A bunch of Martial Arts questions

[Dinadon]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I must have asked the question poorly: Can you take on a defensive grip with (say) a katana and gain the +1 frontal parry WITHOUT gripping the ricasso and getting the -2 to swing damage (as in, these are two different versions of the defense grip) or is gripping the ricasso the way one gets the frontal +1 parry, and thus you must take the -2 swing damage to get the +1 frontal parry (assuming you don't do the thing where you put one hand on the back of the tip)

Defensive Grip is the way you get a +1 parry frontal attacks, period. You also have another affect because you have to put one hand somewhere else in order to get that bonus to parry. There is no choice to avoid one of the other sets of effects. If there was, it would say so.

Er... power grappler is never useful to a low ST character.

Remember, it does two things. Letting you use ST in place of DX is useless for low ST characters. Letting you make ST based skill checks instead of ST is always useful.