Well, you do not keep that level of muscle tone without constantly working out in one form or another...
Before he was an MMA champion, he was a wrestler... his workout regiment was pretty brutal from what he described once in an interview... I imagine that is has not changed much since then...

Keep the Faith

Oh, I agree that TMAs aren't as useful for one-on-one ring fighting as a MMA, but MMA's were designed for cage fighting, while TMA's were designed for something else. Of course you're going to fight like a boxer when you get into a boxing ring, that's what the rules will favor. I've personally seen scary fighters come out of both modern and traditional training, so it's not the art that matters so much. It's the fighter.


Most people don't make it past the 3 month mark, in my experience, so anybody who dedicates themselves to hard training for a year is going to be a cut above. It's not fair to assume that the octagon is the best place to compare, anymore than it would be to take a grappler and put him in a sport TKD match to determine who's "better". LIke I said, both TMAs and MMAs train you to fight someone who fights exactly the same way you do. I've only encountered one art that didn't do that.

These two comments together boil down to my general opinion on the situation. Provided that your martial art features a lot of the damn near universal base skills, the rest of it largely comes down to being able to pick out what works for you in what situations and what doesn't. From what little I've admittedly seen, self-defense training's main advantage comes down to raw focus. By nature it seeks to cut out a lot of sport related things and rely on core moves that most anyone can perform.

With that said though, I try not to dismiss TMA and MMA out of hand. In many cases, there IS stuff in there that can really mess a guy up once you separate the wheat from the chaff. Further, since people generally perform how they practice, even self-defense training runs into the issue that some things cannot be fully practiced and replicated very well in a controlled environment. For example, there's really only so far you can take practicing gouges against a moving target. So beyond a certain point I suspect that conditioning, coordination and being mentally prepared to mess a guy up however you can counts for a lot, and often times that comes down to the person and not the details. For example, I've practiced self-defense stuff and my cousin does MMA, but for the most part I'd give him the edge in a "real" fight simply because he's a helluva lot meaner and generally more focused than I am.

Of course, my real practical experience with defending myself essentially boils down to the time I nailed a guy right in the ear and ran like hell, so what do I know?

Krav Maga. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

Hell, the martial art I studied is fairly young (Ishin-Ryu). We ddid however have a great instructor. He taught us the art of self-defense which covered how to defend yourself from attacks as well as how to avoid getting into situations where you could be attacked (situational awareness).

He also made it very clear that no amount of situational awareness and good judgement will keep you perfectly safe. Sometimes you will just have to fight. Of course, his lesson plan there was to settle for no less than putting the other person in the hospital. If you ended up in the hospital yourself, the other guy had best be in a body bag.

He also showed us the difference between tournament performance and real world performance. He also echoed some of the sentiments in this thread. It's perfectly permissible to fight dirty & underhanded in real life (sand in the eyes, kick to the junk, break a kneecap, etc). The object is to survive and escape the confrontation, not kill the aggressor and win bonus points. He expounded on the ideal that you fight hard enough to make the other guy want to stop and you do whatever is necessary to make that happen.

Ultimately, his students didn't start fights. They ended them. For my friends and I that attended his school, that philosophy was true.

BTW, it's not the style, it's the person. There's a saying that is pertinent to this thread... it's not the size of the dog in the fight. It's the size of the fight in the dog. The style is merely a tool. How well it works depends on the person wielding said tool. As such, it never hurts to have a full tool kit.

Someone give this man a cookie! That was brilliant, you get an ovation from me.

/you also owe me one new keyboard from the soda all over this one

I have to side with Falconer on this:



If you're tossing lots of dice around (and if you're spending BP on martial arts, chances are you've got big dice pools) then trading 4 dice for +4 DV is almost always going to be better than getting one measly extra die. Then there's all the other stuff Falconer listed (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)




Or Korean, apparently. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Or you can take "Ready Weapon as a free action." This can be used also to speed up thrown weapons and bows by 50%.


I took Tae Kwon Do for many years, I know it is Korean. I chose to use the Chinese/Japanese example to illustrate a point, not because I think Tae Kwon Do is either Chinese or Japanese.

I could have SWORN I was reading Bullshido for the first two pages of this thread. No lie.

It really does read that way.

I'll never understand why people -- or, rather, gamers in particular -- are so eager to be classified. Like if you're a gamer, you obviously can't also be an athlete, or a martial artist, or a shooter. If you're into gaming, obviously all you're allowed to know is gaming, and if you're talking about anything else, it's strange and feels like reading some other forum entirely.

Why is that?

Why's it so hard to believe that someone can like slinging around dice and also like other, more fundamentally worthwhile and constructive, pursuits as well? And that then, sometimes, someone can pipe up when their hobbies overlap?

Its not liking that matters, its the preachy attitude that matters. There is something about martial arts that seem to pull out the I'm cooler than you people, my kung fu is strong and your style is weak etc. It is also generally highly irrelevant to a game and yet people seem hell bent on making sure there knowledge of X martial art should change things in the game.

Honestly this thread has not been bad, but go to the martial art and melee weapon thread and you get more of it. I think it is such a common occurrence though that even mild appearances of it will be commented on in threads like these.

I didn't classify anyone. I just felt an immense sense of deja vu due to the way the thread went. Why? Because the guys on bullshido have threads like this all the time, since their forum is ostensibly about what is and is not effective. It says more about the narrow focus of Bullshido and how often I have read the same arguments before than it does about dumpshock.

Ditto. I have read this argument at LEAST three times there.

I think that if someone plays a lot of PnP or video games that have a lot of statistics and rules behind the scenes it is natural to assume that the games could shape the player's thinking. Little by little over the years you are going to get continual reinforcement to the ideas that all people must be exclusive specialists, and that things will happen and people will act with a certain degree of predictability derived from statistical tables.

ANd what's wrong with that? Many of the people on Bullshido really know their stuff. It's nice to see that we've got a few people of comparable knowledge floating around.

Oh, nothing. I just thought it was funny is all. I was actually confused for a moment, and had to look at the header to make sure I didn't click on the wrong bookmark!

This is the thing that I was interested in as well. As opposed to the two pages of internet battles over martial arts styles. Anyone?

So, back to the topic of Shadowrun and all, does everyone agree that Martial Arts gives a character benefits outside of melee?

In other words, can dice bonuses be used with ranged weapons, such as the +1 die for Called Shots to increase damage from Pentjak-Silat and Wildcat? If no, can the free action version of Take Aim only be used with melee in Krav Maga? If yes, awesome. Now every pistolero spends 10bp to practice shooting people in their nerve clusters.

I guess the next question would be, can you call a shot to increase damage for both weapons if you're splitting your dice pool for a two fisted attack? If yes, with the martial arts, does the dice penalty for the Called Shot get reduced evenly across both pools, or is it split too?

I mean, how nice would it be to Call a Shot with two burst-compensated Ruger Thunderbolts at once? 9DV+ hits times two in a single simple action is pretty choice. Combine with the Multi-Strike Maneuver to help with the hits. Best way I can think of to take a Shifter down in only half a single IP. Having to soak 10 DV which can't be regenerated twice in a pass from a single combattant is pretty much a Shifter's nightmare.

Technically, the answer is: Yes, you can. The rules don't differentiate between a Called Shot in melee or at range.

In practice, many GM's are going to hit that rule with the nerf bat real quick.

I wouldn't, but I don't mind a more high-flying style of Shadowrun. YMMV.

As a GM, I'd say Martial arts bonuses apply when you're actually using that martial art. I'm not going to give you your Jiujitsu bonus to using a sniper rifle, and I'm not going to give you a krav maga bonus for pistols.

Even though Krav Maga specifically is designed to integrate (either to wield, or to defend against) firearms at melee-combat ranges? So much so that it offers up an offset to the ranged combat "attacker in melee" penalty? Just what weapons can you ready as a free action, then, in your version of Krav Maga?

Evidently nothing, which would bring Krav Maga back in line with the rest of the martial arts.

..because those do nothing as well?

Great way to spend BP/Karma.

As a GM, you should really read the rules, then. Because they don't do what you seem to think they do.

If that were true, I would see your point...but it isn't.

@RVD, sometimes RAW makes sense, sometimes it doesn't.