Yeah, well I can't wait for matrix rules, but that doesn't mean I want to see them in the wrong book.

I don't think that was the problem, so much as all their complicated, full of variation, design-your-own-martial-artist, nonsense still ended up with every worthwhile melee character having the same three or four manuevers as every other worthwhile melee character. Close Combat, Kick Attack, Whirling, and either Focus Strength/Focus Will (depending on the character). Everything else was just stupid to take by comparison.

Tack on the silly way that martial arts worked as skills (IE, each one being its own separate skill with its own separate rank with its own separate dice that were always rolled in a super-important opposed test) and you really had no reason to try and learn more than one art (since it was a stupid, losing, proposition, and a waste of karma) unless you really wanted Kip Up for something. If you had an art at 6, you were an idiot to start a new one at 1 -- no one is scared of your mighty 1 die, and you will get your fool ass killed.

So you've got only a handful of manuevers being worthwhile, and no good reason to try and learn a second martial art -- which leaves you with only wanting to find a martial art that offers you the worthwhile manuevers.

Which meant, except for people who don't care about actually doing well in melee combat (who just picked shit at random because their GM said to update characters), and except for people who specifically chose a martial art for access to edged/clubs/cybernetic weapons, everyone ended up with the same two or three martial arts, the same three or four manuevers...

...and the whole thing ended up being every bit as boring as simply having "Unarmed Combat" listed again. We were offered the false image of variety and option. We were given a veneer of customization.

Arsenal is, as far as I can see, going to be the Cannon Companion and Rigger 3 rolled into one. As such it will (or should) already be chock full of gear and rules for gear. I think that in order not to do both that book and an optional MA rules a disservice, any forthcoming rules for Martial Arts should not be crammed into an already overflowing book.

That's completely different from what the martial arts rules were like in SR3.

What Shadowrun needs, oddly enough, is a "feat" type system. Has for a long time now. A means to gain abilities and maneuvers that aren't skills so much as special uses of those skills, and reflecting an enhanced training in those abilities and maneuvers. That would rock and you could fold all kinds of abilities into such a system, including metamagic techniques. Something for mundanes as well as magicians, adepts, and technomancers to look forward to in order to expand their character's arsenal.

SR3 took a skill and twisted, mangled, and corrupted it into a convoluted, confusing, and easily abused mess. And in most cases, it still failed to do a decent job of reflecting specific styles of unarmed combat all while making about two or three of them "must haves" when it came to choosing which martial art to take.

Will it really be the wrong book? It's about weaponry and the human body is a weapon. You can enhance it, train it, modify it for all sorts of things. It's not the most natural fit, but it's not like including techniques for rigging vehicles and avoiding Thor shots in a book about Faces.

By the way, are they going to do a Face-book of some kind?

Oh, and Doc, we are experimenting with a 'Feat' system of sorts. We call them 'Grades'. You get 1 grade for simply knowing the skill, and a new grade every odd skill point. These act like special moves/specialties that add bonus die to specific moves.

For example, you can have a guy with Pistols 3 who has 2 grades; one for quick reloading with a specific gun, and another for easier called shots. With Unarmed Combat 5 you could have: use unarmed skill for defense even when you're using a two hander (as in replace Dodge/Gymnastics), a flying kick that requires at least 2 metres and the ability to run, jump, with a -2 dice modifier, and a flurry of blows that deals out Agility / 2 attacks in one complex action with a dice penalty equal to the number of attacks.

Helluva lot more to track. So we're thinking of toning down the number of grades. Starting at skill 2 for instance, then 4, and 6, and 8.

If nothing else it gives mundanes something to sink Karma in that'll give them an up in power.

Agreed, it would be a better conceptual place. Hell, I wouldn't mind waiting for a martial arts/adepts only book, or just seeing martial arts rules as a web supplement (are you listening devs? ).

Which still makes me sad

Agreed. I'd prefer to see something like this:

Unarmed Combat as the only active skill used
Styles as knowledge skills, with each style having it's own list of maneuvers
Buy maneuvers like spells from style list, max # = knowledge skill rating
Work maneuvers in such a fashion that they don't invalidate basic Unarmed Combat skill

Definitely agreed, but basically undoable (as far as I can see) without a new edition (nooooooo!).

I think you need to propose how this could actually be done, because it's hard to see. We can assume that someone with an unarmed combat skill of six is a world master in the field of unarmed combat. They've probably studied a range of martial arts. Even Mike Tyson's coach drew on Wing Chun Kung Fu to improve Tyson's footwork. Synergy and breadth are what it's all about. Any attempt to bring in specific maneuvers or defined martial arts styles is going to detract from what a six in Unarmed Combat means. If you introduce a maneuver for powerful kicks, do we then say that the Unarmed Combat skill doesn't cover powerful kicks, or if we introduce a maneuver for joint locks, do we then say that the Unarmed Combat skill doesn't cover these?

I don't think that you can introduce maneuvers without essentially eliminating the Unarmed Combat skill in its current form and meaning. You'd have to have skills for Karate, Ju Jitsu, Wrestling, etc. Now you could keep the name Unarmed Combat and create different paths in it, or any variety of systems in name, but what you'd essentially be doing is creating different skills for different martial arts. And that contradicts the reality of people who study everything useful they can get their hands on, and also makes trying to get a rounded hand to hand fighter character a spiralling karma / BP dump for what is essentially a minor and not very powerful combat technique.

There are two basic principles of creating a maneuvre system in Shadowrun. The first is that there should be greater differentiation between unarmed fighters, rather than everyone having similar options and skills. By necessity this means that it has to be hard to get most or all of the maneuvres in one character. This is both unrealistic and leads to the karma / BP sink that I mentioned earlier. The second principle is that it should introduce a range of options into melee combat. And whilst some players might find this kind of verbal rock, paper and scissors game fun in a technical sort of way, I think for lots of us it would be a reason for deciding not to charge in and get bogged down in a suddenly complex area of the rules.

But chiefly, my biggest objection is the one I cited at the start, which is the following scenario:

Player: "My character has a four in Unarmed Combat and a six Agility so... <rolls dice> - five hits! I leap forward and plant an almighty side kick in his gut.
GM: "Do you have the kick maneuvre?"
Player: "No. Um... welll, I guess I just punch him then."

Not exactly sure really, since I'm not trying to actually build such a system at the moment. What I was thinking though was not "you must have this maneuver to make a kick attack" but rather "if you have this maneuver, you can do kick attacks better". That sort of general thing, kinda like the +2/+2 feats in D&D.

You may be right - it may be impossible to introduce maneuvers without taking away some from the l33tness of 6. But that really is only important if your absolutely stuck on pages 108-109 of the BBB being the end all and be all of skills in SR. Myself, I see it as more of a guideline (I hate skill caps, in case you can't tell ), after all if dragons can eventually get to a skill rating of 10 why can't it be possible for anyone else?