More on martial arts in d20 Modern

[Vigilance]

Gnome sent me an email offlist, he found the description of the rules for making your own styles confusing *cough*.

In case anyone else is having the same problem, what follows is my response.

Hmmm.

I will see what I can do about clearing that up in the official text. In the meantime, let me break it down for you here and see if I can clear it up for you.

Zones of attack: if you have a zone included in a style, you are armed when making those attacks. Combat Martial Arts already does this. However, if you enter a style through Defensive Martial Arts, you are only armed in your zone, since DMA gives you no offensive ability on its own.

Also, there are more zones than head, hand, and foot, there is also feinting, disarming, grappling and tripping. Again if you have a zone, you are armed when making these attacks. In the case of feinting, you also feint as a move, instead of an attack action.

If you have proficiency in a zone from multiple areas- say CMA and TaeKwonDo, or TaeKwonDo and Hapkido, you gain a one-time competence bonus of +1 to hit.

Hard, Soft, Internal, and External just determine what abilities can modify the attacks. If you want Wisdom to modify attacks, the style must be Internal. If you want Dexterity or Strength, it must be External. Hard and Extrnal, Soft and Internal, are basically different terms for the same thing.

Adaptive Styles can use every maneuver in the book. Non-adaptive Styles can only use a maneuver if they are listed in that maneuver's prerequisites.

Aesthetic Styles have acces to Ki, and some of the general feats like Poise. If you have a non-aesthetic style as your only martial arts style, you cant learn any Ki abilities.

I hope this helps.

I will eventually do an official clean up of wording.

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

A little more weirdness
Another thing that would make an interesting house rule -- I dug out my Oriental Adventures, which I bought ages ago and put on a shelf. One of the class abilities that is available to most of the martial artist classes there is an ability they call acrobatics, which provides a +10 skill bonus to tumble, jump, balance, etc. That is usually followed shortly by Leap of Clouds, which removes limits on jump height. And the book includes some advanced tumble, for very high rolls.
-rg

I like all the ideas gnome

One thing I'd like to point out is that you can do something very similar to what you're describing with BNF as is. Acrobatics Mastery 3 lets you take 20 on Jump checks (as well as tumble etc.) along with a +2 bonus to those skills (from the previous 2 masteries).

The Wuxia Feat (a Ki ) removes all limitations on leaping height a la leap of the clouds.

Not identicle, but close to what you're describing.

 

[Sketchpad]

I just wanted to pipe in and say gow good of a supplement Blood & Fist is I love the style & maneuver system ... in fact, I'm contemplating using it in Mutants & Masterminds d20 has long been without a martial arts system and this fills the void nicely ... my only contemplation with the book is maneuver feats. I wonder if this would better be handled like with Forbidden Kingdom's martial arts system where its a skill that you put ranks into to gain maneuvers (akin to Language). Any opinions on this? Otherwise I love the supplement and the classes are quite cool In fact, I've now been toying with getting Blood & Space

 

[Vigilance]

First off, let me say "WHOOOHAAAA!!!!!"

Ahem, I mean thanks

It's funny you mention that... Vigilance, my superhero game, as a martial arts system *exactly* like that (only without the real world styles unfortunately).

My concerns using a skill system for maneuvers were:

1.)Skill points are needed for other things, forcing a character to spend them on combat makes an already combat oriented character even more so. You end up with some characters spending all their feats and skills on fighting.

2.) I was striving for as much compatibility with the base rules as I could. I didn't think the martial arts rules in the basic game were broken, and people seemed basically happy with them, so I decided to build from there.

Chuck

 

[Vigilance]

In fact, I've now been toying with getting Blood & Space

You know, I have a d20 Modern game called Blood and Relics too.

And I'm about to announce in a few hours the upcoming Blood and Guts: Modern Military with real world special operations forces as well (matter of fact you can see the cover at http://www.rpgobjects.com/index.php?page=pro&product_id=23).

Since you're thinking, you know.

Chuck

 

[Sketchpad]

Interesting ... will the military book cover military vehicles as well? I know that I've been kicking around a "GI Joe" style campaign and may be able to use that

As for B&F, I can see your points ... and I'm glad I snagged the book, it'll prove quite useful for my Urban Arcana game Maybe in the print edition you could include an optional skill point system in the back? That way people who want to have a heavy martial arts influence could still use this great supplement

 

[Vigilance]

Military Prestige Classes, new skills, new uses for existing skills (such as using the Climb skill to repel out of a helicopter), new occupations, new military training, rank, promotions, medals, weapons, vehicles, new combat rules (including rules for grittier combat), and even a touch of military history to give you a little background.

I dont think I missed anyting

A Table of Contents will be coming soon to give folks a firm handle on what's inside.

 

[Morgenstern]

Acrobatics Mastery 3 lets you take 20 on Jump checks (as well as tumble etc.) along with a +2 bonus to those skills (from the previous 2 masteries).

I hope you realize that the way Acrobatics 3 is written, it's not doing what you think it's doing...

Taking 20, without additional text to provide guidance, means you still take 20 times as long to do the thing in question. I don't think you meant for a master to do one big, ol' crazy jump after staring at the edge of a rooftop for 2 minutes... .

I think you may be looking for "May make Jump and tumble checks as if he had rolled a natural 20 without rolling. This takes the normal aount of time for this check." or possibly, streching the term rather severely, "You may take 20 on Jump and Tumble checks, without having to take 20 times the normal time required for this check." Another, possibly less worriesome version would be "You may take 10 on Jump and Tumbles checks, even if stress wounld normally prevent you from doing so. Further, while taking 10 on Jump and Tumble checks, you gain a +10 bonus to the result of such checks." This last one is probably the closest to your intent...

Another think I was noticing, was in the listing of mastery abilites by Martial Arts style, you can cut down on wasted space by listing things like "Acrobatics 1, Acrobatics 2, Acrobatics 3" as just "Acrobatics (1-3)" or something similar.

Actually, the extreme jump between the '2s' and the '3s' in mastery abilites was a bit jarring. I follow you only ever get a single 3, and could (by my estimate) get as many as four 2s, but still...

BNF is some great stuff. I'm still reading through it and finding neat new ideas. It can still be a little tighter before it goes to hard copy however 8).

 

[Vigilance]

Thanks for the heads up on the taking 20 Morg

Classic case of a Dm letting his house rule slip into a game.

Chuck

 

[MThibault]

Another think I was noticing, was in the listing of mastery abilites by Martial Arts style, you can cut down on wasted space by listing things like "Acrobatics 1, Acrobatics 2, Acrobatics 3" as just "Acrobatics (1-3)" or something similar.

Or take the cue from Uncanny Dodge and list it as "Acrobatics X".

Cheers