What systems allow martial artists to be as good as weapon users and also have meaningful mechanical differences...

What systems allow martial artists to be as good as weapon users and also have meaningful mechanical differences between them?

Martial artist doesn't mean "fights without weapons".
It means trained in the art of combat, so a guy with a sword is a martial artist.
What you want is a system with unique but useful hand to hand martial artists.
Despite my sperg rant I'm not really aware of any, sorry OP

Well, I'm going to say it: GURPS
Dump points into your martial art of choice, take Trained By A Master, and wrack up all the special maneuvers and abilities you want.

Legends of the Wulin is the best system for Martial Arts stuff I've ever played, although it's crunchy and not to everyone's tastes.

Weapons in LotW are described by a series of tags, broad categories of weapon like 'Staff' or 'Sword', each with their own stats and abilities. Unarmed is one of the most potent stats in the whole game, boosting your speed and mobility (which no other weapon does) as well as giving you a much greater ability to generate extra Chi, the in combat resource used to activate techniques. The various External Kung-fu styles which allow Unarmed also have their own tricks.

4e

GURPS with the following rules turned on.
-Know Your Own Strength
-A Matter of Inches
-Cinematic Skills
-Martial Arts Styles
-Basically the entirety of Action 3: Furious Fists
KYOS lets punches and kicks keep up with swung swords and axes, AMoI gives unarmed fighters bonuses to feints, parries, reacting actions, etc., CS is useful for both armed and unarmed fighters but may help unarmed fighters more depending on how you read a few rules*, and many unarmed martial arts styles give access to a wide number of techniques, perks, skills, and advantages while weapon-focused styles have a tighter scope. A3 has a bunch of tiny tweaks that both help unarmed fighters keep up with armed fighters and let them both survive in a world with gun-toting mooks.

*Power Blow doubles or triples your ST for one attack. RAW, it doe nothing to improve your weapon's minimum ST rating; if you go too far above the minimum rating, you not only suffer capped damage but risk breaking your weapon as well. If you use this interpretation of the rules, Power Blow is *much* more useful for unarmed fighters. Also, Weapon Master tends to only unlock combat-focused cinematic skills (Power Blow, Breaking Blow, Blindfighting, etc.) while Trained by a Master gives everything (the earlier list, plus Flying Leap, Light Walk, Pressure Secrets, etc.)

This.

If you're looking for something more lethal, you may want to consider Qin or Legend of the Five Rings. If you want something more hyper-Japanese, Tenra Bansho Zero.

...

...

...

Exalted. Martial Arts are a completely different and completely viable fighting option.

The high-level, esoteric Martial Arts are fucking insane.

FATE.

RuneQuest 6 unarmed combat allows for trips and combo attacks, and Mysticism is kung-fu magic shit. The risk being weapon users being able to brute force past your guard and having a reach advantage.

I had an unarmed fighter in my game and he did surprisingly well despite the system seeming to make it disadvantageous when I first read it.

Anima beyond fantasy

This

Yes, and it gives mechanical rewards for roleplaying too.

You people are pathetic.

>You people
Dohoho.

It's Anima.
You can learn different Martial Arts and combine them as wish.

Synnibarr
Shadowrun if you know how to build an Adept
You MIGHT be able to tweak Scion for it since its only got bare-bones equipment lists and most of the weapon relics are melee combat-oriented anyway, those plus Knack combos can make for some really funky martial shenanigans but it'll take some work

Maid RPG.

Fantasycraft.

>Shadowrun
Nah. Melee sucks in general, and troll adepts only work if you abuse the hell out of them, basically making one trick pony.

Or you just don't know what you're doing. Even a pure melee street sammy can be devastating with the right build.

Everyone can. And do something on the side as well instead of being pure murderhobo.

In general, GURPS gives weapon users a rather significant advantage in fights with no restrictions on weapons with the goal of incapacitating your opponent ASAP.

(Which is fine; unarmed fighters often have an advantage in fights where there are restrictions; you can't really restrain your drunken friend by stabbing him with a sword, carry your halberd into a high-society dinner and so on).

There are builds and campaign options which make unarmed fighters more able to go toe-to-toe with weapons, but you won't be able to use as wide a range of options if you want to be really effective.

It's not about the system. It's about the GM setting up situations where things other than a rifle are useful. Are the players in a public spot, in which they can't really solve any problem by just taking the old m203 out of the windowless van? Does the target need to be subdued and captured rather than killed? Do the players themselves need to escape capture, possibly with neutralizing and disarming an NPC silently? What if the pcs are on a plane or submarine, and firing a weapon would result in a total loss of personel and equipment?

Dungeons: the Dragoning 40k 7th Edition

These guys have the right of it.

Exalted. Depending on whether or not you allow broken splats (s'up, Scroll of the Monk), MAs might be outright better than non-MA users.

(Fuck off, Charcoal March of Spiders.)

What's the old line... I think it goes something like

>A mortal martial artist can split a brick and jump over a hedge.
>A Terrestrial martial artist can split a boulder and jump over a house.
>A Celestial martial artist can split a fortress wall and jump over a mountain.
>A Sidereal martial artist can split a soul and jump to Heaven.

Pic related?

what movie is this imitating. i know I've seen it.

Five Deadly Venoms.

Yeah, that's an option.

Exalted includes Martial Arts, but if you're looking for a system which does them well I'd never go for it over Legends of the Wulin. Exalted does a much wider range of things, but LotW is specifically dedicated to doing its narrow purview extremely well.

This. Though you MIGHT want to consider a khatar or cestus or three-section staff or something.

Definitely this. FC does a good job of making different fighting styles useful and distinctive in general. Even within the general category of unarmed combat, there's a fair amount of room for variety. A character focusing on kicks plays very differently from one focusing on wrestling, but both are very solid combatants in their own ways.

Well, Bikki's more of a low- to mid-Essence Terrestrial (except for that one bit with K2 at the beginning of season 3), but pretty much.

Fourth-ing this

4E, dnd or Gurps take your pick.