HardvsSoftinHERO

Hard vs. Soft Martial Arts in HERO

     In the Chinese view of the world, there are two forces at work, The Yin and The Yang. The Yin represents the "Feminine", creative, passive aspects of the universe, while the Yang represents the "Masculine", destructive, aggressive aspects of the universe. These forces are present in everyone and everything, and the world itself is a reflection of them in action. The same is true for Martial Arts, which are generally broken down into two categories in the Chinese system "Hard Styles" and "Soft Styles", each correspondingly representing Yang and Yin respectively.

     Hard Styles are ones which focus on the development of strength and power, they are intended to produce fighters who can quickly render an opponent unable to fight. Prime examples of Hard Styles are Japanese Karate, Korean Tae Kwon Do, Chinese Bagua and most Northern Forms of Gong Fu. In fact, Hard Styles are synonymous with Northern China, where it's believed they were developed for fighters who could use the solid ground and footing it gave them to increase their physical power.
     Soft Styles, on the other hand, are ones which focus on the development of speed and smoothness of motion, they are intended to produce fighters who can deal with constantly changing combat situations and render an opponent unable to fight in the most practical way possible at the time. Most Soft Styles seem to focus on using an opponent's own weight or energy against them, and are meant to disable an opponent in the most energy efficient way possible. Prime examples of Soft Styles would be Japanese Judo and Aikido, Chinese T’ai Ch’i Chuan, and most Southern forms of Gong Fu. There is a theory, like the one behind Northern Hard Styles, which states that Southern Gong Fu was developed for people who were fighting on soft, muddy ground and in constantly changing weather conditions. Because of this, combat was unpredictable and power had to come from within, not without.

So, what does this mean for gaming?

     Well, interestingly enough, the Soft vs. Hard debate is actually very similar to the traditional D&D Fighter vs. Wizard power curve. Generally speaking, Soft Martial arts require a lot more skill and personal development than Hard martial arts do, and at the lower skill levels a Soft Martial artist is probably generally less dangerous and effective than a Hard Martial artist. But, as they progress the Soft Martial Artist will become progressively more dangerous as they learn how to use their art to it's utmost effectiveness and become skilled at dealing with opponents.
     On the more mystical side of things, since most players are most interested in what "neat stuff" they can do, it works like this. Because practitioners of Hard Styles are focussed on developing their "fighting skills" to the best they can be, they aren't developing their Qi energy except in more limited ways, and thus their ability to use it is probably going to be more limited to a focussed set of options. Whereas, a practitioner of a Soft Style will have spend long periods learning to focus and develop their Qi as part their training and natural development, since manipulating force and Qi is what they do. The end result of this is going to be that in the long run, they are going to be a lot more skilled at using their Qi and can probably do a lot more with it.
      Now, with the HERO system, this is a little hard to simulate, because players don't function so much on a development path as they have free reign to shape their characters as they see fit. In most games, the players would pick a Martial Art, and the game makers would have already mapped out a path of options and progression for the character and they would simply follow the variation of it they wished to follow. If a character choose to be a "Tiger Kung Fu Adept" (a Hard Style), then they would learn the basic skills, and slowly gain "Qi Points" as they went up in level, which would be used to power other techniques they would gain as they went up in "character level".
     Not that I believe this is better, actually, I think it's worse since it limits the creativity of players and also fails to simulate the individuality that Martial Artists will tend to develop as they become more skilled. Martial Artists of all kinds tend to start out the same as other members of their art, but the ones who are truly skilled at it don't take long to find their own divergent path.

     So, back to the question at hand: how to simulate this with HERO?

     Well, as I see it, there are several options:

1) The GM can write up, or work with the player to write up the core concepts behind the player's Martial Art, and they can work out together what directions a practitioner of that martial art would be able to go. They can together work out a series of abilities that would flow from the style and using that concept they can decide (with GM final approval) what is appropriate and not appropriate for the character to have. (i.e. if the character's "Soft Style" Martial art is based on the flowing of water and gentle redirection, the GM shouldn't allow them to suddenly have a "Power Cleave" manoeuvre where they use their strength to cut a target in half since it's very out of concept. Really, it's no different than having a superhero based on "Water" to suddenly ask to have a "Fireball Attack". Not gonna happen.)

2) The GM could go through the HERO rulesbook and make two lists: "hard powers" and "soft powers", and require players to define which side of the line their characters fall under in their development. Players would be able to make up new abilities as they see fit, but would be limited to working with the ones which fall under their "type" (i.e. Only Soft Martial artists can use "Healing", Only Hard Martial Artists can learn "Find Weakness".), which could also include variants of certain powers. (i.e. "soft" martial artists can only use certain types of "Ranged Killing Attacks", and always with a certain set of limitations like "requires suitable objects of opportunity".) This is a little arbitrary since there is a lot grey area, and give that by their definition Soft arts would give more abilities, really what this would amount to was limiting "Hard" Martial artists to a specific set of abilities or advantages while "Soft" Martial Artists would have a freer reign with the powers list. (Which, since they are supposed to be more flexible in their use of Qi, makes a certain amount of sense.)

3) The GM could make all Martial Arts abilities draw from an END Reserve (Qi), which they control the size or characteristics of based on whether the character is from a "Hard" or "Soft" background. For example, say "Hard" characters can only have a max of EGOx2 points of END in their reserve since they didn't focus on developing it as part of their training, whereas "Soft" characters have a maximum of EGOx5 pts of END in the reserve due to their long years of development. This would mean that "Hard" characters would have to use their abilities more carefully, whereas "Soft" characters would have the flexibility and endurance to perform many more tricks. Or, even if they are allowed to have the same amounts of END, what if their ability to recover that Qi (END) is at different rates? The "Soft" characters can recover it at a much faster rate because they have the proper training and conditioning, whereas the "Hard" characters are just letting it recover naturally at whatever lower rate it recovers.

4) The GM could make all special techniques, and when the players go to the great grand master to learn them the grand master might only teach people from appropriate backgrounds. (i.e. A grandmaster of Tai Chi is not going to teach a Karate Adept his special "Nine Hags Bowing" technique because the Karate adept doesn't have the ability or spiritual development to learn it, it will be like trying to teach a Dog how to do Physics.)

5) The GM could allow "Soft" Martial artists to use Power Frameworks like Multipowers for buying their abilities to represent the time they spent developing and the ease at which they can add new "tricks" to their repertoire as they get more comfortable with their Qi. The only problem with this is that it can get unfair to the "Hard" martial artists because then their characters will cost more to do the same things, of course, they could put those points into more flexible and tangible things like Combat Skill Levels where they belong....The Soft Martial artist will know more tricks, but the Hard Martial Artists will be more skilled at combat overall.

6) The GM could assign a discount “points ratio” for learning techniques similar to the one suggested for Fantasy Hero wizards to make learning techniques cheaper. Say, “Hard” characters have a ratio of 1:2, and “Soft” characters have a ratio of 1:3. This would mean that if a power’s final Real Cost came to “24 points”, then a Hard Martial Artist would have to spend 12 actual points to buy the power, whereas a Soft Martial Artist would only have to spend 8 actual points to buy the power. This would represent the difficulty of learning and the time invested into developing the ability, as “Hard” characters take longer to learn Qi abilities than “Soft” characters do due to their training. But, both types of martial artists can learn these abilities much easier than a normal person could.

7) The GM could just ignore the whole thing and not worry about it, or limit the players to the
“Special Abilities” listed in the Ultimate Martial Artist Handbook, which already have some “Hard/Soft” associations built into them.