Cyber-Knight Zen combat Yay or Nay?

[Lord Loppage]

I’ve always found the Cyber-Knight to be one of the coolest and iconic Rifts OCCs. From the RMB they were cool, as protectors of the weak traveling out there to smite evil in all its forms. Yeah the psi blade (I feel) is weak in comparison to other weapons (but there are many chats about that, so I’m not the only one, but that’s not the topic here). Now in RUE they have added the Zen Combat. Now are there any fans of it? That is my question. I’ve seen a LOT of negative comments about it. I thought it was pretty cool at first. Yes! The Cyber-Knights got an update! But after thinking about it, I was wondering why they were only anti tech. So I checked the forums and realized I wasn’t the only one who thought this. I saw one post saying it really guides to be anti Coalition due to the Siege on Tolkeen, but they were against what the leaders at Tolkeen was doing as well. And even before (and after) I always saw them fighting ALL evil. Especially monsters and demons (aka supernatural beasts). So are there any fans of it?

[Killer Cyborg]

There ARE fans of it!
And they have a right to be fans of it,
Just as I have a right to think it’s stupid garbage that makes the class worse, is clunky and awkward, and makes Cyber-knights LESS cyber.
It’s one of the dumber things to happen to Rifts.

[Curbludgeon]

It's a weird power, largely but not entirely based on a superpower, and it's both awkward in execution and (to some, at least) narratively dissonant.

I like having a bunch of different expressions of Cyber-Knight in a game. I tie it with all the dream vision stuff. A fun, easy way to have a heroic type knight would be to take a little off of the class' combat bonuses and replace those with the superpower Karmic Power.

[Dustin Fireblade]

I'm not a fan of it. I've tinkered around with different modifications for it over the years.

I think the simple solution for my group was to drop it and replace it with Commando HtH.


Then I did a massive re-write of the OCC's and ended up eliminating the class, although the "concept" of a noble warrior remains (I ended up with 12 total OCC's incidentally)

[Lord Loppage]

There ARE fans of it!
And they have a right to be fans of it,
Just as I have a right to think it’s stupid garbage that makes the class worse, is clunky and awkward, and makes Cyber-knights LESS cyber.
It’s one of the dumber things to happen to Rifts.

Forget Less cyber, more like ANTI Cyber. All against the tech. I agree it was done wrong.

[Hotrod]

I love the class as a concept. I don’t mind them having anti tech capabilities, but Zen Combat is broken as written (not overpowered, but broken, as in does not work), and I generally find Zen to be an ill-fitting concept for a hybrid cybernetic psychic knight. I would rather see them have other specialties and variants with other types of powers.

[Hotrod]

Note: The invariable follow-up question to those who fall into the "nay" category is, how might we improve on it?

This topic has come up many times on the board, and I've seen several approaches:
+A focus on the hybrid cybernetic/psychic aspect of the class that allows the knight to get more bionics/cybernetics whilst maintaining/improving its psychic powers.
+The Savage Rifts approach, focusing on making the Cyber-Knight a potent melee warrior and having special psychic-ish nanites that give the knight benefits against ranged/technological enemies.
+House-ruling Zen Combat such that it's workable while keeping the spirit of it consistent.
+Scrapping Zen Combat and replacing it with an advanced hand-to-hand like Kendo, that samurai martial, or Hand-to-Hand: Commando.
+Creating a variant with an anti-supernatural focus.

I'm completely OK with any and all of these approaches. Where I take issue is the assertion that Zen Combat is not broken (as in does not work).

Examples:
-Cyber-Knights get W.P. Shield at Level 2, but the bonuses provided in Zen Combat for the shield start at level 1 and go up to 15. This conflicts with the rule that all skills start at level 1 proficiency.
-Zen combat provides initiative advantages against certain tech-based enemies. The problem with this is that initiative involves all combatants; it's not a one-on-one roll like strike vs parry. Bumping the Cyber-Knight ahead of one tech enemy may also mean bumping the Cyber-knight ahead of others who should go before the Cyber-Knight. Penalizing a tech foe in initiative vs the Cyber-Knight effectively penalizes that foe vs the Cyber-knight and everyone else, too. It's entirely possible to house-rule this so it isn't a problem, but in anything but a duel, this is a game-breaking problem. This gets even worse when a foe uses and switches between using a ranged weapon (penalty) and a melee weapon (no penalty).
-Rifts often involves multiple combatants of very different types on multiple sides. A demon and a tech-based thug might fight a Cyber-knight and a burster, for example. Many of the perks of Zen Combat vary depending on who an enemy is targeting. Machine-related penalties to strike, penalties to attacks per melee, and penalties to dodge on that machine-based foe specifically targeting the Cyber-Knight. The problem is that combatants in a fight often dynamically switch from one foe to another; turning offensive and defensive penalties on and off is a pain at best, but in the case of attacks per melee, it's simply not possible under the rules as written. When your actions per melee depend on who you're fighting, do you gain actions back if you switch targets away from a Cyber-Knight? There is no explanation or example provided. Sure, you can work something out, but anything you do at that point is a house rule.

My other issues aren't a matter of Zen Combat being broken, but they irk me:
-It's a book-keeping nightmare. You have to dynamically track what bonuses every combatant gets from technology and dynamically turn them on and off for a given situation and opponent.
-What is and is not technology? I once saw a game break up over people playing "gotcha" with this aspect of Zen Combat. To be fair, both the GM and player involved in it could have handled the situation better, but I suspect there's a fundamental issue here, and that is defining what qualifies as technology. The book says it is "Basically any machine with moving parts or that uses electricity or has a computer chip." A simple bow and arrow is a machine with moving parts, but most people (rightly, in my opinion) regard it as not technology even though it meets the criteria. Opinions differ on crossbows, even though it also meets the criteria. Does a mace-and-chain or flail count? How about eyeglasses/sunglasses, or a folding pocketknife, or scissors? As written, the answer is yes, but following the rules as written can make for some silly shenanigans, like a cyber-knight tagging a non-tech foe with a tiny thing with moving parts, and then getting full Zen Combat bonuses.

Now it's certainly possible to house-rule Zen Combat to un-break it, and to rework how technology gets defined, and for those who have no issue keeping track of every bonus and penalty, and their effects, I salute you! It's just not something I care to do. I prefer the original Cyber-Knight; if I were in charge of writing up future versions or variants of the class, I would take it in a different direction than Zen Combat, broken or fixed.

[Killer Cyborg]

I generally find Zen to be an ill-fitting concept for a hybrid cybernetic psychic knight.

Zen is a philosophy.
"Zen Combat" is kind of a thing, in that the philosophy seems to underlie a number of martial arts, but in my understanding the interaction between Zen and physical combat is the ability to get out of your own head, and to DO things without thinking about them.
From "Zen and the Art of Archery":
The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art

As you say, this has NOTHING to do with "technology" as a category. It's about the mind and body, not about whether something is electrical/mechanical/etc.

Chalking the anti-tech powers up to "Zen" just comes off like half-donkeyed cultural appropriation that has no understanding or care for the source being ripped off.
They could have called it "Christian Science Combat," and made at least as much sense.

[Wise_Owl]

I generally find Zen to be an ill-fitting concept for a hybrid cybernetic psychic knight.

Zen is a philosophy.
"Zen Combat" is kind of a thing, in that the philosophy seems to underlie a number of martial arts, but in my understanding the interaction between Zen and physical combat is the ability to get out of your own head, and to DO things without thinking about them.
From "Zen and the Art of Archery":
The archer ceases to be conscious of himself as the one who is engaged in hitting the bull's-eye which confronts him. This state of unconscious is realized only when, completely empty and rid of the self, he becomes one with the perfecting of his technical skill, though there is in it something of a quite different order which cannot be attained by any progressive study of the art

As you say, this has NOTHING to do with "technology" as a category. It's about the mind and body, not about whether something is electrical/mechanical/etc.

Chalking the anti-tech powers up to "Zen" just comes off like half-donkeyed cultural appropriation that has no understanding or care for the source being ripped off.
They could have called it "Christian Science Combat," and made at least as much sense.

Yeah your pretty spot on there Killer.

Zen is the japanese name for the 'Chan' school of Buddhism. This is a syncretic(meaning combines various traditions) form of Buddhism started in China and borrows from Taoist, animist and a few other traditions.

Zen became very popular in Japan, especially amoung the Samurai class as part of it's appeal was a sort of meditative way of looking at the world and dealing with death. One aims for 'Zen mind' or 'no mind' in which fear of death is banished and the knoweldge you may or will die becomes just another thought, like 'I need to do the laundry'. The point of which, in combat circles is to eliminate all hesitation, fear or impulse and just 'act'.

The Cyber-knight power is weirdly named and weirdly applied, but the class has always suffered as having its mechanics kind of divorced from its fiction.