Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

While not fully DF, I am running a fantasy campaign that started at 100+50 points that is definitely "DF style" campaign with mostly dungeon crawls and similar

They were pretty powerless and narrow at the start, but they were fully playable, as the few points really had to go to "core things" of the character.

Thus definitely no things like deceptive attacks or trying to do something too fast and having to retreat to get a decent defense and similar limitations.

The campaign has been going for 60 long(7-9 hours is normal) sessions now and they get a lot of points (1 point/hour of play basically) and are now 500-650 points

They are pretty limited in the points they can put in advantages and attributes (Thus most still have attributes in the 11-13 range and such), causing lots of skills with 1-2 points to get a basic probability to succeed and 20+ points in their mains skills.

This gives them a very different feel than a character with 15-20 in an attribute and only few points even in their main skills.

As for recreating the higher level feeling: I use a variant of the Vitality reserve that Kromm suggested and it seems to work fairly well for the "I can take a hit and barely feel it" thing of middle level D&D characters that the 500-600 points suggests. The amount of vitality reserve they can buy depends on their physical stats so fighter types can buy more than spellcasters. They have currently 2-8 Vitality reserve and most have also bought up their hitpoints to allow for more punishment.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

I agree with this completely.

And if a player comes along and says he/she wants to run a martial artist who only uses bare hands, eschew weapons, and takes a -15 point Vow to do so, the GM needs to explain about stuff like:

- auras, spikes, and other hurty stuff.
- rules and rulings about getting parried by weapons.
- the problems of reach.
- issues with other PCs being able to buy massive damage adds with cash that you won't.

The player has a cool concept, yes, but they're self-limiting in much the same way as someone who takes a similarly limited character - say a knife fighter, or a melee wizard. You've chosen something niche and hard, and IMO it's not up to the GM to make sure that niche character is equally useful all the time or gets extra value out of their disadvantages. That's up to the player. IMO.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

Honestly, a typical martial artist shouldn't have Vow: Fight Unarmed. The most they should get is Vow: Fight With Improvised Weapons, and I'd allow a martial artist to purchase magical improvised weapons, too, so long as the item the weapon is patterned after isn't primarily intended as a weapon.

Also, add in Throwing Mastery or whatever it's called.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

We're really derailing this thread, but as its already got two tracks I'll chime in here too...

To be honest a martial artist should be able to source from many different eastern weapons, D&D even recognises this by just having "monk weapons" - so yeah we shouldn't really have "Has to fight unarmed" as an option at all. Of cause it is there because some people do just want to punch and kick things to death, and if you take what Kromm said as meaning "Don't fight with weapons that don't use the karate skill" then that opens up a little more... but not much.

To fix this a little I'd just go with chi-focusing tattoos, rings, hand-straps, hell even girdles or anything else which can charge a chakra and thus aids in your chi mastery. Or you could just allow martial artists to have some innate attack upgrades for different types of attacks which are still "punches" but with chi-empowerment.

I mean, DF has roots in Diablo, and Diablo III has monks who can punch at greater reach and do a whole host of other cool attacks (teleport over and punch as an alternative to a ranged attack for instance) - so I'd consider it 'canon' despite never having been published.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

You have 8-hour sessions? I can't even manage to get players together for a solid 4 hours without receiving complaints!

The last time I was in an 8 hour session was 15 years ago; we blew the entire session in a single combat round, and had to continue the next week. (razzum frazzum rifts juicers with their thrice as many attacks as everyone else....)

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

Yeah, been running a "every Friday" game from 5pm to midnight or one or two am since 1989. (Well, it used to go on to to 3 am and some times morning during college years but..). Still have two players(+me as gm) from the original group and couple later joiners. In practice we get about 35 sessions/year.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

I played a similar points dungeon-based campaign before DF came out, but our approach seems to have been a bit different. The characters were specialised: they could only do one set of things each, but they did them pretty well. There were no templates, but Martial Arts was new at the time, and was used a fair bit.

We had two fighters, one who had Heroic Archer, and tried hard to do everything through that lens, and the other who had TBAM and Masters of Defence training. We had a magician who'd managed to squeeze IQ14 and Magery 3 for that all-important -1 to the cost of most spells, and a thief-type who picked his advantages really carefully.

They worked their way through a dungeon and some wilderness adventures on Yrth by being really careful and pre-planning a lot. They couldn't do the power-fantasy stuff of DF: if they waded into 20 orcs, they'd die. It was a lot of fun nonetheless.

Re: [DF] 125 pt start?
 

But don't you think that fighting barehanded is a classical Monk archetype, while Knife Fighter and Melee Wizard aren't?

I see no problem at all with Kromm building the Martial Artist inspired on Diablo II's assassin. It's cool as hell (maybe a order of monks devoted to hunt down evil wizards). But, I think its also a valid concept if someone wants to build a Akuma-like character.

EDIT: The combination of Chi skills and chi-based Imbuements (as new power-ups released in a previous Pyrmid Magazine) surely can make the Martial Artist (with enough points, of course) a decent, combative character. With the unarmed limitation (-50%) and chi (-10%), you can buy some few, useful imbuement skills.

Also, I think it would be interesting to build new Power-ups that requires the Vow (Always fight unarmed) as pre-requisites.

For instance:

Dragon Fist 4 points/level
Pre-requisites: Trained by a Master, Chi Talent 3 and Vow (Always Fight Unarmed)

Your unarmed attacks are stronger than your physical appearance could suggest. Each level (up to Chi Talent level) gives +2 to ST to purpose of unarmed strikes.

Advantages: Striking ST 2 (Only unarmed, -50%; Chi, -10%) [4]

---

I always considered to build a power-up like that (and even PMed Kromm for that). I was talking with Kuroshima about this and them this idea was raised.

In any case, I'm not so sure if the Chi Talent cap is a really good idea. Anyway, this is just an idea of how cool can be new power-ups designed for unarmed martial artists.