FOCUSING YOUR KUNG FU DESIGN

This post is just some very basic and narrow advice on creating your own Kung Fu techniques for Wandering Heroes of Ogre Gate, our fantasy wuxia RPG. This past week I had a player propose new techniques for my Celestial Plume Masters campaign. They were all built around an Iron Tiger theme and the concepts were generally quite good as were the mechanics, but there was one issue that emerged with a couple of them, and I believe this is a problem many GM's trying their hand at Kung Fu Technique creation run into. That is putting too many concepts into a technique. 

One important piece of advice I want to confer before getting into the issue of focus is formatting. My experience with Ogre Gate is the best techniques tend to follow a strict format of:

1) A short sentence or two on what the technique does, in an evocative flavorful text 

2) A single paragraph that says what it does mechanically (i.e. Make an Arm Strike Roll against Parry. On a Success do X number of wounds per rank of Y. On a Total Success...) 

3) A short one sentence paragraph if there are any caveats (i.e. You cannot use this technique unless you have the Medicine Skill) 

4) A one to two sentence paragraph explaining the cathartic effect. 

An example of the above format

Not every technique will follow this format, but the closer a given technique is the easier it will be to use in play and the clearer the concept. And some techniques will demand more text, a more complex format, etc. In those instances, by all means do what the technique requires. My advice is try to make most techniques you make boil down to a format like this. In practice this is much easier to deploy in play than the more involved techniques. 

Which brings me to the above point about focus. 

When you make a technique, as a general rule, the more you concept you put into it, the more confusing it will be, the harder it will be to organize the mechanics and the longer it is going to take to use during play. Occasionally more complex ability is fine. Just like some techniques require a slightly different format, some kung fu concepts require more elements to work. Not every technique in the book has to be focused. But generally you want a technique to reflect a particular action or a specific thing. If there are multiple concepts in a given technique you might want to split into two techniques. 

As an example one of the techniques we were working on was supposed to be an Iron Tiger counter that both allowed you to make your body stronger attacks but improving your reflexes. It also used two skills which I felt which can be confusing. It became clear to me reviewing it, that the idea would work better mechanically if these were made into two separate techniques.  

TIGER'S FURY (SECRET)

Discipline: Neigong

Skill: Grapple

Type: Counter

Qi:3

 

You radiate qi energy throughout your body, making you more attuned to your body and its movements while also fortifying yourself from attacks.

 

If an opponent successfully hits you with an unarmed attack you may roll your muscle against their attack roll. If your roll meets or exceeds their attack roll you may roll your ranks in Neigong against their hardiness for a chance to damage them as well as negate the effects of the attack.

 

If your opponent misses, you may make a grapple check against their attack roll to engage them in a grapple with crushing force. If you successfully grapple your opponent roll your Neigong rating against their hardiness for damage, on a total success their bones are broken and they suffer the missing limb flaw for 1 week per rank of Neigong.

 

To use this technique you can only know and use techniques from the Iron Tiger Manual.Can negate the damage from weapons as well but no damage will be done to the wielder.

 

Cathartic: When used cathartically a regular success is enough to break bones and inflict the missing limb flaw for one week per rank of Neigong.

I took this technique and split it into the following two techniques: 

TIGER'S FURY (SECRET)

Discipline: Neigong

Skill: Muscle 

Type: Counter

Qi:3

 

You radiate qi energy throughout your body, fortifying yourself from attacks and making your body hard as iron.

 

Roll your Muscle against the unarmed attack roll of your opponent. On a Success, the attack fails and they take damage as their limb smashes into your sturdy body. Roll your ranks in Neigong against their Hardiness. 

 

This can negate the damage from weapons as well but no damage will be done to the wielder. To use this technique you can only know and use techniques from the Iron Tiger Manual.

 

Cathartic: When used cathartically a regular success is enough to break bones and inflict the missing limb flaw for one week per rank of Neigong.

 

REPLY OF THE TIGER (SECRET)

Discipline: Neigong

Skill: Grapple

Type: Counter

Qi:3

 

You respond to a failed melee attack with the reflexes of a tiger and a grip of iron. 

 

When an opponent misses on a melee attack you can Roll Grapple against their Parry. On a Success you can roll Neigong against their Hardiness for damage. On a Total Success you grip a limb and break bone, causing them to take the missing limb flaw for 1 week per rank of neigong. 

 

If your opponent misses, you may make a grapple check against their attack roll to engage them in a grapple with crushing force. If you successfully grapple your opponent roll your Neigong rating against their hardiness for damage, on a total success their bones are broken and they suffer the missing limb flaw for 1 week per rank of Neigong. 

To use this technique you can only know and use techniques from the Iron Tiger Manual.

Cathartic: When used cathartically you inflict Neigong+Muscle in damage.

The second one is still a little more busy than I would normally like but I find this much easier to run during play than the original version. There are also remaining issues of balance, which I will get into in future posts on this topic. Also this is not the final version of these techniques that ended up in the campaign. These were starting points, which were revised and tweaked after each session until they felt right. 

On the topic of balance, Ogre Gate does take an open approach to power spikes. So it isn't necessarily a problem to have balance issues in a technique, a lot of that is going to come down to feel. But that doesn't mean anything goes either. Again I will touch on this in future posts on the topic. 

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