As I see it, One of the big advantages that ki users get is that their powers aer exactly what they want them to be. They tend to do things like make you hit harder or more often. They are the very sort of powers that player who are allowed to make themselves would want to make.

I don't really see a problem with letting players make their own powers as long as I look over them to make sure they did it correctly and they aren't too crazy.

Since Ki techniques are really expensive, and you use your 60% of your points dedcated to combat to buy up your ki traits, it doesn't seem over powering to me.

However, I was wondering if any other GM's out there ran into dificulties letting PC's have a free reign with their powers.

Ki is probably where the most "broken" abilities can be designed, but if you're not working with powergamers it doesn't become a problem I think. Of course a player will want to develop techniques that give him an advantage within the scope of a campaign, and I don't see any problem with that either. In fact, of all of the systems Ki is the "least flexible" (thats how I describe it). You can vary the power of magic spells and have many spells, you can vary the power of matrixes and there are many of those to choose from, unlike Ki which makes you set your abilities in stone.

In fact, our own house-rule is that Ki techniques can be improved by paying & training the difference in MK, and you can never add new abilities to an existing technique. So you could increase a "+2 limited attacks" to "+3 limited attacks" but you couldn't add on "+25 inititative" if it didn't already have a +x inititative when it was originally made.

Any character that gains enough ki and puts in enough time to develop techniques should be allowed to do so, I think. Technicians certainly should create their own custom powers, thats the point of the class.

Lastly, I've seen other DMs recommend this and I currently must recommend it as well, require characters to learn at least one defensive technique (if they are ki-based, I mean). A technician most certainly should have a defensive technique amongst his level 1 arsenal.

I would think that as a martial artist and not a master magician/occultist, you don't know the full story on Ki power. A guy who starts to notice he can punch harder or feel presences, won't be able to jump to the conclusion that he can deliver an AOE spirit attack that can liquefy the organs of everyone within 30', and tailor the ability to 'miss' allies.

Yes, this happened.

hellgeist said:

When I say the character "won't be able to jump to the conclusion" I mean shouldn't be able to. The whole concept of leveling and slow unveiling of potential should be a discovery process, not a plan for domination. Under what conditions are these abilities learned or taught? That would require some careful planning by a GM who lets Ki be fully used in their campaign. The same troubles haunt Summoning, which is in a similar situation when it comes to game balance.

But isn't a ki master someoen who understands the mystical flowing of energy inside his own body. He/She can then use his understanding of this energy to do super human things.

A Technician isn't just a super hero who woke up one day and realized that he could do things that he couldn't do before.

The best example I can think of is Dragon Ball Z. And I can totally imagine a character in that show, just having a power like you described.

I don't strictly limit the players in my campaign, however I do require them to take time to learn techniques. Unless they're learning a 'style' of technique from someone else, they have to develop the technique in accordance with any other techniques they have, or spend a LOT of time developing it. I try to work with them to develop the techniques they want, starting with the base idea. Once I have an idea of what they're trying to accomplish with the ability, I help them design it, so that I'm familiar with the ability before it ever gets used. No nasty surprises that way.

I believe in the book it states that in order to learn a new technique in the first place, the player has to state they're spending time and effort creating it and mastering it. If your player just woke up one day with an AoE Friend-or-foe liquifying attack, then he's either cheating you by not informing you before hand that he's designing new techniques, or he's challenging you to crank up the difficulty.