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Recently I've been thinking about the Thai Boxer and the Lightning form. Thai Boxing is pretty good on its own, but the fact that it takes up two forms really weakens it in my opinion. Most any combination with multiple forms can trounce a Thai Boxer. (Sumo + Tai-Chi Ch-Uan being my personal favorite)

To get back to my point/question the one thing that a Thai Boxer has is the Lightning form. That lets him use all of his attacks during his first attack if he has initiative. The downside is that he can't dodge and loses all bonuses to parry.

If I use the Lightning form, can my opponent parry any attacks after the 1st? If he can, it seems terribly pointless. You may as well just attack normally, retain all your bonuses and use sweeps to whittle down your opponents melee attacks. It's basically the same thing, just takes longer and you retain your bonuses.

If your opponent can't parry past the 1st strike, it seems to make more sense and make the risk worth it. You MAY be able to beat your opponent down in one round, but then you are at a disadvantage against any other opponents.

After all, it is basically a paired weapons double attack so shouldn't it work the same way?

If that was the case, I would say a circular parry would work against blocking those attacks, which would make circular parry somewhat more useful.

I was just wondering what everyone else thought.

offically, you can block any number of attacks from the same attacker, and lightning form kata has no exception. so yes, people can try to parry 100% of the attacks.

the only use is if you think you can hit enough to win the fight in one round, which means your betting the other guy can't parry you effectively.

It's kind of like a wreastling move. it's very very flashy, but you would never want to use it in a real fight.

Dang. I guess it's really only good for plowing through a group of mooks - if they happen to be surrounding you.

It still makes me wonder why the Thai Boxer is worth two martial arts. Sure it's pretty good in combat, but it doesn't compare to another character with two martial arts.

because even without the lightning kata being particuarlly useful, it's still better than almost any non-exclusive style. I mean, look at it. it gives a nice boost to PS, PE, PP, Spd. and SDC, most styles only give 1-2 of them. it has breakfall, letting you try to negate the damage of almost anything. and it has a move that lets them bypass SDC entirely and hit directly to HP!! I mean think of that, take some physical skills to get a decent strength, and you can trivially be dealing 1d6+10 or more damage to HP, and i'll remind you that most martial artists will only have 20 or so HP hiding behind a wall of 80+ SDC. That special snap kick alone would be worth it, but notice it also has "critical strike from rear". which means that damage is doubled whenever you get behind someone. can you say instant kill? I thought you could. That on top of the fact it has considerably higher bonus's to parry and dodge than 95% of martial arts, gives a knockout on 19-20 at level 3, a crit on 18-20 at level 4, and caps out at death blow on 19 and 20.

It's probablly the best straight-up brawling martial art in the game. no, it dosn't have sneaky stealth or mystic powers, but nothing's better for straight-up pounding someone into a bloody pulp.

I can see it being used as a simultaneous attack. And quite an unpleasant surprise it would be.

Hmmm. I'm not sure if ALL attacks would be simultanious or just the first...

At that, what happens if I use the Lightning Form and you counter with automatic body flip/throw?

rustyspoon wrote:If I use the Lightning form, can my opponent parry any attacks after the 1st? If he can, it seems terribly pointless. You may as well just attack normally, retain all your bonuses and use sweeps to whittle down your opponents melee attacks. It's basically the same thing, just takes longer and you retain your bonuses.

It's not utterly pointless, there can be advantages to it. For example, if you are confident you can take them out during that lightning combo, by using it, you can avoid potentially taking any damage from the person you're fighting with, if you manage to knock them unconscious, as they wouldn't even have a chance to counter-attack. It would also be useful, even if you had great defenses/health, in eliminating someone before they hurt someone else who was more vulnerable.

In a 1 on 1 confrontation I imagine it's something that becomes a better option near the end of the fight, rather than near the start.

Regularguy wrote:At that, what happens if I use the Lightning Form and you counter with automatic body flip/throw?

That is just dark.