So, I was going to include this in my own game but I needed to do some more work on it. But, I was thinking of handling fighting styles by making a series of Tier 5 Talents. For example, Antelope Style Mastery. To take it, you must have 3 Ranks in Defensive Stance and 4 Ranks in Athletics and a few other Talents. If you have those, then you can buy the Tier 5 Talent of Antelope Style Mastery which grants you the ability to, once per session, as an Incidental, move anywhere in Medium range. Multiple uses of this is possible but they have to be used as Maneuvers.

However, the other part is....what happens then? What happens if you master one Style and want to learn another one?

Suppose I come up with another style that requires you to have 2 Ranks in Defensive Stance? Should I say "Since they already have 3 Ranks of it, then should I make them learn 2 MORE?" or "Since they have 3 Ranks in it, we can say that they already meet the requirement so can focus on getting other Talents they need to reach the Mastery requirements"?

I am leaning to the latter but was asking for opinions.

2 more ranks and a tier 5 talent is going to make it a pretty steep price to pay. The higher the price, the higher the reward has to be. Too much though and it's going to break the system.

How prominent is kung fu in your setting? Is it the central theme or just one option among many? If it's a central theme, you could even make it more modular. You could break it down to a series of lower cost effects and let people build their own fighting style.

My 2 cents is no need to force tier 5. A skill rank 5 in brawl is already representing mastery. High ranks in athletics or defense already represent high end physical traits. I'd drop down the maneuver effect to tier 3, ditch the requirements, and add in some strain cost for both balance and narrative. All that maneuvering sure would be tiring.

I also posted this in a Facebook group and I thought about it some more. Namely to include an initiate level Tier 2 that says "You can use THIS Attribute instead of Brawn to make Brawl checks. " and then some more Talents to go ahead and give Boost dice when using certain weapons in the style.

Kung Fu plays a major part in one leg of my Power Rangers game...specifically Jungle Fury. The goal is to have them learn to master different styles.

given the talents below (from Expanded Talents Project), you have a s**t-load worth of wuxia related talents without creating new ones. just pick a few to make up your style.

T1:

• Challenge!
• Desperate Recovery
• Duelist
• Durable
• Finesse
• Grit
• Jump Up
• Painful Blow
• Parry
• Precision
• Quick Draw
• Quick Strike
• Rapid Reaction
• Rapid Recovery
• Reflect
• Second Wind
• Shield Slam
• Tavern Brawler
• Toughened
• Tumble

T2:

• Berserk
• Block
• Bulwark
• Defensive Stance
• Dirty Tricks
• Disorient
• Distracting Behavior
• Exploit
• Grapple
• Hard Headed
• Heroic Recovery
• Impaling Strike
• Knockdown
• Lucky Strike
• Multiple Opponents
• Quick Draw (Improved)
• Resist Disarm
• Shortcut
• Side Step
• Stunning Blow
• Time to Go
• Unarmed Parry
• Unstoppable

T3:

• Body Guard
• Center of Being
• Combat Veteran
• Counterattack
• Disarm
• Dodge
• Dual Strike
• Feint
• Frenzied Attack
• Hard-Boiled
• Heroic Resilience
• Heroic Will
• Iron Body
• Lethal Blows
• Parry (Improved)
• Pin
• Preemptive Avoidance
• Pressure Point
• Reflect (Improved)
• Seize the Initiative
• Shortcut (Improved)
• Stunning Blow (Improved)
• Time to Go (Improved)

T4:

• Back-to-Back
• Body Guard (Improved)
• By the Book
• Center of Being (Improved)
• Deadly Accuracy
• Death Rage
• Defensive
• Deflection
• Distracting Behavior (Improved)
• Enduring
• It's Not that Bad
• Moving Target
• Precise Aim
• Prey on the Weak
• Prophetic Aim
• Reflect (Supreme)
• Steady Aim
• Unrelenting

T5:

• Body Guard (Supreme)
• Coordination Dodge
• Crushing Blow
• Retribution
• Whirlwind
• Zealous Fire

PS: it seams that there are no kicks included, so one may rephrase some attack talents to cover that.

I do intend on using the Talents to build styles but I think that the mastering of a style should result in something more.

On 8/25/2018 at 8:10 PM, thedonnie said:

I do intend on using the Talents to build styles but I think that the mastering of a style should result in something more.

You might look at heroic abilities from Terrinoth. You definitely could reflavor them, and write new ones into fighting styles. Heroic abilities grow with characters for every 50 xp gained without investing xp.

I did look into those but I would rather have someone focus on learning as exemplified by spending XP rather than just -get- things. That way, if others seem to be better at Kung-Fu rather than the guy who focused in on their music career or else focused on making their car bad ***, then that will show. I know that some players would be the type to throw themselves into it and others would prefer to be middle of the road.

Plus, that pigeonholes the players into all taking a Martial Art Style Heroic Abilities. Another thing that I know my players would rail against.

Seems like a bit of a dead topic but I'll just throw in I did a little bit towards fighting styles with a low tier, non-ranked talent in my Dragonball Setting. Essentially you get 1 style from a list as your permanent style and then you can alter the regular Brawl attacks to reflect that style by taking a maneuver to take up that stance. Each had a benefit and a drawback to them, and usually they simply were taken from the list of item qualities (so one attack might have the Linked 1 quality but it added Setback to the check, etc).

Do note that I removed strain damage from Brawl attacks in that setting. Mainly that was done because I made a very strain-heavy setting, so being able to directly target it always would be kinda broken.

I'm sure one could make it a ranked talent so that you could learn multiple styles over the course of a campaign.

Or you could go for the Superpowers described in the setting with the same name. Just rename the Powers with Styles and rewrite the effects.