How hard is it to play a Martial Arts Master?

I think it would be difficult without making them a muscled brute. I haven't seen any finesse style melee talents and both Brawl and Melee are based on the Brawn score. Also, armor in EotE is much more powerful than other Star Wars games. It wouldn't be impossible though. If you had a Brawn of 4 and fished for dodge and melee talents you would be tough and do some OK damage with your fists.

Darn it! I was hoping to make someone like Embo from the Clone Wars series.

IMO, the only way to make a truly viable Martial Artist character is to get into the Doctor talent tree and pick up Pressure Point. 40 XP later, not including the cost to get into the Doctor Specialization, you ignore Soak with your unarmed (completely unarmed; no Brawl weapons allowed) attacks. Increase your damage by upping your Medicine skill.

It's not for everyone, and it does take some RP justification to have all these surgical-style skills and also be an awesome unarmed combatant. But it IS quite the powerful talent if utlized correctly.

Jason_Sunday said:

fairly easily, if you don't mind system hacking…

you need some new talents for it.

• martial strike: 2 adv to add level to damage
• martial dodge: 1 adv to add level to defense for level attacks.
• block-n-strike: spend 3 opponent threat to make an immediate extra attack at plus 2 black dice.
• martial parry: spend 2 opponent threat to add level to soak
• kipup: rising from prone is an incidental action
• throw: spent 3Adv to put opponent prone and unable to rise for level actions.

grid these out, along with fortitude, stamina, and discipline, and you have a not unreasonable martial arts tree

Jason_Sunday said:

By RAW, **** near impossible, or at least not without a fair amount of specialization hopping.

And if you're going to homebrew something such as Aramis has done, you're pretty much better off creating an entirely new Hired Gun specialization than trying to wedge a bunch of new talents into an existing tree.