Unarmed Combat Skills

You are totally right, it did have benefits, but it wasn't how I had initally invisioned it *Heroically taking down ettins and cyclopses mano a mano.*

 

I think a vital point to remember here, is that the term "martial art" doesn't actually refer to unarmed combat. The "art" portion of the phrase refers to skill, grace, the study of various forms, lessons, and exercises that are all designed to increase skill, speed, accuracy, and strength; and the "martial" portion of the phrase means 'military', or 'having to do with violence'. This means that every single combat skill is technically a "martial art". The reason I raise this point, is that in a REALISTIC setting, and on equal ground, the martial art of dagger use will beat the martial art of fisticuffs 99 times out of 100. Same deal with the martial art of swords, the martial art of polearms, and the martial art of crossbow use.

It's very easy to imagine a martial artist confronting an armed opponent and using his speed and skill to gain an advantage, but that image is the result of Hollywood dramatizing the contest for the last century. In a contest of relative equals, the armed opponent won't be slower, they won't be dumb and charge straight in, and their attack will be very difficult to dodge or evade. The slower moving, inaccurate "armed opponent" is no more relevant to this discussion than a fat 12 year old who is trying to kill your martial artist by kicking him in the shin. In ANY real training of how to use a weapon, keeping your opponent from just walking up to you and taking it away is a basic lesson. Those training in edged weapons in particular learn how to make an attempted grapple into an opportunity to bleed to death, and it ALWAYS costs them less effort than it does for their unarmed opponent. Most small weapon training closely resembles unarmed combat training, complete with blocks, strikes, grapples, flips, holds, kicks, etc.... but has the addition that at least one hand is holding something nasty, and several opening moves are included that would shortcut past the rest of the fight, because they involve the target being stabbed to death.

I learned a fair section of my knife skills from a longshoreman who moonlighted in my Aiki-jutsu class, and the first KNIFE move he taught me was to step on my opponents front foot. It sounded so lame. It looked lame. Then he did it to me, while holding a wooden knife. Denying your opponent the ability to shift his front foot's position is actually an amazing, subtle, and very cool martial art move. The fact that he was ending the move by stabbing me was almost icing. It was, however, very much a KNIFE move, because by doing it he committed his weight forward as well, and it was the knife that allowed him to do this with advantage. Without the knife, it just means that one or the other opponent will momentarily be thrown, WITH the knife, it means that the guy who doesn't have a knife is about to die.

 

Oddly I'm finding that I both agree and disagree on a few points.

On the knife vs unarmed.. as with any real match up.. skills being equal there is no absolute outcome in your scenario. There is always a counter. In your example the one without the knife is also lacking in skill.

The conversation seems to take two primary scenarios into account. Martial artists vs an unskilled fighter.. the situation where people seem to think martial arts can be overpowering.. and the unskills unarmed fighter vs the armed fighter where the unarmed guy has no chance of not getting killed.

Yes there is something to be said for the guy who has the deadly weapon in hand. I don't debate that.. but I just think people underestimate ways an unarmed individual (being a skilled unarmed individual) can counter the use of a weapon.

Still.. this isn't reality so all of that is pretty much moot to begin with. If we were simulating reality all fights would be over after two or three moves. There would be no chance to heal.. you'd simply be dead and that's that.. armor or not in many cases.

The challenge faced with an unarmed combat skill is simply making sure it's balanced, useful and fun. You can make whatever justification you like to explain why it's stronger or weaker than we think it is in reality but the ultimate goal is to make combat entertaining.

 

I think that having an unarmed combat skill would be better for a caster class of player to use. For instance if your foe is getting to close or attacking to fast you could use some martial arts skills then. I big problem Martial arts players have had in most games is the lackage of armour and or range.

Swordfighters don't have issues with range because of their heavy armour helping them until they are close.
Archery and casting isn't a problem because they are ranged and can keep distance between them and the fighter.

However martial arts would be spending a great deal of time trying to get next to the ranged attacker while not getting hit too much. They could incorperate dexterity into this to help them dodge, but then if they were against a sword fighter it would be unfair to the swordsman because his attacks would be avoided to easily.

I think the fair balance is one of 2 ways.... #1 make it a back up skill ranged fighters can use at close combat, or #2 give them the ability to stealth so they can sneak up on their ranged attacked and hide/stealth again when low HP against a swordfighter. Other players could then detect hidden (if they had it) to stop them from vanishing.

 

Rogue skills are already going in. There's no need to attach stealth to any kind of unarmed combat. Players will simply have to choose their skills.

The way I see it.. unarmed fighters have two major challenges and both stem from the lack of a weapon.

1: Fewer defenses. Any weapon can be used defensively. Ideally a weapon is prefered to hands. Use of hands in defense against weapons requires closer range and greater precistion & timing. You could compensate for this somewhat with armor but I don't just mean bracers.. you want armor that will cover the elblow as well. You can't stop block heavy weapons but deflecting would be easier.

2: Less damage potential. A bare fist is obviously not going to do the same damage as a mace.. let alone a spiked mace. Again some compensation can be made with armor. Armored joints and armored gauntlets can be pretty nasty impact weapons and they can have spikes as well.

Unarmed does not have to mean unarmored.

Having to close distance isn't really any bigger of a problem than for anyone else so I don't see an issue there.

 

I'm just concerned over the apparent impulse to make unarmed combat fair and equal to armed combat. If unarmed combat WAS equal to armed combat, the human race and it's various cultures wouldn't have spent so much time, effort, and monetary resources developing weapons for it's militaries. If I could take down your roman legionarres with my shao lin monks, why bother with making spears, armor, shields? Weapons and armor add capabilities to a human warrior. With equivalent ammounts of training and experience, armed warriors are going to win. Which is why, even in the part of Earth that cradled dozens of really intense and dangerous martial arts, armies were armed, armored, and trained with every weapon their culture could develop.

They were ALSO trained in hand to hand combat, just like soldiers in modern armies, because even with fully automatic weapons, explosives, armored vehicles, air strikes, and drones, it's helpful to soldiers to be able to fight smoothly and effectively in any circumstance.

But just because hand to hand is good to have, does NOT make it equivalent, or preferable, to armed combat.

 

Obviously, equally skilled unarmed and armed combatants are not going to be evenly matched. The armed combatant will probably have an advantage (depending on what weapon they are using). However, a highly skilled unarmed combatant should be able to hold his own against a lesser skilled armed one. Let's face it, there will be times when your character will not have a weapon (or spell) available and it would be nice to know that they can rely on something else other than simple brawling or running away.

 

I generally do not agree with the milirary comparison. When you start getting into strategies, tactics and formations of large groups the dynamics change considerably. As we won't be having much or any of that in SotA the comparison isn't appropriate. You have an army of unarmed martial artists coming at you? Break out your legion of bowmen and have at it. Problem solved. But what we're talking about here is mainly one on one or small groups. 1 or 2 arrows are a lot easier for one or two people to dodge than say.. 500 arrows shot into a crowd.

Again.. this is NOT a real life combat sim. This is a game and there's no point in having a skill at all if it's not balanced. Now let's not mistake equal skill with equal damage potential. These are two different things. Especially when it comes to game combat mechanics there are two primary factors that determine the outcome with equal skill. Damage over time and damage avoidance.

As previously stated, unarmed doesn't mean unarmored. Speaking in the most general terms damage avoidance could be more or less equal. Damage over time on the other hand is another matter entirely. Unarmed combat will generally be at a disadvantage here. I've been saying and agreeing with this for some time now. What I've been objecting to is the notion that just because the other person is armed means it's an automatic loss.

Edit: Wanted to include that typically in-game the ones dealing the highest damage over time (assuming defenses are equal) is the one that's going to win. But a skilled unarmed fighter should have a chance of disarming an opponent and leveling out the odds particularly if they're specializing. But again.. adding armored (and/or spiked) gauntlets could go a long way to overcoming the DoT problem.

 

And I'm fine with that, I want to have unarmed skills on MY character. But the experience I never want to have, is coming after someone in PvP, WITH my weapons and armor, that *I* am going to have the skills for maxxed out, and getting my ass handed to me by an unarmed, possibly even unarmored opponent, because the unarmed skills are actually able to do that in the game. I just couldn't believe that, it would ruin the experience for me.

 

That's not the sort of power I'm looking for here. I may be revising my stance a little here but I stand by wanting the unarmed fighter to have a reasonable chance of surviving.. but all other factors being equal the one with the weapon has the DoT advantage. This alone should take care of your concerns. If you lose the only one you'd be able to blame is yourself for having a weak defense, just standing there and taking the hits and not having any healing. If your opponent is that much more skilled at PvP than you then you might be in trouble.

 

Once again, in every single post I've made on this subject, I am referring to a contest of EQUAL skills. So no, I won't have a randomly weak defense, or just happen to forget to bring any form of self heal, just so that the unarmed user will win. The suggestion I made, and still stand by, is that there be different categories of skills, with the big destructive schools of magic, the rogue stealth skills, and the big weapon skills being equal, and displacing one another, so that we will have to select between them, and skills like gathering, crafting, cartography, and unarmed functioning as secondary skills, that displace one another, on a secondary list, so that we neither have to justify abandoning, say, fire magic, in order to get unarmed skills, NOR do we have to go without unarmed simply because it isn't as numerically advantageous in combat as, say, fire magic, and Portalarium doesn't have to include a version of unarmed combat skill in the game that is every bit as effective as sword, shield, and full plate(or, say, fire magic).

 

I don't get where you're getting the whole 'displacement' thing. That's not how the skill system was described. If you put in X amount of effort towards any skill.. and then Y amount of effort towards another skill.. you still have X amount of training in the first skill. There was no change to this that I'm aware of. Remember the stated intention is that the primary limitation of learning all skills is time. Simply having too many skills to master with new skills being added regularly.

 

In which case, if A) I can add skills any time I'm playing, and just keep piling skills onto my character infinitely (because I will 1)never stop learning and 2)never run out of new, useful skills to learn) and B) use any and all skills I've ever learned in tandem with one another...

Then the push to improve my character to the best of my ability automatically limits which skills I have time to level up, and I must pick between them [displacement]

If any of the above points fail to be true, then a) I run out of skill points [displacement], or run out of skills to learn [cap] or, b) I have to pick a limited set of skills to play with at any one time, [displacement].

Since the game devs have stated an intention to (and would be very wise to do so) avoid letting players learn all skills and run out of room to grow [cap], the only result I see is that I will eventually be forced, very reasonably, to choose my character build from the available options. I can't see how this will NOT lead to some form of [displacement].

My suggestion is that the displacement itself be managed, such that high value skills that have lots of tactical advantage, let one push quickly through the story, win at PvP, and contribute well to group PvE, be in one tier, and a second tier, not usable for those skills, allow players to also have useful, interesting, but just not as numerically advantageous skills, competing and displacing each other.

I get the idea of just having us re-arrange our skills while in town, so that we sometimes go out with woodcutting and mining, and sometimes go out with scouting and stealth, and sometimes go out with fire and healing magic. But if you had to select like that, that IS [displacement]. I don't think that skills like 'Unarmed', which would in my vision be a lesser combat skill, are likely to displace more effective combat skills. So when would it see the light of day?

 

Displacement implies moving something that's already there. Picking and choose what you don't have and losing nothing you do isn't displacement.

Re-arrange your skills? Huh?? What in New Britannia are you talking about? There's never been any dev talk about needing to enable skills or whatever that it sounds like you're describing. There's been selecting what special moves you might think to do in combat which is related to the skills you know.. but nothing remotely like changing "active skills" in town and going out with some skills and not others.

 

Saying that a skill isn't displacing another because it was my original setup is splitting hairs. I had to make the choice to develop one over another.

None of use have seen the combat system fully developed, but the impression *I* got was that a given player would be able to use only some of the many skills and abilities at any time, and would have to exert notable effort and time to change his setup once it was in place. If your proposal for an Unarmed Combat skill would always be in full effect, passively, without me needing to assign anything to it, would level to full without me taking time away from training another skill instead, then why bother even having it? Every single person would have it at max level at all times, and the playing field would level out.

If instead, I have to devote limited resources, like training time and special moves, to leveling/making use of the Unarmed Combat skill, then that would be displacing other skills.

I don't get why you are fighting that point so hard, what's wrong with saying that it would require a share of limited resources to develop this skill? That's how it works in the real world, and every game world I've ever seen...

 

You may call it splitting hairs but your use of the word is confusing. By definition you cannot displace that which doesn't exist. Nor is it technically possible to displace something that isn't tangable. It has to be something physical that's being moved and having something else put there.

We don't know how skills will level up yet.. but the way combat was explained it's not the skill we select but any special moves associated with a skill simulates 'thinking' during combat as sometimes we think to do a particular move and sometimes we don't.. the things we select are the things at the foremost front of thinking and most likely to come up. There's a difference there. It should in theory be entirely possible to engage in combat without using any 'moves' and still win. This is from a dev chat back in March or April I think. But there's no reason to think you'll gain any passive skill without actually using it.

It never once said or implied that it was. Of course it's going to take effort to learn. I don't get why you thought I said otherwise.

 

You don't get why I might think that you were arguing with my statement that time spent learning the Unarmed Combat skill might displace time spent learning other combat skills, skills that could easily be considerably more valuable in COMBAT? You don't get that?

The point I was raising was that IF Unarmed Combat were made realistic, it would lag behind most other combat skills in terms of effectiveness (the primary motive for acquiring it might even be aesthetic appeal), thus leaving overall diminished motive to learn it. IF it was made equal, it would require unrealistic bonuses to Unarmed Combat (like an instant disarm kill move, where you snatch someone's sword right out of their hand and chuck it back into their face...), and that would diminish it's appeal.

 

This is beginning to sound like unarmed combat...

 

No I don't get why you seem to think that I think learning the skill would be any different than learning any other skill. What I've been getting at lately is the incorrect use of the word "displace".. though displace time I suppose works but you've been saying 'displace skills' which is a little different. And nothing in that quote implies that I'm suggesting the skill should require less to learn.

Also I never suggested it would need anything like an "instant disarm kill move". Why would it NEED that? Why assume that it needs to be over powered to be useful?

Realistically speaking unarmed combat suffers from the same problem of DoT as I've been pointing out. I'm fine with that.. there are ways to compensate. Unrealistically.. let's face it it's a game. None of the combat is realistic. In making unarmed combat useful it STILL suffers from the DoT problem if you don't want it to be overpowered. I'm still fine with that. Get yourself some armored spiked gauntlets if you want to use it as your primary offensive skill.

I don't see the problem here.

 

No, nothing in any quote that I am aware of anywhere on this WEBSITE suggests that it would require less to learn, where did you get THAT? And I never said that YOU said it would require an instant disarm kill move. Please READ MY ACTUAL POST, preferably while sober.

I DO see a problem there. I see people running around with spiked gauntlets doing as well as people using greatswords. "It's just a game" is NOT a point, it's not an arguement, and it sure as hell isn't a reason to overlook something bizzare and unrealistic during the design phase that could just as easily be corrected.