Fighting Styles system...

[RigaMortus2]

Anyone familiar with Palladium’s “Ninja’s & Superspies” RPG?

Well, I've been trying for awhile now (on my own) to come up with a similar system for d20. My hopes were to develop specific “fighting styles” each with individual attacks (kicks, punches, head butts, holds, etc.).

One of my goals was to make it easy to integrate into D&D.

The first thing I wanted to do is have each style have its own BAB, which (if you chose to apply this to a D&D character) would supersede a specific class’ BAB. Another thought I had along with this was to have “stances” (not like ToB) which puts you into a “fighting style mode”. When in this mode, you use that style’s BAB. When not in that mode, you use your class’ BAB.

Common problems I keep running into…

These are primarily hand-to-hand styles, so what happens if I want to use a ranged weapon? What happens if I want to use a melee weapon other than an unarmed attack (you can’t very well “punch” or “kick” with a sword).

So then I was thinking on expanding this, so we have melee weapon styles for specific weapons. As well as ranged weapon styles for bows, crossbows, slings and even conventional weapons like a hand gun or laser rifle.

But I don’t want to have 10,000 different styles, one for each weapon out there…

So that is my main dilemma. I think the first draft should be to “keep it simple stupid” and purely concentrate on just hand-to-hand (unarmed attacks).

The second thing is that at each “fighting style” level I want to add different attacks. Kinda similar to ToB maneuvers, but a little more specific and not the same mechanic.

Anyone have any thoughts on this? I’ve been using Boxing and Wrestling as a test template. Using the parameters above, how would you set up a Boxing fighting style, where it has its own BAB (that increases from level 1 to 20), and has it’s own attacks each level, each with its own unique effects (damage, stunning, dazing, knocking prone, knocking unconscious, penalties to AC or to hit, etc.)

 

[kris_kapsner]

Well, I'd have to give a lot of thought to the unarmed stuff. My favorite book out there is the Swashbuckling Adventures book. In it, you'll find a variety of fighting styles. It's for a low magic campaign that centers around the warrior and is based in a loosly similar world to old Europe. All of the fighting styles in there are prestige classes. They range typically from 3 levels deep to 5 levels with a few rare exceptions going to 10. There are some that deal with stances and changing the stance for different benefits during combat.

It isn't a D&D book but it is D20 and it's a lot of fun for me. It could give you some great ideas for developing your fighting styles.

Have fun.

 

[el-remmen]

This is not exactly what you are getting at, but maybe it will help knock loose an idea for you or something. . .

What I did for my own martial arts styles (mostly for monks, but in theory other classes could take them too if they find access to a teacher and have the free feats) was create groups of ten feats that emulate a style. Some of these feats are normal ole general feats like improved trip or improved grapple, but others are in a category of "special martial arts feats" which can only be taken if you have the base martial arts style feat in which it appears as part of the list of feats associated with the style. These are feats such as "flying kick", "pain touch", "bear hug", etc. . .

A fighter who wants to be a martial arts specialist could just take the base feat and then use his bonus feats to gain the ones in the style, My revamped monk gets a free martial arts feat from their style every four levels.

In addition, most styles come with a free proficiency in a weapon the style teaches, and in the case of monks, these count as special monk weapons to that character.

I found this to be a simple of effective system to emulate "style" without becoming burdened with a bunch of new rules.

 

[Crashy75]

Well, I love n&ss. As far as the weapon vs. unarmed, why not add a feat called 'weapon kata?' I've started redoing ToB maneuvers to better fit n&ss concepts- more 'martial art powers' than fighting styles however. I was really thinking of blending the two. I've even created a discipline called 'the art of atemi'- mostly shadow hand maneuvers with a plenty of custom maneuvers (many inspired by desert wind of all places!) It still needs an 8th level maneuver though. I also plan on doing a 'chi-mastery' type discipline (I like the name diamond mind though it'll have some shadow hand maneuvers and many dw), a 'body hardening' type (stone dragon but with changes- I don't dig the 'strike then gain DR' affects-I know at least 1 8th level stance will be called 'stone ox' or possibly 'chi-gung' and give that DR 5/-) and at least one for 'hard' unarmed combat (using tiger claw as a base) and one for 'soft' styles (setting sun). There will also be other disciplines to support non-martial artist types.