First off, I realize that I started a thread identical to this one a few months back, but I seem to have misplaced it. That being said, what's the deal with martial arts skills? It says in CC that you can learn a maneuver for every 2 skill points oyu have in whatever martial art. So, since there's 9 maneuvers, you have to know that martial art at 18 to learn them all? But wait, there's more. Some of the martial arts give you the ability to learn to use the maneuvers with melee weapons, which would basically be like needing to learn another 9 maneuvers, right? So you'd have to take the skill to 36. I know I'm missing something. What is it?

You could just learn more than one marital art.

I really do think that the way weapons are handled with maneuvers isn't really worth using most of the time.

There's an optional rule that basically lets you learn a new maneuver every level of the skill instead of every second level. Costs helluva lot of karma, but it would mean you would only need to take the skill at half the level, if that's what concerns you.

Eh. Most of the maneuvers, other than possibly Evasion, Close Combat and Whirling kinda suck anyway. And regardless, no maneuver is worth the 2 points you have to spend on it as character creation, so I'd personally never buy a martial art other than Brawling unless we were using BeCKS. Remember that with all other martial arts you are *required* to buy a maneuver for every two skill levels you have in that martial art, which means that at character creation other martial arts cost exactly twice as many points as any other skill. Considering how generally sucky the maneuvers are, they're just not worth the chargen cost.

Where does it say you BUY them? I thought you just got one for every 2 points of the skill you have.

p90 CC. The third paragraph under Maneuvers: "Each maneuver must be purchased at a cost of 2 karma each".

The fourth paragraph tells you about the cost at creation.

The fifth paragraph details the optional rule for learning more maneuvers. But, as was pointed out, it's unlikely you'll need more than four or so from any particular art, although they are all useful in the right situation. Some much more so than others.

I'd agree that most maneuvers for weapons aren't worth the cost of learning, with a few exceptions like whirling.

Here's my little loophole...

While some arts, such as Escrima, allow you to apply a previously-learned Escrima maneuver to a weapon skill, notice that it doesn't say that you had to learn those maneuvers while studying Escrima. If you know close combat, it doesn't matter what skill it's linked with; you can apply it towards clubs.

I've discovered that this makes the system run a great deal more smoothly. It does tend to encourage people training to skill 2 or 3 in a lot of different arts, but that's OK in my book-- a lot of real martial artists do the same, only studying a new art until they learn how it works.

I think one of the snags with the SR Martial Arts system stems from the way that Shadowrun deals with skills in general. In one of these threads before, someone pointed out that if you wanted to make a Ninhitsu based character, you should take half a dozen other skills to get the true flavor of the art.

Well, in almost all cases, Shadowrun takes a skill that would have many component parts and gells them together to one skill just to streamline issues. So, they do the same with martial arts.

In reguards to the manuvers, I perfer to go with a 2 for 1 deal. 2 Manuvers for every one Karma point.

It's very true that a lot (or most) of the maneuvers really really bite. The ones that DON'T, however, can be purchased for 2 karma apiece, no matter what your skill is? Is that right?

2 Karma per maneuver up to one-half your skill level, 8 Karma thereafter to a max number of maneuvers equal to your skill.

We've completely trashed the way it works by canon rules, though, and instead came up with a system that fits in much better with the way the rest of the skills work while still allowing for the combat options Maneuvers represent. I don't think anyone's interested in house rules in this thread, though, so I won't waste my time on it.

Actually the kick attack is +1REACH, not power. It say it increases the power of the attack and yet...doesn't.

I made a monk guy using BeCKS2.0 and it works quite nicely. 2 karma in this system isn't really a pain unless you're a cheese face and want money....

But really why bother learning a skill at all thanks to the miracles of skillwires?

A rating 1 skillwire costs 3x1x500 = 1500 nuyen and 0.2 essence.

A rating 6 Chipjack Expert Driver is 30000 nuyen and 0.6 Essence.

A chipjack is like, 2000 nuyen and 0.1 essence.

Sooo for like 33500 nuyen and 0.9 essence you get 7 dice with any skillsoft. You can pay for this and like, brawling 1 which would cost 3x100 = 300 nuyen for 7 dice

Munch-Cheese powers, ACTIVATE!

Couple problems there.

1) Chipjack Expert Drivers have a max rating of 3.
2) Even Skillsofts have to obey the "no more pool dice than skill level" rule. So at most, you'd only have two dice available.

Where does it say it has a maximum rating?

And thank you for that reminder...I totally forgot about that in my haste to be really useful to the team via knowledge skills. I guess I was blinded by being useful for a change. Silly me.

Ah, The erratta. Thanks. Sorry for making an ass out of myself. I'm really good at it though.

Well this kind of poops on my character. I got a bunch of skillsofts so I could be Mr Knowledge Skills. Even so, 4, 6, or 8 dice is pretty good considering the cost.

But...now I have 15000 to spend and like, a few hours to do it in.

Yeah I got all that fun stuff.

and I know I don't need a skillsoft for knowledge, I just got overhasty while typing.

I just upgraded 10 of my knowledge skillsofts from R2 to R3 because the difference is exactly 1500.

And as good as a ME is, I just can't take it and feel good about myself afterwards.

Oh and my character took these to be useful to a better degree. 75 karma for language, read/write AND knowledge skills is pretty nasty.

I speak 3 languages, including English which I got for free at R5. Only have 6 knowledge skills though at 4, 4, 3, 3, 5, and 2/4.

Only really useful active skills are electronics and Electronics B/R. He's a martial artist who's got Wing Chun at R6 and two extra maneuvers, Whirling and Stunning Fist.

He's part of a Monk order. I invented a maneuver called stunning fist that works as follows:

Stunning Fist: The character makes a standard melee success test as normal at -2 power and -1 damage level. In addition to damage, the opponent is also stunned (+2 to all target numbers) for a number of combat turns equal to the full natural power of the attack minus 1/2 impact armor rating plus any successes generated on a body or willpower (whichever is greater) test made against target number 4. No combat pool is allowed for this test. Impact armor applies normally to resisting incurred damage. This modifier stacks with that imposed by shock weapons. If damage is fully resisted, the stunning effect still applies.

I also managed to procure for myself +1 reach, but I've got some seriously massive strictures (I modelled it after a Magic order) with 5 normal ones plus a NO FIREARMS rule plus dues for a total of 7.

aside from grenades and other explosives like plastique all weapons I use have to be muscle powered.

The +1 reach is conditional: can only be used when unarmed or using a worn weapon (IE: shock glove or hardliner).

Thus, if I counter attack, I get +2 reach which is swanky.

I also managed to get whirling because I wanted to be able to deal with a lot of opponents at once. Sure whirling is kinda crappy, but I figure a shock glove will work, and I just don't feel right if I can't be all Mr.FlailingAboutWildly

I figure that what kills a lot action in games is players not having the knowledge skills or the contacts to cover themselves. I figure this will be a fun way to bolster both of these fronts.

Besides, being able to speak a total of 8 languages all at once is just too damn much to resist.