[MA] Best dirty-fighting style for a callous weakling?

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

In a martial arts demonstration, the martial artist wants to ensure the "attacker" suffers neither pain nor harm.

Tell her that. Once she switched me out for someone closer to her own weight she kicked him in the solar plexus hard enough to make him throw up.

The point is that no matter how accurate a punch or a kick is, it still has to be hard enough to take effect. If there's a large enough size disparity, that's far from a given.

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

In use of martial arts in an actual fight, the martial artist will have no such inhibitions.

On one hand you're telling us that people have extreme mental blocks that prevent them from harming each other, but on the other, you're telling us that martial artists in real fights are capable of anything.

Can't have it both ways.

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

It's as I said: a person most willing or eager to do harm will tend to be more successful in a fight than who's not. This will to do harm is more important - again, in a realistic-themed campaign, not in movies or in typical campaigns - than strength, skill, and many other things.

Sure.

But we can safely assume that most PCs (and all combat-capable PCs), as well as their most dangerous foes, will belong to that rare spectrum of society which is capable of hurting others. Easily and without a second of thought.

When discussing combat options for PCs, it's likely that the opponent in question is actually dangerous enough to make violence justified. No matter whether that's the standard for regular people, that's the standard for the kind of people whom cops, police or adventurers have to take down hard.

And even in the real world, such people aren't unknown or even all that rare. They're common enough so that most of us probably know someone, at least. If you went to a prison, for example, I'm pretty sure a week could be enough time to reality check all of the above by fighting people who really do want to hurt others for no better reason than it makes them happy.

Originally Posted by Kyle Aaron

Please, stop there.

Why?

In the modern world, those are the among the few people who have full-time jobs which require competence in unarmed and melee combat (guns are rarely used for crimes in Iceland, yet). I'd say they are relevant.

And no, the fact that I know several doesn't make me a criminal. I worked in a lawyer's office for years, one where two of the most prolific defence attorneys in Iceland practice. Add to that the fact that my best friend is a cop whose brother was an enforcer for years and that my friend just started dating a former enforcer and that adds up to a dozen or so.