Martial Arts "insurance"/concealed carry license

[Avoraciopoctules]

Personally, my self-defense strategy boils down to keeping physically fit and reasonably alert. I carry two wallets and if I get mugged, I'll throw the less important one and run. Carrying actual weapons seems like a liability if you don't spend time in very dangerous neighborhoods where people will routinely attack you. Most places in the U.S. don't have those.

Also, I'd like a link to Kaelik's ghoul class if anyone has it bookmarked. That could be very handy if I try rebuilding one of my old Planescape characters for a game that involves level-appropriate combats.

[Judging__Eagle]

If you wrote stuff like TarkisFlux's Skills rewrite, Maxus's Crafting re-writes, Iaimeki's Skill Feats and Pally, Koumei's.... greatly varied stuff (I'm currently running two different DC! games, and the stuff for the PCs is awesome at both tiers), Phone's Big Fat Squares (an awesome system for non-mapped fighting; I can't use it b/c I often have to juggle 7 people that split off and have different speeds; so I stick with a grid since it's less memory-load) it would be different.

You know what I don't fucking see in that list? Judging Eagle's X.

You haven't written anything either. WTF is your problem? No, I mostly don't write a lot of homebrew shit. I mostly don't post what I do write because it's for my games and usually not for other peoples.

I do however go into "skills" threads and present design criteria or advice. I do that every now and then. But mostly, I don't write things.

My total contributions on any given day are still greater than your entire lifespan. You seriously don't even give advice, In a discussion about houserules I gave all my houserules and explained why I use them. I even provided a critique of Tome Fighter, and what sort of things need to be changed.

You know what you did? You bragged about a character and how awesome he is for like eight posts.

That's it. That's the sum total of your contribution to the Houserules thread.

Believe it or not, there is no goddam contract that I signed where the Gaming Den pays me based on complete output. I can write or not write whatever I damn want, and the fact that you think you can bitch about how I don't write a lot of rules, and therefore am some sort of idiot is beyond a joke, since you have never contributed anything worth reading to the gaming den in your entire life.

I was being facietious. You obviously haven't been here that long, nor read a lot of what I post. Since you are obviously unable to read forums, or look for IMOI threads that I started, or posted in, I'll see if I can find some stuff.

Some things I've written, and my thoughts/reviews on them after all of this time.

-The Psychanalyst

[not finished, it's a 15 lvl class stretched to 20 levels really; this is old; it's a ranged dps/debuff character that can only affect living enemies, and has specific turn-losing things that are needed for it to do its thing; it can also remove status effects from the party; and gets a pair of minions; giving it Res effects at later levels is one thing that I can think of now that it should have]

-Berzerker-Magus

[old, sort of wek, better than anything WoTC released, it's not a terrible class, but it's still got the old mage-fighter dilema, which is where the 'sort of wek' situation occurs]

-The Berzerker

[When looking at my own Barbarian characters... I'm 50/50 when I look at my re-write in terms of taking more Barb levels, or this class [RoW Barb, obviously]. Which is pretty much what a PrC should be. Not a way to 'get more power', but a way to tweak your character's 'flavor']

-The 'Bloodspiller' (aka, the 'Kharn the Betrayer' class; again, it's a 50/50 split on taking this over more levels of the RoW Barb, not more powerful, just differently powerful, and losing RoW Barb abilities)

-[Azerothian >_>] Death Knight

[so far it's been in play by two people who posted, they like it apparently] [this is my 2nd 'phase class'. I stole the RoW fighter "focus" mechanic, and the 'phase' mechanic/idea from a previous project of mine, the Aquan Champions 'type' idea.

-Some suggestions for Prak's Hell Rider (specifically how the class can be a multi-class lead-in)

-Some suggestions that lead to specific 'Major' Weapons, as well as one (maybe 2?) Major Weapon write-ups.

-Aquan Champion

[My first attempt at a "phase" class; classes that have multiple states, but are not able to change their state at the start of, nor during, a fight; they have roughly 3x the abilities of an other class, but lose 2/3 at any one time. Sometimes you can impose the Drowning status on people as a standard action touch attack; other times you're immune to fire/cold; other times you shoot gouts of super-heated steam; they're flexible, which is what I like to play, but they really can't do everything, and can't use all of their powers in a single encounter]

-The AWoD Campaign, in 10 parts, from start to finish [Frank thinks it's 'awesome']

[Note: This campaign is more of a 'campaign' skeleton. It could be used for Shadowrun just as well as it could be used for AWoD or D&D. It's also the first and only campaign that I've written start to finish; every other game that I've run has been more 'world-building' with the Players interacting with the world; which often leaves me flat on my face when the Players don't have any sort of direction or drive for their characters'

-A few Tome Feats that needed tweaking before they were balanced; none of them had issues mentioned by posters after their final edits. I've had players use some of them in my games to play concepts that they wanted to play.

-Some add-on stuff for the DC! game that I'm running [Specifically Alfar (Eldar), and Dverges (Squats)]

-Edits, corrections, suggestions for some DC! stuff (there was only one thing that I insisted on, the rest were basically "these abilities need to not be the same as those abilities" or typo correction)

-Some other minor 'rules' or 'class abilities' write-ups that people seem to want a write-up of an example of what I mean when I suggest a change to something. Sometimes people like them, sometimes they don't, sometimes they edit it. Either way gets my own brain grinding.

-A mixed amount of adventure ideas (Pistol Shrimp Pirates, Alternate campaigns, and items for Warp Cult (Aliens, Gantz); Alternate Climate ideas)

-d20 replacement races and classes for outsiders [Celestials and Fiends; 'Immortals' ideas];

this is sort of based on the monk class in terms of picking up random powers off of lists every couple levels. The 'races' are generic, and the stat mods are meant to reflect what the 'creature' will be. The idea being that outsider is a class, not a hit dice. In theory this could be re-worked and used for Tome of Celestials. The Immortal Theurge could probably use some more Psalms, but I got bored of the project. It was just dream inspired, so w/e.

-[name] Blade Fighter; meant to make something akin to Duncan Idaho; or a armourless knife fighter.

It does break the RNG, however doing so is a not good idea, since the 'costs' of doing so will build up, and are not removable within an adventure (specifically it's a Con penalty, that lasts the whole adventure; and it gets higher each time the classes ability is used). So, you can fight 10 Sardukar in hand-to-hand combat, but you'll have dealt yourself enough of a Con penalty that you'll die at the end of it

.

-The Monster Rider PrC [think knights, or barbarians that ride mammoths or smilodons]

-A few attempts at the Ranger class; spread out across a few threads

-Light, Grey and Dark marks, a morality system where being good, neutral and evil has it's own benefits and drawbacks.

This system took a lot of hashing over; It has it's core finished, but I didn't finish the "loss of character control" elements.

In review, I noticed that in that thread that I also looked at the RNG and how characters need to stay on it; and discussed Uber's game in that thread. Honestly, I really don't see how 18 con damage +40 per round to one target, versus 200 damage that ignores DR and can hit everything along a 100' line within 20' reach, versus ranged vile damage, AoE Force blasts are very much out of line with each other.

-Races as Nations;

turning every race in D&D into a race here on earth; replacing all different nationalities with D&D monster races. Basically, a re-do of Dead Man's Hand, except for D&D.

-something i'm currently working on, and mostly focused on getting Koumei angry enough to write what she already wants to write; fixes for the 40k system. I want to re-do rules, since the turns feel too static; she wants to re-do codexes. We just need to do some play tests.

Those are things that I can find; the rest is just random ideas that I interject in other people's threads and IMOI threads. Most of the time, I throw out stuff and see if anything sticks. That's really the best way for me. Sometimes I get something really good (like the AWoD campaign) but a lot of the time it's just very vivid dreams that I wrote down, and tried to see it it would gel. Usually it doesn't.

So, yes. Like I said before. "Nothing at all". I guess you never use the IMOI boards, I've been putting stuff up for a couple years now. Some I've finished, some I haven't. Some is decent, some is mediocre, but that's expected. You won't have all 'hits'; and many things will be be a 'miss'. Experimentation, and stubborness are keys.

If Uber's right and you are writing stuff. Then good, finally. I was getting bored of your almost constant bitchmoaning and not having you actually suggesting any solutions or ideas at all.

Even a bad idea is a good thing to post, so post your ideas whether you think they're any good or not. The Gaming Den is as much about brainstorming as it is as about refining products.


Finally, you're repeated comments about how 'unbalanced' or 'overpowered' that fighter was are more funny than anything else. It would deal less raw damage than the monk on a per-round basis (and much less than the barbarian; something like less than half the barbarian's damage), and its only appreciable niches were "knowledge dump", "sensor", "sneak" and "reduce 1 creature's Con modifier by 9 points, deal +15 damage 9 times (DR reduces this each time), requires 9 successful attacks in a row". A massive array of powers that obviously shit all over everyone else's characters.

If you think that the fighter outclassed everyone else at everything else, you're lying, the Monk and Barbarian outclassed that fighter in a bunch of things; like having actual speed, better movement types, as well as more range and reach on their attacks (both were larger creatures, the Barb was Huge size and used a polearm, and was able to alternate between medium and huge; and the Monk I believe was Huge.

They both dealt more damage (the Barb clocked in at 10d6+48 [ignores DR/Hardness] vs my fighters 3d6+11 +3 Con damage [must bypass DR normally] or Prak's Monk who fired Force damage bolts [3x 14d6 ranged touch attacks], or did Vile Damage AoE attacks [15d6 per round, centred on him that he was immune to]. The rest of the party were spellcasters. I don't think that I even have to bother explaining why they were more powerful specifically, or overall compared to a non-caster.

After all of this time, I think that it's you, not me, that keeps inflating the percieved power level of that character.

======

Josh,

My brother was outside, waiting to get back on the bus, the other guy sucker punched him on the side of the head. After being hit in the head, and after simply standing for a few minutes at the bus stop before that, before he hit the other guy. There were several witnesses that watched the guy punch my brother while the guy waited until my brother was going to get on the bus.

This happened after the guy had been verbally abusing my brother for several minutes after my brother had asked him to lower the volume on his headphones while they had been on the bus.

I'm sure that asking someone to lower the volume on their headphones, that are so loud that the person using the headphones can't even hear you when you ask, when on a bus; doesn't really count as 'provoking' a fight.

clikml,

honestly, I dunno what the real difference is between the two terms. Somethings that I have noticed:

-There's no 'rating' or 'belts' in krav maga; the instructors try to go over multiple types of techniques, while most martial arts teach things at certain 'grades'

-It's like the English language, and rifles through the pockets of other martial arts to pick up material that is easy to teach, and handy to know; instructors are often black belts in a couple martial arts. My brother's instructor teaches karate, and kick boxing at the place my brother goes to, I'm not sure what else though. My brother helps teach the children's karate class (the 8-10 year old class); and goes for kick boxing as well as krav maga; I'm not really sure what else that place teaches though.

-most of the techniques are pretty boring; there's no high kicking, but lots of striking

-a lot of form and technique is about minimizing injury when you are in a fight (keep your head down, crown of your head out front; you don't need to look your opponent in the face, and your crown is tougher than your face; also, you protect your jaw, and watch the other person's hips, which will move first in a fight.... learning that was eye-opening for me, and made a lot of sense once I started trying it)

-no specified focus; grappling, ground fighting, disarming, kicking and striking are all covered; most 'martial arts' have a fairly limited repetoire; usually split between striking and grappling; I'm not going to discuss 'throwing', since it's seriously an almost dangerous thing to do if your target is resisting.

-training is very different; it's more a workout than what most martial arts tend to teach; at the end of a krav maga workout you're bone tired, sweating sheets, and need a shower; I don't think that I, or anyone that I know, ever describe something like karate as an "intense workout". Tiried at the end? Probably. Needing a shower? Usually not.

[erik]

Hrm. I only ever practiced shotokan karate for a couple years in college, but we worked pretty damn hard. I always was soaked in sweat and no workout I had ever done was as taxing (at the time I was a decent runner, topped out at 6 min miles and could do a mini marathon at under 8 min pace). Our training usually left many bruises from blocking and included reading assingments and discussions on mental aspects of fighting so that folks would not just shut down in a fight.

I definitely get the distinction between sport martial arts and self defense or practical martial arts. Combat system in this context is sounding more and more like practical self defense. Less forms and stance, more adapting previous knowledge.

About the bus encounter it does sound more like the other guy was a bit unhinged but tis hard to say not having heard the wording, tone or body language used to tell the guy to turn his noise down. *shrug*

[Judging__Eagle]

Yeah, adaptive knowledge is a key thing; then lots and lots of practice with specific methods for striking, how to deal with a handgun to your head, or side, how to get inside control in a grapple, and other things that I really have no experience with.

It's about learning dirty/effective fighting.

Like how, say, flicking your fingers at your attackers groin (it's a spread finger, 'wave' or 'swat' at the target) are are a very reccomended way to get out of chokehold, because humans reflectively jump back when something so much as quickly brushes up against their groin.

My brother has a mix of other stuff too, he uses Bas Ruten's "warm up" DVD/CDs (once you've watched the DVDs for the techniques, you listen to the CDs to do your warm ups). Bas Ruten is a pretty demanding guy, but then again, he's been a pro fighter for a long time (retired now, he trains others now).

I'm not familiar with Shotokan (or really most martial 'anythings'); if it wore you out, then you probably got good training. Most people that do martial arts aren't getting the best possible benefits from it.

Yeah... the other guy was definitely a bit unhinged; he kept going on about how my brother was a retard, mentally handicapped, should be in a mental asylum, shouldn't be out in public; my brother just smiled and agreed and nodded while keeping his eyes on the guy.

The guy then waited until everyone was getting onto the bus before taking the sucker-punch when my brother wasn't facing him anymore, and was waiting to get onto the bus.

When he was on his hands and knees he began shouting about how he was only seventeen, and asking how old my brother was, and why my brother had punched him.

I think the fact that the guy was a few inches taller, and a lot heavier/fatter than my brother made him think that my brother would be a pushover. In any case, hopefully he learned that punching people on the side of the head while waiting for the next bus is a 'bad idea'.

The bus driver thought it was hilarious when my brother got back onto the bus, since he had seen the whole thing, and said that "that's how we settle things where I'm from"; when my brother asked where he was from, the driver said "Scotland!".

[Lago PARANOIA]

If you think that the fighter outclassed everyone else at everything else, you're lying,

JE, shut up.

I really, really hate how 'liar' is just so casually thrown around these boards lately.

So please stop doing it..

[ubernoob]

Holy crap, TL;DR.

[Cynic]

-snip-

I really, really hate how 'liar' is just so casually thrown around these boards lately.

So please stop doing it..

*runsaround likea man on a powerful musclerelaxer*

I'm a hadme head cut off!!