I'm not going to contribute to derailing this thread.

As far as "game balance" goes, I look at more than whether a single item makes a character invincible or not. I look at how logical it is, and how consistent with the rest of the rules it is. A holdout pistol doing 6P damage, capable of burst-fire, with a 40-round clip wouldn't unbalance the game, since there are plenty of weapons capable of doing more damage. But it would still cause a WTF? reaction in me. I would be asking "Why is this pistol so much better than any other holdout pistol? Why would anyone use any other pistol, including most of the heavy pistols?"

Tarantula's interpretation of the rules causes a similar reaction in me. A +2 DV is already huge - it lets a Strength: 1 human do the same damage as an untrained human with Strength: 6. But +5 DV, and you're getting into adept territory (only it stacks with critical strike). Plus, it's the kind of power creep that I really hate to see. If you are an unarmed specialist, you have to take it, or you are going to be hopelessly outclassed, in your specialty, by someone else who does have it.

I guess, since the wording is so muddled, that we'll have to wait for an errata or FAQ to come out for this. Hopefully, they will fix the mess that is social software, too, when they do so.

I disagree. Any other unarmed specialist would be much better off with riposte and finishing move, or throw and finishing move, and taking bonuses towards countering melee attacks than they would be by punching harder. Why? Because taking one guy out doubly over is pretty worthless. Just because you can punch for 15DV, doesn't mean it does you a whole lot of good unless you 1) like liquifying people, 2) make a habit of punching milspec armored opponents, or 3) like to punch walls down.

I don't think having it 'outclasses' other melee specialists in the least, and I'd gladly put a riposte master out against any DV specialized melee character.

Except that Finishing Move and Riposte are Maneuvers, and the DV advantage is just that, an Advantage. The are not necessarily mutually-exclusive. You can have a Riposte Master with mega-boosted DV.

Except that said dv master will have sunk a lot more points into martial arts positive qualities to get such a bonus, while the riposte master being focused more on riposte abilities will have bonuses for that instead of for DV. Its easy enough to get close or more than a 10DV with cyber (bone lacings, muscle replacments), gear (hardliner gloves), and strength (trolls, orcs, dwarfs). Thats plenty enough to fight the damage master, who while he'll do 15 if he hits you, chances are, he won't be hitting you.

For even more bonus, the riposte master can be an adept, with distance strike, riposting people while denying them the ability to do the same back.

Shrug. I don't see it. The opponent can have the exact same advantages you are giving the Riposte dude (and maybe even Combat Sense). Sure he pays some BP in a different manner, but there are lots of BP to spread around (and Karma afterward) if we are only concentrating on the one thing.

As you say, there are quite a few ways to pump melee DV. I don't think there needs to be even more, in the way of unlimited stacking of DV bonuses via cross-training in various Martial Arts. Limiting the stackable bonus to +2 or even +3 (from any M.A. source) is more than adequate in my opinion.

Let them punch like a missile. Who cares? If you can one shot everything in sight with a sniper rifle, and no one bats an eye, why not Mr. Punchy? It's already suboptimal.

Its not unlimited. Its limited by the number of martial arts that grant a +1 dv advantage. Critical strike on the other hand, is limitless.

Critical Strike is limited by Magic rating, and stacks on top of Martial Arts.

I don't get it. I already said I'm not really interested in argument, I think both sides are fine. Are you just making sure you win? Go ahead and take your $0, no prestige prize for winning if it's that important to you. I still think both sides are reasonable. I prefer not to let the martial art damage bonuses stack because I think it's unrealistic, but I wouldn't mind playing the other way either because, as you say, it costs a lot of BP.

And magic rating is technically unlimited, thusly, neither is critical strike.



I'm not trying to "win". You talked about friendly discussion, and when I try to engage in such, you claim I'm only trying to win, without discussing why you think disallowing it is helpful to balance. I merely wish to understand where it is you are coming from with your viewpoint.

Sorry, but you didn't sound very friendly to me. Arguing with someone who has declined to argue sounds like trying to win just for the sake of winning to me. I've stated the entirety of my position more than once now. If that's not enough, that's too bad. You're right, so are your opponents, and that's the end of the matter.

I didn't realize, "Why do you think letting the DV modifiers stack is harmful to balance larme? As I showed, you can't even start chargen with a +7DV bonus. So what exactly is the harm of letting a character who wants to be good in melee, dump all their BP/Karma into it?" was unfriendly speech. I'm not attempting to argue with you. I want to hear why you think that having a high melee DV bonus is harmful to balance. You haven't stated the entirety of your position. You've said that you think its harmful to balance, but not why you think its harmful to balance. An example would be "I think large DV bonuses for melee combat are harmful to balance because being able to do twice the damage of a gun with a punch is an unreasonable advantage."

You've never explained your position, only said what it was, and then refused to discuss why you think so, even when such discussing is exactly what you stated to consider being a friendly discussion. You seem to think I am trying to "win" the argument. I don't think I've ever said "the only way it can be is this!" or "You're completely 3000% wrong." or anything of the like. You claim you want a friendly discussion, but run away from such a discussion when I try to bring one up.

Are you two gonna stop arguing about whether or not you're arguing? As certain as I am that whether or not Martial Arts are "broken" is (like most "broken" things) wholly a matter of personal opinion for any given forumite, I find the +1 DV stackings to be less silly than the +1 Irony stackings that are going on, here, with two people in an unrestrained loop of "no, you started it!"

For reals. Both sides are right. It comes down to preference. As far as I'm concerned, everything that needs to be said on the subject has been said. Anything further is little better than troll bait at this point.

Actually, it doesn't, every MA entry in Arse can stand for any number of MA and you can make your own, so no limit there...


Yes, magic rating is theoretically unlimited, but, starting at magic 6 with no E loss, it would take you 170 Karma just to get to 10, so whole it is theoretically unlimited, it is practically limited by the sheer amounts of Karma needed...


Hmmm, I know Irony...
It's sort of like Goldy or Bronzy, but made of iron...

Yes, but self-made martial arts are not RAW, which what I was discussing. Unlimited magic is RAW. Yes, it takes a lot of karma, but so does maxxing out your martial arts optimized for DV.

Not to mention that since critical strike is so cheap, the adept can still use most of his powers towards other things.

Karate, Kenpo, Soo Bahk Do, Kung Fu, Hwarang-do, Wushu, Tae Kwon Do, Hapkido, Savate and Wildcat give +1 DV.
Boxing, Musti Yudha, Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha, Muay Thai, Kickboxing and Savate give +2 DV.
That +22 DV for 10 karma per DV, 220 Karma for the lot, right there in the book, very RAW...
Getting +22 DV from Critical Strike will cost you 1264 Karma, true, you would have 16.5 PP left, but quite a bit more expensive...
So even if you decide the very limited selection of martial arts in the book is all that exists, the cost of the 'unlimited' magic score is much more limiting than the limit on MA...

This is all highly theoretical, but calling critical strike cheap compared to martial arts is just wrong, IMO...

EDIT: This isn't even taking into account the BP cost of starting with magic 6...

Savate? Just the other night we were talking about Arsenal and somehow, we passed over Savate. Savate IS in there? Knew about the other ones listed at the top, as well as boxing, kickboxing, etc.

Or is the version my buddy has misprinted without Savate? I really wanted to take that as one martial art for my character...I might have just been blind and missed it.

Sorry to derail, but if Savate is in the official Arsenal and i DID just see a misprinted version i just became a happy panda.

And...

Hadn't even noticed until now it's in there twice...

Ok, i'm officially blind. I knew my eyes were bad but sheesh.

Bah, savate has a hell lot more in common with TKD than with muay thai.

You can't take two of the same martial art by two different names, and claim stacking bonuses for them. The reason why Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Savate all work in exactly the same way systemically, is that as far as the system is concerned, they are the same martial art. It doesn't explicitly say so that I know of, but that's the kind of craziness where it shouldn't have to... Kickboxing is kickboxing, no matter what master (or maitre if you're learning savate) teaches it to you.

And some of these are hard to even consider as different martial arts. AFAIK, Wushu is a type of Kung Fu (or vice versa, I'm not sure), and Karate is just another word for Kenpo... Even if you think the DV benefits stack, you'd have to be NUTS to let the same martial arts stack with themselves just because there are alternate names for them

You are right, some of these are just different names for the same thing (kenpo - karate; kung fu - wushu), I just copy/pasted them, but saying muay thai is the same as savate is just plain wrong, they have the same bonusses in the game system, but training for and actually using them is very different...
If you think DV benefits do stack it would be silly to not let muay thai and savate stack just because the makers didn't want to write a new entry for the same ingame benefits...
Note that I never stated one way or the other, just pointing out what I think are flaws in reasoning...

Got a quote to back that up?

Kenpo is actually a typo made by some white guy decades ago. It probably should have been kempo. But today because of commercialization and branding kenpo exists seperately from kempo. For example, EPAK =/= shorinji kempo.

EPAK and its offshoots also =/= karate.

I'd certainly understand, at least in principle, treating EPAK and, say, kyokushin as different skills.

Now, with Tae Kwan Do and Savate...im no martial arts expert here, I know they both rely pretty heavily on kicking techniques(i wanted my guy to rely on a heavy kicking art, and Ive seen these both in action and they just look cool, but i don't know much about them as arts)...but can you really call them the same? How do you think they divide these up, in determining what's a 'different' martial art? The way the rules work, someone could take, say, Boxing and Karate(and get whatever benefits that come), or they can take Tae Kwan Do and Savate, and get those benefits...but the DVs might not stack because they are considered the same, and would go beyond the +2 limit?

and i'm still trying to figure out why Savate is listed under Kickboxing as well.

Nope, we're just going to have to rely on common sense for this one. Allowing styles to stack with styles that work exactly the same under the system is unlikely to prodcue balanced results. If they are treated the same by the system, they should not be considered different enough to compliment each other to the extent of stacking their duplicative bonuses. Of course, if you want every style to provide stacking bonuses in triplicate because you think it won't hurt your game, go right ahead.

@ElFenrir - I'm no expert, but Savate is a martial art very heavily based on kicking, and it incorporates punching too... Why isn't that like kickboxing?

Unbalanced results was my point in the first place. I still find no rules to disallow this, and common sense isn't a good measure for whether it is allowable, as the styles are only treated as similar mechanics-wise, but not in actual practice. I would have no problem is someone wanted to mix Savate with Kickboxing ... but I would still impose my (house rule at present) limit on stacking DV bonuses.

Hrm, I was going to say that it limits stacking by the skill rating, except it specifically only limits dice modifiers. Since they only limit the dice modifiers, I'm inclined to believe that they did not intend for the non-dice modifier advantages to stack. Thusly, at most, you could get +2DV to your unarmed. If they intended for the non dice based advantages to stack, then they most likely would have included them in the limitation as well.

Well, if we disregard the negative examples of TKD in the United States, i.e. highly commercialized ATA outlets with pathetic black belts and leigons of wussy soccer moms filling the ranks of students, and instead take athletes/fighters who are serious about full-contact TKD, I'd argue that in a real fight without rules and scoring they and savate people would probably fight in very similar ways.

Full contact ITF TKD with 0% soccer moms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nez-bT-sSuo

Full contact Savate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WadTkRxeE5A

See? Pretty similar, in effect.

Those were some cool videos. And yeah, sometimes it's nice to watch the real thing over, yeah, the more commercialized stuff.

I can see now why they 'share an entry' so to speak. Seems right to me. So i could take Tae Kwan Do for 10 BP, grab +1 DV and +1 to group fighting, and Savate for 10 BP, for +1 DV and +1 knockdowns. Really, all it's doing is flavor saying my fellow studied both of them(I could take 20 in either one and get the same benefits), but that works fine for me.

They did look quite similiar; not exactly the same, but similiar. The Savate video, the guys seemed a bit more...acrobatic almost might be the word? The TKD guys seemed a bit more up in the face about it. Not to say either side wasn't putting a beatdown or dodging, but that's what those two particular videos looked like.

Common sense is the BEST reason for a house rule. Where would we be without it? Stuck debating trivial ambiguities in the wording of the rules, that's where... Good thing that's not the case!

Shrug. I'm happy sticking with my limit on stacking DV bonuses. As far as I am concerned, that is the best application of common sense in this situation.

If you go to the extremes of any system don't be surprised by unusual results.

I usually respond by limiting people from reaching the extremes rather then re engineering the system to handle the extremes. Especially if it handles the rest of the cases just fine.

The Book of Rules containing things you can and should not do is large and infinite, don't make me hit you with it. It'll hurt.

You don't have to go to extremes in this situation though. You can easily get +1 DV a large number of times at a cost of 5 BP (or 10 Karma after chargen) each level.

I don't think there's much difference either way. As long as you stop DV bonuses from stacking with each other, the worst (and most unrealistic) abuse of the martial arts rule won't happen. If you do that, it doesn't much matter whether styles that are grouped together can stack. But if you let DV bonuses stack, then I'm pretty sure it would be nuts to allow a +22 from stacking every redundant martial art style...

Are there any other advantages in the styles that aren't a dice pool modifier besides the DV bonuses?

The Advantages are all either bonuses to DV, modifiers to dice pools (including penalty reduction), or Action modifiers (Simple to Free).

Yeah, definately gonna limit DV modifiers to a max of +2 (such as muay thai) in any games I run.

You cannot keep taking martial arts styles, the maximum you can spend on martial arts styles is 20 points. Read the special quality.
This means you cannot ever gain more than +4 to your unarmed DV from martial arts, even if you incorrectly interpet the rules to mean you can stack the styles listed in brackets beside each one.

I was wonderoing when someone was going to bring up the fact that martial arts is a quality and that you can only take so many qualities.

I personally do not have a problem with the MA system, it all seems balanced to me.

But every Chosen MA Style counts as its own Quality like said in the arsenal:

"The particular style must be noted when the quality is purchased; additional styles may also be learned, but each requires the quality to be purchased again."

So if the players want to stuff a bunch of karma in their ma skills, let them do. They'll lack in other things therefor.

The sidebar says the quality is available at 5, 10, 15, or 20 BPs. It also says the quality can be taken multiple times. It's jobby, but I'd say that it means that if you really want, you can blow 80 BPs taking 4 20BP qualities (or 8 10s, etc). I'd agree that you can't stack the "styles" listed in parentheses, because it seems that rules-wise, they're just like the similar models listed for cars and such. So while Judo and Aikido may be different in real life, it looks to me like SR is saying that SR-wise, they're similar enough to count as the same thing. However, I see no reason you wouldn't be able to get more than +4 on unarmed DV according to the rules. I might consider limiting it in the same way DP bonuses from martial arts are limited (capped at relevant combat skill). But even then, if someone REALLY wants to blow 80 karma getting a +8 DV in unarmed combat, I might let them do it. I can instantly up the damage on my assault rifle by +9 just by switching on full auto, and it costs me a hell of a lot less than 80 karma*

*of course, just because I'd let someone do this doesn't mean I wouldn't make fun of them for it

edit: damn, I took to long writing this, and other people said it already!

*Sorry*

Next time i wait a little longer before i post.

Hmmm, good point. I didn't have the book in front of me when I posted so I didn't even think of that.

The maximum unarmed DV from martial arts then is 7, for 35 points. I still don't see that as too imbalancing becuase the comprehensive nature of the shadowrun rules deter and limit "one trick pony" characters.

You could make a troll (40 BP) with maxed out strength (about 85 BP, depending on how you get the boost), critical strike Adept power (5 BP for adept, 75 BP for maxed out magic [needed for 6 levels of critical strike]...I'm, not going to break it all down becuase I don't have the book in front of me but from memory I could see a unarmed DV of 22 or so and a BP cost of around 150. Thats not a lot of room for anything else and full auto fire will still bring the bad bitch down fairly easily, or a guy with 10 anarmed DV.

I dopn't see an imbalance in the martial arts rules at all, my recomendation for anyone who does is to reread the rules. Shadowrun has always been very good for balance, but has always been a difficult system to find those balances in

The total maximum of dv is 6.

The +1 by wrestling is only for subduing.

If you put everything in dv that would be with the troll at least a unarmed dv of 38 stun damage.

I have no book, but I would like to see the math where you get unarmed DV of 38, barring the limitless potential for adetps\magicians through infinite amounts of karma.

6 DV is right, I was going by the maximum potantial possable with the 35 points (35 divided by 5 is 7) but you are more accurate.

So how do you get this 38 DV? You mean over time and play or at the start of the game with 400 BP?

I only have Arsenal with me, and I totally wasn't thinking about the fact that there's a finite number of MAs that give a bonus to DV. Obviously, that would limit it. And since I don't have SR4 with me, I can't check myself, but I thought the 35pt cap on qualities was just for starting characters?

You can get more during play, but there is a "GM's discretion" cluase in there I beleive. When it says that, then as far as I'm concerned it's GM fiat and shouldn't be considered in these discussion, since a GM can technically make ANY exception they choose. Basically it's out of the players hands whether or not the GM llets them unbalance the game.
After writing up a dozen or so characters, it becomes apperant just how important that cap of 35 is, boith for negative and positive qualities.