There’s this post on Mailanka’s Musings that talks about two different ways of modeling martial arts in RPGs. The first is something he calls “Move-Based”, and the second “Skill-Based”.

Move-based martial arts is how most RPGs in the 90’s did it. You bought a style, and that gave you access to a series of “moves” that were essentially special powers with individual rules for what they did. Some systems made you buy each individual move as well, usually as a way to model your progression in the style - advanced practitioners know more moves. Your move set is as or more important than your raw skill level.

Skill-based martial arts are what GURPS does. Everyone uses the same skills to fight, and knowing one style or another is mostly a matter of flavor with a few minor mechanical bonuses thrown in. What really matters are your skill levels: people with different style familiarities but similar skill levels are equally effective. The same applies to someone who “knows” a style and someone who just has the combat skills.

Move-based rules might allow you to emulate some classic kung-fu stories that are all about how some styles are objectively superior to others, or how there’s a secret style or ultimate technique that’s jealously guarded by a cranky old master. Skill-based rules are closer to Bruce Lee’s philosophy, or modern views of martial arts in general, where individual skill is more important and the “ultimate power” is learning from multiple sources and combining everything into something that works for you.

Personally, I prefer skill-based rules, largely due to my exposure to GURPS Martial Arts for Fourth edition. Everything it introduces can be done by someone who isn’t using the style rules. It covers styles from the whole world without treating any of them as inherently superior, and it acknowledges that basically any organized system of fighting counts as a “style”. The “generic swings” other systems describe as the standard form of fighting only happen if you’re completely untrained.

Given this preference, it comes as no surprise that I have a few weirdly specific hangups about how Exalted handles its martial arts. Let’s talk about them!

Exalted’s Martial Arts

Exalted’s whole system is entirely move-based. Every PC has a large set of “Charms” that are usually linked to skills, and represent magic techniques they can use to enhance uses of that skill. Getting to the maximum possible skill level is trivial, and it’s your Charms that make the difference when going against similarly supernatural opposition. This goes even for non-combat skills, though the fighty bits tend to take up a lot of attention.

Martial Arts are part of this system, but the game still takes pains to make them extra-special, even as it struggles to explain what makes them different from standard combat powers. Exalted First Edition had a separate Martial Arts skill, whose associated Charms were structured as “Martial Arts Styles”. They didn’t really “mix” with charms of other skills. As a result, a lot of each style’s Charms end up duplicating the effect of basic combat Charms in different ways.

Second Edition merged “standard” unarmed combat and Martial Arts, and made it a little easier to mix and match charms from a few different styles. Third Edition doubled down on the original position and made it so each style had its own separate skill, thus coming full circle on the ‘martial arts cost more because they are exotic and special’ trope.

How I’d Do It

Had I been writing these rules, I’d probably take them in a different direction entirely, and more towards the way GURPS sees things. There would be no Martial Arts skill. Each style is associated with a single standard combat skill, and consists of exactly three Charms representing its advanced or iconic techniques. The basic stuff is already covered by the standard skill and standard Charms.

For the Charms I’d reuse the “lotus” metaphor, so they would be the Root, Bulb and Blossom Charms. You learn them in this order. Each has the previous one as a prerequisite, and probably an increasing Essence score. They’re meant to be combined with the standard Charms for that skill, relying on them for the basic dice-adding mechanics and such. If you know Charms of multiple styles you can explicitly combine them as long as the combination is otherwise rules-legal.

Everyone who learns to fight is a martial artist, even if they never pick up style Charms. Every martial artist ultimately develops their own personal style by learning from as many sources as possible and keeping what works for them. And you can certainly describe the way your kung-fu looks as being a certain style even if you don’t have the Charms.

Example: Snake Style

I didn’t originally plan on doing this, but what the heck, let’s go! Snake Style has traditionally been the main corebook style, so let’s see how it would look in this format.

Let’s see what the lore says about it: it’s a style focused on speed and precision, aiming to take down better armed and armored opponents before they have time to act. It uses two-fingered strikes to hit pressure points and exposed tendons. Masters of the style can “pierce through armor”, “paralyze opponents with pressure point strikes”, and “deliver poisonous Essence through their fingertips”.

The choice of what to keep in our new format is pretty easy - each of the things masters of the style can do references a specific Charm. We want those. All the others increase basic numbers in different ways and can be replaced by standard charms from Brawl and other trees. Want to dodge like a snake? Take Dodge Charms. Want the “tough scales” effect? Take Resistance.

So our new Snake Style is an unarmed style linked to Brawl. Our Root Charm is Crippling Pressure Point Strike (Ex3 p. 428). Our Bulb Charm is Armor-Penetrating Fang Strike. Our Blossom Charm is Essence Venom Strike. Their skill level and Essence prerequisites remain the same, but read Brawl in place of Martial Arts.

This is a quick and dirty sketch, and some additional work would be required. Essence Venom Strike needs to be rewritten a bit, since half of its effects reference Charms we’ve eliminated. We might also want to rewrite some of the base Brawl charms, though I haven’t looked at them in much depth.