Generally speaking, every delver is a martial artist. The amount of points even a wizard puts into weapon skills would easily make them black belts or the equivalent in real life. If you want to narrow things down a bit, the Knight and Swashbuckler are still definitely martial artists, because they dedicate a large part of their lives to studying a formal system of fighting, and their skill at it would make them legendary if they were real people.

This Martial Artist however, is the kind who graduated from an ascetic monastery in a faraway land or perhaps from a local mystical sect. Sure, they’re better at unarmed combat than the other delvers, but the important thing is that they learned how to cultivate their inner strength through special exercises and meditation, and they can use that to manifest supernatural powers.

The book calls their power source “Chi”, and if this sounds a bit orientalist, well, that’s how you know this is a version of the D&D Monk. The term can be stripped away easily enough, though then you still have to put up with some legacy skill and power names that were imported straight from the GURPS core and show up in this template.

Mechanically, the draw of the Martial Artist are those special powers. If you just want to hit things really well and deal lots of damage, you might be better served by one of the other fighty professions. But if you want to walk on water, run up walls, perform giant flying leaps, and paralyze people by hitting their pressure points, then this is the profession for you.

Basic Stats

The basic stat line for the Martial Artist is ST 11, DX 16, IQ 10, HT 12. That gives them Speed 7.0 exactly. Their Will is increased to 11, and their Move to 8, making them the fastest-running profession at character creation.

Advantages

Every Martial Artist starts with two levels of Chi Talent and the Trained by a Master advantage. The former is their Power Talent, and the latter is similar to the Knight’s Weapon Master. It doesn’t grant a damage bonus, but the other ones work for all unarmed attacks and muscle-powered weapons, and it allows the character to learn many more special skills.

They have 40 points to distribute between optional advantages, which include the usual stat boosts, stuff useful for combat, and some advantages representing great mental resilience. Weapon Master also makes an appearance here, in its 20-point version that covers any one single weapon. The book says “one exotic weapon”, but since “exotic” is not a weapon qualifier in the rules, I guess this is here only for “flavor”. You can pick any one you want.

Disadvantages

The mandatory disadvantage here is Disciplines of Faith (Chi Rituals). This represents the special exercises you must perform daily to keep your inner strength up and access your special powers. They eat into your free time, but if you skip even one day you can’t use your powers for a while.

Discretionary advantages include stuff that represents being a foreigner or having a strict code of conduct, monastic vows you might have taken, lower starting Wealth, and even stuff for reckless braggarts like a vow to always fight unarmed.

Yes, Social Stigma (Minority Group) is optional for Martial Artists. Not all of them come from a mysterious faraway land. I remember seeing one who was a local dwarf who wore plate armor and fought using twin battleaxes as weapons.

Skills

Both core GURPS and the DFRPG have a set of “tiered” unarmed combat skills. You can always use your raw DX to strike or grapple someone if you don’t know any of them. That’s always your worst option. Then you have a series of skills that provide increasing benefits but are also increasingly harder to learn. The benefits are things like increased damage and more options during combat.

For strinking, the progression is Brawling, Boxing and Karate. For grappling, it’s Wrestling and Judo.

I feel that both the tier system and the fact that the best skills are the ones with Japanese names is another bit of left-over 90s orientalist gunk we should get rid of. Sadly it did not happen here yet, and the Martial Artist leans into this.

As a Martial Artist you get access to Judo and Karate, and always start out with a lot more points invested into them than the other professions put into their “remedial unarmed training” package that consists of Brawling and Wrestling as secondary or optional skills.

The reason most other delvers avoid investing too much in unarmed combat is that it’s pretty crappy compared to hitting people with weapons. Punches and kicks do less damage than most weapons. Failing to parry an enemy’s weapon or having your strikes parried by one can give the enemy a free shot at your limbs. And even if you hit, you can end up hurting yourself if the target surface is too hard (like, say, enemy armor, or monster scales). The martial artist’s better skills mitigate some of that, and their powers can help mitigate the rest.

The choice of combat skill package determines if you know these unarmed skills at 15 plus two weapons at 17, unarmed at 16 and one weapon at 17, or one unarmed skill at 17 and the other at 16. These are pretty good starting levels, but are still behind what other dedicated combatants get. The weapon list includes stuff we’ve seen already like Knife and Staff and a couple of sword skills, but also some “signature” skills like Tonfa, Jitte/Sai, and Kusari. These three have especially “tricksy” uses that are possibly more valuable than their raw damage.

For ranged combat, you probably use thrown weapons. Your list of default non-combat skills is sparse, but very focused on mobility. Optional skills are the usual delver package.

You then get to choose seven special skills from quite a large list. These are basically low-key superpowers of the sort you would expect to see in a D&D monk. Some are DX-based, others based on IQ or Will, and all get a bonus equal to your level of Chi Talent. More on them below.

Special Martial Artist Traits

If we don’t count spell descriptions for the casters, since they live in a separate book, then Martial Artists have the largest special traits section among the professions. It consists of Chi Mastery powers, and the many special skills tied to Training by a Master.

In both cases, Chi Talent gives its level as a bonus to any tests associated with the power, or to the skill level directly. It’s more expensive than any other talent we have seen so far, because it enhances a lot of stuff. The name of this talent is also the last bit of legacy scuff we have to deal with.

Chi Abilities

These powers have Disciplines of Faith (Chi Rituals) as a prerequisite. These rituals consume 1d hours of your free time each day, and their special dietary requirements mean your rations cost double. If you skip a day, you must spend a full day rebalancing your chi, or your powers will burn out for a while when you next call upon them.

Like Holy Might or Nature’s Power, these abilities don’t count as magic and are not affected by anti-magic measures.

  • Dragon Skin (5 points): Gives you DR 2 and generally works like the Barbarian’s Tough Skin, but cheaper because it’s part of a power.

  • Mantis Strike (9 points): This is two levels of Striking ST, again cheaper because it’s part of a power.

  • Regeneration (23 points): You automatically heal 1 HP per hour no matter what you’re doing, and you roll for natural healing twice as often. Your HT rolls for natural healing benefit from your Chi Talent.

  • Seven Secret Kicks (7 points): You don’t have the usual -2 penalty for attacking with a kick, and your kicks do +1 bonus damage per die. You still need to roll to avoid falling down if you miss, but Chi Talent benefits those rolls.

  • Spider Climb (18 points): You can crawl or walk on walls and ceilings, and can stop at any point there without fear of falling. If you’re falling a long distance and are near a wall, you can grip it to try and stop the fall or at least reduce its damage. Chi Talent aids the rolls for this.

  • Tiger Sprint (9 or 18 points): You can run at 1.5 or 2 times your normal Move when out of combat, and sprinting in combat gives you the same multiplier. Chi Talent benefits any rolls to aid your movement while running (including stuff like Jumping and Acrobatics for parkour).

  • Unarmed Master (25 points): An absolute necessity if you want to specialize in unarmed combat. This eliminates the chance of hurting yourself when striking hard surfaces, and the danger to your limbs when parrying or being parried. It also grants a +1 per die bonus to your unarmed damage, which does stack with Seven Secret Kicks and with the bonus you’re already getting from your high unarmed skills.

  • Uninterrupted Flurry (20 points): Once per battle, you can speed up and take 2 entire actions per turn instead of just one, for the next 1d turns. Ora ora ora!

Special Skills

The Trained By a Master advantage halves your penalty for multiple attacks and defenses in a turn, and gives you access to all of these skills. Their skill level is also enhanced by your Chi Talent level. You can use the skills even if your abilites are burned out, though in that case you don’t get the Talent bonus to them.

There’s a lot of skills here, and you get to pick seven from your template. This is where the “walk on water, shatter walls, perform giant flying leaps, and paralyze people by poking them” magic happens. This is also where your actual ranged combat skill lives if you have any interest in it at all, as it lets you throw anything and gives a damage bonus to those attacks.

Customization

Martial Artists suffer from a problem similar to the D&D Monk in that their set of abilities pulls them in several different, sometimes competing, directions. Standard advantages, Chi powers, combat skills, esoteric skills… There’s some real nice out-of-combat utility spread through here, but choosing it does mean accepting you’ll be less effective at punching people for a while.

Unarmed specialists cannot afford to wait that long. They need Unarmed Master right away to make up the damage deficit and to keep their limbs intact. Breaking Blow, the special skill that lets you bypass DR, is also important, and requires a lot of points to be reliable mid-fight. Those who rely on weapons, “exotic” or otherwise, end up being more versatile out of the gate, as they can spread their points around more.

The book states this represents an Martial Artist fresh off the monastery, so it is indeed lacking in non-combat mundane skills. A few points from quirks can make a huge difference either in shoring up those deficiencies… or getting more powers and better combat skills. As a Martial Artist you’re not hurting for money unless you choose a sword as your main weapon. The other options are pretty cheap, and leave them with enough change to buy some decent hand and foot armor for when they need to fight unarmed. Not only do those protect their extremities, they also give another +1 to punch and kick damage.

Yes, that does mean that in a humorous campaign you might be able to spot a martial artist by their tattered robes and incredibly expensive heavy boots and gauntlets.

The “This Ain’t D&D” section

DFRPG Martial Artists are pretty similar to D&D monks in concept, with the main differences being in their specific capabilities. Monks have this weird grab-bag of powers that are mostly taken from those awful Destroyer novels from the 70s and 80s, while the Martial Artist selection here tends to be a bit more focused on fighting and mobility. And you can also get them in any order you want, this being a point-based game and all.