Martial Arts: Cycling Through Stances

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Greg 1

Often, cinematic martial artists do something I'm going to call "cycling through stances", where they go through a series of mini-styles within the larger style.

For example, in Drunken Master (1978), Jackie Chan learns the "Eight Drunken Gods" style, and in a fight, will adopt the stance of each God in turn. So he might start fighting in the stance of "Li, the a drunken cripple with a powerful right leg" and when he's not winning the fight that way, he'll move on to the stance of "Fat Han holds the pot" and so on.

How would you represent this in GURPS?

GURPS Martial Art has the rule that if you have a Style Familiarity which your opponent does not, you can avoid the penalty to Feints etc. for your opponent having the same Style Familiarity. So if Antinio has Style Familiarity (La Verdida Destreza) and Style Familiarity (Classical Rapier), but Marcello just has the second, Antinio can ignore some penalties which affect Marcello.

You are also welcome to declare that as you change tactics in a fight, you are changing something with a technical name in your style. The Shout it Out rule is also for this ("but if you had studied your Agrippa, as I have ...").