Martial Arts Mechanics

[ThiagoMartell]

Are you guys familiar with systems that use different mechanics for punches and kicks?
Most I know don't have one, or rather, don't have mechanics different enough that I think punches/kicks shouldn't be considered simply 'unarmed strikes'.
GURPS is, as usual, very realistic and has kicks being harder to hit but hitting for more damage.
Street Fighter StG has a different technique for Punch and Kick. This has balance issues, because the basic Punches are simply better than the basic kicks and splitting points between Punch and Kick gets very expensive.
Most systems seem to just call it 'unarmed strike' and be done with it. What I'm looking for here is systems that don't do that. Thrash 2.0 does something similar and kind of has the same problems.
Final Stand has kicks being harder to do. I don't think there is any benefit to kicking in this system, since even the special kicks seem to be at most as good as the special punches.
Any help?

[neonchameleon]

What are you trying to do? For this you need a game that is (a) simulationist and (b) uses rules with turns taking a second or less. I think that narrows it down to GURPS.

[prufock]

Does Rifts do this? I seem to recall some detailed martial arts rules in that system.

[ThiagoMartell]

What are you trying to do? For this you need a game that is (a) simulationist and (b) uses rules with turns taking a second or less. I think that narrows it down to GURPS.

Actually, I don't think it needs to be simulationist, no. Final Stand is anything but simulationist and it includes punching and kicking with different mechanics. Thrash and SF StG are simulationist in a few ways, but they don't have turns measured in seconds. In fact, turn duration is undetermined in both games.

[jindra34]

Honestly with anything more advanced then straight punches and kicks, if you are not going to represent it with the granularity GURPS has it is actually fairly accurate to pretty much say punches and kicks are the same (other than the obvious of low/high start). Exalted does have a difference but it pretty much amounts to the same as GURPS.

[Dusk Eclipse]

Not strictly differentiating between punches and kicks; but Anima Beyond Fantasy martial arts give different bonus when using different styles.

For example if you use Mua Thai you add double your strength bonus to unarmed strikes, Kempo gives you an initiative bonus (in anima you roll initiative every round) and Tae Kwan Do gives you an extra attack at a penalty, etc.

It also have mastery grades, which improve the bonuses or even give you new abilities, one martial art at Grandmaster level allows you to strike in the energy table (ignoring most defences) for example.

[valadil]

I haven't seen any martial arts mechanics that I find satisfying. Whenever I've thought about homebrewing some, here's where I get stuck, no matter the system.

If you're going to have this sort of system at all it should handle wrestling or grappling. One player goes for a hold. There are certain counters available for that hold, which open up opportunities for different holds. In my head I can see this handled by rock paper scissor on crack, where different positions open up different moves you can play, each of which has different bonuses or penalties depending on the move your opponent plays. This isn't limited to grappling, I can see it working with pretty much any martial art.

Until you reach mass combat. This sort of system works well in a duel, where two opponents are engaged with each other. When a third comes in and bonks one of them on the head, it just doesn't make sense to me anymore. I'm tempted to say group combat and engaged combat use different rules, but why can I do one strike in a one on one fight, but not in a two on one? Maybe moves aren't available until you engage an enemy, but that opens you up to other moves (basically this would take the place of 3.5's flanking bonus).

At any rate, if you start doing anything at that level of detail, you have to do everything at that level of detail. And then it just gets too damn tedious. I don't want a system that has rules for attacking a man's head while he is grappling an alligator by the tail. And that's not even getting into which maneuvers are available to you based on the weapon you're using. Too tedious. I'll take abstract over that.

[Dimers]

Shadowrun (4th edition) has optional rules in the Arsenal book for martial arts styles and tactics. 'Course, their main unarmed combat rules are pretty weak, so that may not be the best place to look.

[Knaight]

The Fudge 10th anniversary edition includes two martial arts systems, one of which is more detailed than the other. The detailed one includes distinct mechanics for several different strikes, including several kicks, several punches, elbowing, etc. The less detailed one abstracts it somewhat, but does have decent rules for tripping, pushing, grappling, etc.

[Weimann]

In Exalted, punches and kicks have a stat difference and certain weapons can only be used with one of them. Extra limbs like tails or horns and similar also have individual stats.

Tangentially, in Shards of the Exalted Dream, a book of system hacks for Exalted, there's a system called Burn Legend. It differentiates between Basic Strike, Aerial Strike, Rush, Grapple and Projectile (and Defense). It's a pretty neat system, in fact; mechanically, it stands quite alone from its Exalted parent and can be played fully with only that book. I'd advice you to check it out.

[eyeprofet]

Does Rifts do this? I seem to recall some detailed martial arts rules in that system.

Rifts, along with the other game systems from Palladium Books, have chars use a specific "Hand to Hand: _____" skill. There are a number of different choices from: None, Basic, Expert, Martial Arts and other more exotic forms. For reference the Ninjas and Superspies RPG has rules for 41 different martial arts forms.

There are general rules for Hand to Hand combat that everyone follows. Most HtH skills specifying what types of actions (punches, kicks, grapples, etc.) are available to that HtH skill, along with associated bonuses and number of attacks per melee round that are gained with it.

While normally punches and kicks do not have a separate bonuses to strike, kicks normally do more damage. The trade off usually being that powerful kicks (and even punches) use more actions/attacks per melee. Unarmed or HtH combat does have different bonuses from specific weapon combat though, and can further be modified with high physical attributes (such as Strength and Prowess).

[The Dark Fiddler]

If you really, really want a difference between punches and kicks, and don't mind doing a little bit of work yourself, Mutants and Masterminds can build in whatever differences you want between them. Build up whatever power for punches, take an alternate power and adjust it slightly for a kick. Not really ideal though, I think?

[LibraryOgre]

A few...

As mentioned, the Palladium system has a LOT; Ninja and Superspies had more than 40 different styles, and its Mystic China supplement added a score more. However, IMO, they're kinda bad, since the main difference between them is damage... many times, there's little penalty for using "punch that does 1d10" instead of "punch that does 1d6". Furthermore, Palladium never seems quite sure what to do with its attacks per melee, and tends to way overcharge for things (they like "Lose half your attacks" sorts of things, even if that means a person with 6 attacks is penalized more than someone with 2).

I did some variations on the old Oriental Adventures system, including a partial conversion to 3e. Pick a style (Hard, Soft, or Hard/Soft), pick a primary attack (Punches, Kicks, Movements, Throws, Weapons, etc.). Both style and attack have a modifier to AC (Hard has a smaller one, Soft a bigger one), number of attacks, and damage (Hard did more damage, Soft did less). Your style and your primary attack determined what special moves you used. It wasn't an attack-by-attack matter, but it worked pretty well for D&D.

A lot more specific was the system from complete Gladiators, which used a matrix. You chose an attack, your opponent chose a defense. That gave you a modifier to the attack, depending on whether they defended appropriately (if they chose a high block while you chose "knee to the groin", they were going to have a bad day).

Fading Suns had a pretty good and varied system; I like Hackmaster's, but it's got some weirdness.

[Tvtyrant]

Pokemon >_>

Other than that I have no idea. My idea of an advanced martial artist generally looks like a guy who is surrounded by enemies and manages to attack several of them simultaneously without being hit.

[ThiagoMartell]

In Exalted, punches and kicks have a stat difference and certain weapons can only be used with one of them. Extra limbs like tails or horns and similar also have individual stats.

Tangentially, in Shards of the Exalted Dream, a book of system hacks for Exalted, there's a system called Burn Legend. It differentiates between Basic Strike, Aerial Strike, Rush, Grapple and Projectile (and Defense). It's a pretty neat system, in fact; mechanically, it stands quite alone from its Exalted parent and can be played fully with only that book. I'd advice you to check it out.

I love that system, it's a major influence in the system I'm designing.

Thanks everyone for your responses. I think I'll just stick to punches do d4 damage, kicks do d8, punches are usually 20% more likely to hit, which was my first idea.

[Autolykos]

Shadowrun (4th edition) has optional rules in the Arsenal book for martial arts styles and tactics. 'Course, their main unarmed combat rules are pretty weak, so that may not be the best place to look.

Third Edition definitely has kicks as a separate maneuver, giving more range and power at the risk of being tripped easier and being less flexible (can't be combined with most other options/maneuvers). And learning it wastes time and Karma you could have used on something else.
I did something similar in the Martial Arts expansion for my own system.

[Darth Stabber]

I'm currently playing jeet kun do master in hero system, and it has some pretty good differentiation between various strikes, and if you read through the martial arts book, it gets pretty in depth about various martial arts..

[ThiagoMartell]

Now you have reminded how much JKD has distanced itself from Lee's vision. Sad, so sad.

[NichG]

This is perhaps more abstract than what you wanted, but I've got a 5-level PrC in my D&D 3.5 campaign that works sort of like this:

At Lv1 and Lv3 you get to pick special variations of your standard attack. In the system, these are labelled X and Y (and the standard attack is !). These variations have slight mechanical modifications such as:

- Make a Jump check vs enemy's AC and if it succeeds move 5ft without drawing an AoO followed by this attack - you must keep your target within your reach with this movement.

- Swift blow: enemy loses Dodge bonuses to AC against this strike, but it is at -2 damage.

- Overhand blow: enemy gains an AoO against you, but if they take it then this attack automatically hits.

Things like that. There are five or six of these total. You could use something like this to model variations on your basic strike (so you have unarmed strike, but a Kick has a minor variation and a Punch has a different one, and you can combine them as you like).

The interesting thing with this class was that once you have a few of these, you can do combos (a certain number per level, which you get to define). For instance, you might decide that XY!, a length 2 combo, makes the enemy flatfooted against the finisher (1) and deals an extra 1d6 of elemental damage (1). An X! sequence (length 1) might instead juggle the enemy 10ft up into the air and then cause them falling damage. And so on.

[ThiagoMartell]

Thanks for the suggeston, NichG, but those wouldn't really fit the system I'm working with.

[Darth Stabber]

Now you have reminded how much JKD has distanced itself from Lee's vision. Sad, so sad.

There are several groups of dojos teaching "the proper way" to do JKD, the problem is that JKD is supposed to be tailored by the practitioner to the practitioner. There is no way that the dubious sensei could teach bruce's vision in the format used by every martial arts dojo in the us. All of the martial arts dojos are roughly the same. They teach the same crap methods of fighting, with some minor differences for the sole sake of differentiation. Krav Maga is a little different, since it it has no commitment to any sort of mysticallity, nor does it hold itself as a means to accomplishing anything but pounding the crap out of someone. But even it is being drawn into the mall dojo bullcrap that has given the whole area of martial arts a bad name.