Author Topic: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]  (Read 2878 times)

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Prime32

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Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« on: April 23, 2011, 11:35:17 PM »
I was looking up some stuff on Tai Chi and started thinking about ways to base monk abilities on different martial arts. I'm not exactly an expert, so I'd appreciate any suggestions. Mostly I'm just going by Wikipedia and a few observations.

General monk stuff:
  • Full BAB
  • As a swift action, can gain a bonus to any ability score equal to half their monk level plus their Wis modifier for 1 round.
  • Can walk on vertical surfaces at lv3, water at lv4, and air at lv5, as long as they end their movement solidly supported. At double these levels (6, 8 and 10) they may use these abilities for indefinite periods.



Taijiquan (Tai Chi, "Waterbending")
  • Successive attacks as part of a full attack take cumulative -4 penalties rather than -5 (eg. a 20th level monk could attack at +20/+16/+12/+8). Possibly improves to -3 penalties (+20/+17/+14/+11)
  • You gain Combat Reflexes as a bonus feat, and a +4 bonus to AC against attacks of opportunity.
  • Whenever you strike an opponent they take a cumulative -1 penalty to attack rolls, AC and Reflex saves for 1 round. Or maybe a Dex penalty.
  • Attacking you and missing provokes an attack of opportunity.
  • Whenever you take the total defense action, fight defensively, or use Combat Expertise, you gain an additional number of attacks of opportunity for the round equal to the bonus to AC.

Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Fist, "Airbending" + "Gentle Fist")
  • Whenever you move directly from one of an opponent's threatened squares to another, your movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity from that opponent. While you threaten a creature your allies (including you) may treat every square in which you have been in the last round as if it contained an ally for the purposes of flanking that creature.
  • You gain Evasive Reflexes as a bonus feat, and you may always take a 5ft step on your turn even if you have already moved.
  • After each 5ft of movement you gain a cumulative +1 bonus on attack rolls against any creature you threatened before the start of your movement, as well as on rolls made for special attacks like trip and bull rush. This benefit lasts for 1 round. For instance, if a monk starting between an orc and an ogre travelled 30ft while threatening the ogre at every point, he would gain a +6 bonus on his next attack against the ogre and a +1 bonus on his next attack against the orc.
  • If the path of your movement for the round encloses one or more areas, you gain 20% concealment against any creatures in those areas for 1 round.
  • If you are within 10ft of a position where something could provide you cover, it provides you cover. You may even use an attacker as cover against their own attack.

Xingyiquan
  • For every two attacks with which you strike a creature in a round, you may force them back 5ft. You may then move 5ft forward if you wish. This movement does not provoke an attack of opportunity for either character.
  • Whenever you deal damage to an opponent, that opponent takes a penalty on damage rolls for 1 round equal to half the damage taken. If you deal damage to an enemy multiple times in a round only the highest value is used.
  • You may make a full attack as part of a charge.
  • You gain a bonus to AC and saves against any creature equal to the number of times you have attacked them in this round, whether or not these attacks were successful.


I figure these abilities are sorted into order of strength, and you gain abilities from one school interwoven with lower-level abilities from others.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2011, 11:04:34 AM by Prime32 »
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Otto the Bugbear

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #1 on: April 24, 2011, 10:30:39 AM »
I was looking up some stuff on Tai Chi and started thinking about ways to base monk abilities on different martial arts. I'm not exactly an expert, so I'd appreciate any suggestions. Mostly I'm just going by Wikipedia and a few observations.

General monk stuff:
Can walk on vertical surfaces at lv3, water at lv4, and air at lv5, as long as they end their movement solidly supported. At double these levels (6, 8 and 10) they may use these abilities for indefinite periods.


I'd say scrap the level 3-5 abilities. As soon as you added the part about ending movement solidly supported I think it should simply be reworded. Make level 3 (vertical) the ability to climb at base speed with no penalty. Level 4 (water) should either be balance or jump -- Balance = no penalty for moving normal speed; Jump = always considered as running start. Level is simply a jump check reflavored to be a jump in a straight line rather than the jump being in an arc.

I haven't run the numbers, but as long as someone that maxes ranks on the appropriate skill can usually make the check (over 50% if there are no circumstantial penalties) it would be a better design element.

Levels 6, 8, and 10 I'd so something similar with skill checks. But, I'm okay with allowing it to happen for indefinite periods at will also. (I also had the thought to write the ability to say something like "if your ranks in the relevant skill equals or exceeds your level, you can do this indefinitely", but something doesn't sit right for that one.)

Quote
Baguazhang (Eight Trigram Fist, "Airbending" + "Gentle Fist")
You do not provoke an attack of opportunity for moving from one of an opponent's threatened squares to another.

Does this mean if the opponent threatens three squares I only don't provoke for moving out of the first/into the second, but if I move out of the second/into the third I do provoke? Either way it should just be cleared up a little bit. The way it reads now can be interpreted as moving out of one square only.

You could also simply make it a Tumble check. Something with a DC equal to the foe's CR.

Quote
If the path of your movement encloses any creature's position, you gain 20% concealment against that creature for 1 round.

Needs more definition. I think I know what you're saying. That shouldn't be "think I know".

Quote
Xingyiquan
For every two attacks with which you strike a creature in a round, you may force them back 5ft. You may then move 5ft forward if you wish.

For this last one add, "You're movement when doing this does not provoke attacks of opportunity from that foe," or "You're movement when doing this does not provoke attacks of opportunity."


Quote
I figure these abilities are sorted into order of strength, and you gain abilities from one school interwoven with lower-level abilities from others.

I was going to complain about getting all this at level 1. Talk about quite a level dip. But this last statement sounds like you simply haven't set up the level progression each ability is gained at. Overall pretty nice.

Prime32

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2011, 12:42:37 PM »
Quote
You do not provoke an attack of opportunity for moving from one of an opponent's threatened squares to another.

Does this mean if the opponent threatens three squares I only don't provoke for moving out of the first/into the second, but if I move out of the second/into the third I do provoke? Either way it should just be cleared up a little bit. The way it reads now can be interpreted as moving out of one square only.
You never provoke, but I'm not sure how to make it clearer.

Quote
Quote
If the path of your movement encloses any creature's position, you gain 20% concealment against that creature for 1 round.

Needs more definition. I think I know what you're saying. That shouldn't be "think I know".
Again, I'm not sure how to phrase this. It's supposed to work like that maneuver where you can make an area catch fire by running around it, except that it can affect multiple areas.

Quote
Quote
Xingyiquan
For every two attacks with which you strike a creature in a round, you may force them back 5ft. You may then move 5ft forward if you wish.

For this last one add, "You're movement when doing this does not provoke attacks of opportunity from that foe," or "You're movement when doing this does not provoke attacks of opportunity."
This was taken from the Sun School feat's "Inexorable Progress of Dawn"... except I forgot to add that part. Thanks.
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Otto the Bugbear

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2011, 01:32:13 PM »
Quote
You do not provoke an attack of opportunity for moving from one of an opponent's threatened squares to another.

Does this mean if the opponent threatens three squares I only don't provoke for moving out of the first/into the second, but if I move out of the second/into the third I do provoke? Either way it should just be cleared up a little bit. The way it reads now can be interpreted as moving out of one square only.
You never provoke, but I'm not sure how to make it clearer.

I guess in two ways. This first one is more powerful as it applies to all enemies.

You never provoke attacks of opportunity when moving out of any threatened square.

This next one is less powerful because you have to designate one foe you do not provoke against.

Each round choose one opponent. Against that opponent, you do not provoke AoO when moving out of any threatened square.]/i]

Quote
Quote
Quote
If the path of your movement encloses any creature's position, you gain 20% concealment against that creature for 1 round.

Needs more definition. I think I know what you're saying. That shouldn't be "think I know".
Again, I'm not sure how to phrase this. It's supposed to work like that maneuver where you can make an area catch fire by running around it, except that it can affect multiple areas.

I'm not sure either.

If during your movement you occupy all squares adjacent to a single foe, you gain 20% concealment against that foe.

minmax

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #4 on: May 16, 2011, 01:15:55 PM »
Late reply, but I have a couple suggestions as a martial artist myself:

Taiji:
Maybe give them combat reflexes and extra damage on their AoO's instead of one of the other strange abilities.  I think you're trying to model Taiji's ability to exploit their opponent's mistakes to greatest effect.

Bagua:
I think Otto missed the point about the first ability: you have to finish your movement in your opponent's threatened space for this ability to work.  It's not just ignoring all AoO's. 

The higher-level abilities are pretty cool and I think appropriate, but I'm not sure if they'd be all that helpful in actual play.  Maybe they need more abilities that help them hit/deal damage to their opponent?  Like making the opponent count as flanked by their movement (paltry, but something).  The +1 per 5ft ability is OK for this purpose but not great and may be very situational.

Xingyi:
I don't know enough about this style to be of help.  These abilities seem reasonable balance-wise.

Prime32

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #5 on: May 16, 2011, 07:31:45 PM »
Thanks for the advice, made some updates.

For Taijiquan, with the full attack ability I was trying to emphasise its movements flowing into each other. Maybe I should replace the extra AoOs ability with one which is based on the penalty you take with Combat Expertise.
« Last Edit: May 16, 2011, 07:42:19 PM by Prime32 »
My work
The tier system in a nutshell:
[spoiler]Tier 6: A cartographer.
Tier 5: An expert cartographer or a decent marksman.
Tier 4: An expert marksman.
Tier 3: An expert marksman, cartographer and chef who can tie strong knots and is trained in hostage negotiation or a marksman so good he can shoot down every bullet fired by a minigun while armed with a rusted single-shot pistol that veers to the left.
Tier 2: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything, or the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.
Tier 1: Someone with teleportation, mind control, time manipulation, intangibility, the ability to turn into an exact duplicate of anything and the ability to see into the future with perfect accuracy.[/spoiler]

Bauglir

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Re: Monk fighting styles inspired by real martial arts [3.5]
« Reply #6 on: May 17, 2011, 08:09:20 PM »
For the AoO negating one, the intent seems a bit different from never provoking; maybe, "You do not provoke the normal attack of opportunity for leaving a threatened square as long as the square you enter next is also threatened by the same opponent that threatened the square you leave."? Presumably, you would provoke if your NEXT square of movement took you out of a threatened square into an unthreatened one, but I'm unsure if that needs to be explicitly stated.
So you end up stuck in an endless loop, unable to act, forever.

In retrospect, much like Keanu Reeves.