Pugilists and Monks IC Fighting Styles

[SuplexBunny]

Pugilists, Monks! o/

 

Quick Question, Do you use a fighting style different from the one presented in the game when engaging in RP combat? (As in the very Kung Fu-centric style.) If so, what does your character Use and how do you explain your character's knowledge of it?

[Caspar]

Yeah, and her training in it is like a good 75% of her backstory, lol. She learned it from a really dreadful person. There's just so much I want to share and yet so little I can do with it yet!

 

I just can't help but run my fingers when this topic comes up because it's just a lot of fun to me.

 

It is an interesting question because we know so little about how fist fighting and unarmed combat developed. Because I felt I couldn't tell the kind of story I wanted using the in-game pugilists' guild, nor with the Fists of Rhalgr, I created a non-canon style by coloring outside of the boundaries of what is examined within game. I felt this was okay to do as it is inconceivable there are only two fist fighting styles in the entire world. Beating things with your hands and feet is the most rudimentary form of combat, and the oldest. 

 

For the motions and aesthetic resemblance of the style, I focused largely on Bajiquan and Xingyiquan. The reasoning for this is that the less showy kung-fu focuses largely on punches and attacks with the upper body, which I felt was easier for a person at a severe height disadvantage. They draw strength from spinal compression and strong stomach muscles, and most of a Lalafell's mass is around their stomach. To me striving for realism in this game, rather than simply verisimilitude, is self-defeating. Still, I found it easier to reconcile in my head this way. I felt it made some degree of sense for a Lalafell to have strong leg and stomach muscle, because of where their mass is, and how high we can jump in game...  

 

Philosophically, I drew some from the idea of Jigenryu, wherein the practitioner is encouraged to focus entirely on perfecting a single blow to kill infallibly without regard for defense or your health. I chose this because it perfectly fits the reasoning of desperate, outmatched people who are falling before a superior enemy, like how it seems the Domans were vs the Garleans. 

 

Training your body to be a weapon when you can just pick up a weapon or wield powerful magic is an inherently paradoxical choice, so I wanted to think about what kind of person would deliberately do this on Hydaelyn. Rather than wield the style, I figure it's more like a transformation. You empty your sense of self and surrender all your body's processes to muscle memory. It might be something akin to the old idea of action without thought, Mushin? It should be something terrible and dreaded by other RPers who care about what happens to her. I considered "If you empty yourself entirely and something else comes in, who remains?" It seems like a remarkably convenient way to disassociate yourself from horrible violence. Or become a soulless drone through which a singular talent is expressed, with no purpose other than to continue strengthening it. That might be important to my RP in this game, I don't know... lol

 

I have to make concessions for the fantasy setting though. Obviously the sorts of stuff Virara can do is impossible for someone so small. Beyond crushing things she shouldn't be able to crush and moving faster than she should be able to cover on those stubby legs, I haven't done too many exotic things in game with her writing wise. It's a far cry from the the Toad Style and Nine Yin White Bone Claw sort of ridiculousness I'm used to from wuxia. It definitely is no mundane external martial art, that much I can say.

 

I also wanted to sharply draw a contrast between the existing pugilism and my style. Continuous vs sudden movement. Many blows vs one or two. Action vs reaction. It serves a storytelling purpose to me because the characteristics of the style have a lot to do with NPCs involved in my character's background, and will ultimately serve to hint at the basic idea I had behind making Virara.

 

The basic gist of it was, as a fan of Wuxia and fighting games, I understood intuitively what I wanted to take for fantasy martial arts. The low level stuff, the kind of day to day fighting I wanted my character to exhibit at the baseline and grow from, had to be drawn from cinematic portrayals of real martial arts as well as the actual styles themselves. NPCs could be crazy enough to give martial artists from a Jin Yong novel a run for their money, but Virara has to be more restrained because she's the face I show in day to day interactions with other RPers and it is important to me to be flexible enough to scale up or down to the level of realism expected in a given scene by any given group of players.

 

Spoiler for length

 

 

Trying to think of what was reasonable for me to play with was a challenge though.

Hitting things with your fist is the most basic and instinctive form of combat, so only one order of monks and only one group of debt collectors couldn't have discovered it. And at the same time, our characters live in a world with massive beasts and incredible magic, as well as at least early industrial era technology in some places, so the idea of fist fighting effectively in open battle ought to have come into question. I can't just go by explicitly what is written and portrayed in the game either; for instance, there is no evidence of Rakshasa in the setting, but a move the JP text is named after them (Shoulder Tackle=Rasetsugeki), a Buddhist concept is referenced (Fist of Earth=Kongou no Kamae, which is "Stance of Vajra," or Stance of Indestructibility.) and the concept of Daoist yin-yang magic hasn't explicitly been referenced, but a move uses that term (The Forbidden Chakra=Onmyoutoukizan.) anyway. You end up having varying levels of interpretation of objective canon that will distract you from the real matter of making an interesting character. This is a bit of a digression, but I felt it was worth mentioning.

 

 

[SuplexBunny]

Nothing wrong with longer posts, you seem to really have given it a lot of thought. I love Monk and Pugilist due to my love for fighting games, While my character is a Thaumaturge now, I feel like making a change in career with her.

 

The information on fighting styles for Melee or even armed combat is scarce and it's expected as not everything is shed light upon. The way the MNK trainer explained it, there's Sects of MNKs that lived for battle and the exchange of chakra, or aether, between one another; then the Sect of Darkness fought for power and wiped out other sects to gain power. From this information alone one could assume that a different sect maybe had a different fighting style or different arts. This is good as it sort of initiates a foundation for different ways characters gained their fighting styles, Citing the arts of a Sect of Monk that fought with said style.

 

As for my style, I love grappling fighting styles. Stuff like Judo, Greco-Roman wrestling and the militaristic styles used to disarm and immobilize threats. (Look at CQC from the Metal Gear series) When my character makes that change in path, I want her to have that sort of style to her. Of course, this is all still in the planning stage.

[Caspar]

Nothing wrong with longer posts, you seem to really have given it a lot of thought. I love Monk and Pugilist due to my love for fighting games, While my character is a Thaumaturge now, I feel like making a change in career with her.

 

The information on fighting styles for Melee or even armed combat is scarce and it's expected as not everything is shed light upon. The way the MNK trainer explained it, there's Sects of MNKs that lived for battle and the exchange of chakra, or aether, between one another; then the Sect of Darkness fought for power and wiped out other sects to gain power. From this information alone one could assume that a different sect maybe had a different fighting style or different arts. This is good as it sort of initiates a foundation for different ways characters gained their fighting styles, Citing the arts of a Sect of Monk that fought with said style.

 

As for my style, I love grappling fighting styles. Stuff like Judo, Greco-Roman wrestling and the militaristic styles used to disarm and immobilize threats. (Look at CQC from the Metal Gear series) When my character makes that change in path, I want her to have that sort of style to her. Of course, this is all still in the planning stage.

It is a shame there is no way to grab things in this game like the Monks in Blade and Soul. It's one of the few things that made me curious about that game.

 

I felt that even if my character was abnormally strong for her race, grabbing is something she would be inherently disadvantaged at because of her lack of leverage. Thus, it is something I wrote her as avoiding. Granted, this was also my taste, and there were some players who were totally fine with a Lalafell suplex, lol.

 

The best thing for me was to try and replicate the fictionalized "deathfist" sort of approach of causing immense soft tissue trauma and organ damage within one or two hits to along the centerline. In reality I think this can't really be done efficiently, but in fiction it is the stuff of legends, and it really stimulates the mind. 

 

That was actually one of the few things I didn't plan out, either. I had wanted Virara to just be about as strong as a full grown Hyur, which is impressive enough I think, but after an early fight where the other player emoted her as having broken his cobalt armor, I wanted to adjust and make it fit.

 

Those sects you mentioned are unique to the Fists of Rhalgr, but I think since Garlemald has its own fist fighters, unless they were all trained in Ul'dah somehow or by people in occupied Ala Mhigo, it must be its own thing. Besides, I just feel like basic things like wrestling and fist fighting must exist, because they're too useful not to, even for other martial disciplines like Dragoons and whatnot.

[Jana]

 

Jana's fighting style is almost entirely based on instinct and quick reflexes, having mostly learned how to fight hand-to-hand as a refugee. She has a very bare minimum of formal training in the PGL guild, enough to know a bit about forms and how to maximize a hit. And while she has some interest in the MNK style and has tried to learn about meditating and chakras and such, she isn't going to Dragon Kick anytime soon.

[Leanne]

Leanne's combat form is mix and match of several styles she has seen from other pugilists, and sometimes even monks throughout her adventures, plus her own personal training. Not an attribute that comes often because of her intrinsic affinity to ranged weaponry, Leanne's a copycat when it comes to pugilism, taking a thing she saw it working, and making it her own.

 

But if anything, when fighting, Leanne puts most of her focus on her legs, given the massive strength contained within then. As such, you could say her fighting style is a mix between Tae Kwon Do, Kickboxing, Muay Thay. Narrowing to those three is still hard given Leanne's copycat nature, once more, given the several approaches she can go through for a fight, sometimes relying heavily on acrobatics, other times on parries and blocks...

 

An usual happenstance is her attempts to perform grappling locks on the opponent when possible, so she can subdue them without causing further damage, be to herself, or to her foe.

[ckingch]

My character's fighting style is mix of boxing, grappling, and MMA, with primary focus on the boxing aspect. He likes to move in and stay close with heavy and accurate punches, and has trained himself to accept damage to do so. When very close he'd opt for grapples and counters made to heavily disorient or disable an opponent to put them out of the fight; for example, shoving to the side to throw them off balance, then attempting to grapple from the side to slam them powerfully to the ground to knock the wind out of them, or grabbing an attacking limb and try to break it at the joint. When grounded, he'll resort to moving to dominant positions and chokes.

 

He's not at all flashy and does not like to waste movements or energy. With aether usage, he only uses it to strengthen and harden certain bosy parts to move faster, hit harder, and sustain damage. Due to most of the fights where he ended up ICly having the opponents go DBZ on him with hopping and flipping around and tossing chi blasts everywhere, he's very dissilusioned that fighters rely more on aether than basic fundamentals. This viewpoint has led to some interesting interactioms with some other fighters.

[Roger Holmes]

My character doesn't really go full-on pugilist as he's usually a single-handed or dualwielding swordsman, but the moments where he feels like he has no other option or cant find an opportunity for an advantage, he would go to an unothodox Kung Fu style, Drunken Fist.

 

In his eyes, if he can gain an advantage by doing unusual moves to confuse his opponent then that is half of the battle won. Now I have to say that I was inspired by the Drunken Master movies starring Jackie Chan as it one of the first movies I've seen starring him and I enjoyed the names he gave for his moves. So when he really gets into that style (...or if he's actually drunk), I will give the moves names like "Wheel barrel carries ale", "Momodi stirs the pot," or "Airship delivers wine." Stuff like that :lol:  

 

I remember one time where Roger fought Aaron in the Grindstone and Roger tried to use that style. He lost, but it was super entertaining to RP on both ends.

[Kawaiimalz]

Aymon's fighting style is... Well. Weird. Ideally he is head on, full offensive, and even if it'll hurt himself he'll throw himself at an attack if it will hurt his opponent too, once headbutting an oncoming fist. His style is all about force and speed, but comes off as very reckless and has little defense. He often breaks his own knuckles trying (And on two lucky occasions successfully) punching through thick armor, and has literally headbutted a behemoth for fun.

 

It used to be much like Drunken Boxing, as I intended to make him a Drunken Master. However, as his wife has made him give up drinking, I now refer to it as an untrained style of Taekwondo. The same concept and theory behind Taekwondo, but minus the discipline and add in a few too many headbutts for his own wellbeing.

[ZoktaiKhor]

MY character is only using Puglist arts as a lst resort especially sicne he's used to it So he strictly is a 'boxer' resorting only to fist fighting styles seeing as how he's not as young as he used to be.