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How does someone go about learning a second hand to hand? Does it require both skill cost and year cost if it's a martial art?

there's no RAW for it. But one could extrapolate off of the HU guide to getting a new skill, meaning there'd be a constant time investment and if they fail to meet it, they lose out.

In that case I guess the amount of time it takes to learn a skill multiplied by the number of skills you have to sacrifice to start with a form as an HU category?

I think that makes sense. Now an actual martial art form, unless the game fast forwards or you go through years faster, or you do some sort of Matrix skill insertation, I don't think it'd be possible.

HU2 page 48 states that only one HtH form can be learned. I personally would ignore that though if the character had a good enough reason in-game to want to learn it. In that case I'd allow them to pursue learning it (via the rules on page 48), but it would take the amount of time listed in N&S to learn the new HtH form.

We have always done it this way. Let's say you have HTH Basic at 3rd level, spend the time to get HTH Expert you are replacing the Basic version of the skill, and starting over as HTH Expert, 1st level.

The argument could be made to be able to switch back and forth, but we threw it out. The character retrains themselves to the new HTH. This is part of what you give up to get the better training. The only exception would be a N&SS character who already has the ability to have multiple HTH as part of their base makeup.

Other PB books, have different special cases. For example, the newer Rifts CS Heroes of Humanity book lets certain classes upgrade their HTH through a sort of special forces training program. They still replace the old, don't get two.

I can't remember the exact details, but I know that we always ruled that it replaced at the same level when you were done learning it.

Maybe steal stuff from Palladium Fantasy? IIRC, there was a martial arts trainer in the eastern empire sourcebook who could upgrade a HTH skill (eg. basic > expert) , if a character studied with him...

Dreicunan might be right on the replace at current level. My group usually started it over, but it was a judgement call, not a rule.

There is a gym/dojo in I think Rifts Merctown who can teach various hand to hands, including some of the more exotic ones. I don't remember rules on how long it takes to learn a new skill, or any of that being covered.