===== Melee vs. Martial Arts =====

**By:** Geebs

Anyways, so you wanna be a fighter type. Do you go the melee route or the martial arts route? Honestly, it depends on what you want. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, but choosing one over the other won't make you ineffective. If you're just wanting to kick ass, be able to hit hard, fast, and often while still getting a good defense, melee will serve you well. Melee prolly has all you need- damage ups, increased number of attacks, counter attacks, parry improvers, perfect defenses, ranged (or pseudo-ranged) attacks, ways to store/recall your weapon from elsewhere or create a weapon out of your own essence. And you don't have to worry about weapon/armor restrictions. But that's all it has. Its vanilla, but it works.

Martial arts, some styles (but not all!) disallow armor. And some only work with certain weapons (or none at all!). There's a style out there for every melee and martial arts weapon, but at the celestial level, there isn't really a style for the normal melee weapons. There's plenty of terrestrial styles for the various melee weapons, and the sidereal's "base" style, violet bier of sorrows, has daiklaves (which would prolly be the most common weapon used in a campaign) as a form weapon. But for celestials, they're limited in their weapon choices if they go the martial arts route. And exotic isn't always better. Many of the artifact versions of the martial arts weapons don't have hearthstone settings, and the stats on daiklaves/dire lances/goremauls/grimcleavers are in general better than the various martial arts weapons.

Where the martial arts styles really shine is their variety and potential. Many martial arts have charms similar to/overlap charms from athletics/dodge/stealth so you may get a lot of what you need from one place. And given the sheer number of martial arts charms across the various styles compared to the melee tree, there's all sorts of impressive combos you can come up with. This is not to say you can't come up with truly devastating combos with melee. Far from it! But an astute person could come up with some truly deadly mixes across styles (but more on that later).

Another benefit is their form charms. Once you get a form, it basically confers the benefits of several lower level charms for a scene (or whenever you end the form) This frees you up to activate other charms.

I think if you want to be a head buster and not spend time thinking about what you need to do to be and stay effective, you'll be served well with melee, particularly if you're sticking with a "normal" weapon. If you want to be a "different" kind of fighter, martial arts might be more you cup of tea. Hungry ghost and ebon shadow stylists are stealthy and agile with some pretty devastating sneak attacks if you wanna go the assassin route. Then there's the righteous devil gunfighter who don't even need a firewand to immolate their enemies. The sadomasochistic dominatrixish laughing wounds stylist enjoy taking a beating, and enslave you with their technique, whereas the dreaming pearl courtesan entrances you with her beauty, causing you to let your guard down. And then there's the silver voice nightingale, with their deadly song, and eventually use their mastery of harmony to improve the effectiveness of their weapons and armor. Sure, the last three sound silly, but they are by no means ineffective.

So all in all, one needn't worry they'll end up sucking if they go one route or the other.

I've been slowly paging through scroll of the monk, but the sheer number of charms can be overwhelming. Comments:

- **Laughing wounds style:** I didn't take seriously at first. I thought sexy-dominatrix fighting style, hott! But does it work? It has some good charms there. Since its sado-masochistic, they can take a beating. And wound penalties are reversed for them, they get plusses rather than minuses for being injured. And one of their charms nullifies damage outright. Plus, they can get opponents under their sway, giving them a form of dominate.

One of the Laughing Wounds stylist's most potent charms is Insatiable Slave Stamina. A scene long charm, when "on" the martial artist cannot be brought to incapacitated with bashing, and any bashing damage they take after their last -4 health level does not roll over to lethal. In effect, once you fill them with bashing damage, further bashing damage does nothing. 

Sounds useful, but it becomes incredibly potent when combined with the Gem of Adamant Skin hearthstone. For users of such hearthstones, all lethal damage is converted to bashing before soak. But take enough bashing, and it will roll over into lethal. For a Laughing Wounds stylist with Insatiable Slave Stamina and a Gem of Adamant skin though, the effects combine to make the martial artist invincible against anything except for aggravated damage! Any lethal you do just becomes bashing because of the gem, but since bashing damage can't knock them out or roll over into lethal while Insatiable Slave Stamina is active, they can just stand there and take everything you throw at them. (Of course, there are more than a few simple ways around this, but I will leave that as an exercise to the reader)

Being able to take such a beating and not die confers even more benefits- even though the levels of damage after they're filled with bashing has no effect, they're still "taking" that damage. As such, they can reflexively activate the first charm of the Laughing Wounds style, Sensuous Torment, to regain half her essence rating in motes for every bashing level inflicted. And, if they're using Laughing Wounds Form, being filled with bashing is a boon, as that -4 becomes a PLUS four to all their rolls. 

- **Scarlet Patterned Battlefield style**: One of the two sidereal styles used by the First and Forsaken Lion. One of the charms, which lasts for a scene, the player rolls a die whenever they're attacked. If they get a success, then the attack roll's successes are halved. If they get a 10 (i.e., two successes), the attack is nullified completely. In addition, all attacks the player does while the charm is up are unexpected, and thus conferring the benefits of an unexpected attack (no parry or dodge, only certain charms can be used to try and defend)

In any case, I haven't looked into the sidereal too much, but Sidereal martial arts are friggin' unsane upon cursory glance.

- **Mantis style** is one of the cooler celestial styles. Its incompatible with armor, but it gets good parry modifiers and the form charm confers soak. One of the main things I like about it is that its compatible with any martial arts weapon (many styles just use a small subset for form weapons). Its one of the styles that gets a counterattack also.

But I'm seeing some cool potential for comboing with Dark Messiah style. Mantis has a cool parry that turns into an auto-hold. If a Mantis stylist gets a hold of you in general, its hard to escape. And Dark Messiah is one of the styles you don't want to get in grappling range with. Once a Dark Messiah stylist gets a hold of you, you're in big trouble, because their grappling attacks are automatically lethal. Plus, every round they hold you, that damage continually increases. They can also choke you out as well. (And those two charms are at the beginning of the tree!) I think they're styles that would mesh well together.