Way back in November '09, I asked Dumpshock for some clarification combining Karate and Kenpo, two styles with identical effects (Same martial art, different name), with the consensus being "Yeah, that's kosher."
So now I'm getting ready to build a medtech/CQC specialist Prime Runner who I plan on having take Sangre Y Acero 3 times (as in, all three martial arts mastered). Any suggestions on how I should start this crazy bastard off? He'll be Human, mundane, with at least an arm and a leg (elbow and knee spurs). In his background, he was hit by a hacked truck during a less-than-subtle Shadowrun and decided to make the best of his replacements and stop wasting his life working in an office (with the approval of his superiors, of course). Uses a shotgun as his ranged weapon of choice for style reasons.

400 Build Points, using standard PC character generation rules.

Mastering three Martial Arts at CharGen is impossible, it would be 3*20 BP in positive qualities. You could however master one and be well on the way to mastery of a second. The rest would need to be bought later with Karma. Whether this is a good idea, is a whole different story:
- You blow all of your 35 BP for positive qualities on it, there may be others you would rather have (Ambidextrous for example)
- Most bonuses from those Martial Arts are pretty situational. You won't always profit form all of them (ranged modifier in melee, opponent's friends in melee)
- Boosting exotic weaponry is not a good idea: it is an additional skill you will need and you can't specialize in it so you will always be at -2 versus the normal attack skills.

It would probably be more efficient to take two spurs in the forearms, forget about the knee and elbow spurs and the bonuses for exotic spurs. Then we are looking at only 35 BP and 20 Karma and only a -1 DP with a specialization in blades.

Since you are allowed to take lots of maneuvers anyway and should have some BP left over, take at least Two Weapon Style and Disarm

I would disagree with the consensus, too. I would consider it cheese on the level of trying to stack two separate sets of FFBA, or getting gel packs on individual pieces of PPP, if you're using it to try to get around the usual limits of the style (in other words, trying to get +3 to hit with an "exotic" cyberweapon, or something similar).

I may be wrong, but I think this character is an NPC and therefore doesn't necessarily have to worry about chargen limits.

Actually, I was going to have him be a recurring NPC, improving as the group did. He wasn't going to have Ars Cybernetica mastered yet (1 of the 3), but this campaign is going to run for a while. So while yeah, I am using these martial arts for cybercheese, like Glyph suggested, I think that since he's a close quarters specialist AND mundane, he could use all the help he could get.

You may not like it, but the rules are pretty clear that each group of matrial arts are several different ones and that the bonuses of different martial arts do indeed stack, except for DV increases which are capped at +3.

The OP wrote 400 BP and normal PC generation rules.

Back to how stupid the rules for exotic weapons are: Sangre y Acero and similar arts can convey +3 dice on attacks with cyberweapons in unusual locations for 15 BP/30Karma. For 2 BP/Karma you get +2 dice on all uses of the Blades skill with cyber-implant blades (in usual locations). I'd forget about spurs at the knee and elbow.

How about you post the character and we can provide some more help?

Technically both RAW.


I thought that was specific to Unarmed Combat.

Yeah, complete cheating to call the variant *names* of MAs 'separate, coincidentally identical SR Styles'. Each separate bold heading under Styles is a style, not each name. Why else would there even be 'you may take X multiple times' rules otherwise?

Only Unarmed Combat has a enough options to get more than +3, but the errata rule isn't limited to just Unarmed.

Because any single body of lore (i.e. martial arts style) can only teach you so much. Combining different styles will give you a greater understanding and benefit.
Martial arts with the same bonuses are indeed different and thus stack unless noted otherwise:

I read that. They're *technically similar*, and they have a single crunch section together. They're not separate SR Styles.

I don't Know, Yerameyahu. It says Separate and Distinct Styles. Seems like they are separate to me.

I tend to agree, and disagree. The fact is, it is pretty munchkin to do this kind of thing, and wouldn`t agree, or would at least limiti t in some way.

The disagreement comes from one of the listings as a "similar Martial Art". The heading for boxing, includes Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha as a similar martial art, and while I agree that some things are the same (such as the basic guard and jabbing), the fact is, Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha is a style of fighting with an Irish Club (Shillelagh), as opposed to fists.

I've been wondering about this for a while:

So we can agree that the grouping of the martial arts (4 bonuses for each) are nonsense, right?

I propose: It would be totally the same if there was just a list of all different bonuses and how often you can take a single one.

Agreed?



Coming from there: I'm not sure if it's intentional that there are a multitude of getting +3DV to unarmed, whereas blades are limited to +2DV and clubs only +1DV.
The rules even talk about inventing new styles and say nothing about not repeating those effects.

Wouldn't it be better to just just say:

***

Here we have a list of Bonuses:

* +1DV Unarmed
* +1DV Blades
* +1DV Clubs
* +1DV Subdual
* +1 dice acrobatic dodge
...


Each of those costs 10 Karma (or 5 BP for you..special people) to take and can be taken up to three times.


***




Because seriously: the RAW here is totally convoluted and bad designed.

If you don't want to put names to any of the martial arts then sure. But if you're trying to get +DV with Blades from, say, Boxing, then no. My point being that some of the benefits do not match some of the martial arts.

My point is exactly that the names dont matter. The entire martial arts fluff leads to nothing. If you could only have bonuses from one technique it would make sense. But as it is, its just pointless because you can mix however you like.

That is because people can learn multiple martial arts in real life... Which allows the combination of techniques.

On the other hand, learning principles and techniques in one school, and then learning similar principles and techniques next door, doesn't make them twice as effective, in the way proposed by the OP. That's silly.

I agree with the idea of having a bonus list that you purchase from, not tied to a specific style, and leaving the fluff of it to the player and GM. Forbid learning gun fu in a boxing gym, sure. But say, maybe there's a guy at the gym who cross-trains, and needs a partner to work on some stuff with...

Which I think is covered adequately enough with the existing ruleset.

While giving better fluff reasons then most of the rules set.

Heh... True.