[Martial Arts] Kickboxing as a skill

[Sigrif]

Thanks for your thoughts, you helped me a lot. Now I understand how would it look. Suggestions that this skill should be hard is reasonable and I think that it's right choice. Otoh removing risk of falling on a miss is too good, but giving it bonus should do the work. Removing damage bonus sounds a little strange for me.

And now, I have some questions about parries. MA123 gives some restrictions on those:
1) you parry only low-line attacks
2) you parry once per turn
3) you cannot retreat
Should I remove or ease some of those, or this is fair for this skill?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Sigrif

And now, I have some questions about parries. MA123 gives some restrictions on those:
1) you parry only low-line attacks
2) you parry once per turn
3) you cannot retreat
Should I remove or ease some of those, or this is fair for this skill?

Eh, it depends on how cinematic you're being. Actually, I'd think you were being Anime as the example of what you were looking for is Sanji, the cook from One Piece. He suffers from none of these. Actually, I'd do him with regular Karate and a Vow: Fight only with your feet!

Still in other anime kick heavy martial artists don't suffer these limits (or soem regualr limits from MA). For example of this, Guy-sensei from Naruto teaches a "high" Jam and indeed seems to prefer it when parrying high kicks.

<shrug>I tend to think that a Hard Striking skill based on kicks only isn't very reasonable. So realistic martial artists won't find teachers who know it and would have to invent it themselves. Then they'd have to start with regular Karate ad discard 75% of its' moves.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

I tend to think that a Hard Striking skill based on kicks only isn't very reasonable.

Players would take one look at the skill and choose Karate instead. The only way to make it worth it as a Hard skill is to take all the Kicking-related stuff from Karate and combat-related stuff from Acrobatics and glom them together.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Players would take one look at the skill and choose Karate instead. The only way to make it worth it as a Hard skill is to take all the Kicking-related stuff from Karate and combat-related stuff from Acrobatics and glom them together.

Eh, being two better with all the techniques is essentially equivalent to a Hard skill being Easy. It's a pretty decent deal if for some reason you aren't going to be using your upper body in an unarmed fight.

And yeah, there's a reason it is fairly rare in reality. But you know, this is GURPS we're talking about here, and weird character concepts are not rare. Maybe your character (or his entire species) doesn't [have] any arms.

[zoncxs]

Originally Posted by Sigrif

...
And now, I have some questions about parries. MA123 gives some restrictions on those:
1) you parry only low-line attacks
2) you parry once per turn
3) you cannot retreat
...

Those restrictions would be flipped for your new skill. Specifically, the techniques that let you buy off the penalties.

1) Low-Line Defense (which lets you use boxing or brawling to parry low line attacks) would become:

High-Line Defense: Using your legs to parry an attack to your arms or head is normally at -2, you can buy off this penalty.

2) This is because you have to be standing on at least one leg since the other would be parrying. Instead of trying to remove this, I would create a new technique that would default to your new skill or acrobatics, just like how Sanji is able to parry more than once with his legs.

3) this would also be another technique I would create, defaulting to either your skill or acrobatics.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Sigrif

1) you parry only low-line attacks

As zoncxs suggests, turning this into a penalty to Parry higher attacks and having a Technique to buy it off makes more sense. Also, while I don't think Martial Arts does this, I personally would allow a leg parry to be used against almost any kick, regardless of hit location, without any penalty for it being a high-line attack. This is because, realistically, you can use your leg to stop a kick before it's a kick, by blocking the knee or pushing it to the side, which would be best represented as a Parry. There would be a few kicks I'd allow as an exception to this - mostly jump kicks and those that are making use of Combat at Different Levels - that would instead call for the penalty.

Originally Posted by Sigrif

2) you parry once per turn

I'd disregard this, but the iteration penalties for multiple Parries in a turn should apply to both legs for each leg parry, regardless of which is used.

Originally Posted by Sigrif

3) you cannot retreat

I'd probably keep this, but maybe have a Perk that lets you retreat on a leg parry.

And, to be clear, I think my above suggestions would be fine to apply to Brawling and Karate, not just Savate/Kickboxing.

[pawsplay]

I don't think there is a real combat skill that trains kicking only and no hands. It's too obvious that someone will just close and use their hands on you.

Boxing straddles the line between real combat and combat sport, and comes from a time when the rules did not make such a distinction, so it sits uncomfortably in this space.

[kenclary]

Originally Posted by pawsplay

I don't think there is a real combat skill that trains kicking only and no hands. It's too obvious that someone will just close and use their hands on you.

Probably true, yeah.

If you really want to put points into "only Kicking" buy Brawling (or Karate if you really want) up to DX level, then buy the Kicking technique off of Brawling. Technique Mastery (Kicking) may also help.