Topic: Martial Arts Companion Styles and Combat Companion Styles

[Aotrs Commander]

I'm starting a slight revision of our current morass edition (mostly RM2/SM2/RMC with some bits of RMSS/FRP/SM:P thrown in). The primary aim of the revision is to balance out power creep we've had by collating weapon and other offensive skills together. At the moment, most of the characters have got one, maybe two weapons/MA skills maxed out so far ahead of their other skills that the latter are effectively useless in the high-power environement. MA is especially a bit sad at the moment, as part by luck, part by design later due to the former, lots of stuff as Adrenal Defense - combined the fact with there's no kit like LCD helmets that boost MA OBs.

(This is a product of about 14+ years of sporadic play with this particular party where a vicious cycle of ever-increasing OB/DBs has emerged. But that's not the problem - I don't mind the stupidly overpowered, so long as everyone is all stupidly overpowered equally.)

Anyway, I'm looking at implementing the combat styles of Combat Companion, among other things (such as collating the weapon categories into much broader groups for development rather than by single weapon) with the intention of 'freeing up' some DP to be 'reinvested' as it were, back into the offensive skills to boost their numbers a bit. This would be accomplished by effectively replacing the old MA Strike/Sweep/Nerve Strike/Locking Hold/[Style] with a single [Style] a la Combat Companion, especially with regard to DP costs.

Now, we've been using Martial Arts Companion for some time, and have got all of our MAC styles sorted and whatnot. I though it would be very simple just to divide the MAC Style costs (which are 1-60) by 3 to fit into the 1-20 of Combat Companion for the purposes of DP costs and leave them as is. However, in practise, this doesn't really help much, as it doesn't gain anyone more than a few points at absolute best and makes their bonuses lower at worst. I might be better served by converting the older styles to the CC points system as seeing if that's any better.



Trouble is, tiers aside, I can't find any commonalities between the systems and the weighting is different (very much so for the tiers). Unless I'm just daft, none of the preset styles in either system are of the same martial art (so I could at least have used that as a basis for comparison) and few if any of the non-tier bits match up.

E.g. MAC's Lesser and Greater Adrenal Defense (which reduces the perentage activity of AD and an option we've used in basically every style) bears no corrolation to the Adrenal Defense of Combat Companion (which is a boost to AD's numbers - something I'd really rather avoid if I can...)

Also, a lot of our MAC style options have a fixed bonus to certain skills (e.g. +10 to Adrenal Leaps), whereas CC has a '+1/rank if you've got the skill' instead.

So, I don't have a baseline from which to extrapolate new costs (especially with the tier costs being dramatically differently weighted.)



Does anyone have any suggestions about how I might cost up the older MAC options into the new CC style system? Or some other suggestion that would achive my desired goal some other way?

[markc]

  I wish I had better news but I do not think you can convert the MAC styles to CC styles directly. As you have stated they are very different in there approach to skills, abilities and bonuses.
  Even if there was an easy way to convert IMO I would probably recommend you recreate all the styles any way. Why? Well as you have stated you have been using the combined system for quite a few years tinkering with the rules as you go along. And if I interoperate your remarks above clearly you want to do a major re-hall of skills, combat abilities and they work in combat. When I have encountered this before it has never gone well unless it it broken down to its basic pieces and built from the ground up again. Sometimes the answer is you cannot get there from here and you have to back track a little bit, or a major bit to get what you want.
  Depending on just how much work you have to do I might let some of your players try and design the combat styles you have in the old system to fit in the new system. But as you know your players some might be better at the task then others or I should say better and sticking to the styles base idea and not focused on power creep. If you do this I would say as the GM you have the final call on if the style is ok for your game. If you have a good group give some experience points to do the conversions and provide another way for others to experience if they are not good converters of combat styles.
MDC

[sunwolf]

I would suggest that if you are using the Combat Companion and allowing Adrenal Defense as an option for styles that you either not use the Standard Skill at all or say that only the greater number applies (they don't stack).