I can confirm Martial Arts DPs are from combat pool. I asked it once in the spanish forum, where Anima Studios post regularly to answer such kind of questions (and was probably insulted for being the 100000000000000th person to make the same question without searching the forum first…).

To Sophia Corba:

Welcome back! It's been a while since you last posted! I remember you posted some interesting Ki Techniques back then, some where paladin-related if I'm not mistaken (elemental binding light-earth, if I remember correctly)!

Your character is very nice and your handling of rules is very nice (I really appreciated the Cultural Roots advantage granted for free, it's very flavorful, and not really worth 1CP)

Have you really no idea about Elan? Although the master should secretely track elan, players should notice if they developed some new power…

To Adrassil:

Nice character and welcome to the forum if you're new, by the way. For a TRUE trickster in full Loki-style I would have gone for a Thief (well…I created a Trickster variant class for Thieves, so I'd go for it, actually), rather than a Shadow, but a Shadow is surely more playable and combat proficient. Also Illusionist (with Illusion and Darkness paths and at the very least Sin Subpath) would be a perfect class for a "Loki character".

what was their exact reply, and where in the books did they state it

until I see otherwise the standing house rule will be that they are separate.

Oh, and you don't need to buy "Unarmed Combat" if you're only going to fight unarmed.

You get to choose one weapon (e.g Bastard Sword, Two-Handed Mace, Dagger, Unarmed) for free as default.

And if you're NOT going to fight unarmed as your first choice, then why get lots of Martial Arts? You're wasting DP. Even if you're expecting to have your weapon break every other fight, it's still pointless.

MA are not designed such that every class buys lots of them. That's why the Tao class exists in the first place.

With a Jayan Warrior Mentalist, the expectation is that you'll use a weapon. And probably a 2-handed one, with a Jayan. If not, you might have 1 or maybe 2 MAs.

If you don't want to do that, and especially as you don't want to spend much on the Psychic Powers anyway, you might as well build up a Jayan Tao. You can then buy all the MAs you want to, declare the intention to change classes as soon as possible, then switch to Warrior Mentalist when you can and pick up your Psychic stuff. If your GM is VERY kind, he might even let you say you declared at Level 0 (i.e. during character creation, as every character is assumed to have gone through Level 0), meaning you switch at Level 2 (although he might not). That way, if you still want to stick to your "Been Around" advantage, you'll still be starting the game the same way.

Be warned though, that this is kinda bending the rules a bit. But it's not strictly speaking breaking them. I'm just trying to help you accomplish what you're trying to.
 

That's the thing, Martial Arts aren't exactly the specialty of non-Tao classes, which is why they usually limit themselves to 1 maybe 2 MA. but if you want to have a character which specializes in MA and have SOME psychic stuff, you might be better off with a Tao who has the same advantages. you would then save on MK since you gain 30 per level, and your MA would be cheaper. seeing as you dont have much in psychic anyways, i see this build working out better for you.

*edit* Beadle ninja'd me :O

cool thanks for the input will seriously look it and repost the updated character build.

vaxx01 said:

It is, as I mentioned earlier, stated that MAs are Unarmed Weapons Modules.  Hence they work the same way.

In fact (in most ways that matter) they're actually better than Weapons Modules, because:

1) They give you pluses to Unarmed Attack / Defence, which count towards your total (until you max out your Class Bonus cap at 50, which is why Tao don't get +5 Attack or +5 Defend per level).  And these also count towards your total for calculating how many Martial Arts you can have.

2) They give you MK.  I've done a Tao build that had 170MK at Level 1, and that was with only taking Martial Mastery 2, not 3.

3) They give you other quirky bonuses, extra attacks, immunity to breakage when blocking, increased initiative etc, etc.  And when you start picking up the Advanced Martial Arts (you can actually get both Velez and Dumah at Level 1 with the right build), these quirks get even better.

4) They work together.  You can't get the benefit of using a Dagger and an Axe in the same attack, but you can get the benefits of multiple MAs working together.  Say (and this is a long way down the line, for an extreme example) you have Arcane Dumah, Arcane Selene, Arcane Suyanta, Arcane Lama Tsu and Arcane Emp.  You have infinite penalty-free defences per round, every time you successfully defend  you have a penalty-free chance to disarm your opponent, you have infinite counter-attacks (as long as you keep defending successfully), and every time you attack (or counterattack) you will almost always shatter your opponents weapon if they block, and take Ki points as well as LP if you do damage to them.  It gets crazy.

That Tao build I mentioned has Attack 140 (or 2 attacks at 130), Block 90, Initiative 80, 170MK, 2 penalty-free defences per turn, attacks as energy, with -2AT for the opponent and +10 to breakage on attack, and a crapload of other, weirder (and potentially even more powerful) stuff.  All at Level 1.

MA are made for Tao.  If you're wanting to fight unarmed, they're the best class BY FAR.

Oh, and one final note.  You happen to be using a class that has a 50% cap on Combat Primaries.  That's another reason why Martial Arts aren't as effective for you.  If you're using a "pure" combat class (Fighter, Domine, Novel, Prowler), you have a 60% cap on Combat Primaries, but can still only spend 50% on Attack & Defend.  The other 10% (60DP at Level 1) is for stuff like Ki, Ki Accumulation, Weapons Modules, Wear Armour, Ars Magnus, and Martial Arts.  In that situation, they don't detract at all from Attack and Defend.  In fact they add to them.

Raybras said:

Sorry Raybras.  :)

2 things

first I can see where your going with the Tao thing and yes that is cool

BUT, secondly about MA and Primary Abilities pg. 58 of the core rulebook in the first paragraph it says "In a way the are equivalent to an Empty Hands Weapon Moduals."

now I know that this can be taken 2 ways

1 that they are the and by that logic that count as moduals as far as primary abilities go

2 is that they act the same as the module but that they are different

3 if you treat MA as weapon moduals then your first martial art is free, or at least should be, being that you don't have to pick up empty hands weapon modual if you have MA.

actually, your 1st MA is half price if you weapon of choice is unarmed. otherwise, every MA gives the unarmed weapon weapon module.

Elric of Melniboné said:

Elric of Melniboné said:

Thanks for remembering. Your quite right. It was the light+earth elemental binding Ki-Technique. I'm really astonished, since you've read all the Ki-Techniques and mine was only one of dozens (although the most were your own creations). I' ve never left, but since we stopped playing I had no reason to ask some questions,  so I really only lurked in the forum and was reading what all of you were discussing.

About Elan (as well an Sofias father) I can only speculate. He never gave me some power to write down. Since I haven't read the whole book (our GM wanted us to be protected of spoilers) I can only guess so far: It must be the Beryls and either MIkael and/or Azrael. But it can't be much I think. At least two angels, one beloniging to Mikael and the other to Azrael (Sofia still thinks about them as Archangels - Mikael and Azrael not the Maiden of Lights - is this the right name?) made contact with her. It really was quite shocking, since I never thought, that any prayers would be answered. It's fun not to know the game - you feel like a child and get candies from time to time.

And there was a situation where nearly whole Americh was in some kind of fear and they took sort of comfort of her presence. But I don't know if this has anything to do with Elan or was some kind of scheme of the gm to let Sofia feel special. ;)

But the GM has a gift to hide possible powers a player is evolving, so there may be much more / something different. I'm much more curious who Sofias father is. Lucanor Giovanni (Sofia got damn scared abou his pet - please don't tell anything about it) said he would know him, and that the family resemblance is quite obvious. He called a name of a fortress where I may find some clues. But since this evening our group has only met two times and I can't see any posibilty to solve this riddle during teh next months. :(

but my point is that if they were treat was moduals then they would be in the weapon modual section, but their not in both books their placed seperately which leads me to believe that they are seperate things.

to have to pay multiple times is like have to take you magic level and not only buy your path, but each individual spell as you level up, as well as meta-magic feats. it would make a magic user useless and that is with magic level, now apply that principle to both attack and martial arts at max of a level 1 character with 360 points to spend in their combat abilities kind of penalizes a martial artist because they have to limit their main abilities, to have their MA.  Now if it was not a primary ability you can work with your DP and still have decent combat abilities.

Sadly i don't find my link to the official statement. But if you may look at this: cipher-studios.com/AnimaBB/index.php

"2. Yes, modules, like martial arts and Ki, are paid for by Primary Combat. "

You have the right to disbelieve all our postings, but officialy MA are paid by Primary Combat DP. If you take your time and look in other forums you'll eventually may find a link to an official statement from Anima Studios.

With spending DP from your primary combat DP you may not have the max. Base and Dodge/Block Value possible, but you have other bonuses. Initiative, more damage, energy based damage, additional attacks, attack/block/dodge modifier….

I could also say that Wear Armor penalizes Fighter classes since they are paid with the primary combat DPs. A Wizzard for example has no problems with ist. And worse. With the rules of DE for purchasing MK with DP it's even more penalizing for "warrior-classes". A mentalist for example can spend his COmbat DPs (ok max. 10% of all DPs) in MK without penalizing his psychic  power. But think about a "warrior"-class. He can't use his 10% DP für MK and also maxing his attack/defense. But that's the way the rules work.

Of course you and your group have the possibility to create your own houserules.

If my posting looks agressive please be said, it isn't ment this way. But english is a foreign language for me and so I may make mistakes a natural speaker won't do.

Sofia Corba

Yikes, just looked at page 10 Anima Rule Book:

"Combat Abilities are the following:

Attack Ability

Block Ability

Dodge Ability

Ki Abilities

Weapon Modules

Martial Arts

Wear Armor"

Here you have a rule clarification.

~Sofia Corba

ok that's all I really needed to see where it was I can make adjustments acordatingly

p.s. it is ok about your post way are all human, and you can tell by my spelling not all of us are perfect at it anyway

Sofia Corba said:

Thanks Sofia Corba.  I knew it was SOMEwhere - it's just sometimes impossible to find these things when you need to.

Oh, and vaxx01, your comment about them being listed under Weapon Modules?  Both Weapon Modules and Martial Arts are listed in the "Combat Modules" section of the Core Book.  I should have thought of mentioning that before, but it never even occurred to me.  It might have saved a lot of debate if I'd thought of it.  :)

Hope you're happy with it now.