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The Lu Mao School (Tier 1)

History

This school was founded by Lu Mao in the wake of the Contagion, under tutelage and inspiration from a river god who had helped protect the surviors of the Fair Folk invasion from bandits and stray hobgoblins.
He created a style accessible to many - the Sitting Heron style, otherwise known as Tai-jendo. Through the centuries, it has been passed down via successive generations of masters, and has a firm rooting in the River Province where it is taught to average people on a daily basis.

Minimum Requirements

None*

*Teachers of this school will accept any healthy students and bring them into shape enough for practice - typically, raising Athletics to 1, dexterity to 2 and endurance to 1, if these were lower to begin with. (Characters must still spend experience to raise these abilities, naturally). Students may learn Martial Arts concurrently to this, but gain no benefit from the ability until the exercises are complete, which typically takes a month assuming normal conditions.

Style

Tai-jendo consists of a series of arm-locks and throws designed to subdue, rather than harm, an opponent.

Moves and benefits

All levels

Practitioners gain the ability to perform clinches and throws using their Martial Arts score.

The required Martial Arts score for each level is equal to the rating of the level.

1: Initiate

(A)
Initiates gain +1 to their clinch and throw dice pools when using this style.

2: Student

(B) - Requires: A
The student gains the ability to force an opponent to the floor while maintaining a clinch, inflicting the penalties for fighting prone on his opponent without suffering them himself. Treat this as an opposed Strength + Martial Arts roll against the opponent's Strength + Athletics made after the student has won control of a clinch. A single success means the opponent has been forced to the ground.

(C) - Requires: A
The student may now use her Martial Arts ability to block attacks using the standard statistics for fists.

3: Expert

(D) - Requires: any Student level skill.
The character's clinch attempts continue to do no damage, but the expert may now inflict -1 dice pool penalties instead of health levels using the standard rules for inflicting clinch damage. The hold must be maintained for these penalties to persist, but they explicitly apply to the rolls made to oppose the clinch. Continue to roll for each character in the clinch, and reapply the penalties on a turn by turn basis. If the opponent's dice pool is reduced to 0, the expert may continue to control the clinch indefinitely. This abilty does not work on opponents whose Brawl or Martial Arts ability (if applicable) is higher than the expert's Martial Arts score.

(E) - Requires: B
If the expert wins a clinch roll, she may choose to inflict the fighting prone penalty on her opponent without actually having to force him to the ground. This does not require a roll.

(F) - Requires B, C
The expert may, on a successful parry using Martial Arts at -2 dice, choose to initate a clinch, requiring a successful Dexterity + Martial Arts clinch roll (at -3 dice) immediately opposed by the attacker's player. If the expert's opponent has actions left, she may use them to dodge or parry this clinch as usual. The expert may abort to this skill as a defensive action but his player must declare so before making the roll. Using this skill counts as splitting a dice pool. Alternately, the character's player may opt to reserve this skill over two consecutive actions, in which case the normal dice pool penalties for splitting actions apply.

Disadvantages

• Practitioners gain no training in punches or kicks, and their clinches do no damage. They must use another ability or style to make such moves, following the rules for mixing styles.
  

The rules for mixing styles are tentatively as follows:

A mortal may not split actions between different styles on the same turn unless she has a martial arts rating at least one higher than the highest ability requirement of the skills used. Splitting dice pools between martial arts and another combat ability such as Melee or Thrown is also possible under these rules: simply compare the character's Martial Arts score versus the martial arts skill involved.

• Tai-jendo does not confer any skill with any weapon of any kind.
• As a Tier 1 style, even masters are regarded with scorn by 'real' martial artists. Knowledge of this style cannot confer any rating in the Face background.

Example characters

I'm using Power Combat stats for these, by the way.

Average Student
Attributes
Physical: 2/2/2
Social: 2/2/2
Mental: 2/2/3
(either dexterity or wits at 3)

Abilities
Athletics 2, Awareness 1, Brawl 1, Craft (primary profession) 2, Dodge 1, Endurance 1, Martial Arts 2, Presence 1, Socialise 1

Styles Tai-jendo 2
Skills: A, B, C

Initative: 5
Dodge pool: 3 (or 4)
Willpower 4
Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 2, Temperance 2, Valor 2
Fist (brawl) spd 5 acc 4 dam 2B def 5 rate 5
Clinch (MA) spd 0 acc 5 dam 0B def 5 rate 1

Local master of the style
Attributes
Physical: 3/3/3
Social: 2/2/2
Mental: 3/2/3

Abilities
Athletics 3, Awareness 2, Brawl 1, Dodge 3, Endurance 2, *Martial Arts 4 (Tai-jendo +1), Presence 2, Resistance 2, Socialise 2
*Favored ability

Styles Tai-jendo 3
Skills: all skills

Initative: 6
Willpower 5
Virtues: Compassion 2, Conviction 3, Temperance 2, Valor 2
Fist (MA) spd 6 acc '0' dam 0B def 10 rate 5 Clinch (MA) spd 0 acc 9 dam 0B* def 9 rate 1 *inflicts a -1 penalty instead of each health level of damage. Throw (MA) spd 0 acc 9 dam 2B (+1B/2 successes) def - rate 1

That would be a complete style for use with Complex integration. Note that it caps at 3 dots, which sounds about right for a tier 1 style, to me. Say each level costs 3*current rating to raise (aribitrary value for tier 1...tier 2 could be 4* and tier 3, 5*) and [level] exp per skill - that's 11 experience for our 'average student' mook, and 23 experience for the master, who happens to be a Heroic Mortal. That's probably a little too linear in this example (it should take a bit more experience to get the master bits - it's too close to half and half here), but experience is something that only playtesting will figure out. Considering that this isn't a particularly powerful style (it's decidedly defensive with the +2 defense fists in power combat), I think that's probably about right...for a mortal game. Mastery in 23 experience. A tier 2 style, with 4 dots of levels, and a similar skill spread (1-2-3-4), would cost 50 experience to master. That's probably as much as an average mortal might get in a lifetime, if he's lucky.
At the Middle level I think the style would give a +1 bonus to dicepools involving clinches, including throws. It's possible that Middle level might do with a little more power, actually - will have to see.