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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010860" data-attributes="member: 172">Blood & Fists: Modern Martial Arts[imager]http://www.rpgnow.com/products/product_1742.jpg[/imager]Blood and Fists is a martial arts sourcebook for the d20 Modern system. The book is written by Charles Rice and published (in both PDF and print format) by RPGObjects.A First LookFormat: Available as a 64 page perfect bound softcover book for $14.95. Also available in PDF format for $6.95. The contents of the two are essentially identical.Art: Cover art is by Jeremy Simmons, and is an orange-red with various east Asian themed symbols and characters on it, with the silhouette of a shuriken most prominently displayed on the front cover. The interior is black and white, with a few basic ink drawings of martial artists by Chris Martinez.Layout: The book uses a basic two-column format. A conservatively sized body font text is used. The header font text used has a calligraphy-style look to it, but is clear and readable. The tables are well organized and easily readable.A Deeper LookDetailed treatment of martial arts in the d20 System is a somewhat hazardous subject to broach. Arguably, the feat system is where these sorts of abilities are best represented, but characters only receive a handful of feats as they advance. This being the case, various authors (including those on WotC's payroll) have tried to circumvent this using such dubious techniques as handing out free feat-like benefits with the right "lottery combination" of feats, allowing feat like benefits in exchange for raw XP or money, or even systems assigning individual skill ranks the importance of feats!Blood & Fists, I am happy to report, avoids all this nonsense. Blood & Fists uses the foundational built in features of the d20 System to handle martial arts: feats and classes.            The basic building block of a martial arts style is one of many "martial art style" feats. Each of these feats corresponds to a fighting system, most of them drawn from authentic real world sources. Martial art style feats include well known east Asian combat system such as karate, kung fu, and jujutsu, as well as less known fighting systems from other parts of the world such as Hawaiian Lua, Russian ROSS, and Brazilian Capoeira. The styles here aren't just limited to the ever-popular unarmed fighting styles; you will also find styles like fencing, kendo, and kyudo herein."Animal" style feats, such as those taught by bando and various kung fu variants, are generalized into styles just named after the animal (cat, leopard, etc.), making the abstraction that these styles are fundamentally similar.Each style feat offers a number of basic benefits that vary by style. These benefits can include new class skills, being considered "armed" when performing certain styles of attacks, negating two-weapon penalties with specific weapons, addition of class skills, and the ability to use abilities other than strength for melee attack rolls.All of these feats have prerequisites; most of the unarmed styles have combat or defensive martial arts as a prerequisite. It may seem that some of the benefits are redundant with those of the prerequisite feats. However, the benefits from the style feats are somewhat similar to class skills granted by starting occupations in that if you already have the named class skill (or other benefit), you get a +1 bonus instead.Of course, there are many martial arts in the world, and this one does not capture them all. To allow you to emulate unlisted styles (or make up your own fictional styles), the book has a simple 6-point system with which you can design your own martial art style feats.A single feat only captures the basics of the style, but there are a variety of martial arts maneuvers. Many are available to a wide variety of martial arts characters, but most have a short list of martial arts styles of which one is required as a prerequisite. In this way the system adds further details as more advanced techniques of all of the martial arts styles. For example, a kick oriented style like Tae Kwon Do or Capoeria brings access to Axe Kick (which allows you to perform a kick attack with increased damage once a round), while arts with grappling and hold techniques bring access to Choke Hold (which allows you to quickly enter a strangulation hold). Many of these maneuver feats have more complex maneuver feats based on them.More general maneuvers include the various levels of combination feats (which provide bonuses when you perform other "maneuver" style feats in a particular order) and iaijutsu (which allows an initiative bonus with a melee weapon). Also, general feats are available that have no particular maneuver or style as a prerequisite, such as kata feats (which are basically specializations in a style), know thy enemy, and knowledge is power (both of which provided benefits against practitioners of a specific style.)One maneuver feat left me uncomfortable, the block feat, which let you use attacks to block incoming attacks. While a basic mechanical technique that has been used elsewhere, it seems to lack something; as an opponent's attack rarely occurs on your turn, the only way to practically do this under the rules is to reserve an action, which makes the feat seem weak considering the limitations on holding actions.To further define martial arts styles, a number of signature maneuver feats are available. Unlike the general maneuver feats, each of these is unique to a particular style.Some "aesthetic" styles have access to a selection of feats call ki feats. Ki feats are considered FX abilities, and allow access to benefits such as enhancing ability scores, ignoring environmental damage, or issuing a kiai shout that renders a foe flat-footed.Though this is a lot of game mechanical details that are being lent to martial arts styles in the game, it is still not all. However, to tell the rest of the story, I must delve into the three new advanced classes provided for the game.The three new advanced classes are bad-ass barroom brawler, contemplative master, and martial arts master. The bad-ass barroom brawler (whose name strikes me as a bit crass for a game mechanical entity) is the least entangles with the martial arts system of the three. The brawler receives three types of class abilities as it advances: rage, "cheap shot" (which allows sneak attack style bonus damage once per combat), and bonus feats selected from the more "no nonsense" type of feats providing benefits in melee combat.The contemplative master and martial arts master's special abilities are similar in format. At odd levels, members of both classes get mastery abilities, which like various maneuver feats, are selected from a list of mastery abilities appropriate to a style the character knows; style masteries are more potent additions to the style, and the most potent are only available at the higher levels of these classes. At even levels, they get bonus feats chosen from those appropriate to the character's styles.The contemplative master has poorer general combat abilities (hit die type, BAB advancement) than the martial arts master, but has more skill points per level (and access to more different skills) as well as access to bonus feats and masteries from an additional "contemplative" list.To round out the tools with which to describe various martial arts styles, the book introduces three new skills (meditation, pressure points, and zen mastery) as well as new uses for balance (resisting trip attacks) and sense motive (predicting attacks.) The zen mastery skill leaves me a bit uncomfortable in that it circumvents the normal skill system and instead provides a percentage per skill rank subtracted from concealment miss percentages; this sort of modifier seems more appropriate for a feat.In addition to the mechanics section of the book, part of the book is dedicated to the topic of martial arts campaign considerations. One chapter has a rundown citing many conventions common to cinematic martial arts movies and comics, and providing ideas on how you could use them in a d20 Modern campaign styled after these resouces.The final chapter features the Hanmei, a tournament styled after those that appear frequently in the source material. The chapter describes the tournament, ways to use it in a game, and detailed sample NPCs using rules in this book of a variety of different levels.ConclusionI was really impressed with Blood and Fists. It is the first martial arts resource for an RPG that really set my imagination alight since Hero's Ultimate Martial Artist, and is the best treatment of martial arts that I have seen for the d20 System to date. It doesn't resort to dubious techniques that bypass level mechanics and provides statistics for real world styles that people are interested in representing, and represents them in a very detailed yet playable manner.The book does have a few shortcomings. As mentioned, there were a few mechanical implementations that I was not comfortable with, such as the block feat and the zen mastery skill.The book makes martial arts more powerful than they are as represented in the core d20 Modern rules, and owns up to the fact on the basis that it really doesn't make them more powerful than guns. While this point is well taken, it does make the book more appropriate to campaigns that wish to emphasize martial arts as a central element of the game vice simply adding martial arts techniques to campaigns that only have them as a sideline.Overall Grade: A--Alan D. KohlerEdit: RPGO recently updated the PDF version of this book, addressing most of my concerns with the new skills and block maneuver. You can check the PDF if you want to see changes. Also, if you want both, RPGO lets you buy the print version for cheap if you buy the PDF.</blockquote>

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