Why learn a martial art?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

Maybe I'm misunderstanding. You could buy Style Familiarity without learning the style right now (a good example is that Masters of Defence stylists can learn Style Familiarity (Italian School) without learning that style. You can learn a style with the Self-Defense lens and have no Style Familiarity right now, although you must forgo the benefits of having that perk as well as its downside. You can create your own style, too, which pretty much no one else will be familiar with.

I'm just saying you shouldn't be able to take advantage of the upsides of a style (reduces penalties from DAs from other stylists, better access to perks, access to some perks not commonly available, social advantages, excuse to buy up techniques, etc.) and the advantage of not having one (no one gets a benefit against you). I just think buying, say, Goju-ryu and BJJ and then saying "I throw a non-style punch!" using the points you've claimed as an excuse for buying a Technique from Goji-ryu and counted for buying an extra style perk, to avoid the one downside to having a style.

In more detail, to make my point as clear as I can:

Joe has 20 points in the skills and techniques, etc. of Goju Ryu. He uses this to justify buying 3 perks - two style perks (1 per 10 points) and one general combat perk (1 per 20). Is it fair for him to then say, when he runs in Miyagi Chojun's great-grandson in a fight, "I use a non-Goju Ryu punch on him with Deceptive Attack, and he can't ignore -1 of that because it's not a punch from his style"? I think the answer is no, and that the easiest way to control that is to just say no. The harder way is to decide what points are from what learning, and I don't play games that meticulously detailed, but I suppose you could. I just don't see the upside (do you have a Goju Ryu unch at Karate-15 but an unschooled punch at Karate-13, because that's where you were before you joined the school? Maybe, but that seems like a headache.)

A perk to say my style is no-style isn't unbalanced from a cost perspective. I just can't wrap my head around how you learn that without, basically, not learning a style in the first place.

So, while I'm not saying you should be free to ignore the drawback of style familiarity at no cost, I think what you're proposing now is actually contradictory with the rules in Martial Arts.

First of all, obviously, you can have the upsides of having a style without the downsides. You just need another style that your opponent doesn't know, or to use a technique outside your style. By the book it doesn't even need to be a style at all relevant to the fight you're in, though moding that seems simple and reasonable enough.

Secondly, while I don't have my Martial Arts with me right now to quote, I think you'll find it explicitly states that the same skill investment can justify perks in multiple styles, if you have them.

On the side, there aren't any rules that actually characterize your moves as belonging to a particular style...


Also, as for my own argument, I seemingly must reiterate that I'm not proposing an 'I throw a non-style punch' combat option, and never have done so. I also was in fact specifically talking about a hypothetical character who learned 'non-style' fighting by not learning a style in the first place...and then subsequently acquired a style.



The ability to learn style familiarities for styles you don't have is kind of weird. The way the perk is actually written, having that familiarity would make the Master of Defense's deceptive attacks with a polearm unpredictable to another Master of Defense who doesn't have the familiarity...