Gauging Blood & Fists - a pair of questions

[igavskoga]

A friend of mine recently suggested I look into Blood and Fists for unarmed combat for my homebrew fantasy d20 game. I've got two main questions-

1) How is it? At first glance through I'm definitely interested but informed opinions can never hurt.

2) Assuming a game based loosely on D&D 3.5, lower/rarer magic, no dedicated "monk" class right now, and much greater availability of feats - would it be easier to fit in than above? I didn't see anything that seemed to require Modern conventions like the generic classes with talent trees but I haven't played a lot of Modern and I've only had time to glance through the book once so far.

Complicated solutions aren't a non-starter - I've got a good block of free time on my hands right now so I can tinker as much as I want.

 

[Psion]

A friend of mine recently suggested I look into Blood and Fists for unarmed combat for my homebrew fantasy d20 game. I've got two main questions-

1) How is it? At first glance through I'm definitely interested but informed opinions can never hurt.

It's a great supplement for D20 Modern. Unless your homebrew taps into the D20 Modern way of doing some things, though, it might be a tough adaptation. RPGObjects' Legends of the Samurai uses similar martial arts mechanics, but has D&D style base classes.

2) Assuming a game based loosely on D&D 3.5, lower/rarer magic, no dedicated "monk" class right now, and much greater availability of feats - would it be easier to fit in than above? I didn't see anything that seemed to require Modern conventions like the generic classes with talent trees but I haven't played a lot of Modern and I've only had time to glance through the book once so far.

Shouldn't be too hard. The system is mainly feat based, but there are some martial art secrets that use the advanced classes instead of feats. You might want to port the advanced classes as prestige classes or provide some other way to access the martial arts secrets (like porting them to feats with rough or campaign based entry requirements.)

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

1. It's absolutely brilliant, the best d20 book on the subject. IMO, it's one of the top ten RPG supplements ever produced for any system.

2. It's 99.99% D&D compatible. The only changes I had to make when I incorporated it (which I have done in every D&D campaign I've run and most I've played in since its release) were to port the Defensive Martial Arts and Brawl feats (because they're prerequisites for several of the martial arts styles) and to clarify that Improved Unarmed Strike and Combat Martial Arts are the same thing.
(NOTE: I didn't incorporate the weapon proficiency rules in the 'martial arts weapons' chapter, using the standard d20 fantasy ones instead; otherwise, this would have been a third thing to change.)

 

[igavskoga]

Psion, Moogle - much appreciated. I've always heard it was a good supplement, never had occasion to look it over until now though.

If it fit into D&D as easily as you say, Moogle, then that's great to hear. Thanks guys

 

[molonel]

I'm using Blood & Fists: Master Edition, as well as Blood & Guts 2, in my two d20 Modern spec ops games right now, so I feel qualified to say something about it.

I like Charles Rice's work. He tends to be very thorough for background material. He's a very approachable writer and game designer. In fact, I have a thread here ...

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=194909

... where I've been asking him questions about those two books.

Now, to answer your questions:

1) How is it?

It's very good. I recommend reading the book through, because not all of the material is equally suited to all campaigns. I'm running a grittier game, so I removed Gun Fu because it didn't fit the flavor of what I'm doing.

In my opinion, the martial arts maneuvers are well-written, but tend to be overly feat-heavy in the sense that you often pay one feat per maneuver and the progression is too slow for me. To solve this, in my game, we arranged the martial arts feats in groups of Tactical feats like the ones in D&D's The Complete Warrior.

2) Assuming a game based loosely on D&D 3.5, lower/rarer magic, no dedicated "monk" class right now, and much greater availability of feats - would it be easier to fit in than above? I didn't see anything that seemed to require Modern conventions like the generic classes with talent trees but I haven't played a lot of Modern and I've only had time to glance through the book once so far.

For D&D, the material would require some work. The feats that provoke saving throws don't tend to be modified for factors like size, because in d20 Modern you don't tend to fight a lot of colossal or gargantuan beings; nor for physiology. I think it should be harder, if not impossible, to do certain manuevers on beings that are more than two size categories larger, for example.

I think it's quite doable, because Rice gives you some very good stuff to work with, and if you've got the time to adapt it for your campaign, I haven't encountered a better d20 book for martial arts.

(If there is a better one, incidentally, I'd like to know what it is.)

 

[Vigilance]

Chuck Rice here, author of Blood and Fists.

It requires some adaptation, mostly because of the differences between d20 Modern and D&D.

As Psion pointed out, the path of least resistance might be Legends of the Samurai, which has martial arts rules in a more D&D-esque context and written for a class model of base class-PrC that's closer to D&D.

But since legends of the Samurai is more specific (medieval Japan), it has a smaller range of styles.