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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 1146813" data-attributes="member: 984">Pan Asian Collective in hand, I make my Martial Artist.  A pretty simple martial artist, one who is a Bagua and Xing Yi practitioner.  But I have some nagging doubts, both about how I seem to have filled my feats up to 20th level all to easily (and that's without weapon feats), and about the MA class' "power" vis-a-vis the Soldier.  Disclaimer:  I have not yet played this character in any combat yet.  But.  It seems the Soldier has some pretty significant advantages over the MA.  At level 11, with armour/helmet, the Soldier with his bennies, has a defence of 6 (2 armour, 2 bonus, 2 cover), DR2 and his armour atop that.  An MA character will have a defence of 9 (10, sidestep feat), but no DR, and if he wears armour only has a defence of 2.  For a few feats, the soldier can pick up a rifle, get weapon focus, rapid shot, a scope, matched ammunition, targeting lenses, special ammunition, and be plunking away for 4d4+3 damage at long range. Soldier gets weapon spec atop of that.The Martial Artist has to get in close (not always that difficult for the superspy, of course), and is doing 1d8+1.5str, assuming they've used their feats to get 5 basic fighting styles, 5 style adept, and are using punching basics.  Of course, the MA does have some very nice abilities -- his initiative especially (lower base than the soldier, but the bonus from the life of discipline), certaily combining the X basics (and later X mastery) abilities together can be very nice, as can be the reach, etc.  And dodge a bullet each round, woohoo! (if you can manage the reflex save)  But for the most part those feats are still limited in how many are useful per round, and since so many are required as prereqs, you're basically using a lot of feats up.   (and where are the Qigong feats? }<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyway, before I start rambling -- has anyone else played a MA here from PAC, and am I off my rocker, with vision clouded, or am I onto something?  I'm not thinking there needs to be some massive increase to the class -- the soldier is the ultimate fighting machine (with guns, and knives...), but a martial artist is a fearsome thing to behold in the spy movies.  S'more bonus feats, and/or gaining stances for free, or getting 5 style adept/etc for free when the appropriate 5 basic styles are taken... maybe more defence... and maybe more flexibility, such as having Wuxia being a 'ploy' (so you gain more ploy choices), and/or having ploys being able to be used as feat choices too, or the like.Now I am rambling.  }<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Awaiting thoughts,Kannik</blockquote>

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