I was thinking about what was said in the previous martial arts thread and watching Human Weapon the past couple days, and I realized that the people opposed to maneuvers and the like were pretty much right - the SR4 rules can pretty much cover most martial arts maneuvers already and style names etc are basically fluff. So with that in mind, I came up with the following house rules for my game to fill in the few gaps. Let me know what you think.

Unarmed Combat – Martial Arts is no longer available as a specialization for this skill. Instead, the following specializations are available: Attack, Cyber-Implants, Knockdowns, Parrying, Subdual Combat, Throws.

Counterattacks – Any character involved in melee combat (including astral combat) who has a melee weapon (or is skilled in unarmed combat) can counterattack instead of parrying. This is handled by both combatants simply making Opposed Attack tests. The character with the most hits does damage to his opponent based on his net hits. In the case of a tie, neither party is injured. A character can counterattack more than one attacker in a turn, but suffers a cumulative –2 dice penalty for each attacker after the first.

With this option, do not use the description of the Counterstrike power noted in Street Magic. Instead, levels of the Counterstrike power add directly to the adept’s Attack test when counterattacking in response to a melee attack. The maximum level of this power a character can have is equal to half his Magic attribute. The Power Point cost remains unchanged.

Martial Arts – All styles of martial arts are represented by the Unarmed Combat skill and it’s specializations, and many common maneuvers (sweeps, takedowns, etc) are covered in the SR4 core rules. The additional options listed here are available to any character trained in appropriate skill.
* Disorient – A character can strike to stun or disorient an opponent. This requires a melee attack test as normal. If the attacker achieves more hits than the defender, the defender is forced to make a Body + Willpower (attacker’s net hits) test. If the test fails, the defender is stunned and suffers a -2 dice penalty to all actions for the next (attacker’s Strength/2) turns. Disorienting attacks do no damage, and multiple successful disorienting attacks do not increase the defender’s dice pool penalty but rather only add to the duration the stunned condition.
* Hard Takedown – A hard takedown works similar to a knockdown attack (SR4 page 152), but attempts to injure the opponent as well. If the attack succeeds, compare the attacker’s (Strength/2) + his net hits to the defender’s Body to determine knockdown as normal. Regardless of whether the knockdown succeeds or not, the attack inflicts (Strength/2)S damage on the defender, resisted as normal.
* Kip Up – Actually a gymnastic maneuver, a character can attempt to jump back to his feet from a prone position as a Free Action by making an Agility + Gymnastics (4) test. If the test fails, the character wastes a Simple Action and remains prone.
* Throw – Throw attempts are treated as knockdown attacks (SR4 page 152) with a slight difference. If the attack succeeds, compare the attacker’s (Strength/2) + his net hits to the defender’s Body to determine knockdown as normal. If the knockdown is successful, the defender is thrown a number of meters equal to the attacker’s net hits and suffers (net hits/2)S damage.
* Vicious Attack – A character can attempt to inflict Physical damage with any weapon that normally does Stun damage (including unarmed attacks) by taking a -3 dice pool penalty to the attack test.

I really like that system. Simple, effective, and [almost] no new rules. My group likes to use martial arts and I have been wanting something a little more detailed for melee. When you combine this with called shots [power/precision strikes] what you have is a system that almost does it all. Serious kudos NightmareX.

If you're going to have counterattacks then ties must go to the attacker or else you end up in a situation where there is never any reason to not counterattack a single attacker.

My group made a houserule for counters. If you beat an attackers roll with at least 4 net hits, you then gain the chance to immediatly attack. Also when you beat an attacker and he glitches. FYI my group uses cinematic rules.

My only issue really is with the Counterattack instead of Parry. The fact is that often what is described as a block/parry is also an attack. This is done via positioning said block/parry to perform that function, while in addition resulting in a damaging strike, of course this also involves what in many games would be considered a dodge/sidestep. In truth SR4 is not really designed to model this kind of detailed sparring. This maneuver would only work if this is considered a Complex Action otherwise we wind up with a situation where you will always counter attack because it costs nothing, and as previously noted a faster combatant loses his advantage.

The other maneuvers are entirely usable seeing as they are coarse, and offer a situational modifier to a single roll in general.

Good work.

I like it. Good work.

I have advocated replacing the martial arts specialization with a simple attack one before, and I like most of the other options presented.

The only one I have a problem with is the counterattack option. It runs into the same problem it had in SR3, namely that it not only makes extra IP useless in melee, but ensures that a low-skill speed sammie attacking a slow but high-skill character will get beaten up 3 times faster.

I still like the idea of counterattacking, but I would use the same fix that someone suggested for the SR3 rules - you can opt to counterattack instead of simply defend, but it uses up your next available action pass.

Also, for counterattacking - you've nerfed the adept Counterattack power, but you also need to decide what to do about Combat Sense. I would probably rule that it works for normal blocking or dodging, but not for counterattacking. Otherwise, it would be almost suicidal for anyone to even attempt to attack an adept with Combat Sense.

Thankfully SR4 makes the calculations much simpler

Behold the binomial probability calculator

n = number of dice
k = number of hits you are looking for
p = .333

As for teh threshold for kippup, what level of gymnastics skill do you need to do them?

If you lower the threshold to 1:
3 dice ~70%
6 dice ~91%
9 dice ~97%
12 dice ~99%

for threshold 2:
3 dice ~26%
6 dice ~65%
9 dice ~87%
12 dice ~95%

for threshold 3:
3 dice ~4%
6 dice ~32%
9 dice ~62%
12 dice ~82%

A better way to do it is probably make it comparable to the quick draw test. If you succeed, you get up as a free action, if you don't you succeed, you get up in the regular amount of time (whatever that is). This way, your character can still look cool by doing the kippup, but if he doesn't roll well, he just takes a while to do it. It's only if you glitch that you look like a gimp.

There are actually some very good reasons to use knockdown attacks against, particularly against opponents with equal or inferior IPs.

First, if you knock a character down then he can't move. The rules do not permit a character to crawl so he must remain in position until he stands. If he stands you can knock him down again (assuming that you have enough IPs). This is extremely useful if you keep close track of position, velocity, and cover, since you can essentially ensure that the enemy character remains where you want him to be. This also allows a melee character to beat down a character with an absurdly high sprint pool, who would otherwise by impossible to strike more than once due to his groundspeed.

Second, when an enemy is prone you receive a +3 modifier to both attack and defense, this makes it easier to beat him down and harder for him to beat you down.

Since standing up requires a simple action, it can also be used to sap the actions of a character who needs to be standing for one reason or another.

Heh. Like back in the days of Oni - knock them down, shoot them with the SMG.

I'd run the Kip Up like quick draw with a threshold of 2 going up to 4 if there are opponents with 1 metre, to cover the idea of the other side doing things to keep you down within SRs abstract close combat. Either that or keep it at 2 and allow them to make an intercept attack as per normal movement.

Treshold = bod? or = bod/2 or bod/2 +1?

Ever get the idea that you're thinking about this "kippup" thing too hard? How about a simple stat + athletics skill to see if they pull off a cool move and make it easy on yourself and to keep the game flowing?
Another thing to mention is the fact that a kippup isn't a "free" movement. If you're up against anything but an untrained idiot (who will probably step back because they don't know what's up) your opponent will just step forward and punt you one while you're still trying to get your guard back up (as happened to me when I thought I was Jet Li once).

Just because it works on white belts doesn't mean it'll work against everyone...
Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

I don't see why it would be a Free Action. Simple Action at best, win or lose.

More body doesn't automatically mean more weight.

It seems to be a simple action to get up normally (p137 'combat actions'). So the test is to see whether you can cut that to a free action or not.

I know. Hence why I don't see it being a Free Action as opposed to a colorful way of saying you're getting up. I've never seen it demonstrated as something that qualifies as a Free Action. If nothing else, the regular action to stand up should be a Complex Action instead.