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I think I agree that they shoudln'y be "free' attacks. As far as melee attacks go, first, they should have to actually be explained as part of soms logical series of moves.

I don't think being able to repeat two identical attacks (barring things like jabs) in a turn makes sense anyway. What I have seen done is that a very well trained fighter will find a way to take advanatge of the positions they end up in to throw in some extra strike somewhere while flowing through a series of moves.

I don't have a problem with the new "extra attack at a penalty" solution, really. That works fine too. Although, perhaps from a realism perspective there should be some minimum skill level to even be allowed to attempt that. Not from any concern of play balance. We probably don't care too much if some minimal skill character is throwing away their turn on two totally unlikely attacks, but just that, from my experience, even trying to do such a thing requires a certain degree of coordination and experience (skill) to even make it work without falling over or something.:) As far as the gun thing, it is a little different, since we are talking more about fractions of attacks as multipliers to RoFs.

As for the ninja schools thing: Japanese martial arts schools hand down scrolls called Menkyo, certifying the succession of head of the school. When a Soke (Head of the school) retires, they willl give this scroll to their successor, proving that they are the legitimate head of the school, along with passing on various documents the school possesses. They keep lists of successive Soke, and so forth. (Indeed, many other non-Japanese schools do the same.)

These documents are the proof of a school's historical lineage.

The Bujinkan doesn't claim to be the only surviving authentic Ninja school to discredit other schools. Any school with the proper documents would be accepted as such amongst the Japanese Budo community. There just aren't any such (Ninja) schools. In Japan, nobody would be presumptious enough to even make such a claim without being able to offer documentation.

There are, as mentioned, people who privately possess various scrolls from other ninja traditions. And there are those, like historical re-enactors who take part in local festivals, who preserve certain aspects of ninja heritage as historical artifacts. But none of these people claim to run an accreditated fighting school.

I understand what you are saying about schools claiming to be "the one and only TRUE -jutsu/do/fu (TM)." But with us, there just aren't any "rival schools."

Of course, maybe there are secret Ninja clans still out there...they are Ninja after all. But they probably won't reveal themselves for the benefit of the RPG community. ;)

The scarcity of schools isn't limited to Ninjutus. There are AFAIK only about 15 real Kenjutsu schools left, for example.

As real combat arts became marginalized following the establishment of the Tokugawa Shogunate, and again with the Meiji restoration, the surviving Soke had fewer and fewer students to choose their successors amongst. Talented martial artists often ended up collecting the Menkyo of more than one school. Then, they might pass all those menkyo on to one exceational student, who would accumulate others elsewhere, etc Our Soke has Menkyo from 16 schools, for example.

Because Ninja made up their own radically different subculture that operated outside mainstream Japanese culture, and was even in it's heyday a small minority amongst the prevailing samurai culture, it left correspondingly few lineages.

Someone might try to follow the path of the European medieval arts, which all died out, and try to resurrect a school from surviving scrolls, piecing together the techniques through study of the records and experimentation. But again, AFAIK, nobody has gone this route with Ninjutsu.