Martial Arts

[Godlearner]

As currently written Martial Arts are pretty bland with it increasing damage of a natural weapon and doubling the damage which is stopped by a natural weapon. I think there should be more variation and there should be Martial Arts which effect weapons. Maybe something like this:

Counterattack 

Knowledge (00%)

This special form of a Martial Art developed Abdamedric which allows the practitioner to turn a successful parry with a one handed sword into a strike. For this to occur the defender must achieve a higher level of success with his sword parry than the attacker with his weapon attack. In such a case the original attack is resolved as usual, but then the defender receives an additional attack at his Counterattack percentage.

[Diana Probst]

The Dragonewt Quick Draw skill in the bestiary might be a good model here.  Bear in mind that it has a significant penalty for fumbling.  That is, you can use the skill - but while you get an advantage it's not a flat advantage with no drawbacks.

[Joerg]

Back when he still advocated the strict division between the three Otherworlds, Greg said that martial arts are "Something you know", hence could be treated like sorcery. So maybe there could be techniques and possibly runes you master by spending POW after some sufficient meditation, and actual skills (i.e. spells) that you release upon striking. Perhaps using something like RQ3's Godunya's Magic, aka rune power to power sorcery spells, which would excuse the extremely shortened casting time compared to Western sorcery.

For another way, maybe revisiting the Ki skills from Land of Ninja, but starting them at a much lower level than 100% might be a way to do this and have magical martial artists upon character creation or at least shortly thereafter.

Some form of purification through meditation might be necessary to call upon these abilities. Possibly with failure punished similar to failing a Runic Inspiration test.

But then, all of this still sucks compared to a Weapon Trance spell unless the damage effects get really cinematic.

Edited December 29, 2020 by Joerg

[French Desperate WindChild]

13 hours ago, Godlearner said:

As currently written Martial Arts are pretty bland with it increasing damage of a natural weapon and doubling the damage which is stopped by a natural weapon. I think there should be more variation and there should be Martial Arts which effect weapons. Maybe something like this:

Counterattack 

Knowledge (00%)

This special form of a Martial Art developed Abdamedric which allows the practitioner to turn a successful parry with a one handed sword into a strike. For this to occur the defender must achieve a higher level of success with his sword parry than the attacker with his weapon attack. In such a case the original attack is resolved as usual, but then the defender receives an additional attack at his Counterattack percentage.

I dislike the martial arts skill because that breaks the fight

So an answer would be creating skill like you propose (more rules)

we could be transfert martial art in a magic way (between draconism and sorcery, both not yet full described) as @Joerg said

or simply say that martial art is a cult secret and use "hand trance" and "foot trance", so just to find the good cult (no more rules, no more skills)

another way is to say fight is already deadly no reason to add more bonus (and more simulation, yes your proposal is good for a fighting game but for a more large play, why having 100 pages about fight and just 1 page about temple management, for characters designed to become priests and rune lords it is weird)