Screaming Rodent Martial Arts
Posted: Wed May 30, 2012 8:47 pm
Having a go at making a martial arts form, exotic or otherwise(though this one leans towards Absurd). Suggestions welcomed.
Screaming Rodent Martial Arts
“I’m not running away...I’m repositioning myself to a more secure point of perspective from which to better survey the situation and develop more options...NOW GET OUTTA THE WAY!!!”
Screaming Rodent is an art form centered on survival, rather than doling out massive amounts of damage to other people. It’s for people who are expecting massive amounts of damage to be done to them, and by practicing this art, hope to reduce their chances of being rendered into permanently inanimate red paste.
Screaming Rodent emphasizes running away, and actual damaging combat moves are few and far between; mainly concerned with removing obstacles from your way(like doors) as you run for your life! If you actually manage to hurt someone with Screaming Rodent, it’s most likely because they didn’t get out of your escape route fast enough, rather than any deliberate intent on your part.
Practitioners of Screaming Rodent seem foolhardy, even suicidal; regularly practicing by playing in high speed traffic, running through avalanche zones, tightrope walking on power lines, jumping under machine presses, playing human cannonball, and other stunts that would earn them regular status on ‘Jack@$$’. Practice isn’t always deliberate or planned; there’s usually a bloodthirsty mob, raging angry ex, rabid animal, brakeless careening garbage truck, or Mafia debt enforcer involved. Falling exercises are key to the art. And, true to its name, blood-curdling and heartrending screams are also featured strongly in both practice and combat.
Screaming Rodent is competing with Drunken-style martial arts as the advanced martial arts of ‘serious’ Ludicrous-Mage Warrior-Assassins, though only when they are retreating.
Country of Origin: Canada
Style: (Non-Exclusive) True Fear knows no exclusivity.
Entrance Requirements: None. Novice practitioners often meet their teachers while running away from danger. Provided the novice isn’t tripped or otherwise sacrificed to distract any pursuers, and can keep up with the master, the junior is accepted as a student.
Skill Cost: 6 years(4 years if taken as a Secondary Martial Art Form)
Costume: Anything...as long as it doesn’t trip you up while you’re running for your life.
Stance: Legs set apart, knees slightly bent, hands held up and crooked in front of the chest, shoulders slightly hunched forward, mouth open in a rictus of terror or surprise, and eyes wide open. Ideally, one’s back, the heels of one’s feet showing, is faced to danger at all times.
Character Bonuses: +1d4 P.E., +1 P.P., +2d4 Spd.
Combat Skills:
Attacks per Melee: Not ATTACKS per say, more like defensive actions. Starts with 4 per melee.
Escape Moves: Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, Leap, Backflip, Maintain Balance, Somersault
Basic Defensive Moves: Dodge, Parry
Advanced Defenses: Automatic Dodge, Multiple Dodge, Breakfall
Hand Attacks: None
Basic Foot Attacks: Kick, Back Kick
Jumping Foot Attacks: Jump Attack
Special Attacks:
*Heart-Rending Cry of Despair---Similar to the vocal techniques of Kaijutsu, this scream conveys such fear, pain, and suffering that opponents may pause in shock...or savoring appreciation. This may allow the practitioner another few seconds grace to make good on their getaway. Delivered during a long fall, it may also convince pursuers that the fugitive is really dead, and thus call off the pursuit. In game terms, anybody caught in a 40 ft radius of the screamer must save versus M.E. or pause for 1d4 melees, and can only defend themselves from attack, not attack.
Weapons Katas: None
Modifiers to Attacks: Pull Punch, Critical Strike(Kick)
Special Katas:
*Splatfall---This is meditational skill that allows one to attain a state of apparent relaxed bonelessness. In this state the SRodent practitioner can survive normally fatal falls and impacts, and crushing confinement without ill effect----it still hurts like hell, but the practitioner is less likely to limp away with broken bones and serious internal injuries. A practitioner can survive falls from as far up as 25 ft + 10 ft per level of experience, without taking any damage. Unlike other falling skills, the SRodent practitioner doesn’t immediately jump back on his feet or land lightly, but takes 1d4 melees pulling himself up out of the ground/peeling himself off the concrete.
*Hang Time---It’s like falling, only slower...Whether it’s latent telekinetic levitation or fear-amplified senses telescoping time, the SRodent practitioner takes twice as long to fall from a given height. While this gives the practitioner extended time in which to appreciate their predicament, it can also give them more time to look around, maybe adjust their posture for a better landing, or even make a grab at a nearby ledge, tree, or line. Usually, though, all it does is allow the faller to update their will and pop an Advil.
*Vertical Leap---SRodent students learn to make instant standing straight-up vertical leaps, of up to 1 ft per every 2 pts of physical strength(P.S). Practice is usually done by concealing a sharp pin in the chair the student is sitting down in, shooting flames through a grill or releasing poisonous snakes at their feet, or rolling large stone barrels at them while they’re standing around.
*Death Trance---The SRodent practitioner becomes remarkably adept at imitating death, and can assume a limp, lifeless, broken appearance almost instantaneously upon being slammed to the ground, thrown through a window, or wacked into a wall. Only close inspection(and a good hard poke with a sharp instrument) will reveal that the person is still alive.
*Flee Instinct---When faced with such things as a Horror Factor, the SRodent’s survival instincts are so finely honed that there is NO chance of them simply standing there paralyzed; they will instantly flee, as fast as possible. This works best when in a group where others, paralyzed with shock, may provide a distraction to the monster while the SRodent practitioner escapes, but may backfire if the monster is attracted to movement.
*Emergency Boost(‘Arse on Fire Technique’)----Similar to the psionic ability Summon Inner Strength, the practitioner can dredge up a second wind, effectively DOUBLING their speed for 1d6 melees. They can perform this stunt as many times as (their P.E. divided by 3) times per day. As the name suggests, this technique is most often taught by setting the student’s pants on fire or beating their buttocks with a spiked or pointed weapon.
Skills Included in Training:
Identify Plants and Fruits(+10%)
Wilderness Survival (+5%)
First Aid(+10%, +15% when applied to self)
The following skills, if taken, get a bonus of +5%; Paramedic, Field Surgery
Martial Arts Powers:
*Art of Invisibility: Art of Evasion(Hsing Tsia)---Many a ninja clan would like to know how the heck the School of the Screaming Rodent learned ninja stealth techniques, because it clearly stole them. Needless to say, SRodent practitioners have studiously remained one, ideally many, steps ahead of any ninja wanting to question them.
Language:
Does “AAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” count as a language?
Cultural Skills:
*Begging/Pleading---Begging for your life dovetails nicely with begging for alms or food.
Physical:
*Running
*Climbing(+5%)
Philosophical Training:
* “Every Man for Himself!”
If this is your Primary Martial Arts Form, then you’re not interested in learning another martial arts, you craven coward. This is one of the few martial arts forms that bottoms out in its philosophy.
Level Advancement Bonuses:
1st----- +2 to Dodge, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact. Also select 2 from the Special Katas
2nd-----+1 Maintain Balance, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
3rd-----+2 ft to Leap distance, +2 Breakfall
4th----- +1 to Dodge, +2 Save Vs Pain, +1 Parry, Select 2 from the Special Katas
5th-----+1 APM, +2d4 to Speed, +1 Maintain Balance
6th-----Automatic Dodge, +2 Breakfall
7th-----+1d4 to Physical Endurance, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, +1 Parry
8th-----+1 APM, +2 Save Vs Pain, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
9th----- +2 ft to Leap distance, +2 to Dodge, +1 Maintain Balance, Select 1 from the Special Katas
10th-----Martial Arts Powers: Choice of either Kick Practice(Chagi) or combined Kangeiko/Shochu Geiko Body Hardening, OR one of the following Arts of Invisibility: Art of Hiding(Inpo), Art od Escape(Inton Justu), or Art of Vanishing(Sun Shih K’an Chien Chih).
11th-----+2 Automatic Dodge
*Control Bleeding---This mental discipline allows the practitioner to WILL a wound to close within one melee, not regenerating damage but curtailing further blood loss. Call it hysterical panic-induced muscular tourniqueting, call it denial-fired psychosomatic control, but SRodent practitioners don't like seeing their precious bodily fluid seeping away, very bad thing bleeding is.
12th-----+2 Save Vs Pain, +2 to Dodge, +2 Breakfall, +1 Parry, Select 1 from the special Katas
13th-----+1 APM, +2 ft to Leap distance, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
14th-----+2 Automatic Dodge
*Double effective radius of the Cry of Despair
15th-----Critical Kick Damage on an Unmodified 18-20, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, +1 to Backflip/Somersault.
Why Study Screaming Rodent?
Because you’re a craven pessimistic masochist who knows it’s only a matter of time before the Universe gets you square in its sights, and you’re going to make sure you make it WORK for that hit. It’s one of the few schools that teaches Arts of Invisibility(often practiced by studiously avoiding the schools that regard those arts as exclusively theirs). Plus it has a good selection of body toughening exercises and wilderness survival skills. If you ever anticipate having to do open abdominal surgery on yourself in the field, Screaming Rodent will prepare you for it.
On the minus side, it’s almost completely devoid of offensive moves. Hitting back only invites further trouble, and bigger beatings, in the experience of Screaming Rodent practitioners.
Screaming Rodent Martial Arts
“I’m not running away...I’m repositioning myself to a more secure point of perspective from which to better survey the situation and develop more options...NOW GET OUTTA THE WAY!!!”
Screaming Rodent is an art form centered on survival, rather than doling out massive amounts of damage to other people. It’s for people who are expecting massive amounts of damage to be done to them, and by practicing this art, hope to reduce their chances of being rendered into permanently inanimate red paste.
Screaming Rodent emphasizes running away, and actual damaging combat moves are few and far between; mainly concerned with removing obstacles from your way(like doors) as you run for your life! If you actually manage to hurt someone with Screaming Rodent, it’s most likely because they didn’t get out of your escape route fast enough, rather than any deliberate intent on your part.
Practitioners of Screaming Rodent seem foolhardy, even suicidal; regularly practicing by playing in high speed traffic, running through avalanche zones, tightrope walking on power lines, jumping under machine presses, playing human cannonball, and other stunts that would earn them regular status on ‘Jack@$$’. Practice isn’t always deliberate or planned; there’s usually a bloodthirsty mob, raging angry ex, rabid animal, brakeless careening garbage truck, or Mafia debt enforcer involved. Falling exercises are key to the art. And, true to its name, blood-curdling and heartrending screams are also featured strongly in both practice and combat.
Screaming Rodent is competing with Drunken-style martial arts as the advanced martial arts of ‘serious’ Ludicrous-Mage Warrior-Assassins, though only when they are retreating.
Country of Origin: Canada
Style: (Non-Exclusive) True Fear knows no exclusivity.
Entrance Requirements: None. Novice practitioners often meet their teachers while running away from danger. Provided the novice isn’t tripped or otherwise sacrificed to distract any pursuers, and can keep up with the master, the junior is accepted as a student.
Skill Cost: 6 years(4 years if taken as a Secondary Martial Art Form)
Costume: Anything...as long as it doesn’t trip you up while you’re running for your life.
Stance: Legs set apart, knees slightly bent, hands held up and crooked in front of the chest, shoulders slightly hunched forward, mouth open in a rictus of terror or surprise, and eyes wide open. Ideally, one’s back, the heels of one’s feet showing, is faced to danger at all times.
Character Bonuses: +1d4 P.E., +1 P.P., +2d4 Spd.
Combat Skills:
Attacks per Melee: Not ATTACKS per say, more like defensive actions. Starts with 4 per melee.
Escape Moves: Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, Leap, Backflip, Maintain Balance, Somersault
Basic Defensive Moves: Dodge, Parry
Advanced Defenses: Automatic Dodge, Multiple Dodge, Breakfall
Hand Attacks: None
Basic Foot Attacks: Kick, Back Kick
Jumping Foot Attacks: Jump Attack
Special Attacks:
*Heart-Rending Cry of Despair---Similar to the vocal techniques of Kaijutsu, this scream conveys such fear, pain, and suffering that opponents may pause in shock...or savoring appreciation. This may allow the practitioner another few seconds grace to make good on their getaway. Delivered during a long fall, it may also convince pursuers that the fugitive is really dead, and thus call off the pursuit. In game terms, anybody caught in a 40 ft radius of the screamer must save versus M.E. or pause for 1d4 melees, and can only defend themselves from attack, not attack.
Weapons Katas: None
Modifiers to Attacks: Pull Punch, Critical Strike(Kick)
Special Katas:
*Splatfall---This is meditational skill that allows one to attain a state of apparent relaxed bonelessness. In this state the SRodent practitioner can survive normally fatal falls and impacts, and crushing confinement without ill effect----it still hurts like hell, but the practitioner is less likely to limp away with broken bones and serious internal injuries. A practitioner can survive falls from as far up as 25 ft + 10 ft per level of experience, without taking any damage. Unlike other falling skills, the SRodent practitioner doesn’t immediately jump back on his feet or land lightly, but takes 1d4 melees pulling himself up out of the ground/peeling himself off the concrete.
*Hang Time---It’s like falling, only slower...Whether it’s latent telekinetic levitation or fear-amplified senses telescoping time, the SRodent practitioner takes twice as long to fall from a given height. While this gives the practitioner extended time in which to appreciate their predicament, it can also give them more time to look around, maybe adjust their posture for a better landing, or even make a grab at a nearby ledge, tree, or line. Usually, though, all it does is allow the faller to update their will and pop an Advil.
*Vertical Leap---SRodent students learn to make instant standing straight-up vertical leaps, of up to 1 ft per every 2 pts of physical strength(P.S). Practice is usually done by concealing a sharp pin in the chair the student is sitting down in, shooting flames through a grill or releasing poisonous snakes at their feet, or rolling large stone barrels at them while they’re standing around.
*Death Trance---The SRodent practitioner becomes remarkably adept at imitating death, and can assume a limp, lifeless, broken appearance almost instantaneously upon being slammed to the ground, thrown through a window, or wacked into a wall. Only close inspection(and a good hard poke with a sharp instrument) will reveal that the person is still alive.
*Flee Instinct---When faced with such things as a Horror Factor, the SRodent’s survival instincts are so finely honed that there is NO chance of them simply standing there paralyzed; they will instantly flee, as fast as possible. This works best when in a group where others, paralyzed with shock, may provide a distraction to the monster while the SRodent practitioner escapes, but may backfire if the monster is attracted to movement.
*Emergency Boost(‘Arse on Fire Technique’)----Similar to the psionic ability Summon Inner Strength, the practitioner can dredge up a second wind, effectively DOUBLING their speed for 1d6 melees. They can perform this stunt as many times as (their P.E. divided by 3) times per day. As the name suggests, this technique is most often taught by setting the student’s pants on fire or beating their buttocks with a spiked or pointed weapon.
Skills Included in Training:
Identify Plants and Fruits(+10%)
Wilderness Survival (+5%)
First Aid(+10%, +15% when applied to self)
The following skills, if taken, get a bonus of +5%; Paramedic, Field Surgery
Martial Arts Powers:
*Art of Invisibility: Art of Evasion(Hsing Tsia)---Many a ninja clan would like to know how the heck the School of the Screaming Rodent learned ninja stealth techniques, because it clearly stole them. Needless to say, SRodent practitioners have studiously remained one, ideally many, steps ahead of any ninja wanting to question them.
Language:
Does “AAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEE!!!!” count as a language?
Cultural Skills:
*Begging/Pleading---Begging for your life dovetails nicely with begging for alms or food.
Physical:
*Running
*Climbing(+5%)
Philosophical Training:
* “Every Man for Himself!”
If this is your Primary Martial Arts Form, then you’re not interested in learning another martial arts, you craven coward. This is one of the few martial arts forms that bottoms out in its philosophy.
Level Advancement Bonuses:
1st----- +2 to Dodge, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact. Also select 2 from the Special Katas
2nd-----+1 Maintain Balance, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
3rd-----+2 ft to Leap distance, +2 Breakfall
4th----- +1 to Dodge, +2 Save Vs Pain, +1 Parry, Select 2 from the Special Katas
5th-----+1 APM, +2d4 to Speed, +1 Maintain Balance
6th-----Automatic Dodge, +2 Breakfall
7th-----+1d4 to Physical Endurance, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, +1 Parry
8th-----+1 APM, +2 Save Vs Pain, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
9th----- +2 ft to Leap distance, +2 to Dodge, +1 Maintain Balance, Select 1 from the Special Katas
10th-----Martial Arts Powers: Choice of either Kick Practice(Chagi) or combined Kangeiko/Shochu Geiko Body Hardening, OR one of the following Arts of Invisibility: Art of Hiding(Inpo), Art od Escape(Inton Justu), or Art of Vanishing(Sun Shih K’an Chien Chih).
11th-----+2 Automatic Dodge
*Control Bleeding---This mental discipline allows the practitioner to WILL a wound to close within one melee, not regenerating damage but curtailing further blood loss. Call it hysterical panic-induced muscular tourniqueting, call it denial-fired psychosomatic control, but SRodent practitioners don't like seeing their precious bodily fluid seeping away, very bad thing bleeding is.
12th-----+2 Save Vs Pain, +2 to Dodge, +2 Breakfall, +1 Parry, Select 1 from the special Katas
13th-----+1 APM, +2 ft to Leap distance, +1 to Backflip/Somersault
14th-----+2 Automatic Dodge
*Double effective radius of the Cry of Despair
15th-----Critical Kick Damage on an Unmodified 18-20, +2 Roll With Punch/Fall/Impact, +1 to Backflip/Somersault.
Why Study Screaming Rodent?
Because you’re a craven pessimistic masochist who knows it’s only a matter of time before the Universe gets you square in its sights, and you’re going to make sure you make it WORK for that hit. It’s one of the few schools that teaches Arts of Invisibility(often practiced by studiously avoiding the schools that regard those arts as exclusively theirs). Plus it has a good selection of body toughening exercises and wilderness survival skills. If you ever anticipate having to do open abdominal surgery on yourself in the field, Screaming Rodent will prepare you for it.
On the minus side, it’s almost completely devoid of offensive moves. Hitting back only invites further trouble, and bigger beatings, in the experience of Screaming Rodent practitioners.