 Munchkin-Fu |
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 Sep 10 2005, 04:56 AM
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#1
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Target  Group: Members Posts: 64 Joined: 17-December 04 Member No.: 6,886  |
Specializations. Munchkin joy.
1) Unarmed has a specialization of 'Martial Arts'. Is there ever a time when this _wouldn't_ apply, getting 2 dice for everything except cyber-implants? 2) Pistols has a specialization of 'Semi-Automatics'. And what does everybody use 90% of the time? |
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Sep 10 2005, 05:08 AM
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#2
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Grumpy Old Ork Decker Group: Admin Posts: 3,794 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Orwell, Ohio Member No.: 50 |
Unarmed Combat was always a wonky one regarding specialization,and always annoyed me, even in older editions... the Martial arts rules in Connon Companion helped a little, but still... I generally just disallowed Specializations for those.
For 4th ed, I'm going to allow them, but it has to be for specific situations. Generally Defensive or Offensive, which means they wouldn;t get their extra dice about half the time. For Pistols, I'll have to check that out when I get home. I had thought that Specializations for this sort of thing were supposed to be weapon specific... So you could Specialize in Ares Predator IV or Ruger Warhawk. But yeah, as a GM, I generally treat specializations very carefully... Plus,my players are all well aware of my rule of "You abuse it,I abuse it back." Specializations and Sniper Rifles are fine and Dandy, until the bad guys starting using them against you. Bull |
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Sep 10 2005, 05:22 AM
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#3
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
It also probably should not apply in Parrying or Subduing combat. In other words, you only get those dice when doing an offensive attack with Unarmed combat rather than using it defensively in parrying or using it for Shock hands or Subduing combat. You should, as a GM or prospective player, put further restrictions on it as well (only in open areas, only when both hands and feet are usable, whatever). Just like making a new Geas in MitS.
Well, you can't use Tasers, Revolvers, and other pistol-like weaponry that fall in the skill. But since Machine Pistols have been folded into Automatics, yes, there is very little point in getting anything other than Semi-Automatics, unless you are a Revolver specialist like my Dwarf Gunslinger Adept. :)
Specializations almost amount to "free +2" dice, in terms of low Karma cost and the fact that it raises value as the skill increases. *shrugs* Considering the penalties that can accrue for both of those skills in combat, you'll probably need as many dice as you can get. |
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Sep 10 2005, 05:30 AM
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#4
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 458 Joined: 12-April 04 From: Lacey, Washington Member No.: 6,237 |
If you select a martial art as a specialization, I'd rule that you can attack with the bonus all the time. However, you may not defend with the bonus unless your opponent is using the same martial art. Each style has different preferences and attitudes - some work well for long range, others for close in work. But practitioners of an art are at their highest level of performance working within their own comfort zone. Almost by definition, when the other guy is initiating some foreign attack you'll be outside your comfort zone.
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Sep 10 2005, 06:05 AM
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#5
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
That's not remotely reasonable. Better to just ban martial arts as a specialization in favour of things that are, y'know, actually balanced, but none of those things are outside the ken of "martial arts", nor even outside the areas of certain specific martial arts. ~J |
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Sep 10 2005, 06:13 AM
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#6
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Target Group: Members Posts: 85 Joined: 26-May 02 Member No.: 2,769 |
Specializations are just wrong as printed. 2BP for 2 more dice, and it grows as you increase the base skill. I mean the only thing with stronger munchkin-fu is musle toner bioware. I mean smartlink is not even as janktastic anymore, and they removed the penality for the non-cybered version. So, now every mage does not even have to consider implants. They just need a sprite guarding their PAN :P
/houseules sofar: it costs 2BP for each point of specialization, its still a great deal but not nearly as munchy as it is written. |
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Sep 10 2005, 06:13 AM
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#7
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
Well, I'm merely presenting the specialization as a mutually exclusive option, as it is presented in the SR4 Core book (you can only have one specialization for any given skill, after all). There are multiple ways to interpret the various specializations of each skill, and there's some overlap on some of the key specializations, I will agree (any vehicle skill and the Remote Operation specialization, for example). I'm just offering one interpretation, that's all. I don't believe it is asinine or unbalancing to split it off into such categories, especially if one considers Parrying to be an Aikido (or other "avoidance" martial art) specialization or Subduing Combat to be a "grappling" martial art specialization. I'm not interested in getting into a Martial Arts Trivia pissing contest here. |
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Sep 10 2005, 06:43 AM
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#8
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Certainly I'm not suggesting splitting the specialization by individual martial artmartial arts have no place in the specialization system anyway. What I'm objecting to is splitting into things like Parrying, Offensive Combat, Defense, whatever, while still calling it "martial arts".
~J |
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Sep 10 2005, 07:01 AM
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#9
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Midnight Toker Group: Members Posts: 7,686 Joined: 4-July 04 From: Zombie Drop Bear Santa's Workshop Member No.: 6,456 |
Have martial arts specializations only apply when fighting using tournament rules.
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Sep 10 2005, 07:21 AM
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#10
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Target Group: Members Posts: 85 Joined: 12-June 03 Member No.: 4,720 |
I'm not terribly happy with the specializations as listed in the book either...too wide-open for interpretation.
I'll probably go with: - Grappling (for subduing, choking, throwing, etc.) - Striking (for kicking, punching, etc.) - Defensive (for parrying, blocking, dodging melee, etc.) |
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Sep 10 2005, 09:16 AM
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#11
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Prime Runner Group: Banned Posts: 3,732 Joined: 1-September 05 From: Prague, Czech Republic Member No.: 7,665 |
Look at it this way: Silat uses cyber implant weaponry in 2070, so the right Martial Art specialization would apply even to your cyber spurs. But more importantly: so what?
Unarmed Combat sucks. It's just like ranged combat except: it doesn't have any range it takes a complex action your opponent gets to add their dodge or close combat skill to their defense dice. That's completely ass! If people get a practically free 2 dice to their attack rolls - I don't honestly care. It's the least I can do for people having to put up with the fact that their chosen method of combat is the suck. I would give people those 2 dice for free. And I want people who perform unarmed combat to periodically describe what their character does. So it's a perfect world after all - they have to write up a little bit of character background, and then they get 2 extra dice to try to make their combat style suck a little less. -Frank |
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Sep 10 2005, 09:35 AM
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#12
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Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
Specializations have changed into a free bonus. Thereīs no longer any question weather or not you take one. Iīm going to assume everyone who can will specialize in a skill they use a lot. This will apply to the oposition as well.
In the end you could view it as being worse at things youīre not as familiar with just as soon as to view it as a huge bonus to the thing you do the most (not really, but you get the idea). I do not think it will be unballanced as long as I remind my players to take advantage of it whenever possible, so that it is not utilised by some to outpower the others. |
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Sep 10 2005, 09:43 AM
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#13
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 316 Joined: 18-July 03 Member No.: 4,963 |
Wow, my GM must have gone to the same school as you! We just started an SR4 campaign. We quickly figured out how he was calculating the dice pools the enemies used. He'd just look at whoever in the party had the biggest dice pool for a given task and made that what all of the enemies used. Obviously, there was only one thing we could do. We immediately began performing lobotomys on one another in a desperate effort to reduce our skills as low as possible. As long as our skills were low to non-existant, our enemies would be similarily wimpy. After all, he'd only throw whatever we could throw! We soon realized the folly of our ways. WE HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT AGILITY! We still had dice pools large enough to have a good probability of getting a hit with a weapon! We went south to Aztechnology and begged them to perform Genetherapy on us to give us whatever Steven Hawking had. They told us it was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and were happy to oblige. They were always in need of new test subjects. Right now, the party is planning a run on the kitchen in our hospital. We think we can successfully steal some of the good stuff. I KNOW those bastards are holding out on us. Seeing as how the rest of the world is coping with outbreaks of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and Down Syndrome of pandemic porportions that even affected already-born individuals, we're pretty confident we can do it. If we can just get some modifiers to reduce their perception tests, we're all but guaranteed to reduce their pool to a Longshot test. I'm gambling that greasing my wheels will do the trick, but we're also going to try to cause electrical shorts in every room we go in by drooling into electric sockets or just flicking them off at the switch. As a backup plan, the former party mage(He took up marijuana in a desperate effort to destroy his magic rating) has filched a fork and will use it to sabotage the place if he has to. Overall, I have to say that his policy of 'Anything you can do I'll do too' is pretty good. The other party members think he's just an uncreative bastard who can't min/max so he just copies off of us, but I know they're wrong. He's really just the best GM on the planet. Look at how many other people came up with this SAME IDEA! Great minds think alike, eh! Obviously, we should never come up with clever, rules-legal ideas. We should only do the obvious things in every game, but not the BEST things because then you'd be a dirty filthy pinko commie who's out to steal our precious bodily fluids and we'd have to kill you with an elaborate Rube Goldberg device that involves a CD rom, an opened box of Doritos from the year 2002, and a chain-smoking orangutan named George. Anyway, if something was broken, he'd just ban it instead of using it himself. As he is better than Jesus he could never do an imperfect action and thus his policy MUST BE RIGHT! I know he's better than Jesus because he gave me this book called 'Diagnosis' that told me about how I need to become Clear and then he told me he was already Clear and could totally throw cars around like tin cans as long as no one else was watching. I think it has to do with Schrodinger's cat, but maybe it's the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle, but it doesn't matter because he's Clear and that's that. I'm so glad you are around to remind me of just how totally awesome my GM is! Not that I'd forget anything, but I like being reminded. It's like how you always tell your girlfriend how pretty she is before you slug that gold-digging slut in the face! She likes it just like I like my reminders. I'm sure you're just as good a GM as mine, after all, you're using the same ideas he does. For creating such lucid explanations to concepts so complex, I salute you. |
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Sep 10 2005, 10:05 AM
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#14
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Mr. Johnson Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,587 Joined: 25-January 05 From: Berkeley, CA Member No.: 7,014 |
That attempt at humor just makes you look very pretentious. If you're going to mock someone, at least do it with some smileys so that you conceal your maliciousness.
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Sep 10 2005, 10:56 AM
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#15
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Grumpy Old Ork Decker Group: Admin Posts: 3,794 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Orwell, Ohio Member No.: 50 |
Heh. Thanks, I needed a good chuckle. I would note, however, that despite the fact you apparently disagree with one of my personal GM decisions, does not make it wrong or right. And being condescending about it? Let's not do that anymore here, ok? Bull |
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Sep 10 2005, 11:31 AM
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#16
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Mr. Quote-function Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,317 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Somewhere in Germany Member No.: 1,376 |
*g* So did the martial arts rules themselves ... No specializations for martial arts under CC rules ... |
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Sep 10 2005, 02:26 PM
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#17
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Grumpy Old Ork Decker Group: Admin Posts: 3,794 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Orwell, Ohio Member No.: 50 |
Sorry... I meant prior to the MA rules in CC I had generally disallowed specializations.
Bull |
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Sep 10 2005, 02:41 PM
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#18
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 316 Joined: 18-April 05 From: France Member No.: 7,343 |
I think coming back to the base help making rules after.
1 Martial Art means (to me) training until the point it becomes art in a martial (= violent, military or something like that) application This meaning seems especially important since a lot of "martial art" branches - kung fu wuchu, budo in japan, old version of yoga means the opposite of "martial" art. Budo or Wuchu could be translated as "the brave who stop the violence without using it" when "martial" comes from Mars, god of the war (his behavior being quite violent) 2 Martial arts (as they are generally called) eventually teach (for a lot of them) that using a weapon is close to using no weapon. 3 There is a lot of "martial arts" that are in fact a complete training in a wide area of fighting (grapple, hit, push, using most of the part of the body) With that I would state : (3) a global method should not be allowed as a specialization (!) (2) the real skill of fighting isn't so fragmented as written in sr rules (unarmed, club, blades), therefore the concept of martial arts is not applicable in the sr4 rules, (1) but any good skill should be linked to a particular style (any martial skill at a high rank means a particular (or even a few) technic is used anyway So in the end you could simulate a tai shi master just by giving him good skills (with push as specialization for unarmed combat for example, tai chi sword in blades and so on), and for the culture a knowledge skill "tai chi" . |
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Sep 10 2005, 05:39 PM
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#19
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Target Group: Members Posts: 64 Joined: 17-December 04 Member No.: 6,886 |
On consideration, I think the best fix for unarmed combat is to make the specializations
-- Offensive (like tae kwan do) -- Defensive (like aikido) -- subdual (like judo) Pistol specialization in SA is still pretty much a gimmee. Then again, in SR3 everybody in the world had Pistols 6 at creation. |
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Sep 10 2005, 06:00 PM
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#20
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Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,013 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802 |
Not remotely true, and even if it were it would not be a justification. ~J |
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Sep 10 2005, 06:03 PM
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#21
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 316 Joined: 18-April 05 From: France Member No.: 7,343 |
I would add -- knock down (in many arts) -- interception (not very useful - but makes sense) -- by part of the body: fist - leg - head etc ... -- by condition: on the ground, running, charge, with multiple opponent, multiple strike ... I think a lot of specialization are possible, since it's balanced. Anyway the more munchkin one will probably stay the same than in sr3 : fist (used with shock hand or bone lacing) - almost always useful |
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Sep 10 2005, 09:48 PM
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#22
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Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
I would comment on Modesittīs post if I didnīt know that would cause Bull to close down the thread.
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Sep 10 2005, 09:56 PM
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#23
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 316 Joined: 18-April 05 From: France Member No.: 7,343 |
I found it very amusing actually. ( it is a bit of a shame I perceive bad intentions in that good story).
could be a nightmare / Virtual reality game scenario :) |
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Sep 10 2005, 10:40 PM
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#24
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Karma Police Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 1,358 Joined: 22-July 04 From: Gothenburg, SE Member No.: 6,505 |
:) Could be cool. Caricatures of the characters run around in a parody of the typical shadowrun, trying to defeat the unbeatable gamemaster once and for all.
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Sep 11 2005, 01:26 AM
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#25
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,133 Joined: 3-October 04 Member No.: 6,722 |
...what? Sorry, is that correct? If it is, would the writer who came up with that please post up the materials he/she/it based that decision on? As a per silat myself (silat tokku and seni silat haqq), it strikes me as out of character, but I am aware that there are a great many schools of silat and there may be others that differ (saying you study "silat" is like saying you study "kung fu", meaningless without further qualification). |
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