Why learn a martial art?

[DangerousThing]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It's slightly perverse that that character could then learn a style and in the process become predictable to all practitioners. I wonder if an additional perk would be enough to buy away the 'recognizable style' penalty.

All you need to do is to get a style familiarity with a similar enough style that you don't need to learn new skills, but that is uncommon in the area. It isn't sharing a style that is the trouble, it's if your foe has style familiarities for all of your styles. If you both have the same styles, then you both have the same advantage.

And the advantage we're talking about here is only a reduction by -1 of the penalty from your foe's feints and deceptive attacks. And even this can be avoided (p. MA 49)

If the technique he uses with Deceptive Attack or to follow a feint isn’t an orthodox part of any of his styles, ignore this effect.

So learn a feint based on Dancing (which is a part of one of the martial arts in my SF setting - I call it a "graceful feint").