Rules Lawyer – “Be Like Water, My Friend” The Martial Artist: A Bounty Hunter Specialization

You step into the room and immediately understand something about each of your attackers. One, the Trandoshan, leans heavily on his right leg, each jagged tooth grimacing when he shifts his weight. His friend, the Weequay with one eye, looks strong, but breathes heavily. You can almost smell the fermented bantha tears on his breath. The Toydarian flaps his wings nosily behind the two, smirking.

“Eh, you wanted to to get-a me-uh?,” he says, grunting the words out in that familiar Toydarian cadence. “Come then, Bounty Hunter. Lets-uh see if your reputation is well earned.”

You nod. You already know how this ends. You’ve analyzed their movements, and you can predict their reactions. You know exactly what blows will knock them unconscious, what will cripple them, and ones that’ll make them afraid of your whispered name. You are a Martial Artist. You knew how this was going to end before you even stepped into the room.


 

With the hopeful, eventual, possible, maybe release of the Bounty Hunter Sourcebook for FFG’s Edge of the Empire system, I was speculating recently on what sorts of new specialization’s we could see. The very first one I could think of was the Martial Artist – a.k.a the person who can clear a room with just their hands or their demeanor.

I believe that the creative minds of the Gamer Nation have already home-brewed their own versions of martial arts experts, but I wanted to try my hand at writing it as a specialization.

And its a challenge.

Not only for the challenges that being a Brawl heavy character proposes in this system, but for a Bounty Hunter in general. In the land of Beskar armor and energy-based long range rifles, what hope does the creature with two hands/claws/tentacles have?

Maybe a lot, depending on how you play it, but any Bounty Hunter who makes his bones as a Martial Artist will foster legends amongst the guild ranks just for being tough as nails and cool as ice.

Why A Bounty Hunter?

Martial Arts could be incorporated into almost any combat-based character, however, making the Martial Artist a Bounty Hunter spec gives it the style a bounty hunter, like Embo from the Clone Wars, deserves. There are thousands of martial arts from a millions of different species across the galaxy and they should feel as singular as the character you choose to play.

Martial Artist – Master of the Self

As a reminder, the Bounty Hunter career comes with these career skills:

Athletics, Brawl, Perception, Piloting (Planetary), Piloting (Space), Ranged (Heavy), Streetwise, and Vigilance

Most Bounty Hunters prefer sighting their unsuspecting quarry from a scope or engineering unique traps to take the target alive, if a little bruised up. The Martial Artist likes to use their hands. Different from most bounty hunters, the Martial Artist is usually after honor as often as they’re after credits. They see bounty hunting as a way to exercise their skills and test themselves through combat. They awe many with their ability to dispatch a well-armed foe without so much as a hold out blaster against all odds.

Due to the emphasis on being a master of ones mind and body, a common trait in all martial arts across the galaxy, a Martial Artist also begins the game with these skills: Brawl, Coordination, Discipline, and Resilience. These four skills become additional career skills. If this is a character’s starting Specialization, he may choose two of these skills and gain one free rank in each.

The Martial Artist has usually trained for years, maybe from the beginning of their life, to become even semi-proficient in their chosen art. Through this, Martial Artists turn their mind and bodies into fortresses. They are capable of amazing athletic feats as well as coordination, as well as physically demanding activities that could drain the mind as well as the body.

Martial Artists are excellent combatants, but should understand their limitations in any given situation and make sure to utilize their strengths to turn the tables in their favor.

The Talent Tree

I won’t be creating an entire talent tree, but these are some of the talents I could see being generated specifically for the Martial Artist. They’re in the paradigm FFG has set down, with two sides of the tree representing a specific focus within the specialization.

The Hand to Hand Expert Tree:

Close The Gap (Passive) – Per rank of Athletics, the PC can take two strain to maneuver one extra range band than would normally apply.

Commentary: To be an effective Martial Artist, you have to get up close. Take too long and you’ll be ripped apart by that long range slug-thrower or blaster carbine. This gives the Martial Artist the opportunity to even the odds, fast.

Rolling Blows (Passive) – PC adds +1 damage on a successful Brawl attack per rank of Rolling Blows.

Commentary: Gotta make those Brawl attacks count. Narratively, who doesn’t want to be that character who unleashes a deadly flurry of blows on his foe at lightning speed?

Master of Mind & Body Tree:

Be Like Water (Active): The PC can make a Hard Resilience check to recover two strain once per encounter.

Commentary: Martial Artists are known for the extremes they can put their minds and bodies through. Mechanically, this allows them to maintain their ability to push their bodies when needed.

Like A Stone (Passive): May decrease one difficulty of any Discipline check per rank of Like A Stone

Commentary: Martial Artists should be hard to scare, and even if they are scared, their built-in discipline should keep them in check.

And there you go.

I hope this got you excited, or maybe it just got your hopes up, to play your very own fist-fighting Chuck Norrisian bounty hunter. If you get a chance, check out my species build for the Kyuzo which may be one of the more perfect species fits for this type of specialization

Until next time, grasshopper.

5 Comments

  1. Here’s a Thought:

    Close the Gap (Passive): When you perform a second Maneuver during your turn to Move, you reduce the Strain suffered by 1 per Rank in the Talent.

    Then just have two Talents in the Tree and pow! Free Second Maneuver in the turn for Movement.

  2. I agree and I like your suggestions. I was actually rereading this the other day and thought something along those lines.

    I do like Fleet Footed! The build will need something to level the playing field if they are mainly using their fists to fight.

    What about:

    Close The Gap (Active) – Take one less maneuver than is required when moving into engaged from any range band per rank of Close the Gap.

    This could be balanced by it being exclusive to the Martial Arts tree and giving two ranks at most.

    Or

    Close the Gap (Active) – Make a Daunting Athletics check to move one full range band.

    Then you could have “Improved Close the Gap, etc” and deescalate the difficulty per talent.

    It’s powerful, but

  3. Passive talents just always apply; active talents require a choice (but not necessarily an action). Close the Gap would be an active talent, similar to Intimidating or Rapid Reaction.

    I think Close the Gap needs a little work. It’s a little too strong to let a guy go from Long to Engaged by spending 2 maneuvers (to go from long to medium) and 4 strain (to add 2 more range bands). In fact, as written, it’s even more powerful for running away than for closing — spend 1 maneuver to disengage, then spend 6 strain to immediately move three additional range bands, to Extreme range, outside the range of most portable weapons. (Presuming you have 3 Athletics, but why wouldn’t you, for this kind of power?)

    I’d suggest something like this–
    Fleet Footed: Once per round on the character’s turn, the character may suffer 2 strain to take the move maneuver as an incidental. This move does not count towards the limit of two maneuvers in a turn.

    No idea if that’s balanced either, but it makes this character more maneuverable without making him better than a Force Leaping jedi.

    • Oops – sort of the blew that comment.

      (See above)

      I think that certain talents that seem high powered for the martial artist will be tempered by the fact that it’s still a Brawl based character. It may need a little oompf, but I agree that my initial version is way overpowered.

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