[FATE] How to make everyone equal-ish fighters?

[JusticeZero]

I want to have a game that has a martial arts movie feel to it. Trying to think up some premades for the demo. Condensed, so using skills, not approaches (which I found not to my liking).
One thing I want to do is to design such that both "My big thing is knowing how to fight better than everyone" and "I don't fight, I'm a skill girl" are equally invalid. Everybody can fight. I'm happy for everyone to fight differently, I just want to make it so the default is "Everyone in the party is good at fighting AND their skillset".
What would you suggest?

[Anonymouswizard]

Simplest solution? Approaches. More difficult solution? Carefully curated Skill or Profession list with no dedicated combat option but everything is combat applicable. Easy but not totally reliable: hey, can everyone put Fight or Shoot at at least Good?

Alternatively drop Fight and Shoot and give everyone a Stunt that lets them Attack with their highest skill. Just be prepared for weirdness like characters having to fight with Rapport, Drive, or Crafts.

[Eldan]

I definitely wouldn't have Fight as a skill here.

Instead, you need different ways of fighting. Either approaches (whatever they end up being, for fighting maybe something like Strong, Sneaky, Tactical, Fast) or with different fighting skills.

Stunts and Aspects definitely will have to be ways of fighting, not just "I fight good", but "My punch takes enemies out in one hit" or "I can analyze an enemy's moves and then predict them" or "If I get a drop on an enemy, I can disable them before they know what hit them" or "I have mastered the blade".

[kyoryu]

I want to have a game that has a martial arts movie feel to it. Trying to think up some premades for the demo. Condensed, so using skills, not approaches (which I found not to my liking).
One thing I want to do is to design such that both "My big thing is knowing how to fight better than everyone" and "I don't fight, I'm a skill girl" are equally invalid. Everybody can fight. I'm happy for everyone to fight differently, I just want to make it so the default is "Everyone in the party is good at fighting AND their skillset".
What would you suggest?

Fate kinda works like that, mostly, especially if you look at "can fight" as more broadly "can contribute in a fight".

A lot of times, the "combat monsters" are actually the ones not doing the heavy lifting in a fight, especially if you've got an enemy that has a sill higher than them (which should happen pretty regularly). At that point, the fight guy is probably finding most of the things they can do are pretty well resisted. Meanwhile, Skill Girl is using Notice, Athletics, and everything else to do actions which are weakly resisted to do Create Advantage while the Fight Guy just holds the line.

Sure, at the end of the day, Fight Guy is probably getting the final big hit in, but really they're only able to do that because of Skill Girl.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Alternatively drop Fight and Shoot and give everyone a Stunt that lets them Attack with their highest skill. Just be prepared for weirdness like characters having to fight with Rapport, Drive, or Crafts.
Honestly I would do this without the stunt. If it's emulating media where everyone can fight in a large variety of ways, then just assume that fighting can be wrapped up into any physical skill and used as an attack.