Martial arts

esran · 2013-06-13T20:45:29.000Z

so i found an npc who knows almost every martial arts. despite having no unarmed skill i kind of want to do martial arts because he can teach me unarmed combat anyway, and i have a bunch of mutations that boost unarmed combat.
i have a few questions though.
which martial arts styles are the best for general usage?
how does martial arts compare to similar skill with a nail bat?
does anarmed combat get bonuses from bashing skill?
how much unarmed combat do i need with a good style in order to be able to reliably kill hordes of zombies?
edit: actually he doesnt know nearly every style, he knows only a few styles but repeated multiple times on the teach screen, which is a really wierd bug. he knows viper, tai chi, leapord, muay thai, and karate. which of these should i learn?
edit: i dont quite have the ost recent sdl build, but in the sdl build i have learning martial arts crashes the game. in addition i overpayed fro training with an item worth of 4000 for a traing worth 200, and now he gives me all the training for free. except of course martial arts training because the game crashes if i try that.

halberdsturgeon · 2013-06-13T22:56:23.000Z

NPCs are heavily bugged in all builds, as far as I’m aware. I tried learning taekwondo from one the last time I played with NPCs activated and instead he taught me dodge. Over and over again, with no limit. I ended up with dodge at over 30. Anyway, don’t count on this working correctly; aside from cheating, the only reliable way of acquiring a martial art is to start with the Martial Artist trait.

esran · 2013-06-14T00:02:42.000Z

he taught me karate without crashing, but instead my character learned “capoere” which rrandomly adds “+attack” and “+dodge” after its name. it does ridiculous damage with 6 unarmed attack though.

KA101 · 2013-06-14T00:05:40.000Z

Guess I’ll have to finish that wiki page after all. It’s a work-in-progress, but it ought to provide some guidance.

(Briefly: Karate is good, Tai Chi only if you’re a ranged build, Viper/Leopard are sorta “meh” and Muay Thai looks pretty good. Capoeira gives bonuses based on movement: it’s a dance-based martial art out of Brazil, IIRC. Not bad to have, but I wouldn’t take it at chargen.)