Fantasy Martial Arts Starting Abilities

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by monstrous engineer

...

Pretty much my thoughts, was also looking to see if anyone else might think of some other abilities that would count as "basic" that I might have missed.

Originally Posted by Varyon

You've established Sense Chi as the first. After that, I'd say Recovery/Healing, alongside building up a larger reserve of chi (if that's something one can do via training), as those will allow more practice for later steps (as you don't need to rest as long between sessions if you boost recovery, and can practice for longer at a time with a larger reserve).

I do have something like that for the game world, where they can gather chi to increase their reserves. As well as stages:

Qi Sensing
You begin to learn how to sense the life force around you.

Qi Gathering
You learn how to take in the natural Qi around you into your body for nourishment.

Qi Refining
You take the Qi that you are absorbing and purify it.

Core Shaping/Foundation Stage
You take your purified Qi and mold it, giving it shape.

Core Crystallization
The density of your Qi solidifies.

Golden Core
Your Qi has now become a liquid core of pure energy to allow you to survive without need of food and water.

Spirit Tempering
You begin to temper your core with your soul.

Nascent Soul
Your Golden Core hatches a second soul for you. You now have 2 souls.

Soul Formation
You can now form more souls, each one granting you an extra life should you perish.

Enlightenment
After you have successfully split your soul several times, they condense back into one, making your soul more powerful.

Ascension
You begin to shed yourself.

Immortal
You ascend to the next layer of the universe.

Originally Posted by Varyon

...start learning some of the more overt stuff, depending on the student's talents (and probably the school's philosophy/quirks - in Dragon Ball the ability to use chi for flight was largely a Crane School thing, while the Turtle School favored strength building).

This was my though as well, but flight was too cheap with how it was and didn't feel right for a new student to be able to pick up within the first year. Keeping the price I got I might just make it something masters hide since they wouldn't want everyone flying around.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Of course, there may be other factors involved. If chi practitioners are frequently targeted for attacks (by a fearful government, rival schools, etc), chi concealment might need to be learned rather early to avoid getting crushed as a newbie.

Actually, for my game world at least, the martial world governs themselves and stays clear of the "mortal" world. Their is a group of powerful martial artist that are known as the Martial Judges who eliminate any evil martial artists they find out about to keep the peace. If you claim to be a martial arts and try to establish a school, they will come to with a challenge. If you manage to beat their representative (who will be as close to equal in power to you) without killing them, then you have the right to form your school. Otherwise, they kill you.

Originally Posted by Varyon

If building up a reserve and/or learning how to recover faster is sufficiently boring that an unacceptable number of students are likely to quit if just learning that, obvious improvements like strength boosts and even force-fields and imbuements might be learned much earlier.

The culture of the world makes becoming a Martial Artist the pinnacle of your life. It becomes easy to make money, and raise your families status. So people are willing to spend the entire families life savings to get an elixir that MAY allow their most talented child get a chance to join a school.

Originally Posted by Varyon

If medicine is sufficiently advanced that sickness is rarely a serious concern, increasing physical resistance may be delayed - although if boosted resistances lets you more safely make use of certain power-boosting elixirs (historically, a lot of "elixirs" contained dangerous components, and I know in some "cultivator" stuff I've seen/read many of the high-end elixirs are dangerous to weak practitioners), then you might want to learn that trick ASAP.

Though chi based medicine is advance enough to heal a lot of things, its expensive. The world would also have a lot of chi based sicknesses as well to balance that out. Everything you said would apply too.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Looking at Naruto you may have overlooked "Using Chi to enhance your own movement".

So far, the basic thing I have is to enhance movement speed. It does have a technique that you can learn to dodge better.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Any Genin seems to be able to use his chi (chakra in the show) to boost his leaping ability and before he reaches Chunin level he can do it on a sustained basis for long distance movement by leaping from tree limb to tree limb.

I will add this, but not as a starting ability. It would require some levels in the enhanced speed and strength.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Shortly there after they learn wallwalking (Clinging in Gurps) and then waterwalking.

These would be more advance as well for my list. Requiring at least Sense Chi at level 2 or 3.

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Running at blinding speed may actually be more advanced or at least left to specialists like Lee though any Jonin seems to be able to move to intervene in Genin level disputes so fast you start to wonder about teleportation (which it probably isn't as that appears to have been a Hokage level jutsu).

I will implement prerequisites for all abilities. So to get really high enhanced speed would require higher levels of Sense Chi, being at higher cultivation stages, and a certain minimum chi reserve.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Naruto is really more "Ninja Supers" than "Martial Artists using chi." I'm assuming OP is going for something more akin to what's seen in martial arts media, or maybe even earlier episodes of Dragon Ball (which is also closer to the Supers side of things, albeit perhaps not quite as extreme as Naruto with the exception of Goku's superhuman resilience).

Actually, its a little of both, plus more! With what I have, I can run a Street Fighters type game all the way to Dragon Ball and Late Naruto.

Originally Posted by Varyon

I assume skills like Lizard Climb, Flying Leap, Light Walk (which I'd probably let work for walking on water, albeit at a penalty considering thin ice is at +0), etc, are still available (or maybe even their Advantage equivalents with the Chi modifier and possibly Costs FP), but would be advanced skills.

Advantage equivalents, and correct for them being advance skills.

Originally Posted by Varyon

The Jounin "teleport" is probably meant to be something akin to Flash Step, which shows up all over the place in shounen media; it's meant to be a sudden, extremely-fast movement that the eye cannot track (although some characters can track it), but is explicitly not teleportation, as it can only allow the user to reach places they normally could (so no going through walls). As much as I dislike it as a base, that would nonetheless be built as a modified version of Warp (I know there's a Limitation for only being able to go places you could normally reach, I believe in Horror for the Ghostly Movement power, that you'd want to include here). It would be up to OP if one can do that via chi manipulation in this setting, of course.

I actually have a means for this from pyramid 3/89, a modded ability:

Basic Move +10 (Accessibility, Only for determining step length, -60%; Chi, -10%) [15/level]

Which is a little costly, but this is then taken as a technique under enhanced speed:

Flash Step (H)
Default: Inner Speed-8; cannot exceed Inner Speed.
Using this technique adds an additional +1 to your step distance for every level of Inner Speed you have.