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Hello All,
I am hoping for some clarification here. In skimming through the China 2 World Book Martial Arts section I was baffled to read the following (after what appears to be a clear understanding of the confusing 2 + 2 = 4 method of determining starting attacks per melee): "...most of these combat lists state that the character starts with THREE of FOUR. So please do NOT add another two to this starting number." The paragraph then goes on to explain that a character taking Hand to Hand: Basic starts with Four attacks per melee. Why would you create these bad ass Martial Arts styles and then give them only between TWO and FOUR attacks per melee to start? Did they forget to go back and update the Hand to Hand combat lists when they realized the earlier method of determining starting attacks was confusing and outmoded? Was this changed or clarified in a Rifter follow up? It just seems like a gross oversight to me. Any information or clarification y'all might have would be greatly appreciated. I would really like to use these martial arts styles in my game but not if they are slower than the vanilla styles from RUE. Thanks!

The Rhina books might of been written before the "Two APM for Living" were officially added to the h2hs with the RGMG book. As such there might be dicrecpancys between the Old Canon and the New Canon. This is a typical problem with the older books.

Then also the Martial Arts 'Half forms' in the RC2 book (Only adding the two halves together) are more like the Martial Art Forms within the Ninja and Sperspies & mystic Chins books where 'what you see is what you get'.

Why fewer than 4 APM....because MAFs are Hard To Learn. They KS and EW were going with the idea that Rifts China was going to be "different" than the rest of the worldbooks.

(Don't have many of my Rifts books anymore...so can't check publish dates.)

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:The Rhina books might of been written before the "Two APM for Living" were officially added to the h2hs with the RGMG book. As such there might be dicrecpancys between the Old Canon and the New Canon. This is a typical problem with the older books.

Then also the Martial Arts 'Half forms' in the RC2 book (Only adding the two halves together) are more like the Martial Art Forms within the Ninja and Sperspies & mystic Chins books where 'what you see is what you get'.

Why fewer than 4 APM....because MAFs are Hard To Learn. They KS and EW were going with the idea that Rifts China was going to be "different" than the rest of the worldbooks.

(Don't have many of my Rifts books anymore...so can't check publish dates.)

The reason that the explanation paragraph before the Hand to Hand descriptions was so baffling to me is because it does recognize the "New Cannon" with the description of Hand to Hand: Basic. (Skill Descriptions for Hand to Hand Martial Arts [China 2 page 19]). So, as written in China 2, a 1st level character with Hand to Hand: Basic starts with 4 attacks per melee, a 1st level character with HtH: Monkey Style has 3 APM and a character with HtH: White Jade Fan has 2 APM. At level 5, a character with HtH: Basic has the same number of attacks as a level 5 character with Shao-Lin Kung fu. Again, this is all as written in China 2 with what appears to be a clear understanding of the post-RUE attacks per melee rules. Anyhoo, if anyone has played these martial arts styles using RUE HTH rules and find them to be just fine as written please let me know. Perhaps there is something else I am missing. Do the Mystic Martial Arts powers add something that boosts them beyond the vanilla Hand to Hand styles in RUE? Thanks for your input.

With the arguable exceptions of Monkey and White Jade Fan the Hand to Hand styles in WB25 more than catch up. Consider H2H: Assassin, which also starts with fewer attacks per melee than H2H: Basic. I suspect that White Jade Fan might have had a synergy with classes reserved for China 3, and would consider adding a Knockdown ability or two to Monkey Style to complement their focus on Critical Strike.