Quilone/MMARequirementsAdvantages

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Requirements and Advantages of Mortal Martial Arts

In the section on Tiers of Schools I vaguely mentioned requirements of admission into schools. I wanted to expand upon this somewhat.
In the MMA system, I envisage a world where Martial Art schools are common, and where all three tiers co-exist. If Martial Arts are a driving force behind the world, I imagine that they have an impact on people's lives beyond simply giving them dots of the MA ability. They have many secondary effects, but also many secondary requirements.

These are split into two categories:

The Entrance requirements

A Sifu requires his students to have a pre-existing set of skills before Martial Art training may begin. At the most minimal level, this probably means:

1. The student must not be a cripple. (possesses all limbs in good working order.)
2. The student must be physically fit. (all physical stats at 2 or higher.)
3. The student must be able to perform and endure the physical training which is part of learning the martial art. (Athletics 1, Endurance 1.)
   

For a Tier 1 style, those would be fine requirements. The Lu Mao School is an example of a school which very generously will train people's bodies to this baseline for free. Obviously they can't do anything about cripples, but they might still teach them a few of the simpler moves anyway. Tier 2 is probably about as stringent, though athletics and endurance may need to be higher. Also, literacy (lore 1), poetic expression (knows the language as a native tongue, linguistics 1), certain Crafts, might also be tangential requirements. You can't learn Prismatic Arrangement of Flowers style if you don't have Craft (flower arrangement) 4 - indeed, it can perfectly well apply to XMA styles (or their mundane equivalents - see Quilone/MMAvsXMA). Tier 3 styles can ask for whatever the hell they want in terms of prerequisite abilities, obviously.

But more importantly, a school for martial arts isn't just a mill where people go in and come out knowing Gung Fu.

The Advantages of learning Martial Arts

It's a social environment following a philosophy, a community. Even the student learning from the isolated sifu has to perform tasks. The Player's Guide has a good explanation of this.
So, as I see it, if it's harder to learn Martial Arts, then there should also be some benefit besides becoming able to throw people through windows using your MA score. Those mantras might use rose petals as an analogy. But while the meaning behind them is for you to Beat People Up, on the surface you're still learning about flowers. Why shouldn't a student be able to use this knowledge later on? Similarly, the mind is trained as well as the body. Maybe a school is also a repository for history. Or the students of a school are adopted into a family which serves and protects the members of another family, but does so discreetly - requiring social skills at events and functions.

In a nutshell, every MMA style, as well as having requirements to learn it from a master, also gives the opportunity to learn new skills alongside it. These are determined per style (intrinsical lessons gained as part of learning it) and per location (maybe two masters stress different aspects). Characters should be able to justify raising these tangential abilities as part of their Martial Arts abilities, and in turn they may serve as prerequisites for other skills. This further helps each martial artist to look and feel unique, in the same way that a Dynast has a base skillset which makes her different from a Lookshy outcaste or a Forest Witch. It helps characters look at different skills, and makes those skills part of Martial Arts - sure, you might roll Martial Arts to do something stealthy in an Ebon Shadow-esque style, but learning to be stealthy is part of the Martial Arts training.

Charms and requirements

On a related note, it would be possible to make XMA charms have other ability requirements. I'm not sure who suggested that on the forums, but I liked the idea (or I might be imagining things. I'm afraid I can't remember names to give credit if not...). It shouldn't feel contrived, however, but a natural part of the progression. This hopefully will help it happen.