TH SUMMER 2020 BREAK OFF: Martial Arts
Break out topic for things that didn't make it onto Agenda

"Martial Arts, why is this skill so much worse than Brawling, and how do we fix it?"

"I think Floki's topic would be interesting to discuss, and I also want to know if there's anything that can be done to make Martial Arts as a skill less of a joke than it currently is. I think something like making it compatible with certain cybernetic weapons would make it a decent equvialent to Brawling."

"I Also would like to discuss how martial arts is also much worse than Brawling and what can be done if anything to help improve it, if anything at all. Or perhaps it is fine."

"I'd also like to see some more discussion on how martial arts can be improved, especially things such as a cyberknux equivalent and more weapons options for martial artists other than the staff (even if they are stastically identical) to differentiate the styles."

Brawling is a stand alone skill, with its own stats attached. These stats are NOT the same stats that you typically use with Martial Arts. This means that the stats that make you good at Brawling are in general, different than the stats that make you good at Martial Arts/weapon fighting.

Martial Arts is a support skill. It uses the same general stats that most weapons and other skills like long/short_blade, pistol, rifle, melee, etc. use. This means that investing in Martial Arts is much cheaper, because you have all the supporting stats already.

Martial Arts as a skill will never be as good or do as much damage as other weapon based or brawling based skills. It is not intended to. Martial Arts is a skill to give you a fighting chance if you are unarmed, or coming out of the vats.

There is no plan to change this, it is working as intended.

If Martial Arts is a support skill, my main question is... Why?

IRL, martial arts are basically a more effective form of brawling. MMA is filled with muay thai, judo and wrestling. The only reason apparent in your post is because it shares stats with other common weapon types and is therefore 'cheaper' to get. And I guess that's fair enough, even if it doesn't make much sense IC.

But if this is the case, it really needs to be made clear ingame, because nowhere is it mentioned that Martial Arts is a support skill or not as strong as other weapon types, until you're already in the dome and possibly spent skills/advantages on it.

One simple reason why MA is support is "You never lose your weapon"

The stats that matter for brawling and the stats that matter for other weapons have some overlap, but they're not the same stats. Brawling characters have spent a lot of UE in stats that are primary stats pretty much only for brawling.

Still, I think making clear that Martial Arts aren't balanced as a primary combat skill is important for folks making characters. Maybe on the archetype page.

I think it's fair to at least have a blurb in the help file that martial arts are considered a 'support' or secondary skill.

Please add big bold text that's hard to miss, overlook, or ignore on the help files for the skill stating it's a supporting skill and not intended to match up to other 'mainline' combat skills, please, please, please.

Just so players OOCly/ICly know that MA is designed to be used to supplement other combat skills, and not be something you want to base your entire character identity off.

I hate thinking people are chasing a rabbit and that they just need to get harder, better, faster, meaner at slap-boxing and keep dumping more time into it when they'd get better returns elsewhere.

That said: so long as it's clearly outlined as a supporting combat skill? I think it's in a perfectly fine place where it is now. Some cool additional thematic weapons down the road might be nice, but now that we know it's apples and oranges we're comparing when talking brawling vs MA? I think that's great that it's been spelled out to us.

I know MA is now revealed to be a support skill, but I still feel like MA should be at least as strong as brawling, make it a standalone skill, maybe? Instead of focusing on stats that also encompass other weapon types, make it a standalone skill as I feel like it's impossible to just be pretty successful as a martial arts master. Maybe make martial arts have higher scaling (whatever you want to call it) with skill (since MA in real life is more focused on skill and technique than power) and maybe make it use intelligence for a stat (again, since martial arts use skill and technique)...

Nevermind chargen. There are no skills that give you OOC clues what they're for, how they're used, or what stats you need.

What's missing here is the IC knowledge. Every skill is learned IC. The IC mentorship should be the channel via which this information is given, and, now, there's no reason for anybody who's in a position to give it, not to.

I think people have been avoiding (not entirely, but largely) using their IC position to just come out and say "Martial arts is limited, you're gonna want a synergizing weapon too." Because, their players have been thinking that something was broken.

Now that we all know it's not, let's go ahead and use the same IC voice that we use for:

- Teaching guns

- Teaching decking

- Teaching securetech

- Teaching roof jumping

- Teaching everything

I'm not sure I understand your point, beandip. How is finding out IC going to help someone who wrote martial arts as part of their history, statted around it only to then find out it's not meant to be used as a standalone weapon skill?

FOIC is fine, but character gen needs to be crystal clear and there are already drives for other elements of it to be tweaked, like job availability, UE, etc. Imagine writing a character as a hopeful gunslinger only to find out handguns are designed to compliment other weapons and are outperformed by rifles in every way?

Too bad, should've asked IC whilst in character gen. I don't want to rant too much, but in my experience, explaining OOC mechanics IC has never been interesting for me. It's just awkward, short conversations that lead nowhere and feel forced to the point that a lot of times players just say fuck it and use OOC. There are many things ingame that should be hidden and involve fun RP finding out, but stats and skills just lead to frustration 99% of the time.

I remember having this problem before when I realized an element of stealth did not operate in a way that would seem the most logical. It was not fun finding out, it didn't lead to good RP, and affected my character negatively IC because of an OOC thing.

FOIC isn't to gatekeep. It's to create RP.

Martial arts is its own skill. You should not compare it to Brawling just like you should not compare Pistols vs. Rifles.

It is its own skill with its set of pros vs. cons. Saying that Brawling is superior in every sense is simply misinformation. While Slither says that MA is meant to be used as a support skill, there have been many extremely efficient combat characters who relied on MA alone and still outdid their armed counterparts. So to me this seems like people are complaining about:

- A skill they never used

- A skill they weren't even good at in the first place

- A skill that will OBVIOUSLY be inferior when you bring weapons and firearms into the equation (don't bring Taijutsu into a carbine shootout)

I believe it's fine as is.

Sly,

Maybe if you sought proper mentoring before deciding to invest UE you wouldn't have been frustrated... There's no way we tell players via OOC mediums, "ok if you want to be a badass Jackie Chan, invest X and Y here and there." Much like real life, it doesn't work that way.

It's absurd to think in a very minmaxy way where we look for the "best skill". The best skill doesn't exist, every skill is extremely circunstancial. And it is also not helpful to think we should balance them all to be equally powered across the board. Imagine heavy weapons existed: should a RPG be as efficient as a pistol just for the sake of balance? Or vice versa? You know the answer to this.

Initial experience is negligible and a good chunk of experience can be eventually reversed with a justified respec. Also, you can booth and re-roll always if you are that frustrated.

There are plenty of skills which even if a character has had previous experience in before entering the city, they work differently in Withmore and hence there is no 'Me or my character should have known how this or that works' beforehand. Even the most skilled chargen character is essentially a promising rookie at best.

I think the issue here is that its a combat skill and that it works differently than people expect, but with due diligence and field testing this should become apparent in time to its users.

As mentioned repeatedly, asking for guidance be it by mentor or paydata or whatnot is one of the fastest ways to better understand how your character and the game world works.

And as much as I would love to see some MA cyber like 'shock tonfas' or a 'laser whip', I understand the possible reason for them not existing is that it would upset the game's balance.

I'm not sure how this doesn't make sense.

We have weapon based skills like long blade, melee, short blade, pistol, rifle...

Those do more damage because they use weapons.

Brawling does more damage with brass knux or synth knux and damage on par with martial arts, maybe a little less (depends on some other stuff) when you are unarmed.

Martial arts has bo staffs, which do more damage.

I'm not interested in making either of these better. What's the point of melee if martial arts is basically martial arts + melee weapons?

You are never unarmed when you have MA or Brawling, which is the advantage of this skill over something like pistol, which can do more damage but requires a weapon.

I never said we wouldn't consider cyberware for MA or other skills, I said we weren't interested in engaging with a conversation about how to 'fix' something that isn't broken.

If we had a combat system that more appropriately handled range while in the same room, meaning I could pull out a gun and shoot at you for 2 combat rounds before you closed the distance to hit me, we might have a different conversation about the amount of damage MA or Brawling does, but we don't, and thus, we need to balance things as such.

I posted this to shoot down the idea that all combat skills are INTENDED to do the same amount of damage or be on par with each other. They aren't just flavor. They literally do different things with different damages intended for different situations. Nothing is stopping you from being proficient in multiple skills.

I will look around for a good place to state this information and add it in, generally speaking.

(Edited by Slither at 6:27 pm on 8/10/2020)

Well, I think that it makes sense that it's not balanced to be the same. It's reassuring to know that's a matter of intention. However, as a sort of 'backup' I think MA chrome would be very nice. It wouldn't necessarily 'balance' it to be the same as Brawling, but would put it on a level playing field of applicability as a true backup skill.