Viable fighter using only claws and teeth?

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Gef

Assuming you come up with an in-game justification for why claws and teeth penetrate metal plates better than a warhammer,

There's an optional rule in LTC2 that gives Warhammers, Rondels, Estocs and so on AD (2).

[Dangerious P. Cats]

Biting mastery?

If you want to compete with weapon fighters you're going to need a skill that allows you to parry weapons meaning either Karate or Judo most likly and the appropriate perks to allow you to use claws with them (cheaper than doubling up on skills). Disarming would also be useful to rob your opponents of their weapons. Beyond that maybe a few targeted attacks (biting targeting the neck could be very appropriate).

I'm not really sure what you mean by fancy techniques though, as the word fancy within a martial arts context has a few different meanings. In terms of it's meaning there is the obvious meaning of: "will not work under combat conditions" though all too often it really means "works better than what I do/have yet I refuse to admit it", in fact I find many people wishing to imply the former are actually saying the later. The whole discorse of martial arts being overly fancy is really born out of a reaction to more technically detailed and skill focussed methods of fighting defeating ideas combat prowess that are based in strength and notions of masculinty. Beyond that fancy can mean a large training requirement to become effective at a given system (which is often the way I use it). The basic concept is that in order to gain from training you need to train for a long time before you can use what you've learnt under duress. Fairbairn leveled this criticism at many unarmed combat systems that were offered to the military citing that no recruit would pick them up in the time they should reasonably spend on hand to hand training.

[Gef]

Originally Posted by Bokker

I'm not particularly concerned with doing tremendous damage with any one attack, but two of my major concerns were getting through potentially significant armor and being able to parry/block/generally defend against decent weapons without getting bits and pieces lopped off for my trouble. Or having said bits and pieces lopped off if someone decides to defend against my own attacks.

For the latter, how about Slow Regeneration, and Injury Tolerance (Unbreakable Bones)? The latter is from GURPS Powers; for 10 points, you are harder to cripple, and you're never permanently crippled.

For the former, if you are getting through armor, you're doing heavy damage to unprotected flesh. You can reduce that somewhat with Armor-Piercing Claws, but how do you explain that? Diamondoid teeth might make sense in some campaigns, but if you're limited to calcium and keratin, you gotta ramp up base damage.

How much of that you need depends on armor in the campaign. If TL3, then the best armor a knight is likely to wear is a coat of plates (scale armor) over light mail, enchanted +2 yields DR 10. At TL4, you get heavy plate armor for DR 9, slightly better on the DR but much handier. If you encounter heavy plate over light mail, that's DR 12, or 14 with enchantment (and you can enchant it to weigh less, while you're at it). So you need 3d at TL3 and 4d at TL4 to reliably get through really good and quite expensive magic armor half the time. While you can encounter armor significantly better than this, that's when to all-out attack and hope for a high damage roll. Don't forget Luck.

GEF

PS: Those numbers are total damage, for instance 3d+4 is about the same as 4d, but 3d+4 is the damage from Sharp Claws with Striking ST 27.

PPS: I wouldn't worry about the martial artist too mush; just give him a tip that if he focuses on judo (the other way to get through high DR), he'll have a distinctively different approach in game-mechanical terms as well as roleplay.

[Verjigorm]

Originally Posted by Bokker

Reasons I don't want to tread into screaming, spin-kicking monk territory are because 1) it's not really fitting for the concept (which is basically a foaming-at-the-mouth killing machine who doesn't think the job is done until various chunks of his enemies are decorating the landscape, most of said chunks having been spit out of his mouth)

Then i recommend using Wrestling. Not all the time, but a good "wrench limb" is one of the easiest ways to get swing damage for a unarmed brawler. if you have access to Martial Arts(which you REALLY need of this kind of stuff), you'll find that a biting based grappler can be really nasty, if you want.

And even better, if I'm not mistaken, lifting ST is the core attribute for wrestling, which gives you the advantage of being able to buy it up much cheaper than full ST or striking ST. And then WHAMMO, broken arms galore!

[Phoenix_Dragon]

You can parry weapons with Brawling, it's just more likely to get you injured (And the "harsh realism for unarmed fighters" box adds some details to this). Though if the creature has really reinforced claws and such, he could always get a "limb striker" so that he doesn't take damage on parries or when being parried. Those are the primary weakness of an unarmed fighter against someone with a weapon. Unless you're careful and use a lot of feints or surprise, you lose limbs easily...

[Verjigorm]

Also, why not use something like a cestus or the like? "war gloves", so to speak?

[Refplace]

OK if you dont want to step on the martial artists toes then I recommend wrestling and sumo and emphasis grapples and slams. Once the opponent is on the ground you can more easily do targeted attacks against weak armor and they cant use many weapons in C combat.
Also consider constriction attack, ie. Bear hug.

All these rely on High ST which is atypical of a martial Artist build which tends to focus more on Striking ST and high DX.
And that high ST gets you more HP which in turn helps you in a way different then the martial artist is likely to focus on.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Fwibos

Innate Attack +2 cutting (St Based +100%, Melee, C, 1 -20%, Magical -10% Alternate 1/5)
(2 points)
And another impaling with the same modifiers (9)

For 11 points you have claws.

Altenated to what? what are you buying at full prices that is more expensive?

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

Altenated to what? what are you buying at full prices that is more expensive?

The Impaling attack.

What escapes me is why it would be Magical if it's meant to represent part of the creature's body.

[Fwibos]

Well, if it's a fantasy world. Beast Men are generally Magical creatures. It could In Theory be Biological, or Even Chi. If it's natural, then it wouldn't have any modifier.