Sorry if this has been brought up before, probably has, but my network is preventing me from getting a successful search through the forums.

Is it feasible to allow Agility to be used in place of Brawn for Brawl?

I'm thinking along the lines of species such as the Noghri who are physically small, and I'd never expect to see one with near a Wookiee's strength, but still have the ability to do serious hand to hand damage with their martial arts, Stava. I'm basing this off of Donovan Morningfire's and others (I apologize for not naming names here) Species Menagerie where Noghri are more agile than brawny.

Thoughts? I'm thinking it's valid, but I wanted to make sure I'm not leaning too far off base and into the realm of munchkinism. Plus, I look at a person like Jet Li vs someone like Kimbo Slice. Two very proficient fighters with very different styles.

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You might as well argue for using Intellect for Brawl, like Robert Downey Junior's Sherlock Holmes. I think that martial artists like Jet Li who rely more on skill and less on physicallity are best represented by having a high Brawl skill. Besides, good martial artists still need to be pretty strong.

I think depending on the opponent and the GM agility could make a good brawl factor.

godofallcows said:

This got discussed more in the other thread .

MrBaldwin said:

Well, why not? With a couple of Talents that represent supreme mental focus and/or eidetic memory, some drawbacks that include a-social behavior and drug addiction, and a Brawl rating of at least 4, I'd say yes

MrBaldwin said:

And for all his Intellect, he still needed the actual Strength/Agility to land the blows that he was thinking about needing to do. It's one thing to know where to hit someone, it's another thing entirely to actually succeed at doing so. Especially when you don't have a movie choreographer directing the action, heheh.

As someone who plays an “agile brawler” I would say stick with brawn. After all, no matter how accurate your blows if there’s no force behind them it’s not going to hurt. Martial artists like Lee may not have the mountains of muscle an Arnold Schwarzenegger or Lou Ferrigno have but they still have a lot of densely packed muscle on them.

Though I do think perhaps there should be a maneuver, maybe a hard coordinate check to give a boost die for every odd numbered success rolled? Gives some more utility to a rarely used skill, doesn’t negate aim since it’s not guaranteed, and isn’t useless since you might do much better with it. It would represent how the acrobatics help the fighter put more force behind his blows. Thoughts?

Vonpenguin said:

The game is pretty open-ended right now. Interacting with the environment is left pretty open. During engaged combat a player could say that his character wants to flip over his opponent to gain a hopeful advantage as his maneuver. GM asks for a hard Coordination check (if he feels that would be applicable) and if the player succeeds he can spend any advantage to upgrade his Brawl check in normal fashion. How's that work for you?