[martial arts] deadly sport
 

I had this idea of a space setting that is a loose deconstruction/satire of much of your classic space sci fi (primarily Star Trek and series like it). One of the species in setting, a proud warrior race type, will often resort to trial by combat and personal duels to resolve things. The issues for them is that all of their martial arts have become highly ritualised but because they all practice the same art (the society has very strict laws in order to make it a mono-culture) none of them have noticed. Killing the opponent is often the intent in legal disputes so the fighting skills are designed to kill, the issue is just that when put against more practical fighting skills of any other species in the setting, even the same type of skills (striker vs striker, etc) the war arts of the proud warrior race are at a disadvantage because of their ritualisation. I guess the question is how to represent this in the Martial Arts rules?

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

I might do a couple things:

1) Call the things you're doing Style(Art) or Style(Sport). Yes, it's a killing art, but the primary thing you're looking for is a ritualized style that's penalized against "real" fighting. Since all practitioners will be using the same Style(Art/Sport) it won't matter that they're disadvantaged vs "real" fighting. The fact that you're using real weapons, or bare-knuckles fighting with no pads or gloves or protection, will take care of the lethality issue.

2) If you don't like that, go with arbitrary and large familiarity penalties vs "all styles not mine."

3) Much like the writeups in the Styles section of Martial Arts, come up with "standard tactics" for this style, but make them REQUIRED tactics rather than optional.

"Practioners of Dangerous Cats Fu are limited to the following tactics, which represent a wide variety of formalized techniques: [whatever]. They will either use Defensive Attack or All-out-Attack(Strong) on the attack, and All-out-Defense or Parry, but will never dodge."

Something like that.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

You could make Easy to Read a common disadvantage, too, perhaps with a limitation of some sort.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

I think the best option is to call it a Sport version of whatever skill it normally uses. If you'd like, you can allow them to fight at full skill (rather than taking the -3 hit) but give the opponent a +1 to Defense (attacks are easy to see coming, but not quite Telegraphed) and the proud warrior race a -1 to Defense (unused to combating those not using the ritualized style). Note these penalties are equivalent to a +4 under the Technique system in Martial Arts, so you could be justified in giving them a special benefit. Of course, the fact that they can use this Technique along with any other Technique might be benefit enough.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

I would treat them as having been "Trained by a Fraud". Delusion (My style is a practical fighting art), Reputation (Frequently uses Telegraphic Spin Kicks or whatever), and lots of Useless Techniques.

As others have pointed out, using Combat Art does make sense in this situation, if fighters only fight others in the same style, they may always use Telegraphic Attacks, or similar and never notice that "real" fighting styles are much harder to defend against.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

Another way you could go would be to have the proud warrior race guys (PWRG) waste rounds doing ritualized poses and the like.

Round One:

PWRG: I salute my respected enemy, holding my palm forward with my knife in front of it and my elbow out.

Enemy: I stab him. *rolls to hit*

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

So far the working name for the art is Nook Nook Krar (which translates as "I proform my threats on you"). I guess the question is if both partisipants in a fight were using the style how would it work differently to if they were fighting someone who doesn't use the style. I do wonder if there are real world examples of this sort of thing?

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

What about an appropriate martial arts related delusion? I can't think of one off the top of my head ("The Martial Arts of my species are just as deadly as any other" jumps to mind, but that just doesn't feel exactly right), but that would require them to occasionally do something incredibly ineffective against practitioners of their non-racial style.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

I'd say that they fight at -3 for Combat Art whether they're fighting each other, or someone else. The difference lies in their effectiveness.

Both combatants are at -3 to hit, -1 or -2 to parry (depending on whether or not their skills is an even or odd number). I think it's very appropriate with this type of style for most attacks to be Telegraphic; this fits the stylistic ritualistic elements well, as every move must be done "just so".

This would result in a net +1 to attack and +1 or +0 to defend when fighting another stylist. This would allow for a lot of impressive and risky moves being fairly effective.

Against someone who has a full combat skill, this becomes +1 to hit against +2 to defense, or -1 or -2 to defend against +0 to hit. A situation that could quickly turn against you.

That's just how I would do it.

Re: [martial arts] deadly sport
 

What about a very large familiarity-bonus for someone who learned enough about the style to get it's perk. You could for example grant everyone fighting against someone who actively uses the style and knows its perk a +4 bonus to defenses.

In this way you achieve a situation in which people who don't know enough about the style don't get any advantages (they always use the same maneuver's.. yeah.. but you can't use that to your advantage if you don't know which ones!) - which is an important point in my eyes - but at the same time have the possibility for enemies to exploit the styles weakness.