Forum > Rolemaster
High End Martial Arts
Marc R:
RM in different variations has offered powers you'd expect to see in an over the top Kung Fu movie. . .ranging from skills, like adrenals, to spells, like the monks, to psions in SM.
The description of the Essence field in magic can be broadly interpreted to sound a lot like some eastern magical traditions of an all encompassing "field of energy" that casters tap into. . .or ki martial artists can "tap" into.
I find that in my games adrenals can sometimes become unbalancing. . and often start to lose their special feel as they become just another skill you can buy. "The Goblin warrior uses adrenal strength and attacks you" or the like.
OTOH treating all of these like spells seems to limit them from being used often (due to limited PP), and begins to blur the line from ki like martial art abilities into all out Street Fighter fireball tossing short range teleport behind the enemy style "martial arts abilities".
So far the best answer I've had is to limit the adrenal type skills to "schools" where they'd have problems with outsiders learning them, so that they remain special. . . .but this tends to then unbalance combat unnaturally in favor of monk like martial artists.
Any of you have similar issues, and come up with answers I might use for my games?
markc:
No, I geneally have them tied to combat styles or backgrounds. I also try and keep some of the oposits away from one another ie adrenal St and Adrenal Sp etc.
I have also thought of tieing them to combat styles with the option of adding them to a style for DP and increasing the Dp cost of the style. Or requiring the adrenal skill as part of learning a style.
MDC
Elton Robb:
So far, only my cousin has tried any of the adrenal skills. I've given my party's orc Adrenal Strength, but he (his player is a she) has yet to use it.
DangerMan:
I used to think the adrenal skills are too powerful, but recently I've started to lean towards them being okay (for all). These skills help balance the power level between spell users and non spell users, as the former tend to dominate combat at higher levels.
I think players should justify their adrenal skills, by some training, in their bacground story, but wouldent limit it to certain professions or requier a talent.
Marc R:
So would you consider the concept of Ki/Chi in martial arts to be a skill, or magic more akin to Essence or Mentalism?
Or would you consider it both, with more "realistic" abilities on one end, and more fantastic ones the other?
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