On the uselessness of a karate course in GURPS

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Four hours a week is crap all. If you're serious about your martial arts training, you do at least an hour of practice daily - at home or at your school. Plus lessons.

If you just show up at class and go home, you're taking aerobics classes and probably learning Karate Sport.

This is speaking as someone who just showed up at class and went home. :) It was fitness training, good cardio. Also good for my general flexibility and mental health. That's not points in Karate.

Sounds like an opinion to me.... Just like a belly button.


I do eight hours of Muay Thai a week ATM the other student is doing twenty four. A lot of his extra time is 'JUST' fitness. We do a comparable amount of time in technique and sparring.


I assure you that you can learn important things even in brief drills. I still believe as with every skill I know the biggest learning step is always going from zero to something.

I don't know what the original poster meant be default character but sounds like they are unfamiliar with GURPS marital arts

Firstly instruction offer improved progression over self study.

Second what makes anyone think the skill learnt is Karate?

I'd say a large part of my study has been buying off unfit, removing some quirks about fighting and buying style familiarity.

Style familiarity makes a lot of sense for Karate sport because of the katas.

[OldSam]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Four hours a week is crap all.

To keep going is the key, not all or nothing. Though if you only do that 4h and nothing more, it takes a long time to get at a moderate level and you won't get beyond that. At least in practical application. But at least moderate level often can be good enough to defend against an untrained assailant.

And in most martial arts in the first 1-2 years you're really only a beginner, so at that level people should not expect much from their capabilities, but they will grow with continued training. Moreover that 4h regular training can be a quite good base if you also attend intensive training seminars at times and have phases with more extra units.

[DouglasCole]

I thought Sean's answer was really good, so I stole it for a blog post. Check the comments where he amplifies even further.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

There are intensive courses for self-defense which seem to get results in less hours, like the pistol course which Fairbairn and Sykes worked out for the Shanghai Municipal Police Department, but they rarely look like a traditional group class, and 'effective' does not necessarily mean 'high skill' as much as "not trying to default from Weapon Art-3, and not crippled by mental disadvantages and freezing."

There exist a lot of instructors among various organisations, primarily military in nature, that are very good at teaching the first points in self-defence and soldiering skills through Intensive Training.

It's also really common for people to pick up points in these skills at rates far exceeding normal skill training times, for the reason that an environment where combat and military skillls can be learnt often counts as 'adventuring', which means earned points that can be spent on skills that were used during it.

It's easy to justify the difference between Axe/Mace, Shortsword, Two-Handed Axe/Mace at DX-5, Knife at DX-4 and unarmed combat at DX on the one hand and Brawling at DX+2 and all the weapon skills at DX at the other as being more about self-confidence and willingness to hurt others than it is about long training times.

Trained troops with actual combat experience often have more points in Soldier and other primary skills than the hours they've had to train would justify. In a few months, someone can go from civilian to professional-level soldier, if he has good instructors, good leaders and is lucky enough to survive his first battle.

Once basic competence is achieved, however, improving these skills can take much longer. And in modern armies, there are many necessary technical skills that aren't so quickly learnt.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by joppeknol

I practice twice a week for two hours. [ . . . ] I still feel cheated after one year of intensive training.

I'm sorry, but 2×2h/week is not an intensive training regimen. In fact, a 'maintaining' training regimen is 3×2h/week, and a 'kinda average regiment meant for gradual but honest improvement' is something like 5×2h/week.
Now, a training camp would be more like 3×2h/day, and even that falls short of what GURPS calls intensive training.

[lachimba]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Now, a training camp would be more like 3×2h/day, and even that falls short of what GURPS calls intensive training.

Must Thai training is 2 × 2 hours a day 6 days a week. And even that's considered overtraining by some western fighters (you will definitely lose muscle mass)

[scc]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Remember to use the higher of DX or skill. Going by the Basic Set alone, doing all the math to express things relative to DX (drop fractions at the very end!), and putting the benefits of Karate in boldface, the real progression is this:

0 points (DX only): Punch at DX for thrust-1; kick at DX-2 for thrust; armed enemies who parry your unarmed strikes attack your limb at full skill; parry unarmed attacks at DX/2 + 3, or DX/2 + 4 if retreating; parry weapons at DX/2, or DX/2 + 1 if retreating; cannot attempt Back Kick, Elbow Strike, Jump Kick, Knee Strike.

1 point (Karate at DX-2): Punch at DX for thrust-1; kick at DX-2 for thrust; armed enemies who parry your unarmed strikes attack your limb at skill-4; parry unarmed attacks at DX/2 + 3, or DX/2 + 5 if retreating; parry weapons at DX/2 + 2, or DX/2 + 5 if retreating; Back Kick at DX-6, Elbow Strike at DX-4, Jump Kick at DX-6, Knee Strike at DX-3.

2 points (Karate at DX-1): Punch at DX for thrust-1; kick at DX-2 for thrust; armed enemies who parry your unarmed strikes attack your limb at skill-4; parry unarmed attacks at DX/2 + 3, or DX/2 + 5.5 if retreating; parry weapons at DX/2 + 2.5, or DX/2 + 5.5 if retreating; Back Kick at DX-5, Elbow Strike at DX-3, Jump Kick at DX-5, Knee Strike at DX-2.

4 points (Karate at DX): Punch at DX for thrust; kick at DX-2 for thrust+1; armed enemies who parry your unarmed strikes attack your limb at skill-4; parry unarmed attacks at DX/2 + 3, or DX/2 + 6 if retreating; parry weapons at DX/2 + 3, or DX/2 + 6 if retreating; Back Kick at DX-4, Elbow Strike at DX-2, Jump Kick at DX-4, Knee Strike at DX-1.

8 points (Karate at DX+1): Punch at DX+1 for thrust+1; kick at DX-1 for thrust+2; armed enemies who parry your unarmed strikes attack your limb at skill-4; parry unarmed attacks at DX/2 + 3.5, or DX/2 + 6.5 if retreating; parry weapons at DX/2 + 3.5, or DX/2 + 6.5 if retreating; Back Kick at DX-3, Elbow Strike at DX-1, Jump Kick at DX-3, Knee Strike at DX.

Adding in the Martial Arts rules gives you a bunch more techniques (almost none of which default to untrained DX). You also get to parry with the legs or feet, and may parry grappling techniques with "counters" that don't require a free hand. And you can dive, sideslip, and slip as well as or better than an untrained person can retreat.

The benefits are subtle but real at low levels.

Why the boost in damage at DX? I thought it was DX+1 and DX+2

[Langy]

Originally Posted by joppeknol

Something that has been bothering me for some time.

Let's say I'm a default GURPS character. I take a karate course for self defense. I practice twice a week for two hours. After a year I have roughly earned 1 cp in karate (200 hours).

I'm average, so my DX =10 and my karate skill is 8. My offensive capabilities haven't increased at all. Parrying while retreating is at 10 (4+3+3) instead of 9 (5+3+1). I parry weapons at 7 instead of 5. I still feel cheated after one year of intensive training.

In general, the problem is that a low karate skill is worse than the DX-based score for unarmed combat. Am I correct in this assessment? If so, are there any house rules for correcting this without changing the whole system?

You're forgetting that karate classes typically teach Karate Sport, not Karate. They teach you how to do things that are useless in a real fight (such as how to score points in a sparring session), not how to actually beat someone up.

So yes, you'll have significant improvement in what the class is teaching you - but what it is teaching you is not what you think it is.

Originally Posted by malloyd

I've never seen anybody serious argue a college education is just a *few* points. Most degrees come to about 2000 hours of actual classroom time, plus some non-trivial amount of outside studying. Admittedly some people would argue a lot of those points should probably go toward buying a +1 IQ and not skills.

Anyway new college graduates usually aren't in the running for people who have been through intensive training either.

I'd argue a college education is largely worthless in the 'teaching people useful skills' aspect. You almost never use skills taught in college in the real world even if you're working a highly technical job. It's certainly much worse than actual on-the-job training.

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by Icelander

There exist a lot of instructors among various organisations, primarily military in nature, that are very good at teaching the first points in self-defence and soldiering skills through Intensive Training.

That does not really explain, though, how Fairburn and Sykes were able to get better results with a dozen cartridges and half a dozen lessons than earlier trainers had got with much greater resources. Their book makes it clear that their basic course was relaxed, yet somehow it worked a lot better than many hours of shooting with an extended arm at targets far away. That does not fit the Basic Set description of Intensive Training or even the looser ones which are meant to cover things like cramming for the Imperial Exam.

Originally Posted by Icelander

Trained troops with actual combat experience often have more points in Soldier and other primary skills than the hours they've had to train would justify. In a few months, someone can go from civilian to professional-level soldier, if he has good instructors, good leaders and is lucky enough to survive his first battle.

Thought that might also be that GURPS tends to make being good at dangerous things expensive, and being good at quiet things cheap. There are deep mysteries in the relationship between inputs and outputs in education, but the 200-hours-per-point thing is only a rule of thumb because what counts as one skill is arbitrary.

[PK]

Originally Posted by scc

Why the boost in damage at DX? I thought it was DX+1 and DX+2

Nope. Reread the Karate skill description.