SoF Exalted/Supernatural MA

Supernatural Martial Arts

Blah...

General Requirements

To use any form of Supernatural Martial Arts, you must have an Awakened Essence. This is represented by having an Essence Affinity Ability and an Essence Pool track. Anyone with any of the "basic packages" can thus learn some form of supernatural Martial Art. Minimum Power TL is 2. Each tier has it's own Power TL minimum to be able to access those Powers.

Advantages

Advantages are the prime means by which a character builds a Supernatural Martial Arts style. While certain Speciality Aspects will also be appropriate and useful, the specifics and differentiation are provided by your choice of Expert, Heroic and Power Advantages.

Expert and Heroic Advantages

There are a number of Expert and Heroic Advantages which can be used to simulate particular aspects of the supernatural Martial Arts.

Expert Advantages:

• Acrobatic
• Deadly Grace
• Grappler
• Hard Style
• Quick Step
• Soft Style
• Weapon Specialist
• Wrestler

Heroic Advantages:

• Assassin Strike
• Counter Attack
• Crippling Blow
• Dazing Blow
• Dervish
• Ground and Pound
• Slippery Combatant
• Weapon Expertise

These can already be used to represent mundane (ie non-supernatural) martial arts, but nothing stops them also being used to add nuance to the supernatural styles.

Enlightened Advantages

Those with Awakened Essences can also use that connection to fuel their martial arts abilities. You can choose to take Expert Advantages Hard Style, Soft Style or Wrestler, along with any of the Heroic Advantages with the Enlightened (-1) Limitation on them.

This changes them to into Power Advantages and requires the Essence Affinity Ability. They take a simple action to activate, have an activation difficulty of 4 and a duration lasting the scene. You distinguish Enlightened Powers by marking them "(E)". So for example a Terrestrial grappling style might be Ground and Pound(E). This may also be applied to Power Advantages which do not normally have an activation cost/difficulty (eg Augmented Movement).

The purpose of this is to give the Enlightened martial artist a broader range of powers but at the risk of Essence Stress.

Limitations

Supernatural Martial Arts are treated in the same way as other Powers. There is a cap on the maximum Weapon Rating (WR), Armour Rating (AR) or Explosive Rating (ExR) achieved with any Power equal to the character's Power Tech Level x2. Only Sorcery is exempt from this restriction.

Many supernatural Martial Arts styles come with limitations on them, such as elemental aspects which restrict how they can be used. Elemental-aspecting means taking Limitations on each one, which reduce their cost. There are other forms of restriction, all of which reduce the cost. Guidance on how much they should reduce a Power by are given in the table below.

AP Cost     Limitation
Modifier
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 -1         Any form of restriction on armour (light only, unarmoured only, etc) and/or weapons (no metal weapons, unarmed only, etc) 
            Enlightened (requires activation, lasts for scene)
 
 -2         Enlightened and restricted armour/weapons

As always, a Limitation cannot bring the cost of a Power under 1AP.

See page 199 of the SoF rulebook for more details.

Terrestrial Martial Arts

Terrestrial Martial Arts are the only form of supernatural martial arts that mortals and other non-Exalts can learn. They are the lowest tier of supernatural martial arts, but also the most commonly learned.

Requirements

To use Terrestrial Martial Arts, you must have an Awakened Essence and a minimum Power TL of 2.

Powers

Terrestrial Martial Arts are Powers, but are quite restricted in terms of both scale and scope. On scale, your CamPL limits on AP expenditure on any single Advantage apply even after chargen. None may be taken to the superheroic level, that's the preserve of other Powers and Celestial Martial Arts. For scope, only ever from the list below:

• Absorption
• Armour
• Augmented Movement
• Body Weaponry
• Enhanced Endurance
• Enhanced Speed
• Enhanced Strength
• Enhanced Reflexes
• Imbue Armour or Shield
• Imbue Weapon
• Poison
• Power Attack - Melee
• Resistance
• Weapon Mastery

Limitations

Terrestrial Martial Arts are generally elemental-aspected, and thus have restrictions relating to those elements. For example many Air-aspected styles cannot be performed in armour. The Five Dragon Style uses only swords and spears aside from martial arts weapons.

Celestial Martial Arts

Requirements

To use Celestial Martial Arts, you must have an Awakened Essence and a minimum Power TL of 4. Dragon-Blooded characters may only learn Celestial Martial Arts with an Immaculate Order-trained sifu, and by purchasing Pasiap's Humility and the Moment of Daana'd. Even then they are restricted to Metro-Class Super Powers. Only Celestials may purchase World-Class Super Powers with Celestial Martial Arts.

Powers

Celestial Martial Arts are also Powers which are strictly defined. However, they come from a broader list, and start at Metro-Class in the case of Super Powers.

The list of Powers appropriate for Celestial Martial Arts is as follows:

• Absorption
• Affliction
• Armour (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Astral Perception
• Augmented Movement
• Binding
• Body Weaponry
• Enhanced Hearing/Senses/Sight/Smell
• Enhanced Speed (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Environmental Protection
• Flight
• Heal
• Imbue Armour or Shield
• Imbue Weapon
• Insubstantial
• Leach
• Poison
• Power Attack - Melee (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Power Attack - Pulse (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Power Attack - Ranged (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Resistance
• Super Agility (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Super Endurance (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Super Strength (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Telekinesis (Metro-Class or World-Class)
• Wall Walker
• Weapon Mastery

Sidereal Martial Arts

Requirements

To use Sidereal Martial Arts, you must have an Awakened Essence and a minimum Power TL of 6 or be a Sidereal. No one else can learn Sidereal Martial Arts.

Powers

Done with Control instead of a discrete list of Powers.

Limitations

Back to Main Page