Elemental Martial Arts
by David MelikI'm working on a martial art styles thing too. I think it was the mystic rules in the old Masters set I was reading, which said that fighting styles correspond to elements, and I thought it would be interesting to assign actual martial arts to these different elements. I made combinations of the elements so there could be more styles. (Then after reading WotI I did sphere and class combos too, since I eventually used class combos in OD&D.) First I looked in the Manual of the Planes, but it had negative and positive planes, which I don't use, and it didn't combine them all, so I made my own. Thinking back to the RC planes chapter, AFAIK the elemental planes aren't touching each other, but if they were, these new elements could be the spaces between them, or other planes between them, but they wouldn't even have to be planes. I think they really need some improvement, so that's also why I've posted them. Any ideas? Oh yeah, the charts don't exactly line up with the others, it's in alphabetical order, so if you want to find out the right elements on the other charts it'd have to be looked up. Anyway, here's the charts.
Elements
Air Earth Fire Water
Air Air Dust Smoke Water
Earth Dust Earth Magma Ooze
Fire Smoke Magma Fire Steam
Water Vapour Ooze Steam Water
Void (corresponds to entropy. some ancient civilisations did consider it an element.)
Martial Art Styles (this *really needs improvement and additions - *WARNING* I know this is *not accurate* since I don't know much about this... it's just thoughts & ideas. also maybe we should substitute the 4 basic types with actual styles)
Defensive Offensive Throws Wrestling
Defensive Defensive Ninjutsu Jujitsu
Offensive Ninjutsu Offensive Sumo
Throws Wrestling
Wrestling Throws
street fighting (corresponds to entropy, since it seems they'd use any method to kill...)
Classes (OK - so they're more like titles, so what.)
Cleric Mage Rogue Warrior
Cleric Cleric Theurgist Mystic Paladin
Mage Theurgist Mage Bard Ranger
Rogue Mystic Bard Rogue Thug
Warrior Paladin Ranger Thug Warrior
Ultimist (a combo of everything (from Polyhedron mag.) which is too munchkin so, they're bad, so they're entropic. Seriously though, a highly toned-down version of this could be interesting)
Theurgist is as in Theology, I thought of it myself but then read somewhere theurgist is an actual word. Anyone know what the definition is and what it would be for RPGs? You could substitute Forester for Ranger, but I like ranger from the rogue-like computer game Moria. I use the Mystic class as is, but I guess if it went on the chart that's where it would go. I guess monk would work too. Thug is aka headsman, the monster from the RC. Seems appropriate for that class. A friend of mine also suggested bandit or brigand.
Now... the spheres. I don't think I'd actually use extra ones, but I think this is just something that's maybe useful to look at, when thinking about immortals, quests for immortality, (maybe even with transferring AD&D cleric spell spheres to OD&D spheres?) etc. Maybe it's not useful but here it is anyway. Actually it did help me when I made immortals for Daneme, my own world, even though I only used the 5 spheres.
Energy Matter Thought Time
Energy Energy War Magic Power
Matter War Matter Creativity Change
Thought Magic Creativity Thought Wisdom
Time Power Change Wisdom Time
I think I did one for colours
corresponding to elements too, but that's more complicated, and I'd
have to figure out how it goes again even though it's written down,
and I have an essay to do, and maybe that would be getting too far
off the Mystara subject so that's definitely enough for now.