Describe your PC's fighting style.
Is it realistic? Is it flashy or exotic? What weapons do they use? Where did they learn to fight that way? Why do they prefer to fight that way? Are they any good at it? What is it useful for? Does that fighting style have history?
Other urls found in this thread:
youtube.com
youtube.com
twitter.com
...
I know I've always been a sucker for one-handed melee weapon and open hand, especially if the game we're playing has rules that make that useful for grappling, tripping, or other tomfoolery.
Pretty much all the PCs in my current use the universal fighting style of 'Hit it with a sharp object until it dies whilst also trying not to get stabbed'. None of them really have more training than that.
Their fighting style, at least on the service, is grandiose and exaggerated, with lots of unnecessary movements and pointless flourishes, punctuated with bold, arrogant or courageous statements.
Of course, those with enough skill to tell can see there's more depth to it than that. Every obvious opening conceals a feint, every true weakness draws the enemy forward, letting an ally stab them in the back.
As egotistical as their fighting seems, its hidden truth is that it's all about their allies, drawing attention in order to weaken their opposition, putting themselves at risk to give their friends opportunities to put the enemy down.
*surface
Fuck phoneposting.
Shield smash, then whack them with his bastard sword. More chopping than cutting.
Maximum anime. Dual-wields "Flying Talons," essentially knives at the ends of chains, mixing subtle enchantments with precise strikes. (PF Gestalt Mesmerist//Ninja)
Demon: The Descent character, an Inquisitor/Destroyer.
In cover she tends towards ruthlessly efficient and aggressive pistol fighting - think John Wick.
When her cover drops she's Samus.
4e, Half-Elf Bard (fake Skald)/War Chanter, using a Rapier. Kind of a mix of fencing, kendo and dancing which is what is used to canalize magic, really. It's fun to roleplay it, it's an interesting mix of things. Plus I loaded up on out-of-turn basic attacks and there's some really funny stuff you can do with that.
I'll list some old favorites of mine:
Mutants & Masterminds/DC Adventures: Fluh; hero character that could catch him self on fire and would use grappling techniques on his enemies.
D&D: Knell; Dread Necro that used tons of minons. Would try to raise anything to help him fight.
Pathfinder: Kizziar; Half Orc Bard that would use a flute and dancing to cast and a massive Falchion for wrecking shit. He was beautiful.
Pathfinder: Monk who used to a cleric for a god of knowledge that died in-setting and shortly before the story begins. After recovering the traumatic event of having your divine patron get snuffed, he turned to the lore he was gathering - which was the treatises and manuals of combat for various cultures and regions of the world - and continued his work of understanding them.
Except instead of just parsing them and writing a grand book on it all, to be slapped into a divine library in his god's realm that now no longer existed, he began practicing it all.
Completely self-taught monk, with a synthesized style that combines various forms of striking and wrestling across the setting's world. Not at all flashy, looks like mundane kick-boxing, but with a knowledge of pressure points (for stunning strike) that will grow over time.
>looks like mundane kick-boxing, but with a knowledge of pressure points (for stunning strike) that will grow over time.
>pressure points
Just fucking rock the guy with a head kick or something.
Dwarven Musketeers live in ranks from the day they enlist to the day they die. They parade in ranks. They assemble in ranks. They march in ranks. They bunk in ranks. They mess in ranks. They take aim in ranks. They raise spears in ranks.
Ranks bring discipline. In the corridors and mineshafts, ranks bring control.
Ranks are security and safety, massed fire and massed spear point.
Ranks keep you strong. They keep you focused. They keep you fearless.
Ranks keep you alive.
His new unit does not fight as one.
Gunther does not understand his new companions.
They do not understand ranks.
They fight as individuals, each one wanting their own little space, fighting their own little battle. They do not coordinate, not like they should.
Do they not see that locked shields bring strength? Do they not see that volleyed fire brings accuracy?
Gunther tried to ask them about it once. They laughed him off, chiding him for thinking they were mere soldiers.
He does not understand. Were they not just soldiers of a different kind? Did they not still need the discipline of formation?
There is no one to form ranks with here. The shields are too different. The spear shafts are of odd lengths. The marksmen all use different weapons, and take their time to load and aim. This is not an effective unit. There is no way to coordinate them. There can be no ranks.
This confuses Gunther deeply. Without ranks, there can be no order. Without order, there can be no tactics. Without tactics, there can be no victory. Without victory, there can only be death.
This scares Gunther. The surface scares Gunther. He dreams of the ways his companions collapse, each alone and unsupported. He has nightmares about their missing unity, their fragility.
They do not understand ranks. For this, Gunther knows, they will all die.
He ranger that uses a crossbow at range and an axe and board when up close. very careful and calculating, if he cant take down an enemy in "three or less" strikes, he simply wont engage him head on until it's weakened
Oh wow, one of the other 3 D:tD fans on Veeky Forums. Hello fellow obscure game enthusiast.
Not flashy at all. He went to a military academy when he was a troublesome teen, and learned that simple and efficient is the way to go.
Of course, he only draws his short sword when he runs low on Zeon for his Earth spells and something actually manages to survive the gauntlet run through cannon batteries manned by his homunculi, but he can still swing a sword decently enough should he have to.
Though whatever gets to him is probably a better fighter than him by a long shot. He's a support caster, not front line material.
>Plays a bard speced into maximized bardic music And buffs.
1st round: Bardic music.
2nd round: Cast Haste.
3rd round: Plink with UMD wand.
Repeat and heal until combat is over
Showboaty and infuriatingly inefficient.
Pathfinder: Old bard who fights with a crossbow. Slow and deliberate.
Mass Effect: SMG-using former gangster. Scrappy and frenetic.
He's a rogue that grew up in a port town that fights with a knife and wears a gauntlet/cestus on his offhand.
A big part of his play style is knowing when to close in for the kill and when to back off. One of his big tricks is feinting and then moving away to force his attacker to take sneak attacks of opportunities if they want to pursue him.
I like to think his actual style is pretty similar to Filipino knife stuff, like he picked up tricks from the slummers he lived and worked with.
hang back and let the skeletons do all the work
1. Go on the nearest difficult terrain.
2. Use thrown weapon.
3. ???
4. Victory
I don't get why it's so obscure, it's the coolest fucking thing WW ever released.
Cleric of the deity of knowledge and craftsmanship.
>Style
>Fighting
Pretty brute-force when it comes down to it, shoot the things all day and stomp on their toes if they get close.
Fighter/Mage.
Uses sorcerous talents for some damage spells when the party really needs it, but gets the most fun out of a fight when flying around on a tower-shield with a racing-broom's enchantment on it and smashing enemies into the ground. Occasionally casts a pit-creation spell to bash folks into it.
Martial-Adept campaign character, diplomatic buffer and only member of the party to fail the "no spells no magic nothing supernatural at all just physical prowess" test. Normally likes to fight with friends on-hand to supercharge them all, fights ruthlessly with literal tooth and claw via shape-shifting when cornered alone.
PF Warlord/Oracle in Hell's Vengence Game.
Seems blunt at first with a mace or baton in hand, but it's mostly used as a defensive tool, preferring to duck and distract an enemy's means of harm before battering and breaking them with bare-hands. Eastern-origins in style, but clearly applied with Chellaxian mentality of efficiency and order; no fancy flourishes, just stick.
I have not played a finesse or non-magical warrior type in a while... I should give that a try next time. Last time I tried that my acrobatic warrior barely lasted a session before getting caught alone and flowered to death.
D:tF was kinda terrible and so was alot of nWoD's design decisions. Turned most people off to the idea before they even looked into it.
I play an elderly fighter whose combat style would be described as minimal effort for maximum reward, he knows that he's well past his prime so he can't just overpower an opponent anymore, he has to outsmart it one way or another.
He fights mean and he fights dirty, at his age playing fair is just going to get him killed, he can remember killing plenty of older, better trained enemies that made that mistake when he was younger
To make up for my semi off topic posts.
Last character I got to seriously play was my /k/ tier Etherite in a M:tA game. Mostly used normie firearms and backed that up with technomantic gadgets and an unhealthy amount of /k/ube blessed thermite. Had some Dresden / Geralt type combat magic to back that up but didn't use it much on account of Paradox being unpleasant.
Ended up doing more damage then the villains when one of them hit her alchemy lab / sanctum / ammo dump / workshop.
Turned into this with more pretty colors: youtube.com
>Hans are we the baddies.mp4
Remember safe chemical storage, kids.
Grandiose, dextrous, flashy and extremely lethal.
HackMaster Rogue, of all things (equivalent to Bard in other systems more or less) with a glaive.
The character is basically a peacock, and the glaive is his talon. Lots of fluid slashes going into one another and conserving momentum.
It's been useful to be able to brace against charge, or just having the reach on people, and 5d4p+3 means I often reach at least ~20 damage per roll.
Downside is no shield, and long time between swings.
Every fighting style is developed with a purpose in mind. Some are for killing, some are for disarming, some are for subduing, and so on. Most styles were developed by men for fighting other men, while others were developed to fight monsters.
My monk learned how to fight from a 160 year old human monk who learned the fighting styles developed by cosmic celestial entities to fight other cosmic celestial entities. I'm talking wheels of eyes, too many wings, melts with its gaze type entities -- the shit they use to fight -other- wheels of eyes, too many wings, melts with its gaze entities.
So how does that actually end up looking?
Like having a seizure that somehow kills the other guy?
Cast Psychic Domination, commanding your enemies to shoot themselves in the head.
Give he's got it Inured, and as a Rote, I think he's in the clear.
Legends of the Wulin - Basically a combination of Crane Style(Ravenous Wings) for hand to hand and some hidden throwing needles(Ranged, Paired) not overly flash but not terribly understated either
D&D Barbarian - See Pic. Basically a dynamo of destruction and brutality the exact opposite of subtle
My character rarely attacks. Me and another player have taken up the "Sword and Shield" character archetype, him, being the damage dealer and I being the full time tank. On the rare occasions that he has to fight, he takes up a pirate-like stance, since he lived most of his life on hia father's ship.
There are a lot of mudras and mantras and prayer, and while the character does know conventional physical combat, the end result is that he can punch more than just his opponent's body. He has backhanded an incoming spell out of the air, ripped a protective spell apart with his bare hands, and punched the magic out of a wizard.
He can also reach into the residual magic of a teleport spell to pull the caster back to where he was (so he can punch the thoughts out of his head), has punched the sharpness out of a sword, and has even punched a dude so hard that he ended up in the future. He has also punched so hard that the air friction made fire, and punched so hard that it blew out a fire.
>Black Joke
I've modeled a couple of characters after Doji Kodama at this point
The one being a sort of Triad Enforcer guy in a modern Legend of the Wulin game
Nigga the levels of envy I hold toward you and your group can not be measured by humans
To the untrained eye, he looks like he's swinging a big 2-handed sword like it was a lump of metal, but anyone with skill can see that he knows exactly what he's doing when he's making big arching swings with the speed of a freight train
Barehanded relies heavily in fisticuffs and wrestling moves, giving flying big boots, and belly to belly suplexes, a man of strength rather than skill
then there's another character, a girl that started as the prototype swat soldier, Riot shield on one hand, gun in the other, calculating risks and being safe on the trigger, but as the game kept going (And she started getting more relaxed and lively) she started to become pretty much a gunslinger, doing tactical rolls and blowing all her bullets on enemies, she still has a sense of tactics, but they're now much looser
>5e wizard
magic-flashy and exaggerated
staff-beat shit over the head till it dies
>5e horror survivior
uses environment to his advantage
discern enemies weakness and exploit them
fight cautiously
>3.5 halfing archivist
no nonsense, everything is practical
uses magic to it's fullest
uses magic and creative ways
often spams cure spells as a way to destroy uindead
Waylon Louviere. Lizardfolk barbarian who prefers to wrestle alligator-style. Very bitey. If biting and grappling doesn't work, he lashes at it with a length of chain he kept as a reminder of his days in prison.
Attempt at being honorabu samurai, but mostly just smashes shit with his sword as hard as he can.
Also shoots magic and sets things on fire sometimes.
I throw robo doggos at my enemies while apologizing sincerely for the disturbance I'm causing.
The last character I played with much of a fighting style would be Iona, for a magical girl game.
Her parents taught her rather a lot about staff fighting so if she's stuck in a fair fight she's not at a complete loss. She focuses heavily on the reach a staff gives her to keep an opponent away and the amount of force that can be provided by a long staff. She tends towards the flashy but that's an effect of her being young and inexperienced in real fights rather than a natural part of the style.
She's a blind geomancer who is pretty awful at actually throwing spells about outside her own reach. She's very good at using it to 'see' the environment or using the connection to other places to teleport. She will hit you in the back of the head with her staff as hard as she can the moment a fight starts.
She's more than willing to abuse the fact that she's blind to get a leg up on the other guy or to play possom after losing a fight. No one looks good when they find you having just beaten up a blind girl.
>5'0, 80 pounds Fighter/Rogue girl
>has 20str for plot reasons
>fights like Mike Tyson
Nobody expects it.
My character is pretty similar
>5' paladin girl dressed up in armor
>Wrestles shit to death
>if she can't grab it she just goes wild and hacks away at it with a sword
It's gonna be fun playing the angry doomgirl paladin.
he points his pistol at the target, usually sideways, and fires
he fights like this because he's a daft cunt from a booster gang with no formal gun training whatsoever
the only reason he hits anything is because he's got a really fucking steady hand, excellent reflexes, and a good dose of luck
Human, very Viking-inspired (not irl Viking, stereotypical one - savage in a horned helmet) barbarian in 5e, and his style is wildly swinging his axe and using his raw strength and the occasional feint/mindgame to pummel his enemies into the ground. I imagine that he fights quite a bit like pic related (the Raider from For Honor).
Walking burning halberd tornado of justice
5e Fighter/Gunsmith
>Attach pistols to rapiers and shotguns to battleaxes
>Crossbow expert for 5ft range
>Use Hex to give disadvantage on Con saves then use trip attack with pistol from 30feet away, run in and swing at prone target. Action surge. Disarming attack and goading attack against prone target.
Its usually just moving in and out of combat alternating ranged options and melee options.
My character stares at people until they explode, so I guess it's not realistic
think the terminator but with a halberd
most opponents cant hurt him or are outclassed physically - so theres no need for flashy moves, simple sharp motions are enough to butcher them
Fighting Style: Sheer overwhelming brute strength and speed. He has formal military training from his background as a solider, but technique only goes so far. Lots cleaving as opposed to stabbing or precision hits.
Weapon(s) of choice: a pair of longswords hilts gifted to him by his diety that ignite into a flametounge lightsaber and a sunblade lightsaber.
Paladin BattleMaster Hybrid
Hex gives disadvantage on ability checks of the chosen stat. Saving throes are ability checks their saving throws.
I like the weapon mounted gun I idea tho.
Bard that grew up in shithole thief town and started wandering the continent in order to become famous and live forever
She fights dirty and agile. If there are tables around she'll flip them in your direction and run away then start throwing scenario at your to either piss you off or in knock you out, all while shouting at you in the most high pitched dissonant diziness-induced screech she can muster. Eventually she'll shoot an arrow that might or might not be made of some ice crystal shit or just stick to your clothes and annoy the fuck out of you
She has this habit of chewing on green herbs, so if you get too close she'll just spit that shit in your eyes or on your brow so it'll leak down and it's quite sour.
As a last resort she's also pretty good at throwing small knives and has a thick one for real stabby stabby.
I tried to make her fighting style how I imagine a bar brawl or general back alley survival fights would go