied to a much larger victim results in "worrying" or "thrashing". On a shark, the saw edges on the sides of their teeth are sliced back and forth through the victims flesh, and they essentially cut a neat hunk out of the victim.

On most mammals, relatively conical teeth help the predator keep a good grip on a hunk of flesh, and all the thrashing around and worrying rips a messy chunk out of the victim, or breaks a limb, or possibly twists the limb right off.

This is a technique that is generally popular among predators with short thick necks and powerful shoulder muscles, along with strong jaws and either deeply rooted teeth, or quickly regrown teeth. It puts a LOT of stress on tooth roots, and the muscles are required to a) exert the force and b) protect the predator from getting his own whiplash.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Okay, a terrier digging into a smaller squirrel is one thing, but a cat-person attacking a normal person with "cat fu" (as opposed to Wolf Fu) is another...

Should a cat-person really be able to do Swing damage to someone with his mouth, if they are an equal or larger SM?

I can see it if the jaws are really tough, really large, and built for that kind of thing -- but I can't see it on a cat person without a very large mouth, and I find it unlikely to be done with most conventional "anthro kitties". Maybe a hyena or wolf person, or a large dog, but a cat? They use their claws more than they do head muscles.

That was my point; I wasn't imagining a terrier with a squirrel, but a "cat girl" and a human.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

there i more see latching onto the shoulder with the then then going claws of fury ;)

Assuming they don't thing their superior dex (and combat reflexes) can keep them un hit as they dace around you swiping with cat-fu claw swipes

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

The Targeted Attacks are written up incorrectly. You must specify the kind of strike, not just the skill - and the order is reversed. So it's not:

Targeted Attack (Face / Karate)

it's

Targeted Attack (Karate Punch/Face).

If you want them to use it for both punches and kicks, you need to list it (and learn it) separately.

Also, Ground Guard isn't so useful a perk if you don't have a ground grappling skill; it's not a perk I can see many practitioners picking up. They'd spend 1 point for a +1 to grapple when both they and their opponent are on the ground, but 1 point in Wrestling would be better spent - you get vastly more for it.

I'd suggest Rapid Retraction (Punch) might be very cat-like, if you are going for the housecat type rather than the big pouncer type. But with Sumo Wrestling and Wrench Limb and Neck Snap, it sounds more like a pouncer type.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

That's not a neck snap. That's a grapple using teeth. Key difference.

Also, shoulders don't really equal neck.

Get in close, grab with teeth, realize that your opponent just stabbed you with a close-range dagger. ;) Much better.

Sounds like a Siberian Tiger... that, I could maybe see.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Never said it was I was merely describing the typo of moves i see A Feliniod with Cat-fu would do

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

And you're very right on that type of maneuver. ;)

Something would clear this right up for me, though: Are the techniques "optional"? Like, say, would I be choosing one technique OR another technique?

If they aren't optional, I'd make the "neck snap (Bite)" technique more of a "lense" type thing, with an optional specialization in types of Cat Fu. Say, there's Housecat Fu and then Siberian Tiger Fu and the like.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

You never ever have to buy or use the techniques. Consider them a "recommended stunt list", a "suggested maneuver list", or the like, with the added bonus of being able to improve one if it turns into your signature move.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

So it's not quite the styles from 3e, where you would buy a minimum amount in the techniques and skills when you bought the style, unless they were filed under "optional"?

Sounds cool to me. I like the change.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

For the record, I wouldn't say it's "not quite" the styles in 3e. I'd say it's "completely different from" the styles in 3e. The only thing that stayed constant is the concept of buying a few required skills and having a list of techniques. What you do with those techniques, as well as how advantages, disadvantages, perks, and other ("secondary") skills are handled, is 100% different from 3e.

This is not GURPS Magic here. This is a unique book with pretty much nothing carried forward from any earlier books.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Hm.

I need $ for MA... >.>

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

You tell it! *grin*

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Thx for the input, will update Cat-Fu style tomorrow...

We probably should also consider two lenses, the light Catgirl-Fu Lense and the strong Tiger-Fu lense...

Keep the input flowing...

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Updated (In post #1)

- Incorporating Peters suggestions
- Added Stealth to the primary skills for a Sneak / Pounce Combo
- Added Roar (Kiai) and Growl (Shtick)
- Kicking was moved to optional techniques, as this style should more represent big pouncing cats
- Added a very short description

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Is it wrong that I find hissing growling deadly catgirls sexy?

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Yes, report to the nearest termination center immediately, citizen.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Eh, I prefer the "do it yourself" style. And to do it to other people.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

I had this idea a while back for a setting where TL4 Humans are the prey and playthings of super tech Catgirls. They made great villains since they would let people escape purely to chase them, thus keeping foolish PCs alive. I really should try and turn that into a setting with this Martial Art now.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

1) Seeing Dangerous P. Cats post in the Cat-Fu thread has made me very happy.

2) Catgirls, shmatgirls. Where's the catboys, says I?

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Would you settle for a wolfboy?

Aroo, babeh.

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

FAST! Run! Go buy SPANC now!

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Re: [MA Style] Cat-Fu
 

Silly Bruno, there ARE no 'catboys'. Anime law.

However, it's a well-known fact* that catgirls collect poolboys, so there ya go.


* see SPANC (Space Pirate Amazon Ninja Catgirls), published by SJGames and illo'd by Phil Foglio. Meow.