I have been very confused with the changes to Martial Arts that occured in Dominus Exxet. It now seem to me that, with all of the prerequisites and the fact that you have to pay for it three times, it would be very hard to work with to create a character. Did it get totally nerfed?

Not if you build right, and if you look at it, the martial arts in the core rulebook give the same effects for there second level counterparts in the dominus exxet, also if you look the total cost for first and second degree of a martial arts costs the same as getting the martial art in the core rulebook. All the dominus exxet really does is it adds a higher level to the existing martial arts as well as adding more martial arts. As for being nerfed i would say no, becuase one of my players made a completely legit acrobatic warrior using dominus exxet rules for martial arts and he being i think its level 4-5 gets +150~+200 (i cant remember exactly) to initiative. He surprises all but the most powerful encounters i put him against.

I hope I shed some light on this problem

Actually, if you look at the requirements, they are vastly different. Several of the martial arts have new requirements at the level that they should be equivelent to the ones in the book. The costs are the same to get to that level, but the requirements are not.

For example, Akido in the core book has Sleight of Hand 40 reqirement (as does the Core Exxet btw). Aikido Advanded degress, that is the equivelent of the Marital Art withing the core book, has the follwoign requirements: Sleight of Hand 40, Attack Ability (unarmed) 100, and Defense Abiltiy (unarmed) 120. That is a drastic difference between the two, and many of the martial arts have those different issues.

Now not withstanding that some of those changes make some sense (your not going to Trap or Knockdown with a low Attack, and your not going to gain the counter attack with a low defense), the differences are well, notcably different.