Martial Art styles
 

OK so I am sure I am missing something obvious with the styles in the Martial Art book but I just not quite grasping how they work.
I have a player that wants to take. Jeet Kune Do (MA p.164), but I am having three big things I don't understand.

1. What do you get when you buy Jeet Kune Do style?
2. How high dose the Judo and Karate need to be to buy the style?
3. Dose the PC need have all of the Techniques and Perks before they can take the style? This is a cinematic game so what about the cinematic skill?

Re: Martial Art styles
 

To get the basics of the style, you need to spend three points: one for Judo, one for Karate, and one for Style familiarity. The actual skill levels are impertinent for this purpose. This entitles you to put points in Techniques and Perks germane to the style. A suggestion is to allow one style perk for each 10 points in the skills and techniques of the style. Cinematic Skills are always optional.

Re: Martial Art styles
 

Nothing. You don't "buy a style". You buy each of the primary skills in the style and then point a point into the perk: Style Familiarity (JKD).

What do you "get" from that? Well, you get whatever skill level you paid for in the primary skills, plus the benefits of Style Familiarity (JKD). That's not meant to be a flip or ironic answer -- it really is as simple as that.

No minimums. You just have to point at least one point into each primary skill. If Judo and Karate are the only two primary skills, you have to put one point (or more) into Judo and one point (or more) into Karate.

To give you another (made up) example: If Karate, Hiking, Riding (Horse), and Wrestling are the four primary skills of a style, then you have to put at least one point into each of those four skills.
No and no. In most cases, it would be very foolish to buy all of the techniques in a style. You should rarely buy more than two techniques for any given skill, and you should never buy more than three -- past that, you should just raise the skill level.

As for perks, you can only take a certain number of them: One for every 20 points in combat skills, plus an additional one for every 10 points invested in a style. So if your only combat skills are (let's say) the five points you spent on a style, you can't buy any of the perks!

Re: Martial Art styles
 

One thing I think I picked up from previous discussions:

You don't have to put ANY points into Techniques, if you don't want to. Some (all?) of them can be used untrained. They add extra combat options.

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For my question: do the combat and style skill points count for both? For instance, if a style has combat skills, and I put 20 skill points into them, does that mean I get one for having 20 points in combat skills, and two for having 20 points in the style?

Re: Martial Art styles
 

Both! You get 2 style combat perk slots for 2×10 points in a style and 1 generic combat perk slot for 1×20 points in combat skills of whatever sort.

Re: Martial Art styles
 

I would not be so cathegoric. Sometimes, you can have multiple techniques that can be used together (Conterattack/Dual weapon attack/targeted attack/lethal strike/...) and it can make sense to invest in 4+ techiniques for a given skill. It is, however, rare.

Re: Martial Art styles
 

But then why just not raise skill level?

Re: Martial Art styles
 

Because multiple techniques used together, under certain circumstances, can be higher than skill level?

Re: Martial Art styles
 

Well, let's assume:

Counterattack: Default: -5
Dual Weapon Attack, Hard, Default -4
Targeted attack (Armor Chinks-Vitals): Default -10 (max -5)
Lethal Strike: Default -2

Total penalty: -21, can be reduced to -5.

In order to reduce this penalty, you can purchase +16 to skill (64 points) or max the 4 techniques (6+5+6+3=20 points). Of course, the fighter that has invested in more general skill has an edge in versatility.

Re: Martial Art styles
 

Ha! I like the idea of some guy poking holes in peoples armor with his fingers!