Iron Heroes -- my solution to the martial arts thing

[Staffan]

I'm not a big fan of having more than one level of increased damage (to bring it up to par with light weapons like the short sword). If you want to do more damage with your unarmed strikes, you should do what any other character who wants to do more damage with his weapon of choice does: get the even levels of Weapon Focus.

 

[Acid_crash]

I like this one. Particularly since if you keep the actual feats within a broad range of masteries unarmed combat becomes a good secondary strategy with characters, which is the way it works out in a lot of the literature.

That way a guy who just does unarmed combat is still great, but a guy who specializes in wacking people with clubs might actually have a good side specialty in defensive martial arts, grappling attacks, or using his fists as a light weapon.

If you really wanted to build up that modular component you could also have minor feat chains and major ones. Say basic defense, attack, and grapple chains capping out at five or four, and then really exotic chains begining at no lower than four and that's where'd you'd put anti DR chains, leaping attack chains, pressure point stuff, and (if you really wanted to go hardcore) stuff like flaming fists and chi-beams.

This just kind of hit me but I think Iron Heroes shows a possible pathway of creating a decent version of Exalted based on the d20 system with Feat Master chains simulating different Exalted chains and stuff like that. With the stunt system Mearls created, and combining it with the Book of Iron Might, it's now not as hard to convert WW fantasy game into a d20/OGL version.

Especially when you are talking about stuff like flaming fists and chi-beams... also reminds me of Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat and other fighting games. Hell, why not base a Supers game on Feat Master chains like this as well.