Buffing the Martial Artist: Alternate Trained by a Master and Weapon Master

Trained by a Master

Trained by a Master (or TbaM) has the following effects:

• Rapid Strike penalty is reduced by half
• Multiple Parry penalty is reduced by half
• Unarmed attacks do not take damage from armed parries (this is a houserule)

These are almost the exact same bonuses as Weapon Master, but without the damage bonus.  TbaM works with all melee weapon and unarmed skills, but this is needlessly broad, as most Martial Artists won't use more than 4 melee skills, assuming they invest points in all of Judo, Karate, and two melee weapon skills.  Compare this to the Knight and Swashbuckler who start with Weapon Master (One Weapon), and are given the option to buy up to Weapon Master (All Weapons).

The 5-point brackets of Weapon Master are a good target to emulate, and the percentage Accessibility modifier from Powers can be used based on how many skills TbaM effects.  To start, there are six unarmed skills, but because nobody is ever going to buy more than one striking skill (Boxing, Brawling, and Karate), and one grappling skill (Judo, Sumo Wrestling, and Wrestling), it's fair to reduce these to only two skills for the purpose of calculating the discount.

Next, after eliminating things like Force Sword, Lasso, and other out-of-genre skills, we're left with 18 melee combat skills, for a total of 20 skills.  All Martial Artists will have at least Judo and Karate, so the minimum price of TbaM should be determined for 2/20 skills, or 10%, which gives a -35% discount according to Accessibility.

3 skills, or 15%, gets the same discount, so we may as well start there.  Thus, Trained by a Master [30] is replaced with:

Trained by a Master (Judo, Karate, and Melee Weapon Skill of Choice) [20] (actually 19.5, but round up)

That saves 10 points, which go into extra advantages, putting the modified Martial Artist at 40 total.  Then, we work out the remaining 5-point tiers as closely as we can.  These will be:

Trained by a Master (Judo, Karate, and 8 Melee Skills of Choice) [25] (actually 24, but I like round numbers)

Trained by a Master (All Unarmed and Melee Weapon Skills) [30]

Now, is this a fair discount?  To check, let's compare these against limited versions of Weapon Master.  TbaM (3 Skills) [20] is about equal to Weapon Master (Small Class of Weapons) [30], and TbaM (10 Skills) [25] is about equal to Weapon Master (Large Class of Weapons) [40].

For the cheaper ones, both TbaM and Weapon Master come out to 66% of the full-cost version.  For the second tier, TbaM is 83%, while Weapon Master is 88%.  These are close enough that it's safe to say these discounts are fair.

Weapon Master

The Martial Artist has the option to take Weapon Master (One Exotic Weapon) [20] on its template, but this is a rip-off.  Both Weapon Master and TbaM have very similar effects, and you can't really use both at the same time, so I'd say it's fair to call them Alternative Abilities.  Assuming the base 20-point version of TbaM, then, Weapon Master (One Exotic Weapon) has its cost reduced to 4.

Results

Another day, another 10 points added to Advantages.  I'm pretty happy with this, as TbaM always seemed to get pretty poor effect given the cost.  I think part of this is that it's supposed to act as an Unnatural Background to give access to Chi Skills, but, at least in DF, other classes can get those without it.  Swashbucklers even get perks that let them base Flying Leap and Power Blow on DX instead of IQ/Will, which is something that Martial Artists can't take.

This should be the end of this series, and now I'll just need to put it all together and create the new Martial Artist template.