Martial arts as they’re now are great. Unfortunately they are immensly inflexible and don’t lend each other’s teachings to your character in a meaningful way except for the one you’re currently using. Realistically speaking someone would be able to blend aspects of the teachings of the styles they know into everything else they do.
So I ask this: Is it possible to make each learned martial art add a small aspect of its teachings to the character in general when you’re not using a specific style? It’s not like the character forgets them when they’re not actively using the style.
I was thinking along the lines of this:
Character knows karate and judo.
While not actively using a martial art, gain +1 dodge after each attack and lower the chance of a character getting downed.
Or:
Character knows ninjutsu, brawling, and muay thai.
While not actively using a martial art, gain silent attacks, the ability to counter, and a slight buff to damage done against large opponents.
Basically the character loses a lot of the martial art’s abilities when not actively using them but they gain a small part of them in the rest of what they do, to the end point of giving an incentive to learn as many styles as the player can in order improve their character in a generalized sense. The arts themselves would still be massively preferred in the situations they are best at, but at the same time a character would want to seek out many of them.
I like this idea, but it fails to address the fact that you can master a martial art in an afternoon. It takes months to become skilled enough to actually fight with a martial art, years to be considered a master in a particular art. It’s possible to meld styles (MMA) but you’re not mastering a particular art at that point, you’re practicing MMA.
As an alternative, what about a way to automatically drop into a preferred martial art based on what you’re wielding at the time combat begins. Sometimes you find yourself with a weapon in hand that doesn’t suit your current martial art, having the survivor switch to a better stance for the weapon on hand could save your life. We can already do this manually, but anything to cut down on keypresses is a bonus in my book.
The system you described would just encourage pokemon style gameplay to farm the passive bonuses. “Gotta catch em all!”
So what you’re saying is that every martial art you learn should go through stages of mastery once you learn them and upgrade as you use them? Like learn karate in a couple of days, get karate(novice), use karate for a couple of months, have karate(novice) turn into karate(intermediate) and so on until karate(master), with each step giving you progressively more martial profficiency with that style?
I like it but that doesn’t adress that the character essentially forgets the teachings of the art if they’re not actively using it. Perhaps once you’re at a martial art’s (master) stage then you’ll be able to pick certain aspects of it and mix it with another one you’ve mastered into a style of your own. Perhaps 4 effect slots max for your custom style that you can take from the various arts you might know and a preferred weapon type? Hmm…
We’ve already got skill rust, it could be applied to a martial arts system in some way as well. Hopefully with the option to turn it off
The advantage of some kind of skill progression applied to martial arts would be to force the player to put some thought into which arts they want to specialize in, rather than just learning every single one they come across in a week or two. I’m not a fan of the slots system you described, that feels like something that could go in as a bionic on top of or besides the CQB cbm. I can’t think of a valid alternative right now…food is calling me…
wasnt brawling an all round style that can use all weapons? (i remember it only being good after reaching level 3 of unarmed or melee skill).
And other thing is the way one plays, i always play ranged, so the taekwondo martial art is good enough, they get near, stun kick em and run to shoot them, repeat
Other way would be making other martial arts and divide them in a main play style, like X martial art is stealth based, Y martial art is melee based, and Z martial art is tank based.
Now adding a ranged style martial art would be good and refreshing
Uh, well, there are martial arts avaliable for spears (pretty sure they are from the Historical Martial Arts mod), and I think the moves and buffs apply to reach attacks as well. That’s about as ranged as it gets before you require a form of projectile based weaponry. Upon reaching that point, I hesitate to believe it could be considered a martial art. Unless, I suppose, you are thinking of something like Equilibrium’s “gun kata” which, while largely fictional and of dubious merit, could be an interpretation of a martial art which improves aiming speed and dodging.
Regarding a way to automatically drop into a preferred martial art based on what you’re wielding:
Saving on keys pressed would be great, but I sense conflicts. For example, a character knows 2+ MAs, and multiple of them support the use of their currently wielded cudgel. Which martial art does the system choose? I suppose calculating the time to kill a targeted creature for PC wielding X using martial art Y is an option. Cumbersome and full of math, my dreaded enemy, but an option. Or, randomisation could work. I would settle for that, but I am lazy.
My concern with adding passive bonuses is that it would make martial arts OP, especially if you learn more and more.
If I recall correctly, the CQB CBM replaces all known martial arts with bionic combatives, judo, and karate. Bionic Combatives also kind of sucks unless you have a monomolecular blade installed, which is a fairly gruesome weapon on its own. Why not just give BC a few moves or buffs from Judo and Karate instead? Grab breaks definitely jump to mind.
Hm, maybe making a mod for tweaking bionic combat to contain some of the more noteworthy passives and utility moves present in other martial arts could be a good way to test whether or not blending martial arts would be OP. It could also make the CQB CBM a more attractive option.
i was thinking more along the lines for example a “martial art” for sniping, that give bonuses if yo dont move for certain amount of time or rounds, or the same for a bow that lets you shot a “charged shot”, i would dare to say something for guns and throwing weapons, but those feels that are falling in the gun kata realm
The ranged weapon code path and the melee weapon code are entirely separate and the ranged weapon code path does not include support for techniques. Changing that would involve a fair bit of C++ programming.
yeah, just found out on the discord channel, so maybe adding a whip with long reach (i have been informed that reach attacks of melee weapons are affected by techniques too, correct me if i understood it wrong) or maybe waiting to see if ricky_van adds whips with his mods and work with those.
Thought of adding a martial art for throwing weapons that added bonuses helping the the throw (like adding dex for a turn so the throw has better aim), but got that idea shot down too
