[MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

"Your combat training has focused more on kicks or lower-body grapples than punches or upper-body grapples. You must specialize by skill. For Brawling or Karate, your kicks are made at no penalty while your punches have a -2 penalty. For Judo and Wrestling, your lower-body grapples suffer no penalties while your normal grapples are made at a -2 penalty. These penalties are loaded into all techniques, for example a character with Lower-Body Focus (Karate) makes a Push Kick attack at -1, but makes a Hammer Fist (Karate) attack at -3."


It seems to be balanced at first glance, with just moving penalties around and all that. The benefits to strength are generally balanced against issues with keeping your footing.

Any thoughts or critiques?

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

I've got a vague notion that there might be balance issues on the grappling side, but I'm not familiar enough with the rules to pin that down without poring through my books for an hour.

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

"...grappling side..." "...pin that down..."

I see what you did there.

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

I don't think it's realistic for a style to make kicks easier than punches. The penalty that they normally have is not because combat skills are "upper-body focused", but because kicks are inherently more difficult, requiring more coordination and being less precise. If a martial artist has trained extensively in kicks, he should buy up the Kicking technique. (As a houserule, I'd be tempted to allow the various kicking techniques - Push Kick, Axe Kick, etc - to default to Kicking instead of Base Skill-2. Maybe use a perk for that.)

For grappling, there's a separate set of techniques for leg-based versions of common moves (MA79). Unfortunately there isn't an obvious "Core Technique" for leg-based wrestling. I suppose you could use Leg Throw (since Throw is the "basic" attack of Judo, like punch is for Karate) and let other Leg moves default to that, charging a perk for the privilege.

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

I'm not terribly concerned with realism here only balance issues, as this perk is more for the archetypical fighting game character who only uses kicks and leg-grapples. As to leg-based grapples, I'm aware of the rules for them, thus the inclusion of a grappling variant of the perk, removing the -2 DX or skill penalty for leg-based grapples and moving them to arm-based ones.

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

Well, have at it then, I suppose. I don't think balance will be too big a problem, since leg moves are still more limited in the targets they can engage, and carry inherent stability issues (a missed kick requires a roll of DX or skill to avoid falling down, and many kicking techniques limit defensive options.) Something else that's seen frequently for high-kicking opponents in martial arts films is what's probably best represented as a Combination - a potent attack sequence that they use early and often, but once the hero adapts to it it becomes easier to avoid or counter.

Re: [MA] Possible Perk: Lower-Body Focus
 

I think the perk is ok but for balance issues you should consider that a kick is better (stronger for grappling and more damage for kicking) then a punch.
In trade you do have stability issues unless your on the ground or have extra legs.