This general striking style emphasizes speed, agility and defense. Practitioners block, bob, weave and pick their shots whenever they see their opponent’s defense falter. The core rulebook’s Kung Fu style is a specialized version of this Merit.

It uses the following maneuver progression:

Focused Attack (•): Physical conditioning and accuracy allow your character to deliver blows at vulnerable spots on targets. Penalties to hit specific targets are reduced by one. See “Specified Targets,” p. 165. Even when a specific part of an opponent is not targeted, armor penalties to your character’s Brawl attacks are reduced by one.

Duck and Weave (••): Your character is trained to instinctively duck and evade an opponent’s blows. Use the higher of your character’s Dexterity or Wits to determine his Defense when dealing with Brawl-based attacks only (not against Weaponry attacks). If a combination of Brawl- and Weaponry-based attacks is focused on your character in the same turn, use his normal Defense against both.

Defensive Attack (•••): Your character has mastered the ability to fight defensively. When using this maneuver, your character gains +2 to his Defense for the turn, but any attack he makes suffers a -2 penalty. He can move no more than his Speed while performing a Defense Attack maneuver in a turn.

Whirlwind Strike (••••): Your character can unleash a storm of blows against an opponent. He can make a number of extra Brawl attacks for each point of Dexterity that he has above 2 in a single action. Each extra at-tack is made at a cumulative -1 modifier. Thus, he can perform a total of two attacks at Dexterity 3 (the second of which is at -1), three attacks at Dexterity 4 (the third of which is at -2), and four at Dexterity 5 (the fourth of which is at -3). All attacks must be on the same target.
Drawback: Your character cannot use his Defense against any attack in the same turn in which he intends to use this maneuver. If he uses Defense against attacks that occur earlier in the Initiative roster, before he can perform this maneuver, he cannot perform the maneuver this turn. He is too busy bobbing and weaving out of the way of attacks.

Destroy Defense (•••••): Your character uses clever combinations, feints, sidesteps and perhaps furtive grabbing (called “sticking” or “trapping” in some martial arts) to progressively destroy your opponent’s ability to defend himself. Whenever he successfully hits an unarmed target with a Brawl attack, he reduces her Defense by 1 against his next attack. This is cumulative across multiple, successive attacks, up to a maximum Defense penalty equal to the lower of the attacker’s Wits or Dexterity. After that, the target recovers her full Defense, and the character must try to impose this penalty once again.
Your character can use Destroy Defense across multiple rounds as long as he does nothing except deliver successful Brawl attacks. If he misses or performs any other action, the running penalty imposed by the Merit automatically “resets” to 0.
The target retains her full Defense against other attackers; she’s only extraordinarily vulnerable to the maneuver user’s Brawl attacks. This maneuver does combine with Combination Blows or Whirlwind Strike. Destroy Defense’s penalty is cumulative with the normal Defense penalty against multiple attacks, if it applies.

Schools: Common Evasive Striking arts include Bruce Lee’s Jun Fan Kung Fu (or “Original Jeet Kune Do”), American or Hawaiian Kenpo, rapid-fire kung fu styles like wing chun and Filipino panantukan boxing. Remember that specific styles may have specialized maneuvers (see p. 106 ).