Review: Martial Arts Mayhem

Or, "I know kung fu!"

One of the most repeated complaints against d20 Modern is that you can't properly create a ninja character. Now, on one level, this is nonsense - you can create a perfectly servicable ninja, just not at 1st level. On another, the martial arts rules are very abstract in d20 as a whole, and consequently the ninja you might create will always look a little bland. (As compared to a ninja created under Storyteller, of course, where those five dots you have in the Martial Arts skill are naturally superior.)

Regardless, this book redresses the balance somewhat. Intended as an expansion for the martial arts rules in d20 Modern, it uses the rules for martial arts styles from Oriental Adventures, rather than Prestige Classes, and a wide selection of feats, to enable characters to do all sorts of crazy stuff.

This is a 62-page black and white softcover published by Green Ronin on behalf of the Game Mechanics, and written by Rich Redman, who was one of the original designers of d20. So, a high pedigree indeed. It cost ?10, which was rather expensive for a book of this length.

The book opens with a brief introduction desciring what martial arts are, both in reality and in the game, adding the material here to the campaign, training issues, and also the design philosophy behind the book - to expand the role of martial arts, while remaining balanced with the rules for firearms.

Chapter 1 then provides the general rules for martial arts: a martial arts style is a set of three masteries, each of which can be gained by learning the right combination of skills and feats. Each mastery then gives a bonus to the martial arts master. Characters may master as many styles as they wish, but it should be borne in mind that they only have a small number of feats to play with, which limits them rather tightly. There are also a couple of additions to the grappling rules, a clarification of what happens to a character's feats if he loses the prerequisites (for instance, a character with Expertise who drops to Int 12 - he loses the feat), and guidelines on creating new styles.

Between the introduction and the general rules, 6 pages are taken up.

Chapter 2 describes many sample styles. There are eighteen in all, including the northern leg style (focussing on kicks), drunken fighting, School of the Dance, and so on. In general, these don't match existing martial arts directly - there is no karate style, for instance - but rather are broadly analogous to existing arts, allowing a wider variety of martial arts to be modelled easily than would otherwise have been the case.

This is a good thing, and in keeping with the rest of the d20 Modern design. As pistols exist in a multitude of forms, most of which function in much the same way, with small differences known only to experts, in the same way, there are a huge number of martial arts schools in existence, with small differences in emphasis, but little difference to anyone who isn't an expert. d20 Modern doesn't model all the small differences between types of pistol; neither does it model the differences between all martial arts styles, and nor should it.

In addition to fifteen styles intended to model a variety of real arts, there are three fictional styles, one dedicated to a campaign featuring magic, which harnesses elemental energies, one dedicated to psionic campaigns, and one similar to the gun kata used in the film Equilibrium. These I like - they're a lot of fun.

The style masteries are very nice, and would definately encourage characters to aim to master styles. They are balanced, however, by very strict mastery requirements, with the more powerful masteries requiring more from their students. Since characters have very few feats to play with, this is fair enough.

Chapter 3 provides 10 pages of new feats, intended to supplement the new styles. Some of these are familiar, such as Die Hard, which matches the feat of the same name in PHB 3.5, some are obvious - Improved Dodge and Advanced Dodge, for instance, and some are brand new. Reagrdless, they are all related to martial arts in some form, but would be useful to characters interested in combat but not actually following a style. All in all, these are nice feats. It should also be noted that the balance here is very well done. (One exception - Three-Conflicts Stance is designed to allow a character to make an opportunity against a character who makes a grapple attack, where said character has an ability that negates the normal attack of opportunity. That is, it is a direct counter to another ability, which I'm not fond of as a design philosophy.)

Chapter 4 then provides seven pages of secret techniques. Characters who gain levels of mastery of certain styles become eligible to learn special feats. These tend to be more powerful than other feats, but have huge lists of prerequisites, so are fine. The secret techniques themselves are nice, although I did find the name of the level 3 mastery technique for Western Boxing style amusing - Eye of the Tiger.

Chapter 5 gives a whole range of martial arts weapons. These are nice enough, although melee weapons aren't particularly worthwhile in d20 Modern (and are too weak to use in D&D - a deliberate design decision for the game). Amusingly, we get yet another set of stats for the chakram. As yet, I have yet to find one that justifies tagging it as an Exotic Weapon.

Chapter 6 then discusses campaign models focussing on martial arts. It discusses the question of whether to have "No fu", "Some fu", or "Crazy fu", relating to the level of martial arts silliness you want in your campaign. There are rules to back each of these, including a set of Stunt rules for use in Crazy Fu campaigns. There then proceed discussions of five campaign models, which can most easily be summarised as Mad Max meets martial arts, Alias meets martial arts, the Godfather meets martial arts, Mortal Kombat meets, well, itself, and the Karate Kid (or, less lame, equivalent) meets itself. Each campaign model discusses the place of the PCs, Department 7, rules of the model, and sample villains for each.

This was a nice book, of which chapters 2, 3 and 4 are the most useful. Since these comprise the bulk of the book, this is a good thing. The utility of the book would depend on the style of d20 Modern game the GM was using - in the same way that Ultramodern Firearms won't always fit, neither will this book. However, this book does make martial arts campaigns a viable game style in d20 Modern, which they might well not have been in the past. As such, it can be recommended.

Still, you can't do The Matrix in d20 Modern. It seems Neo will remain the eternal munchkin :-)