Can martial arts maneuvers from Arsenal be used in astral combat? If not, would maneuvers learned specifically for astral combat be fair?

I would say no current Martial Art could possibly be of any use in a situaiton where the laws of physics no longer apply.

That said, I would say creating a new Martial Art specifically created for Astral Combat would be a really cool idea. Ares or whomever could have developped it to help fight the invae or something.

We toyed with the idea of psychic martial arts and the like, but the initial results were unsat. That said, Focus Will works fine in Astral Combat, and some of the styles presented offer bonuses that would apply.

err... one of the martial arts has stuff that is pretty much *only* usable against astral opponents i thought...

everyone yell, "KIAI!"

I can see room for some astral martial arts, though they would have to be really good to beat "Magician with manabolt and good sorcery". I'm thinking something involving the biggest, meanest, most nasty and improbable weapon foci that would be completely worthless in the meat but is perfectally usable in the astral.

Some Maneuvers are meaningless in astral space, others will still work.

And Silat has one advantage that is for astral combat only.

Normal martial arts are similarly useless against a guy with a gun, so no difference there.

I wouldn't say that, exactly. While Grammaton Cleric-Fu is just for the movies, IRL some arts (like Krav Maga) have several techniques designed to deal with an opponent armed with a gun.

I think he was speaking to the fact that there isn't really any way martial arts will get you to the guy with the gun faster than another style.

No, but you can close the gap pretty quickly, if you know what you're doing. In one martial art, they told me that the average human, properly trained, could close about nine feet before an average opponent with a gun could react. Never had a chance to test that one, and I hope I never have to; but it's food for thought.

Typically, its given that melee can close about 6 feet from someone who has a gun holstered.

Make the gun drawn, and you get virtually no closing distance before they're able to pull the trigger. Go try it with a friend. Give him a nerf gun or something, and have him hold it up in the air like you see cops do on shows. Go 9 feet away from him. Tell him to try to shoot you before you can touch him. See who wins.

If the gun's out, that's when you go for a disarm. You need balls of steel to walk within easy reach of the gun; but if you have your hands up, you can even get the other guy to close on you. One of the Krav Maga disarms I was taught worked best when the barrel was practically touching you. I'm not entirely sure I could pull that approach off in real life.

Edit: BTW, I have pulled off the nerf gun dodge, but I cheated. It was my gun, and I knew it pulled to the right.

Sorry, but outside of arm reach, you won't get a disarm before they get a shot. We're not talking about people who are going to let you walk up close because you're non-threatening.

Having it within arms reach opens up the possibility of a disarm, and thats basically an initiative check for who goes first.

But we're all forgetting that on the astral distances don't matter for beans when you can travel as far as yo can see at the speed of thought. Combined with hiding behind astral shadows and using ninja like stealth (not just infiltration, but keeping yourself out of sight with those shadows) I'd be pretty frightened of the mage who decides to sneak up on me in the astral and gets to attack for the gold with no drain. Even if you use a turn to get away from him and sling a spell, next action he's right back on you. As far as I'm concerned, astral combat is always at melee ranges unless just perceiving and you're tied to a meatsack still. Even then, hide in those shadows, but a better solution would be to just stop astrally perceiving and let that magician float and sputter.

But about real world guns and martial arts... yeah, guns win at a distance. that's why you have to go ninja fu and get close before you unleash hell.

Or if the mage does this frequently, he should learn mana barrier. Throw that up, and then nuke them all you want. Just keep it sustained, it'd only take a complex action to move it from wherever it was at to be around you, and then they would slam into it if they didn't realize it showed up. Then you manabolt them.