@Azereiah

Just finished writing.

I hope you don't mind @Silver Carrot, I used acupressure points on Mina to give her a small lecture about Eastern Martial Arts

@Silver Carrot

The points I used are real acupressure points. More specifically Lung 5 and Lung 3

@13org

Nice!

Also, should I post? I always like to leave a two post buffer, even if there's no rule.

@13org

Nice!

Also, should I post? I always like to leave a two post buffer, even if there's no rule.

You can post now that I've put mine up :P

Is everyone waiting on something right now? I ask cause no one's posted in a while and I want to make sure I'm not missing something that everyone is expecting me to do right now

Was waiting for @Dblade26 to post but I guess I should react to the things that happened.

@13org

>acupressure points.

>All I can think about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zoLyXSno4s

I think of this video, mostly because my go-to one for Kyusho is mostly just nothing happening. And besides, there's a very short distance between magical touch spots to magical waves of energy, as shown by the trajectory of the US' foremost expert in no effort knockouts George Dillman.

I considered having acupressure stuff for Musashi eventually when I wrote my sheet, mostly because there aren't a huge selection of direct offensive moves you can do for extensions of 'sees stuff really well' but I've been trying to come up with other ideas because they're a bit eh. Might have him develop other aspects to Augment instead and develop moves off of those.

Granted, my general approach towards using actual martial arts knowledge in RPs is to dilute it and give precedence to style and genre.

and yeah, I've relapsed into sickness again so my postrate kinda dropped. Sorry. @Zero HexGo ahead.

I think of this video, mostly because my go-to one for Kyusho is mostly just nothing happening. And besides, there's a very short distance between magical touch spots to magical waves of energy, as shown by the trajectory of the US' foremost expert in no effort knockouts George Dillman.

While there are plenty of spots to hit to incapacitate people, I wouldn't call any of them 'no effort'. But I'm giving it a total pass since we're in anime land here where there're people with laser eyes and fireballs and cryokinesis and shit.

@Dblade26
Just being able to land pinpoint strikes on the actually very vulnerable spots in the human body such as the liver, the nose, the temples, the floating ribs, the solar plexus etc is pretty damn good, considering that kind of precision does not come easy at all in an actual engagement. Just being able to jab someone on the eyesocket rather than the general face area is a good skill to have.

@Azereiah
I can't tell anyone not to do them, but like Dblade I think they're a copout. It's like, instead of doing any martial arts and working that choreography and whatnot you're just kinda dealing in a no-effort vaguely combative tag. Which is funny because their whole selling point in real life is the idea of no-effort badassery. Anyway, I love Fist of the North Star but the actually memorable fights as such are the ones where the author decided that it didn't have to end within the first contact. Style and genre are fine and all but as a matter of style, I find them pretty boring personally.

That's partially why even when I put them on my sheet, It basically amounted to 'give someone a dead arm or something for a bit' and nothing that'd win me a fight while also being hard to use and requiring actually fighting.

And yeah, I agree that just being able to easily land proper precision strikes to anatomical vulnerabilities mid-combat is definitely useful, but it lacks the sense of growth and progression that the powers seem like they're supposed to have in this game.

@Dblade26
Just being able to land pinpoint strikes on the actually very vulnerable spots in the human body such as the liver, the nose, the temples, the floating ribs, the solar plexus etc is pretty damn good, considering that kind of precision does not come easy at all in an actual engagement. Just being able to jab someone on the eyesocket rather than the general face area is a good skill to have.

@Azereiah
I can't tell anyone not to do them, but like Dblade I think they're a copout. It's like, instead of doing any martial arts and working that choreography and whatnot you're just kinda dealing in a no-effort vaguely combative tag. Which is funny because their whole selling point in real life is the idea of no-effort badassery. Anyway, I love Fist of the North Star but the actually memorable fights as such are the ones where the author decided that it didn't have to end within the first contact. Style and genre are fine and all but as a matter of style, I find them pretty boring personally.

Aye, I'm on board with all of the above and with keeping it semi-realistic. With Meilin's demonstration as an example, she pressed on... Er, I forget whether it's the median or ulnar nerve, but that doesn't really matter. Numbness and lack of easy motion is a pretty big deal either way and is realistic enough, since I know I've managed to put my arm to sleep for several minutes by getting hit on the 'funny bone' and by laying on my arm the wrong way. I think @13org is working based on acupuncture and acupressure points which do correspond to actual nerves despite the medical application being mere quackery, so no problem there.

Let's get some Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon tier fighting up in here whichever way it goes. \o/

That's partially why even when I put them on my sheet, It basically amounted to 'give someone a dead arm or something for a bit' and nothing that'd win me a fight while also being hard to use and requiring actually fighting.

And yeah, I agree that just being able to easily land proper precision strikes to anatomical vulnerabilities mid-combat is definitely useful, but it lacks the sense of growth and progression that the powers seem like they're supposed to have in this game.

Agreed. That's pretty realistic and reasonable. Don't underestimate just how distracting it is to not be able to feel and move your arm for a while, though.

Yeah. They're actual pressure points. Their effects and even locations are accurate (I'm not an specialist but...)

As far as their use on actual combat goes, realistically one could disable or even lethally injure someone. But hitting them accurately while on combat is another story. It requires precision, agility and above all else, extremely specific situations.

EX: if someone punches you, but they miss/you dodge/"deflect" their punch, you could hit the nerve just below the armpit (its a pretty big one, hard to miss.) with a quick strike.

As far as their use on actual combat goes, realistically one could lethally injure someone.

Spinal cord or vagus nerve damage is pretty unpleasant, aye, but doing enough to actually kill someone is quite a feat.

I'll believe in the combat applications of pressure points as they are (not disputing the existence of vulnerable spots, just magical asian points) when they start being used effectively and consistently in the myriad of combat sports and contests across the world, where they're not actually banned at all. And like, rather than look for a point under the armpit, protected by a person's ability to retract their arm, it seems far simpler to aim for the sternum or liver or ribs which are consistently targeted to great effect.

@Azereiah

Well, its not exactly a pressure point, but crushing one's windpipe can result in a pretty unpleasant death.
A lot of other "weak spots" or pressure points can be quite devastating (stomach, carotid artery, etc.)
While the "damage" is not caused directly by the strike, its still there.

The actual "death touch" or dim mak in Cantonese is a very controversial technique. Some say its exaggeration, others go as far as saying that Bruce Lee's death was caused by this technique ()

I also believe that there is some exaggeration to this. Death can occur, but its by no means a direct consequence of one of those techniques. Only coincidence. Many different factors that coincidentally caused a lethal injury.

But, still, its not something to be immediately disposed as fraudulent.
For example, if i said to you that its possible to throw a sewing needle with enough force to pierce tempered glass, would you believe it?
But actually, someone has already done it.

Yet, pressure points can be used in combat, but the maximum they can do is inflict a lot of pain, cause dizziness, numbness & etc

I'll believe in the combat applications of pressure points as they are (not disputing the existence of vulnerable spots, just magical asian points) when they start being used effectively and consistently in the myriad of combat sports and contests across the world, where they're not actually banned at all. And like, rather than look for a point under the armpit, protected by a person's ability to retract their arm, it seems far simpler to aim for the sternum or liver or ribs which are consistently targeted to great effect.

Agreed here as well, for the most part. They are used pretty consistently, though - strikes to the neck, groin, and solar plexus come to mind. The more esoteric stuff just doesn't happen because it's impractical for exactly the reason you mentioned.

Anything mystical-sounding, though, is pretty much out of the question. If someone dies from being touched in a certain spot, it's almost certainly because they had a medical problem that facilitated it, and it'd be nigh impossible to reproduce on someone healthy.

The nerve under the armpit is quite big.
Try to find it and apply some pressure. It hurts like hell.

If someone punches you and you dodge, their arm will be fully extended for a sec.

For the sake of not starting another argument with 13org again so soon, over something that does not really matter in the IC right now, I'll just stop here and let people believe what they want to believe with the experiences that they have. I wouldn't if this were like, an issue of actually going off to train these things but this is something else entirely.

I'll just go ahead and dump a theory on how "dim mak" came around. It's total bullshit, but it's probably closer to the truth than reliably being able to kill with a touch.

Martial artists and religious students living in a temple for decades spend time learning new and creative ways to hurt eachother beyond the obvious "big stick to the side of the head" trick. One day, one of them goes out for a walk. Drunk Dumbasses A and B are walking down the road, and Drunk Dumbass A decides that this martial artist doesn't look so tough and wants to prove how much of a badass he is. Drunk Dumbass A throws a punch at the martial artist and gets whacked in the side of the neck beneath the jaw. It doesn't look like the martial artist put much force into it, but he definitely did. Drunk Dumbass A stumbles around, falls over, and loses consciousness because his blood pressure dropped. Drunk Dumbass B runs screaming back to the bar and spreads a tale about how there're men who can kill with a single touch, and the story spreads throughout the bar quickly. Meanwhile, Drunk Dumbass A is just now getting back up. The two will meet up again later that day or maybe the next day and Drunk Dumbass B will realize he's wrong, but the story's already out and spreading like wildfire.

Alternately, Drunk Dumbass A has an undiagnosed and otherwise undetectable heart condition, and a strike to the neck causes a blood pressure drop that ends up killing him. In that case, the story is true, but only in that specific situation. Drunk Dumbass A would've died of it a few months to years later anyway, but the story's already out and nobody's going to bother with investigating it because that would take effort and people like spectacular tales.

@Azereiah

That's exactly what I think about it.

Stories, a bunch of coincidences, tales and exaggerations.

More specifically :

"Drunk Dumbass A has an undiagnosed and otherwise undetectable heart condition, and a strike to the neck causes a blood pressure drop that ends up killing him."