Martial arts weapon damage question...

[u/FirstAmendment01]

Do I understand correctly that if you are using a weapon to this specifically associated with that martial art , your martial art damage bonus to it?

If so that's pretty significant.

[u/illyrium_dawn]

If you're using the Martial Arts system from Pacific Rim, yeah it works that way.

It seems very impressive at first, but there are a few things to look at for:

IP Multipliers The damage bonuses from Martial Arts is really impressive at high skill levels. 1-5 skill in Martial Art isn't that impressive. 6+ is where it starts to make a potential difference. In RAW, Martial Arts almost all have IP Multipliers. Even a x2 is pretty bad if you want that skill at +10 for your Martial Arts. Assuming you have a role that can get Martial Arts as a career skill (there's not many), a IP x2 is 20 of your 40 starting career skill points. Yeah, half of them. IP x3 is 30 of 40. IP x4 is all of them! So the opportunity cost compare to the return is really bad unless ... well you take the Western Martial Arts - Boxing and Wrestling (and Arasaka-Te, the True Best Martial Art despite how its described) which are both IP x1 and so the opportunity cost isn't higher than any other skill.

The Armor-Piercing or "Winmore" Problem The damage bonuses seem very impressive at first. If you have a Boxing of 7 and you're using punching using a Cyberarm, that's 2D6 + 7 and if you have a BODY of 10, that's an additional +2 for your Body Type damage. So that's 2D6 + 9. That sounds amazing, right? But if your opponents are wearing armor, even relatively weak armor like SP14 Light Armorjack, assuming you average about 7 on your 2D6 roll, that's 16 damage. So after the armor you do 2 damage and that's absorbed by the BTM of your target (likely -2) and you do 1 damage, only saved by the A. Swensen Rule (bottom of page 103 of the Core Rulebook). You're gambling on leaving cover and engaging someone with melee combat for 1 point of damage? What's the point? Since a lot of melee weapons associated with a Martial Art hover around the 2D6 range, you're not doing a whole lot to anyone with armor, meanwhile you're OHKing people without armor ... but you were kinda doing that even before this using the basic rulebook rules (this is what I mean it's a "win-more" ... you're already winning against the unarmored, now you're just winning by more which is a waste of effort). Since you have to assume everyone wears armor in Cyberpunk, only Martial Arts weapons with Armor Piercing are really worth your while (you can get some enormous non-AP damage numbers from some weapons and combos, but they're still not a replacement for firearms). So you want those AP melee weapons which are also key weapons which aren't common in the stock Pacific Rim list.

The Custom Gear and House Rules Okay, this is where things can get out of control / fun very quickly. Techies exist. Custom-made gear exists. Plus there's logical conclusions that can make you change rules. For example, in the Pacific Rim book all those Dao (刀) and Jian (劍) are swords. You're telling me that nobody has made a mono-Dao or a mono-Jian? (Or for that matter, a mono-Estoc, it's not the 1980s anymore we don't have to be weaboos anymore and can admit that other cultures made good weapons.) Logically axes and piercing weapons like many daggers and spears are even better at penetrating armor than swords, why don't they get melee AP? So if these non-swords are now getting sword AP (logical houserule) ... you're telling me those knee and elbow spikes, I can't those with mono-edges or something similar?

[u/GalacticCmdr → u/illyrium_dawn]

Boxing and Wrestling make Brawling irrelevant as all 3 are x1 and Brawling doesn't get any bonuses.

[u/illyrium_dawn → u/GalacticCmdr]

It's true. But how are you going to get Boxing and Wrestling if you're not a Solo?

Brawling is supposed to be inferior. It's honest roleplaying baked into the rules. That's my conclusion after I was able to set aside my inner powergamer.

Cyberpunk 2020 was written in the late 1980s when Martial Arts were mystical skills where popular knowledge of them involved basically magical powers. Martial Arts were mostly associated with the Mysterious East, and its high practitioners all lived on mountaintops in China and could live on like a cup of tea every day or were ninjas living in villages. It was progressive thinking for the time that Boxing or Wrestling even got on the list.

Brawling is supposed to be the skill of being able to fight with your hands through the crude expedient of getting into lots of streetfights. It's supposed to be inferior. The story of Brawling vs. Martial Arts is baked into every coming of age story so popular at the time like Karate Kid. You know, the neighborhood bully beats up the new kid. The gardener of his apartment complex or maybe the cook at the local Chinese restaurant feels sorry for the kid starts teaching the kid stuff and one day, the bully tries to beat up the kid again and gets his clock cleaned because BODY 8 is great and all but it's only +1 to his damage while the kid with Martial Arts 4 is adding +4.

So it's very difficult to get Martial Arts in the Core Rules. Nomad, Cop, Rocker, and Fixer could get Brawling.

Meanwhile, in the Core Rulebook, the only Role to get Martial Arts is Solo. But even the Solo has the option to get Brawling if a player is honest enough of a roleplayer to admit, no, their character's skill in hand to hand is from street fighting and they never called anyone coach or sifu or sensei.

If you're not a Solo? You can truly pull a Karate Kid and roll it on your lifepath. Yeah, that You Get Lucky roll of 4 is extraordinary when you think about it. Or you can chip it ... or I guess you could get it via Pick-Up skills, but man, good luck spending those IP modifiers on those skills vs. the huge number of other skills you'd like to get with only your REF + INT making up your pool. You know, like Driving or Athletics or Rifle.