MartialArts/MACreationGuide

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On Celestial Styles

As posted by Rebecca Borgstrom on RPG.net, (quoted by Kirin, Wikied by DaveFayram, reorganized by Wohksworth, et certa,) regarding creating new martial arts styles:

Off the top of my head, creating a martial arts style:

  • 1. Create the student techniques---the things you learn before the Form. These aren't very powerful, but have imagery fundamental to the style. I recommend that these be Essence 1-2, Martial Arts 2-3. Look at some Charms with similar requirements to see the basic power level.
    • 1a. Pick one that everyone learns first. Either the most defining or the weakest---ideally, both.
    • 1b. Arrange the others in a mini-tree after that, however you like. Note that requirements should always stay the same or increase as you follow the tree, though---it's almost always silly to have an Essence 1 Charm that requires an Essence 2 Charm to learn, for example.
  • 2. Create the Form. Assume that every serious practitioner of the style invokes the form when fighting. Complete the sentence: People fear the warriors who practice Triple Goddess Style Martial Arts because ..., making them undefeatable!
People fear the practitioners of Hungry Ghost Style because they feed off their enemies' strength, making them undefeatable!
Who could defeat a student of Snake Style? They strike like a serpent! They fill their enemies with too much dread to fight! Truly, they are invincible!
Once you have completed the sentence, realize it in mechanics in a way that creates a persistent advantage. It shouldn't have flashy F/X, because that'll get boring through repetition. It should have F/X that can be stunted flashily, though.
I recommend Ess2/MA4, Ess2/MA5, or Ess3/MA4 as a requirement for the Form. It requires all of the student techniques. It should be of an appropriate power level for a scene-length Charm with its Essence and MA requirements.
  • 3. Create increasingly advanced techniques. 6 or so is good. These have increased requirements over the form---up to Ess3/MA5. Arrange these as you like. Completely unrelated techniques should be down different paths. The base of these paths is the Form.
  • 4. Create a finishing move, Ess4/MA 5 or so, to mark the deadliest masters of the style. This requires all the Charms in the tree.
  • 5. Choose weapons that the style treats as equivalent to unarmed attacks, if any. Choose acceptable armor, if any.
  • 6. Check and make sure that you have all of these that you want for the style: \\
A way to do Lethal damage barehanded; a way to parry Lethal barehanded; a dice adder; a solid defensive benefit; a solid offensive benefit.
  • 7. Set Essence (and possibly Willpower and/or Health Level) costs by checking against somewhat comparable Charms. Don't make a Charm more efficient than Excellent Strike or Hungry Tiger Technique.

There are probably some considerations I've forgotten.

Rebecca

On Sidereal Styles

Notes on Designing a new Sidereal Level Martial Art
Rebecca Borgstrom 10-18-2003 01:19 AM

Ess4/MA5 is a typical starting place for the pre-Form Charms. The form is Ess5/MA5. It is probably difficult to go much below that and still have a Sidereal-level Martial Art. If the tree starts with Ess3/MA4, for instance, then it is a strong celestial-level Martial Art. You might give it some sort of perk, but not on the level of the sutras.

Structurally, a secret style has more Charms below the Form than a typical celestial martial art. This represents two things: first, greater utility for low-Essence students; second, the increased complexity of the Form itself.

Sutras are reserved for Sidereal styles, because they're basically adaptive prayer strip technology. Feel free to write them, if a Sidereal designed the style, but a style that gives a special benefit to Solars or Lunars will use a mechanism and benefit of a different style. I think it would be neat to see a discussion of the many different kinds of things this would be. I don't take a position on whether Solar and Lunar and Abyssal styles at this level are possible. (Note that one reason I included sutras is to create a third option---that anyone can make this level of style once they get the right Essence level, but only Sidereals get the sutra benefit. It's really up to you until Geoff says otherwise.)

Remember that a Sidereal-designed style is made for a purpose. Often, it's to compensate for a weakness in the user or their Charm set. A high-end Solar-designed style would probably be much more an outgrowth of the person, and would probably enhance strengths more than compensate for weaknesses.

The Charms in a Sidereal-level Martial Art---like any Charm, to an extent, and particularly any Martial Arts Charm---deviate from the standard rules of the game. In this, you need to watch for a couple of different traps. First, make sure the rules still work afterwards. It would have been nice to write Charm Redirection Technique as "you can use one of an enemy's Charms against him or herself", but you would have heard the rules set breaking in half as soon as you put the book on your table. Second, and more subtly, make sure not to add layers of complexity that you will have to observe forever after when thinking about new Charms. I tend to think of this as the Mega-Damage problem. If you expand the power of the game in the wrong directions, you're going to start needing a new "class" of attack, damage, and defense, to handle the interactions of high-powered Charms. I'm hoping that any eventual First Age book manages to avoid this, and you should *definitely* try to avoid it until then. This imposes a kind of invisible fence around the way Charms work, because it means that perfect effects have to represent the end of a tree, or at least a development path---once you start getting into perfect stuff, you don't have anywhere to go. So you have to be tricky.

Remember to have a strong mood. This not only makes the Charms more fun to write, but it's Martial Arts' disadvantage---the Charms are exploring a principle or idea, not just building competence. So they're less efficient at building competence than a set of ordinary Charms of their power level really could be.

Remember to keep the Charms combat-focused if you think that's important. There are some people who are okay with Martial Arts branching out to do anything and everything; and there are some people who aren't. If you *don't* want it doing everything, be careful not to get too enthusiastic and have people using their Form Charms for persistent social bonuses and so forth. It's easy to fall into that. :) I tried to walk a middle ground, but in your game, probably either you want them to be pure combat or you want them to be do-anything. Keep that choice in mind when you're working on stuff.

The apparent naming structure for styles at this level is (Color) (Collective Noun) of (Passive Noun), with an alternate name of (Concept).

Rebecca

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