Chapter 4 - Martial Arts

# Chi and Martial Arts

This section is for those of you who want to play a monk, or some sort of highly trained martial artist. A highly trained martial artist is considered to be someone who has trained almost solely in the martial arts for years. This isn't someone who has taken a weekend class at the local guy's karate class. These are people who have dedicated and directed their lives according to the teachings of a master. Martial Arts are a specialized form of unarmed combat. Martial Artists are highly trained fighters who have learned to focus the mystical power of the universe, known as Chi, into their attacks. Remember that little stat back in chapter 2? This is where I explain the Chi system. Monks and highly trained martial artists choose their martial arts abilities before they can use them kinda like choosing spells. The amount of Chi rating you have above 1 is the potential amount that you can put into the damage of the attack. It’ll become clearer as I explain more.

As I stated earlier martial artists must choose their attacks much like a wizard chooses spells. The martial arts maneuvers are explained below.

# Punch Maneuvers

Punch maneuvers are martial arts moves that involve the monk using his fist to attack the enemy. The types of punch maneuvers are as follows

## Physical Damage

The punch attack does damage to the victims Life points. For each point of Chi focused into this maneuver, the attack does one more point of damage.

## Spiritual Damage

This punch attack doesn’t damage the Life points of the victim, instead attacking the victims Intelligence. For each point of Chi focused into this attack reduces the victims Intelligence by one. If during the course of the battle, the victims Intelligence reaches zero, then the victim falls unconscious.

## Speed

Instead of increasing damage, Chi increases the speed of the attack. For each point of Chi focused into the attack, the monk can perform one additional attack directly following the previous attack. So focusing 3 points into the Punch: Speed attack allows the monk to perform four rapid punches for normal damage.

## Chi Attack

The monk uses this particularly nasty punch maneuver to block his opponents own Chi. For each point of Chi focused into the attack the monk can block the use of one Chi point by the opponent for the rest of the battle.

## Elemental Attack

The monk focuses Chi into this maneuver to make his attack do elemental damage. The element is chosen when this maneuver is taken. For each Chi focused into this attack it does an extra point of elemental damage. The monk’s fist takes on characteristics of the element that he chose. For a flame elemental attack his fist may be surrounded by flames or for an earth element his fist may actually become stone for the attack. The effect is ultimately up to the player.

# Kick Maneuvers

Kick Maneuvers are martial arts maneuvers that involve the monk using his feet or knees to perform the attack. The kick maneuvers are as follows

# Meditative Maneuvers

Meditative maneuvers are performed when the monk sits and relaxes to enter a meditative state. These are not attack maneuvers but more used for healing or rest or spiritual insight. The meditative maneuvers are listed below.

## Healing

The monk enters a trance. While not completely oblivious to the world around him, if he is interrupted then the Chi spent is lost. For each point of Chi focused into the healing meditation the monk heals one point of damage. This can be performed for as long as the monk has time.

## Curing

This meditation is different than the Healing one. This meditation is used to purge the body of toxins or debilitating spell effects. Again, the monk must be able to relax and enter the state so performing this in battle is definitely out. For each point of Chi focused into this meditation the monk can neutralize one level of toxins or reduce the spell effect by one level. For example if a level five Poison spell is cast on the monk, after the battle he can enter the curing meditation and spend five Chi to neutralize the poison.

## Body Enhancement

The monk enters the meditative state and focuses Chi into his body to boost one or more of his attributes temporarily. He can only spend as many Chi points on this meditation as his rating is at. While most other meditations allow for Chi to refresh, this meditation can only be used once. So if your Chi rating if 3, then you only have 3 points to allocate to enhancing your body. Also, the Chi spent enhancing your body is considered “invested”, meaning that it is unavailable until you cancel the effects. So if you have 3 Chi and spend 2 to enhance your Endurance, then you only have 1 Chi left to spend until you cancel the effects of the Body Enhancement.

## Body to Chi

There’s no other real way to put this power into words. By entering the meditative trance you convert your Life points temporarily into Chi. For each Life point spent you gain one Chi for an hour. Your Life points won’t return until either the hour is up or you spend the Chi. This effect is because your body wasn’t meant to harness that much cosmic energy at once. Beware burning too much of your body at once for while you may have incredible stores of Chi at your disposal, you’re not as hardy as you normally are. This is the only meditation that can be performed in battle.

# Choosing and Upgrading Maneuvers

Now that I’ve explained the different maneuvers it’ll be a little easier to explain choosing and upgrading your maneuvers. When you create your character you can choose as many maneuvers as you have Chi rating. Note that this only applies to Monks or similarly trained martial artists, people who have spent their lives learning how to focus Chi. For example, if you have a Chi rating of 4 you can choose four maneuvers. So say we make our four maneuvers Punch: Physical Damage, Meditation: Body Enhancement, Kick: Spiritual Damage and Meditation Healing. All maneuvers start at a rank of one. The rank of a maneuver determines how much Chi you can focus into it. If you only have a rank of one then you can only focus one Chi into the attack. As you gain levels you can increase the rank of maneuvers. For each level you gain you can increase two maneuvers by one or gain one new maneuver. Please note that I stated two maneuvers by one point. You cannot gain more than one rank in a maneuver per level.

Another word on Chi. Your Chi replenishes every four combat rounds, or one minute, so use your Chi wisely. There can and will be many more possible maneuvers, but mostly I’ll leave those up to the imaginations of the players and the GM, since they’re what this game really revolves around.

# Combination Attacks

This system as I envision it will allow for the player to create elaborate combination attacks. When your monk gains a level you can choose to either gain the level increase to your current maneuvers, or you can combine two maneuvers that you already have into a new combination maneuver. For example

*If you have the punch maneuver speed and the elemental attack maneuver, you can combine them into a new maneuver so your extra attacks that you get from speed inflict elemental damage. You have to make the choice to gain the levels to your current arts or make a new one because you will have spent the time creating your new move instead of practicing your old ones.*

The mastery level for this new maneuver starts at the average of your two existing maneuvers, rounding down. So in the example above, if your speed maneuver was level 5 and your elemental attack maneuver was level 3, then the new combination maneuver will start at level 4.

# A Word from the Author

While this system seems to be just more stuff to throw in to fill space, just try it out. You’ll find out how fun it is to come up with new and unusual combinations and to make up your own fighting style essentially. That, and as I’ve stated so many times previously in this book, it’s all about making things fun and interesting and fleshing the character out. I used rules similar to this when I was running this world as an AD&D game. The player of Jonas Earthfist started off thinking that this concept was probably the worst conceived waste of player time that he’d seen. Once he started playing around with it however he started making up his own fighting style based around just a few standard maneuvers. So as I’ve stated, while not entirely advantageous, it is merely fun to come up with new combinations and such. And isn’t fun really what playing an RPG is supposed to be about