I fear you have understood them all too well.
> * Defending against magic with your disciplines. This is
> not of much use, at least initially. With the -20 penalty
> the default defense at 14 is better until you reach 15w
> and then you are still better off using other appropriate
> abilities if they are higher than discipline-20.
>
Yes, mysticism gives you the special ability to defend against magic extraordinarily badly using unusual abilities if you want to. I can't think why you would actually do this in play, though.
> * You don't get any magic until you have reached 1w2 in all
> three disciplines. And then you can't leave the school
> until you reached 1w in one power. That means that the
> narrator has to bend things a lot in order to include a
> martial artist character in a mixed campaign. If the
> campaign revolves around a dojo, it's fine, you can play
> the struggle to reach that point, but a lone starting
> character in a mixed group is a problem.
>
Yep, not only is it poor magic, but its the hardest to get.
> * The strike mechanic also has some oddities. The special
> effect only happens if you drive the opponent below 0 AP.
> But at 0 AP the opponent is already out of the contest
> which makes the special effect less important and less
> dramatically interesting.
>
The strike mechanic is very odd. Its effectively a complex way of making extended contests behave like simple contests with very nasty comnsequences. Unless you are fighting a supervillain witha large number of APs (around double yours), most strikes reduce contests to a single roll. There are two big problems with this. The first is that it reduces what are supposed to be the most dramatic and interesting contests to single rolls - completely against he spirit of the whole extended contest mechanic as far as I can see. The other is that in actual real play, strikes (which remember you can't even learn until you have various w2 abilities around) are likely to be one of your lowest abilities, so using a strike with its low chance of success and extreme consequences is likely to be a curious form of suicide. Unless you are a muchkin or an NPC, who can ignore normal character advancement patterns.
> * Other magics are vaguely described and can thus be used in
> many ways. The few mystic powers are described are quite
> specific in their effects.
>
Yep.
> All this and the heavy cost in hero points in using the
> chancy strikes make it feel like martial artists are NPCs
> only.
>
Pretty much. Or at least, any supplement that tries to make martial artistsinto PCs is probably not going to do it with these rules.
> Finally, the examples in the descriptive text "transform
> hands to eagle talons" and "ride a thunderbolt into battle"
> don't sound like either counters or strikes. How do you fit
> them into the concept?
You don't - it doesn't really work that well. Counters and strikes are both very limited mechanics in comparison to feats or spells.
These rules were not really playtested at all, as far as I am aware. It shows.
Regards David the curmudgeonly 'rules consultant'
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