Alright everyone had a serious question. I just started running an anima chronicle and the player of the tao has a beef with the innate bonus of the technician versus his innate bonus of style saying its unbalanced and the logic behind it is crap. so I need some more experienced opinions, cause one of my beliefs is that the tao outwieghs the tech by a mile on the virtue of martial arts ability. While the technician needs some level of bonus over time to its attack ability.

To put it simply: The different classes are meant to be played different ways.

Technician vs Tao may seem like a silly comparison, but take a look at Mentalists who get absolutely no bonuses besides more PP. There was a thread around here somewhere where a few members totalled out the "CP cost" of each class, and it was all over the map, yet the classes are seldom that imbalanced. More to the direct point though, a Tao is hardly ever behind anyone when it comes to Primary Combat abilities and the main reason is that he has cheap Martial Arts.

Martial Arts are pretty awesome in Anima. Most of them give some sort of Innate bonus to Attack, Block, or Dodge, and since a Tao can pick them up at half the cost of a normal player, they tend to hit that +50 Innate cap faster than anyone else. Take, for example, a Level 1 Tao who one picks up the Base Degree of Shotokan (assuming Dominus Exxet). For 5 DP (because there are no prerequisites at all for Base Shotokan), he gets +5 Attack, and since that doesn't count towards his spending limits on Attack, he's now coming out ahead of the Technician, who would have to spend 10 DP to catch up with the Tao's Style bonus. Throw in Base Lama, and you get another +10 to Dodge and Block for the cost of 15 Style. The cost of the Martial Art may come out of your Combat DP, but it gives bonuses to Attack and Defense without dipping into those pools.

If you really want to go all out, you can easily get Dumah by Level 1 (depending on stat generation methods), which gives -2 to your enemy's AT, +10 Breakage, +20 Attack, +10 MK, and then the bonuses from either Advanced Capoeira (+10 Dodge, +10 MK, hit up to 5 enemies unarmed with an area attack) or Advanced Kempo (Additional attacks are at only a -10). And that's at Level 1 for a grand total of 30 DP spent on Martial Arts, which doesn't even cut into your Attack/Defense spending. That puts the Tao even with the Technician's MK value, with 15 more Attack, potentially 10 more Dodge, and (truthfully) even with Capoeira not that much less DP to throw around depending on their chosen advantages and their stats.

Whether or not your Technician makes up for this gap by getting Techniques is almost irrelevant, because the Tao has just as much MK to throw around at this point, and could do the same thing if he really wanted. By later levels, the difference will become more clarified, with the Technician able to do a lot more with Techniques, and the Tao doing insane nonsense without any spending whatsoever, but neither is inherently better or worse for their innate bonuses to Attack or Style.

In summation: Your Tao only has himself to blame if he's looking to compete with the Technician for raw Attack and he falls behind, because his class more than makes up for a +5 Innate Bonus with the things it's best at.

I would have said the Tao is ahead of the game every time with the cheap marital arts the paltry +5 attack means nothing considering the bonus for martial arts and the MK you gain with them the best of both is to be a Tao cross technician if you really wanted to get MK points more quickly but seems power gamey and remember style is the most important factor if your player doesn't know that he has failed

I would have said the Tao is ahead of the game every time with the cheap marital arts the paltry +5 attack means nothing considering the bonus for martial arts and the MK you gain with them the best of both is to be a Tao cross technician if you really wanted to get MK points more quickly but seems power gamey and remember style is the most important factor if your player doesn't know that he has failed

Not every time, no, but in terms of raw base skill, almost definitely (if that's what the Tao wants, anyways). The Technician is by no means a pushover though, as that +50 MK every level before spending anything can give him some nice boosts through extra ki abilities, or techniques. Since the Technician also has cheaper Ki and Accumulation costs, they'll also pretty much always be better at using techniques, which can let them do just about whatever they want so long as they're built properly. So a Tao might always be getting +20 Attack per hit above the Technician, but a Technician can whip out a single +200 Attack Ability to wipe out a big bad the Tao can barely touch, well before a Tao could hope to accumulate and pull off a similar technique.

As I said, the different classes play differently, so comparing them can be a difficult thing. It's difficult enough to do when considering all the different possible combinations of Martial Arts vs Techniques; it's nigh-impossible just looking at numbers as straightforward as who has the higher Base Attack. But, in the end, neither the Tao nor the Technician has anything to complain about, especially if they don't try to focus on the exact same thing.

Hey thanks for the replies and yeah these are all points made to the player, and he just couldn't reconcile that the bonus to attack that technicians get . making the statement cause basically he has a fighter mixed archetype. I'm hoping he's got it know

@ firelight I suppose the real question would be what he wanted his Tao to do as if he was all about the Ki it would be an odd choice not to be a technician, Also I would say in every game I have played all the players regardless of type have picked up a martial art to defend themselves if they are sans weapons and that really eats points for the non Taoists so if you consider that your guy is almost guaranteed to be better off by his terms

Grey has a good point about the Tao possibly being ahead of the curve (depending on how people play).

Hey thanks for the replies and yeah these are all points made to the player, and he just couldn't reconcile that the bonus to attack that technicians get . making the statement cause basically he has a fighter mixed archetype. I'm hoping he's got it know

As far as this goes, I've always found the Tao's place as a Fighter Archetype a bit odd, but it makes sense. Mostly, the Fighter Archetype has been thrown in to make it easier for any other martial fighter to switch classes to Tao (or vice versa), since Tao can master weapons in their martial arts and, as Grey again points out, many fighters eventually want a way to protect themselves unarmed. It's also seen in the Tao's bonus LP/level as opposed to the Technician. While a Technician makes a decent combatant in his own right, if he wanted to later switch classes to something more combat-focused, he'd have to spend a lot more than a Tao would, or he'd have to switch through Tao to minimize costs (while maximizing time).

If the player doesn't see these benefits as worthwhile, then it sounds like a personal issue which may never be resolved. The balance is there though, and if he really wants a +5 attack per level then I'd just cut off 5 from the bonuses martial arts give him, and he can deal with being the most crippled Tao I've ever seen... but I'm also a bit mean at times, so your mileage may vary.

His Tao is built for punching high attack high block shotokan and a couple other martial arts with some ki abilities bought through martial mastery. I think part of it was he didn't comprehend the rules in Dominus Exxet that martial arts add in to your innate bonuses and the +5 to attack seemed like an unbalanced point for him.

I suppose I'm just confused on how he sees the +5 Attack as unbalanced if he was bringing up similar points as we did. Even if it wasn't an Innate Add-In, I just don't see the issue. But I suppose that's life, neh?