macksting wrote:Also bear in mind that, according to Mystic China, chi can be disrupted far more easily than was made clear in N&SS; negative chi infection can't be used to fuel powers, as I recall, and cannot be flushed or healed by normal means. (As opposed to Dim Mak, which cannot be healed at all.)
At least, this is what I recall. As I've said before, I don't own the book. I do know that negative chi is pretty nasty even to chi masters, as of MC.
I find Negative Chi Mastery even more effective than Dim Mak myself. Given the system of Chi Combat in N&S, even if the "good guy" has positive chi mastery, he needs to spend a decent amount of positive chi on defense against negative chi attacks. On average, the character only has to spend 1 point of positive chi per 6 points of negative chi to defend, but low dice rolls means that the defender using positive chi could have all of their chi wiped out with one low negative chi attack, thus becoming utterly defenseless. Even better is learning Control Negative Chi, which means that after you've infected your target with Negative Chi, you can ignite it, doing 1D6 damage, direct to hit points, per point of Negative Chi the target is infected with...even a mild negative chi infection has the potential to be fairly lethal in very short order to the target, compared to Dim Mak's much longer duration. Sure there are more, easily available, cures for Negative Chi Infection, but they don't do you much good when you can be killed in a melee round of combat.
Now someone with Negative Chi Mastery on the other hand is in a much better position to defend themselves, as the rules currently stand at least, as they are unaffected in most cases of Negative Chi attack (while being charged with Negative Chi at least), and still able to defend themselves in the rest of the cases.
Simplistically, it would be almost obvious that the best defense against Negative Chi is Negative Chi Mastery, irregardless of the evil/good issue. Now since there's nothing inherently evil about Negative Chi, it doesn't make a lot of sense for access to it to be restricted to evil alignments.* A good aligned character learning Chakuri-Chi for instance could use several of the powers they received from it without doing anything evil (since Chakuri-Chi is nothing more than the Negative Chi version of Dragon Chi), and Negative Chi Control certainly isn't an evil ability. Ironically, Negative Chi Masters get the best of all worlds simply because they can select one Negative Chi Mastery ability as their first MAP selection, and get SIX chi mastery abilities for the price of one! Oddly this seems to be quite overlooked by many players, selecting, say Chakuri-Chi as your first MAP means you automatically receive Chi Awareness, Chi Relaxation, Defend against Chi Attacks (all as per rev N&S, page 118, second paragraph) AND Negative Chi Control and Negative Chi Attacks (as per rev N&S, page 120, second paragraph of Negative Chi Skills).
My advice if you're going to get really hot and heavy into the whole Chi Combat system is learn Discorporate ASAP, as this is the BEST defense against most chi-based or chi-related attacks (including Dim Mak!). Sadly, this uber-powerful Zenjorike power is easily available to any first level character with a martial art style which allows initial selection of a zenjorike power (Aikido, Lee Kwan Choo, Snake Style, Tai Chi, Taido, and Tien-Hsueh are the best bets, Hsien Hsia and Fu-Chiao Pai both have access to 1st level Zenjorike, but have fixed selections). Of course, there's another reason for learning Discorporate ASAP, as it's the only thing you need to know to become an enlightened immortal (makes that whole Internal Alchemy pathway fairly pointless). Otherwise, learning Negative Chi Mastery is the only way to go (especially if you go with something like Snake Style AND Tai Chi, awesome chi bonus multipliers with that combo).
Due to the vast difference in ability though, I'll probably have to look at revising the offensive/defensive aspects of positive vs negative chi combat and negative vs negative chi combat (in the former case, I'd probably switch the values for defense and offense, i.e. 1 point of positive chi destroys 3D6 incoming negative chi and negative chi destroys 1D6 points of positive chi... in the latter case, I'd probably set up an opposing battle system where both sides can pump negative chi into a conflict, roll 1D20 and add the amount of Negative Chi pumped into the contest, to determine who gets control...sort of like a possession contest, or the living dead immortal's contest of wills against other living dead immortals) just to make things more balanced.
