One of the gaming podcasts that I listen to is the Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast by someone called “The Other Jason.” On his podcast, March has been “Martial arts March.” He was running a contest for listeners to call in and tell their favourite martial arts property, and a gaming idea inspired by that property. This post is an extended and updated version of my 90-second phone call entry.
My Favourite Martial Arts Properties
My initial thought to the contest was “well, that leaves me out. I don’t like martial arts movies.” But then I thought about it, and it dawned on me that there were three properties that I was a fan of. For some reason I don’t think of them as martial arts, but there’s no denying that they are:
- 1972’s Kung Fu television series.
- 1984’s The Karate Kid motion picture.
- 1994’s The Next Karate Kid motion picture.
Their Influence on my Gaming
The second part of the contest was to say a way that the properties influenced my gaming. To be honest, they hadn’t, but that would make for a boring contest entry. So I thought about what they had in common. The answer was that both Kung Fu’s Caine and Mr Miayagi from last century’s Karate Kid movies were pacifist heroes. So it occurred to me to make a pacifist character class for OSR style games.
While the monk might seem like the obvious class to serve as the base for this new class, I never felt the monk truly fit into my fantasy world. So I decided that this new class would really be a type of cleric. The Clerics of the God of Peace, Caiyagi. (See what I did there?)
Restrictions
These are clerics, just like any other, except they have taken the following vows:
- Never attack anyone (though see “Special Abilities” below). Turning Undead is not considered an attack.
- Never pursue the fleeing.
- Never refuse mercy to your enemy.
- Defend the innocent whenever possible.
Breaking a vow will result in the loss of all clerical abilities and all special abilities
Special Abilities
In addition to all the normal clerical abilities, Clerics of Caiyagi can do the following:
- Defense Rolls: If an opponent makes a successful attack, the cleric is allowed a saving throw to avoid the attack completely. Depending on the game/edition this could be a save vs Petrification, a reflex save, or a Dex save. Because this is a divine ability, some DMs may decide to allow the cleric to use his Wisdom bonus instead of Dex.
- Counter-attacks: If an melee opponent makes an attack roll and misses, the cleric can immediately make a counter attack. This is the only circumstance in which a Cleric of Caiyagi is allowed to make an attack. There is no limit to how many times per round this can happen, so if two different opponents attack and miss in the same round, the cleric can make counter attacks for each. If your game/edition allows monsters to have multiple attacks per round, the cleric is allowed a counter-attack for every attack that misses.
Epilogue
I thought that this would make for an interesting character, though maybe it’s best suited as an NPC.
That’s all for this time. I know I haven’t posted in a while. The podcast has been sucking up all my free “creative time.” I haven’t even been getting any work done on Lucky 7. When I started the podcast I didn’t realize how much time went into the edit. It’s not bad on the episodes I record alone, but when I have a guest host the conversations seems to go on longer and go off track more frequently, which leads to a lot more editing.
I’m going to try to get back to blogging regularly though. Maybe semi-weekly instead of weekly.