This is what I believe Kata are meant to be like, according to Roark:



Of course, you'd have roughly 30 different skills to use in your forms.

This is the gist of it. Additional gameplay details, syntax and what the skills actually do are apparently to be defined.

I wasn't actually hoping, just asking him what kind of flow they meant.



Oh no I dont want a goat stance hehe

Remember, katas will be different here. This isn't about getting a new rank in the skill or belt, this is about having a maneuver available in combat. Using warrior maneuvers as a rough yardstick, you'll have 6-16 such forms depending on how many you want to create and think you would reasonably use in combat. You'll likely be able to have a "leg" form, and target it on either leg, or similar, so most won't make all the forms they can. Katas will be forms strung together in sequence. (Assuming I understand what Roark has said so far, and nothing has yet been written in stone anyway).

About all the practicing would do, mechanically, is prevent on-the-fly kata adjustment in combat. And give a 2-3 minute rp window when developing a kata with guildmembers, but you could do it alone if you wanted. It would never slow down skill learning, and would involve a one-time charge of less time preparing for combat than tarot takes on an everyday basis.

So... scorpion and ox? For cities, I think I'd rather go elemental than cosmic - Rushing Water v. Stone Hand. The Supernals and Demon Lords are great, but I sometimes feel that the Elemental Lords get overlooked a bit.

ETA:@Ildaudid As far as I know, the Admin hasn't endorsed stance flowing just yet. I am a proponent of it, and hope they do it, but I do not think they have mentioned it yet, and so cannot have yet meant it. Roark's earlier quoted excerpt from the committee has a good example above from Verithrax, at least as I understood Roark, and involves no stances or flowing. About the only thing Verithrax left out was that the Night_Draw form could be made to stun, or prone, or be faster, or something, with the modification going on the form instead of a specific attack.

ETA:@Ildaudid 12 for warriors, I believe. That could be plenty, depending on how it is implemented. Enough to have 2 combos for each body area (counting arms and legs as one each, with right/left targeting done on the spot) and a few left over for extras. And remember, a kata would be chaining several of those forms together. So you'd chain 3 of them together for an 8 second sequence involving 9 attacks, or 4 for a 10 second sequence. Anyone who sits still long enough for a 30 second, 14 form, 42 attack chain to hit them deserves what happens to them. You can repeat forms too, so even if you only have 3 forms made, you could still do a 4 form kata. Again, all of this is written in wax, not stone. KEPHERAN wax, to be precise.

If monks use long katas, they may yet have a use for active psionic offences, since those are on their own balance.

Hope it is alot larger than manuevers, I think ya get like 10 max maneuvers you can make, would like to see monks be able to set up alot more than that, giving them more flexibility in combat

Regarding Verithrax above, I believe that requiring demonstration is kinda silly. They require it in Achaea, and I never understood why. Why not just have demonstrate as an RP skill that doesn't do anything except "emotes" in the style Verithrax listed, without it being required for contemplating a form?

I would like to see the ability to perform demonstrations as above even if it's not required, simply put it would look ALOT better than doing it via emotes

In Impy you have to perform your katas perfect before being able to train more.. and I actually like the idea of perfoming it, just when you slip and it take 4 hours to trans it is a pain

Demonstrating is almost worthless, especially because all of the IRE games with monks added an option to be graded regardless of whether you've mastered it. If you add that part, it's worthless. There's no point in trying to master it if you can just get the belt for doing it right the first time. By all means, have the ability to perform katas, but don't add the option to just "skip" if you make it required.

In regards to longer katas opening up for psionic usage, I am against it. It's one thing to have a mage have his demesne set up and then use all three psionic channels. It's another thing to be actively concentrating on your martial arts and then still be able to focus your mind on hurting the other person. Locking channels like AnimateDagger, feasible. Mindburst, no.



In that vein, I want this.

edit:

I take back approximately half of the bad things I have said about Serenwilde, assuming you are correct.

As far as I know and it could be changed so don't hold me to it, demonstrations has been agreed on as not going to be happening. Having played a monk I fully agree demonstration is nothing but time consuming, it is one of those really nice things the very first time you every play a monk, but after that you never do it again because it loses its appeal after the first hour of "You trip over your two left feet. Hahahah you have to do this again sucker!"

Oh yes I remember that one..... soooo annoying.

But I think it would be nice to have it for RP value. IE perhaps you have requirement in your guild where you have to be able to complete skill xy perfectly for guild advancement and this could be used for it. Something along those lines. I'd love it if the GH's could have training rooms where you could do those things if you just felt like it, or you could have a contest or whatnot..

EDIT: Or just do it in front of people to impress them and show off

I know nothing of stances. For forms, it's a mechanism to string together attacks that could otherwise be done independently. A form is any number of attacks you can do at once. You then perform two or more forms you want in any order you want as a fluid sequence. It gives you a speed bonus over doing them as a normal attack, but you can't back out of a form once you started it without a balance penalty. You also get modifier skills to the overall form that you do not get when doing a normal attack.

For example, maybe a basic boring form is a kick, a punch, and a hold. Another basic form might be a throw, a kick, and another hold with the other arm. A third form is a throw, punch, and kick with a chance-to-stun modifier. You could do each of these individually, but the balance timers will get you out of whack and you would not get the chance-to-stun modifier. (Each limb gets slower than the previous.) Or you could perform all three forms in sequence against a target to achieve the same result. Now the balance timers will be perfectly in synch and it will be done faster than if you did them individually. But it is harder to change direction once you have begun that form sequence vs. if you do them individually.

The specific attacks to be used in forms is up in the air. Defensive moves are not known yet. They will probably be discovered as specializations are explored more in depth.

If we do have to demonstrate and practice katas, can the katas before the demonstration change as we get closer to achieving elation. So the first time it looks really bad, then gradually becomes better such that when we finally feel elation our kata looks perfect.

I wholly agree that kata demonstrations should not be required for the skill. I do think it would be fun to require demonstrations for guild advancement and such, but that's completely different. I also like the idea of forms, and the idea that they can be made up even on the fly. I think there should, at the very least, be an eq loss while contemplating new forms, so you have to pick and choose which you'll use, and changing in the middle of combat will have its drawbacks (like investing, but maybe not quite that long).

I'm still curious how the forms will work out. I can imagine all kinds of abilities that would fit. Finding a way to mesh katas with psionics will be more difficult. I can imagine it being effective if the monk passively locks psionics channels for defenses. There might also be a kata skill that allows the monk to split his awareness, so that katas can be used while off psionic balance, but psionic channel balance takes 50% longer (or something similar). Acrobatics for a monk seems like it would be superior, since most of the defensive abilities are passive and effective all the time, while psionics requires either the sacrifice of a channel (i.e. max 3 defenses) or the sacrifice of offense.

I'm also curious to see these tertiaries!

So lemme try to visualise what monk forms are.

Monks have basic moves like kick, punch, hold, etc.
So are forms a single command which performs all three moves simultaneously, or are they 'combos', like how X X O performs a left punch to the chest first, then a right one, and ending with a high kick to the head?

Basically, are forms X = (A+B+C) or are they A+B+C = X?
Where X is a form, and A, B and C are the moves.

I believe it's the former. I'm assuming that we'll be able to name form X and set it to equal A+B+C. Then we might have form Y, which equals C+A+D. Then, there will be a command to string the forms together, so for example: Perform X Y. This will do A+B+C (taking 8 seconds total), then immediately perform C+A+D (another 8 seconds). Doing A, then B, then C individually would take 18 seconds I believe, so doing them in the form is faster, you get A+B+C (pause for balance) C+A+D in only 16 seconds total. The downside is you can only pick one target, and if for some reason you choose not to complete both forms, you will suffer a long balance loss.

At least, that's my understanding of it.

so we would see something like

you wrap your left arm around randomtargets neck, holding her in a head lock.

you drive your knee deeply into randomtargets gut.

with a shout you drive your right fist into randomtargets gut, following through and throwing her over your shoulder

you thrust the heel of your foot onto randomtargets throat

and so on

with the forms basically just dividing that up into smaller sections

Right.

I think I was mixed up in my original post. I was thinking that all of the movements for a form would go through at once, followed by a long balance recovery, but looking back I don't know if that's the case. Above, I said it would be A+B+C (wait 8 seconds for balance) C+A+D. In reality it may be A (wait 4 seconds for balance) B (wait 2 seconds for balance) C (wait 2 seconds for balance) C (wait 4 seconds for balance) A (wait 2 seconds for balance) D (wait two seconds for balance).

My question, then, is this: what is the difference between creating one long form, and creating two shorter forms and stringing them together?

I understand Forms to be like Maneuvers, where you set them up yourself.

edit: Oh, and lets make the Glom weapon of choice the Nightstick in one hand and a Crowbar in the other! (I think I just came up with two new hammer designs )

All these new weapons are neat, but ware Polearms ever actually going to be usefull? And if not, can we replace that weapon category with "monk weapons" category?


Forging needs some severe re-looking at now.

two words... scorpion kick. if a monk(or acrobat) is trapped in a hold that has their opponent behind them, they can perform the scorpion kick to attack them