[MA Style] Cat-Fu

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

Originally Posted by Molokh

I don't understand: how is Fighting While being Grappled different from Fighting While on Ground. If one can be a Technique, why can't the other? Both are penalties to a skill under specific circumstances.

Well, so is Deceptive Attack, and you can't buy that off...same with Rapid Strike, or many other combat options. Sometimes this is for ghame balance at heart - like buying off DA - but it's often hand-in-hand with realism concerns (i.e. if you let people buy off Deceptive Attack, you're saying they can't do a plain vanilla attack any more easily than a really tricky one, which doesn't make sense).

Buying off the penalty to DX while grappled, even on a per-skill basis, was one we rejected on the realism grounds. It's just never as easy to fight when someone is holding you as it is when you're not being grappled at all, no matter how much you train. That was the consensus all the grapplers and strikers who grapple that I talked to, and it also reflected what we found. Not a single striker, even ones who like to strike while grappled, have said that it is easier.

That said, you could a) ignore what I said and make the technique anyway, or b) make the technique but cap it below full skill, so you can get a little better but never as good as if you didn't have an active opponent holding on to you and by his or her actions interfering with your actions. b) is more realistic, although it's still pretty optimistic - even with lots of training you are vastly better off if your opponent doesn't grab you back.

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And yeah, no Cat-Fu in MA. We didn't have a handy cat race to attach it to, it's easy enough to generate (it's fictional and much of its components are fairly obvious), and it was an easy call as "the first thing people will make for themselves." Those added up to not considering adding one.