Learning Martial Arts after 1st level

[elijahbenedict]

Wondering if there's an official ruling on whether a character can pick up a Ninja and Superspies Martial Art, after 1st level by finding a teacher and spending the requisite number of years in study?

Here's the situation. I'm running a Heroes Unlimited (Revised) campaign. About two years ago, on their first adventure, I had them face a Hardware: Analytical villian, who had an Experiment (Super Soldier) protege (whom he'd given powers.)

The player's Ancient Master was able to handle the Super Soldier, while the team took out the main villian. The Super Soldier escaped though. I had the initial hardware villian revealed as a mid-level operative in a larger organization that they've spent the rest of the campaign taking down. We had the big climactic show down last week. My players say they don't want the campaign to end though.

I was trying to figure out where to go next, and I thought it might be a nice call back to have the Super Soldier show up plotting revenge. Since the groups martial artist took him down last time, I thought it would make sense that he'd gone off to study some martial art (Jujitsu or Thai Kickboxing) during the several intervening years of in-game time.

I know rule zero is thar, as GM, I'm always right, but I've got a couple rules lawyers in the group, and I'd rather be able to point to something than to have them grumble when I say "because I said so."

[drewkitty ~..~]

It takes time to learn a MAF. In the N&S book these times are listed and it is implied that a DMA can learn a third MAF (see the HU1r conversion notes on the Ancient Master for this implication.)

For the MC MAFs three were no listed time to learn so I wrote some in the book based on the 'Descriptive Text' in both the MAF in the MC of the MAF in both, of the chi powers text and N&S books and 'My Real World Knowledge'.
An Yin KF-- 10 years.
Ba Gua KF-- 12 years.
Bak Mei KF-- 10 years.
Cho Ta KF-- 2 years.
Chi Hsuan Men-- 4 years.
Gui Loup KF-- 6 years.
Han Yu KF-- 6 years.
Hsien Hias-- 7 years.
Hsing-I KF-- 10 years.
Liang Hsiung-- 5 years.
Shan Tung KF-- 8 years.
Shih Ba Ban Wu Yi-- 7 years.
Tong Lun KF-- 8 years.
Tirad Assassin-- 4 years.

MAF: martial arts form
DMA: dedicated martial artist
KF: kung fu

If the player says literally or figuratively, ' "flavor text" yeah right, I ignore it ' then those are the players that are lazy and ignorant. And until they put the time in to understand what their char would go through to get the abilities/power they claim to what for their char, --They will Not Play That Char As They Would Be If They Understood The Time/Sweat That Is Needed To Get Those Abilities/Powers--
As such if they whine about how you won't let them, they are just being childish. And until they do a little growing up use the word No to them.