Hermit Crab's School: BM's Wuxia Game

Located on a high bluff overlooking the a port town, the Hermit Crab School gets its name from its founder, who created the school primarily to entice students from across the empire to study there. His hope was to bond different martial arts communities together and spread their teachings to better aid the Imperial forces.

This is an attempt by a Western gamer to run a wuxia game. The players play martial artists at the Hermit Crab School, a former castle turned into a monastary overlooking a port city. You train, you fight, and protect the common folk from lawless bandits, evil tyrants, and supernatural monsters.

Port Town

A small fishing town along a narrow bay that empties into the yellow Sea

Rules

Character Creation

Choose 10 points worth of Combat Skills.

Style – 1 point per rank, apply 1 rank of specialty in one of the combat actions, a favoured weapon, or a maneuver or terrain. You may take up to 2 ranks of disadvantage in specific actions, which reduces your rank in situations involving them, which gives you equal specialty ranks. This caps at 4 at Chargen.

Sorcery – 1 per rank, define the kind of magic you use and the effect – sorcery is rolled directly to create the effect. You have a single distinct effect you can perform per rank, like Claws or Iron Skin. This caps at 5 at chargen.

You can buy more effects at 1 point per, capped at 5. This allows for a low Sorcery rating, but a lot of Utility.

Chi Pool – Automatically get a pool with capacity of 1. You can buy extra points for 2 points for extra Chi available, up to a maximum pool of 4 at chargen.

Choose 10 points worth of Skills, non-combat abilities that apply for non-MA actions (Cooking, History, Barter, Survival, Forging, Charm, Medicine)

Combat

Combat is largely the same as most d10 games; rolling D10s against other D10s. For this game, a success is a roll of 6 or higher on a roll. Ones do not subtract successes. A roll of ten is rerolled, with any new successes added to the result – new 10s are rerolled again, with subsequent 10s rerolled, etc. If you roll no successes and at least one one, you botch – the botch's effect is determined by the number of ones, but it is always damaging.

Any time you engage in combat with another, you roll your relevant Style rating. Choose what kind of action you're doing.

Strike: You hit someone. Roll your Style, with successes adding as Push against the enemy.

Throw: You attempt to trip or hurl your enemy. Mechanically, you roll your Style. A positive result subtracts dice from the enemy's future Style actions; if Style is reduced to zero, the opponent cannot take any action requiring a style roll.

Block: You attempt to guard against the opponent's actions. You apply your Style rating against your opponent's next attack roll; every point of Style or block speciality subtracts from successes against you. In addition, if you negate the person's action AND have successes left over, apply those as either Push or dice penalties.

Intercept: If you block in a round, and an opponent attacks someone else, you can attempt an Intercept. Roll your Style, and compare the number of successes against your enemy. If you match or exheed their roll, the opponent's attack is applied to you and your block; resolve Block normally.

Disarm: An action to attempt to remove a character's weapon, be it sorcerous natural weapons or mundane ones. Roll Style and subtract an opponents relevant Style from the result

Focus: You take a turn to refocus yourself and regain your energy. You regain your full Chi pool instantly.

Styles

Styles refers to physical martial arts. While some styles at higher levels may allow for supernatural effects, they are supplementary or subtle, and usually involve augmented strength and speed. Your martial arts style is your primary mode of attack.

When you create a style, describe what it favours (hard strikes, throws, counters, and other such things). When you build a style, you get 1 point of specialty that you apply to a kind of action used with it (Throws, Strikes, Blocks, a Weapon, or specific maneuvers or terrain). You may also take disadvantage points to specific actions, which reduce your ranking for the action – these give you another specialty you can put into the same favoured action, or another one.

Sorcery

This represents direct applications of Chi energy to produce overwhelming supernatural effects. All uses of Sorcery require one point of Chi to activate.

Mechanic: When you create Sorcery, you define the effect – you conjure fireballs, cause the earth to animate under people's feet, or summon spirits or demons. Your Sorcery rating gives you a number of different effects equal to the rating

Sorcery is rolled to activate, using the rating. One success is enough to activate the effect in question; it's rather easy to cast a spell.. Examples include enchanting fists with flames, throwing fireballs, or conjuring a servant to help.

For offensive or deliberate effects like fireballs or windstorms, the Sorcery applies Push equal to your Sorcery rating. It can be resisted normally with Block and other things. For effects that reduce dice pools, apply the Sorcery rating directly.

Persistant damage effects (damage over time) generally do one Push per turn, lasting for a number of turns equal to the Sorcery rating. They break if the sorcerer is Pushed to 5 or more – the lose concentration.

For enhancements, general rule is that half your Sorcery rating rounded up is added to your Style for the purposes of whatever relevant action, assuming the effect makes sense. For defensive powers like wind walls and iron skin, half the Sorcery rating applies against all offensive actions – however, suffering more than the rating in Push in one turn breaks the effect.

For summoning, you call another entity that acts independently in combat. This being uses your Sorcery rating in order to aid you in combat, and applies and accumulates its own Push. It instantly dispels upon receiving 5 push or more, and is subsequently dispelled if its summoner is sufficiently wounded or knocked out. A summon uses Sorcery for non-combat Skills, but you need to define this beforehand and the GM reserves veto right for silly things. Summons are under the control of their summoner, don't get specs as of now, and are rolled by the summoner.

They can act in concert with their summoner, adding the Sorcery pool to their master's Style pool for the action, as long as it is a valid teamup.

Chi

The body's life energy, Chi permeates all things. Practically, it represents the essence required for all action, and can be applied to achieve superhuman and sorcerous effects.

Chi can be used in the following ways:

1 Chi can be used to cast any sorcery power.

1 Chi can be used to add a die to any roll. Roll this die like any other, as part of the roll. You can't add more dice than half the current dice pool (whatever it is).

1 Chi can be used when a player is suffering from 5+ push, and the aggressor tries to inflict a wound. This negates the wound entirely, but the Push remains (so you can be wounded again at next opportunity.

1 Chi can be used to switch to another style instantly, rather than at your action. Doing so puts you into that style until your next action, subjecting you to its specialties and disadvantages until you next change it.

1 Chi to activate your next action early as a Block in reaction to another attack, if you had not specified a block on your last turn. You lose your next turn, but you can effectively free block an attack.