Kult – revised Unarmed Combat & Martial Arts Version 1.03 © Andrè Michael Pietroschek, my rights reserved “One of the greatest differences between unarmed streetfighting and martial arts is, that frequently only one of the mentioned consider themselves skilled without having ever de facto fought for their life and being alive enough to brag or keep silent about it.” Pietroschek, A.M. in the year 2008 Compared to nearly any other roleplaying system of the world, the martial arts system and definition of Kult is clumsy, even idiotic. Kult is about weird, alienating horror by priority. Unarmed combat is the instinctive and intuitive way of brawling. Using parts of your body and all the speed and strength you can muster, to hurt, disable or kill. Martial arts, the four in the rulebook, the others and cognates in the 2nd edition players handbook, are learned techniques. The benefit is: damage bonus, access to so called Budo manoeuvres and a gaydancer styled excuse for hubris while wearing a boring costume. Both ways, unarmed combat as martial arts, are described, as if anybody doing it has taken the advantages by names alertness [from 2nd edition players handbook]& body awareness [2nd edition rulebook]. These must be purchased, so maybe the author confused the concept a bit. There is a martial artist archetype defined in the 2nd edition players handbook. I liked it. But even I as a long ago Kult player (we had harshly three adventures played) know that most children of the night or “demons” to summarize it here, have scores of 25 to 50 in either unarmed combat or nearly any martial arts manoeuvre. For comparison, a human soldier in the second year of duty may have an average score of 15 in commando style, if very welltrained. Further, be it Arnis, Pencak Silat [autocorrection offers Pancaked Splat as correction for Pencak Silat] or mentioned Commando. You can learn the weapon skills outside of the martial arts. All it needs are the measures of competence, it doesn't matter at all, which martial arts label or style makes you fail against a Lictor anyway. Spontaneous brawling needs no combatstance and though it is weaker than fullbore martial arts can be, dying one round later or taking one more wolven with you before dying are all, until dice roll exceptionally well. The Kult players handbook, 2nd edition, offers a simplified martial arts table for damage bonus. Useful. The styles mention what moves are taught by a martial art style for sure.
Now let's make it simple: Unarmed combat and martial arts are raised as normal skills. No separate raising of punch or kick and so on. Means, up to your base attribute level, which is strength or agility by players choice, it costs one point to raise the skill level and above attribute it costs more. Dodge and weapons are purchased as normal skills, until they are listed in the martial arts style, then you can roll that martial arts skill for such. Block should be autoallowed, as long as proficient with the weapon or bodypart used for it. Same truth for unarmed combat, read below. Now both, unarmed combat as martial arts, get the simplified martial arts damage bonus by the table from 2nd edition players handbook, page 58. Depending on effect of the specific hit.
The martial artist may purchase degrees now: •
Student, cost 10 points, 5 points if you took body awareness. Benefit: +2 to each of strength, agility and constitution. Further, you can select one suiting Budo manoeuvre which is rolled with your martial arts skill.
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Instructor, cost 20 points, half of that if you took body awareness. Benefit: +1 again to each of strength, agility and constitution. Further, you can select a second and third suiting Budo manoeuvre which is rolled with your martial arts skill. Prerequisite: martial arts Student, martial arts skill > 15.
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Master, cost is 50 points, half of that if you took body awareness. Benefit: +1 again to each of strength, agility and constitution. +2 to Ego and Perception as well. Further, you can select a total of 5 suiting Budo manoeuvres which are rolled with your martial arts skill. Prerequisite: Must have purchased martial arts student and instructor& martial arts skill > 18.
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Grand-Master cost is 90 points, half of that if you took body awareness. Benefit: +1 again to each of strength, agility and constitution. +2 again to Ego and Perception as well. Further, you can select a total of 8 suiting Budo manoeuvres which are rolled with your martial arts skill. Prerequisite: Must have purchased driving goal advantage as martial arts student, instructor as master degrees& martial arts skill > 22.
Remember please, that unarmed combat needs nearly no training per week, where even a martial arts student must practice a minimum of 12 hours per week. Extra hours in the gym are not included! Martial artists purchase degree after degree here, to cleanly raise attributes and keep their characterdocument in shape. •
It may be hard to notice, but I designed this with the idea, that not all players start the game as martial arts grandmasters or streetfighters (read below). If you have decided for unarmed combat or martial arts and play a StreetWalker or Student of in example Jeet Kune Do, then roleplaying well may motivate your game master or mistress to reward you with a bonus degree ingame, not just in numbers.
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Purchasing two martial arts styles does not give double bona to attributes. A student of Commando & Aikido would still get +2 to strength, agility and constitution. NOT +4 to each. Nice try though...
And our unloved wallflower unarmed combat? Humming a line from Placebo: “All it takes is one decision, a lot of guts and supervision...” 1. Street-Walker. Cost 30 points, 15 points if you took body awareness. Benefit: +2 to each of Ego and Perception. Further, you can select three suiting Budo manoeuvres from these here: break grip, Circle kick, elbow strike, evasion, Iaido, knee-strike, knock-out, strangling grip or uppercut which are rolled with your unarmed combat skill. One of Brass knuckles, punching daggers & boot blades is part of your style. Roll them with unarmed combat. 2. Street-Fighter. Cost 60 points, 30 points if you took body awareness. Benefit: +2 to Initiative rolls. +2 on Strength, Agility and Constitution. Further, you can apply all Budo manoeuvres listed here: break grip, Circle kick, elbow strike, evasion, Iaido, knee-strike, knock-out, strangling grip or uppercut which are rolled with your unarmed combat skill. 3 from Brass knuckles, punching daggers, boot blades and similar lethal trick-weapons are part of your style. Roll them with unarmed combat. Prerequisite: Street-Walker, unarmed combat skill > 15 & Fearless or Iron Will advantage. •
The specific weapons of the martial art style, like nunchaku for Karate or stick for Arnis, Dagger for Commando and brass knuckle or similar for streetfighting get the damage bonus by effect on simplified martial arts table as well!!! Hopefully players realize that their foes got such, too.
About the author rumours, lies & insights
Possible Dark Secrets: Family Secret, Occult Experience, Insanity, Victim of medical experiments Advantages eventually in his life: Faith, Luck, Artistic talent, Sixth Sense, Driving Goal, Honesty, maybe even iron will, “where my disadvantages don't spoil it”... Disadvantages he was caught with in life: Lousy on grammar and comma placement, Touchy, Anxiety, Low SelfEsteem, Black Sheep, Sexually repressed & Drug Addiction (tries to quit smoking again, still speaks suspiciously fascinated of Kultcocaine in weak moments), Narcoleptic. He seems to like about KULT: Jail of Night by Paul Beakley!!! Borderlands, Dark Secrets giving variety, even if all play one archetype. It had a unique approach, but many years ago. It caused nostalgia within me, which made me write the recent two files. I like Madness&Dreammagic and the asylum escapee whom I call Asylumancer! Great, that all could apply the insanity dark secret, for nobody is immune & “psst, they are already after us”. ;) He seemingly dislikes about KULT: Conjurers are spoilers & after 1st insights it is easily boring. Such topics seem mostly immature fallacies of the authors. Rarely worthy campaigns. No good Kult novels or films either.
My granted generic permission More by clarification than necessity: I, Andrè Michael Pietroschek, have written this file based on the rules of 2nd edition Kult, Kult Players handbook and guides to dreams, madness, passion, death & space/time. I have no problem with and thereby allow: Any reader or downloader to upload or send a completely functional and completely not manipulated, unaltered version of this PDF to any nonprofit website which deals with Kult RPG, Horror gaming or any website which is otherwise suiting and legal. Example I read about: www.kultrpg.org/ which attempts to bring back Kult into publishing???
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If some form of competition, contest, tournament, “vote who wrote the best file agitation” or authoraward celebration is going on and my file would be suiting, feel free to send a functional copy in, as long, as it does not need any registration or my personal interaction in any way. I consider nonprofit or fan stuff.
I would prefer a hint that it may be “adults only” or the classic “for mature readers”, just in case. The intent of this file is to contribute to fiction and gaming. Perhaps making me more known as an hobbyauthor. •
I do not allow to make money with any of my mental property, any of my published files, without first having a contract signed with me. I am a pauper, I am too poor to gift you money which I need for my own responsibilities. Quoting me and being inspired by my published mental property:
Do it the proper and legal way, or not at all. I didn't share freely with all the world, for villains to steal my stuff. I consider forgiveness a dire mental disorder and revenge a holy virtue, Samael is defined as an angel after all. It is law to mention me by name and that I was the original author whenever I am the author and you are the plagiarizing waste of life. This includes so called “officials”. My own opinion: SoftwarePirates and rogues give a damn, while all the licenses only make it harder for creative people who want to make it the legal way. Or simply people who indulge their hobby. I will, sooner, later, or never; upload a permission like this for all my files. Consider it granted BUT excluding those files for D&D or D20 which include Open Game Content! I am simply too sick and too stupid to instantly craft a generic and global permission which guarantees that the Open Game License won't be violated in any form. Further my own permission can not allow you, what is illegal in your country.
AddOn: Learning more than one martial art. Now it works. Student of Arnis and Student of Muay Thai based selfdefence I was in my own youth. Commando with Aikido can be very hard to defeat in KULT contest. Once more: KULT is not a martial arts focused game! The key decision is, does your game master or mistress rule this as one martial arts skill with dodge, night combat and impact weapons or Daggers added as separate skills? Or does the game guide demand, that you raise them as two different martial arts skills, one for in example Arnis and one for the Greek Mu Tau? My solution is not detailed and has minor flaws, yet it is a timesaving and functional alternative to the one we all know. My rules for unarmed combat spiceup all the classes which have no access to martial arts at all, too.
Kiforces To martial artists all kiforces are available and no change of rules is needed. To streetfighters only the following kiforces may be available: •
Combat Mind, Fast Reactions, Endurance, Enhanced Senses, Resist Pain, Vitals Strike..?
For all kiforces, no matter, if martial arts or unarmed combat: There should be a prerequisite like having 15 or more in meditation skill and an advantage, like faith or driving goal, which justifies such. Personally I think they are the most idiotic placement, as they really spoil the horror when it comes down to old kung fu movies or films once more. NinjaNepharites versus SamuraiLictors..? Bruce Lee the Seraphim versus the eldritch Japanese Revenant coven? The archon secrets of Wing Chun kung fu, buy the book and video!!!
Principles How to make a fist and how to punch with it. How to keep balance. How to empower your kicks, throws or punches. Such is known in unarmed combat, just that beginners, or temper tantrum brawlers, usually do it on instinctive level, instead of by clear thought and the pleasure to hurt while looking stylish. Further, martial arts refine and cultivate their techniques while brawlers get drunk or laid instead... Martial arts can be beneficial, even superior, yet there are plenty clouded by theory and assumptions, some even by prejudices or racism or fanaticism, as well! Now I would appreciate constructive feedback, before wasting further effort and time.