Empty Hand Combat (Martial Arts / Wrestling)

@ the very least it would be a good skill to help push your strength up faster if you are transitioning from a Mage to Fighter.

 

Um...who needs to transition? Mages do not have to be physically frail. (That's just a stereotype.. ) I can envision a buff mage clad in cloth or leather casting spells or battling his foes with his staff (as a polearm) coupled with hand to hand attacks when he runs out of reagents or battling lesser foes Archers could also rely on such skills in a similar situation

 

First, love the idea.

Second, it has been discussed ad nauseum before. Many threads.

Third, the dev response is that it is cool and may come in, but not in episode 1.

Four, as a lifelong martial artist and instructor, they are really cool. I can do things that would seem like magic to some people. I feel very confident that I could take a sword away from a drunken idiot in full plate. BUT if the guy isn't drunk off his gourd and has had even a month of training and a sharp knife I am not interested in the fight. I can bend a spear with my throat (and rebar) , it is physics, not magic and it doesn't work against a thrust! If you have any doubt, recall that the boxer rebellion - the boxers being essentially Shaolin monks with decades of training - was ended at a battle where inexperienced gunmen shot them dead. Chi Kung does not make you bullet (or blade proof). That myth was largely inspired by heavy silk clothing and the fact that the healthy monks could recover from serious wounds while most people simply died.

Five, we can simulate it now (at least the fantasy spell-like version). Just take all the fist spells and cast at will. Be sure to dress in cloth, take dodge and acrobatics and all that. And let me know the moment melon hammers or rope dart make it in game.

Six, did I say I love the idea?

 

Mages should be able to fight physically with theirs staves at any rate

 

Post was about empty hand or wrestling.. it would have lots of uses but at its core it would be a very str heavy first and for mos ... so if they wanted to add to it than yes a strong mage would not be interrupted as often.. a staffs damage should be dex basesd.. .. not all mages want to by a hybrid. And not all mages want to carry a wand.

 

Hah, yeah, well thats where magic resist skill, and Chi-Gong body fields for defense come into play. The technique known as the "one inch punch" was developed for this reason - to penetrate a master of Chi-Gong's external energy field. If you dont invest skillpoints in defenses, then youd get blown away by a mage's bolt like everyone else.

There has to be a sacrifice in skill investment - entirely offensive, entirely defensive, or fair but not master of both, etc. Just some ideas... no one wants an "invincible" class in the game (re: "The Toad" from the movie "5 Deadly Venoms").

 

Absolutely! Anything unbalanced would make the game suck. There has to be checks and balances with any new skills introduced to the game system, else everyone will just roll the same toon. Kung Fu mastery should be as arduous and lonesome as being a Necro in EQ, and still, not overpowered. It should result in as much fairness and balance at the highest level as any other mix/match of skills in the game. If a swordfighter, for instance, lands a successful slash into an unarmored opponent, that opponents is going to have a very hard time continuing to fight back. Having a chopped off hand makes for some rather crappy punches. Etc, etc, again, nothing should be introduced that purposefully leaves the game unbalanced. It should just open up more strategy, more involved tactics, and more complex fighting scenarios to deal with, thats all.

Plus its cool to roleplay a monk. Dont need items, dont need fancy weapons, just need to punch trees and rocks a lot. And defend the occasional village from banditry, evil government tax collectors, or that guy that killed your father and laughed when you were a small child.

 

Would be a great skill for Half Dragons. Half Human Half Dragon.

The race can only use hands(clw attack) and breath weapon for combat. The skill trees will have different attacks, definitely need some stunds in there and a flurry of punches...

 

hoho well my chopped off appendages end up as artifacts, but I see where you're going with this. I wonder how far the developers will be able push the boundaries of game dynamics in Sota. As a monk would I be able to scale buildings, jump off roof tops and use the tumbling skill to reduce damage? how about passwall? How about having to learn different poison tolerances? I like the idea of having to seek out grandmasters to teach some of these advanced skills.

In MMA, you don't see too many of these flashy martial arts styles because wrestling and brazilian jujitsu is so overpowering. The karate kid crane move isn't a winning move in the octagon and you'd be on your back in a hurry trying to figure out how to retain your facial features. So we're dealing with some type of fantasy based martial arts implementation that can be competitive in combat, fun to play and isn't a slap in the face to people that invest all of their time into mastering one or more weapon types, armor, etc.

Should a monk be able to disarm a person's weapon preventing them from using sword skills for X amount of time? Perhaps in this case an experienced weapon master should be able to load his bludgeoning deck (pull out a mace) and confront the martial artist if this occurs. The current skill system allows you train many skills, but only specialize in a few. So pulling out the mace in this case would likely lower the monk's opponent's combat effectiveness. But what if a monk disabled his opponent's hand entirely? Would this prevent any spell casting the fighter may have learned? Perhaps this experienced fighter should be able to draw a weapon in his other hand, but would the game account for ambidexterity and training weapons in both hands...? Would this fighter be as effective using his off hand? All considerations of game dynamics and how far you want to go with it. A lot of these considerations might seem logical and based on reality but might not be fun for players.

Shadowbane used power blocks and it was interesting and seemed to be pretty effective. So a 4 second power block might affect all skills (or whatever the actual time was), and if your opponent managed to hit you with the power block when you were activating a skill, it blocked that school of skills for a longer duration (8 seconds). This way a pure monk/martial artist would experience similar penalties as other characters because they would be required to spread their skills out into several disciplines.

 

hmm if it was a skill tree it would probably look like this.
palm punch 1- 5 damage vers dexterity for attack speed
high kick 1-10 ver strength for damage, inside attack combo . stun attacker , concentration pose- increases attack speed.
lag sweep knock down attacker , duel hand strike 3-10 damage , blocking pose damage advance , striking pose strength damage
round house sweep kick 1-5 knock down multi attackers , Twisting Wrist attack 1- 5 - ignores weapon damage, control pose knock down help ,
fury attack combo multi damage with stun affects , aware pose stun help , drunk pose damage reduce

think this would be a good start.

 

Ahhhh do you mean kind of like a minigame skill (*cough* Witcher)? Maybe not a realistic suggestion for this game, but it would be cool to bet on pit brawls at the tavern or local arena. (yes I know we already have these with player-run duels but I meant as a game mechanic)

 

While these threads go far afield quickly and this one already has. Before things get totally derailed into personal attacks, I would like to point out that there have been some pretty serious empty hand fighters in history. Mas Oyama being one we have film footage of. (If you don't know him: http://www.badassoftheweek.com/oyama.html)

He was not bullet proof, and was once gored severely. But, his skills (even if he did a style very different from what I enjoy) were remarkable. While empty hand martial masters are equal in their art to their weapon bearing counterparts we must remember that it is weapons that have earned humans the top of the food chain.

Aetrion, I feel your desire for scientific evidence (my degrees are in hard science, as are my Master's). But, science tries to explain what it sees, not discount what it does not like. So, if you care, research this yourself. If not, why do you care what Stratigos believes?

Stratigos, I feel your desire for an accurate representation of empty handed arts in game, but we will not get it. And it should be clear that there is at least a certain segment that does not want it nor even believe it is possible (though fireball is ok?).

In the end, we all play the game (or test SotA so far) for fun. If it isn't fun, there are other games out there. OK, shutting up and going back to mining.

 

Shroud is a game. yes, elements of realism help the game's immersion. but there are times where unrealism also helps immersion.

i've learned much from multiple martial arts, but only take from them what works for me, much like a MMA fighter would, in the ring. while not a fighter myself, i know the discipline and techniques utilized can be quite brutal, even against both armed and armored opponents.

i've also always enjoyed playing this style of character whenever i could. elder scrolls 4, oblivion, was ok. but i had much more fun with everquest2 monk (i was a barbarian monk hehe). they used weapons like the cestus and handwraps. they hit lower damage for many of their attacks, but they hit VERY fast and a whole lot. any skill that took time to 'spool up', then hit for a LOT of damage, as it was targeted for a kneecap, neck, or some other high-value places. there were other moves that focused on pressure points, they were the utility skills, usually disabling the mobs or disorienting them for a time.

because they wore light armor, they had a single heal, and had a feign death. not a fan of feign death, personally, but it WAS a good utility to get the 'hate'/aggro back on the main tank - by the way, monks in eq2 were an offtank, able to peel all the aggro from a single mob at a time, from the main tank easier than any of the nuker mages...and hold their own while doing it.


so i'm thinking having multiple stances... crane, tiger, etc...don't forget drunken boxing (its for show, really, but really fun to both perform and watch)

so if the tech REQUIRES a weapon in hand to do damage and use skills etc, like many game devs have told me in the past:
like the cestus, or bag naka
or if you decide to use a weapon style instead of just the utility skills that usually require your hands free, keeping light armor and acrobatic like kicks, etc... you hit fast but not as hard as a traditional weapon, constant dps. using thins like the Katar

 

Just as a science footnote here, masters of ANY art (even golfing) develop what is called a "Zen" state. This is how they can perform things like plucking arrows out of midair and hitting a hole-in-one. The best of the best, in ANY field or muscle memory, develop this. There are even video games developed with headsets to register and utilize this "attention" state. Um. Hang on....THIS is the kind of thing I am talking about. So yes, the human mind and body are capable of pants wetting behavior and there is scientific proof of that.

So please leave the "belief" at the door.

I dread calling this "Martial Arts" because anything that is a fighting style (single blade, fencing, two-handers, et al) are "Martial" arts by definition. For the sake of this discussion though, I would dearly love to have a Kung-Fu (the TV Series) style monk wandering the world doing good deeds ability.

As I said before, the Asian Open-Hand styles were developed by people who had nothing else to use at the time. In other cultures they used farming implements (who fights with a scythe...? A farmer who knows it can tear you apart) to fight oppression, but I am with ThurisaSheol in that if a weapon is NEEDED, a cestus, punching dagger, tiger claws and such would be just as wild for MY needs. (Which are small because ultimately I want something else.)

 

Sure, people can perform amazing feats, but it has nothing to do with some internal energy fields that can only be mastered by eschewing any kind of tools. There are fast draw shooters who can draw and fire a revolver accurately in a fifth of a second. You can attain incredible skill at using the most vulgar of weapons, it's not somehow reserved to just fighting with your bare hands.

From a raw mechanics standpoint there just needs to be some symmetry in the system, can't have one skill tree be just as good without any weapons or armor as other people are with them, considering those things have to be crafted and maintained.

 

I vote yes so I can kill skeletons naked with no weapons and not risk anything for gold.

But don't we kinda have some unarmed skills, like earth fist and such.

But yeah, I'm all about constantly expanding skill options and abilities, so we have more an more, and eventually unarmed should be there.

Should someone who spends 1000 hours training a punch do as damage hitting me as a guy with a legendary obsidian flameberge forge deep in the earth and enchanted with the most powerful of dragons blood? Probably not. But that weapon won't be allowed in bar room balls so next best thing is a few punches.

 

when i'm usually speaking with someone else who respects them as i do, i tend to describe them as martial sciences, as opposed to arts.

hm... @Enfo makes a point, we do have some unarmed skills. and with the use based skill system we can utilize those trees with the unarmed combat we're requesting here.
some martial arts are about the chi, others are about the focus (same thing, really) but others are about the technique (and you develop the focus/chi by focusing on your technique..subtle eh?) - it is all the same as the mechanics we already have implemented in the game.



so i guess the biggest question is this: does the current technology allow for this to happen, or will they have to devote extra time to this tech to be created?

if the tech is not here now and lots of time is needed to develop it, please consider it in a later chapter, because i think it will help round out a few holes in the combat system.

if the tech is here now, and/or very little time is needed, please do it!

of course that has to include the time it takes for the body animations and weapons to be created or yanked form the unity store (if any exist)...



but i'd LOVE to see something similar to a shaolin temple, done novia style, in the game, where you can go to learn these styles and do quests this way. i think learning the styles don't even have to force a new skill tree to be created, just use existing trees and require certain types of trainers (already in the game) to unlock those skills.

 

as a practiced martial artist of age, i have long been disappointed in the lack of unarmed combat capabilities in this game.

 

Kung Fu, Tai Chi, Bagua, Tsing Yi, Qigong, Reiki, internal arts practitioner here. Would love to see a hand combat system put into game so long as it was balanced.

 

That said, whatever your beliefs on real world martial arts/internal arts, please refrain from turning this into a religious/political style debate. This is a game and things that can be considered mythical or magical are also part of it so debating the real life aspects is pointless.

I've removed a few posts that start moving into this territory. Please keep it on topic of the game. Thanks