Krav Maga Rules

I have some Karma and I was thinking about taking a marital arts for Gideon so I read the rules in Arsenal in detail for the first time. It all looks pretty reasonable but Krav Maga gave me pause. It says if you take it you can have the Ready Weapon action as a Free Action. There's no further limitations or clarifications. I don't know anything about Krav Maga but somehow I doubt that it is the martial art of quick drawing a light machinegun (but maybe I'm wrong.) Honestly, I don't see it as being that big of a deal but it seemed odd, especially since there is a martial arts quality called Iajutsu that allows you to quick draw Reach 1 or less sized weapons and it requires a roll to succeed (unlike Krav Maga.) On the other hand, the quick draw does not even take a free action, it's part of your attack so there is still and advantage in taking it. For example if you were say an "archer" with Krav Maga and Iajutsu you could ready your bow as a free action and then quick draw and fire and arrow as a simple action.

What do you guys think?

Its an israli martial art that was designed as a last resort on the battle field. It is seriously one of the most hardcore martial arts in the world. The quick draw rules that already exist state that you can quick draw a pistol sized weapon (with a test i think) as a free action. So i'm not sure why Krav Magra has that extra quick draw maneuver.

It's not actually a quick draw maneuver, it's one of the Krav Maga advantages you can take and it literally says you get to treat the Ready Weapon action as a Free Action (you can use it to ready any weapon no matter the size and no roll is needed.)

idk, maybe they think Krav Magra is the most harcore put a shot gun on target martial art ever. (It might be) I mean if you have an AR strapped to your back being able to instantly ready it is a pretty big advantage for a soldier.

Actually, one of things they specifically train for is how to carry your assault rifle so it's not in the way and how to go from the carry position to the shooting position in a fraction of a second. (As a side note, they also train that if you're close to someone when you do it, you stab them in the face with the end of the barrel.) For Krav Maga specifically, it really should be limited to readying a pistol or assault rifle as a free action, but it's easy to imagine variations (or future additions) which would have the same mechanical beneft for SMGs, or whatever... I would absolutely be on board for limiting it by size, though. Maybe say it doesn't work with anything fired using the Heavy Weapons skill, and just in case it comes up, no crew-served weapons of any size.

Likewise, Iajutsu specifically trains with the katana, but it would be easy to imagine similar techniques being developed for a variety of weapons. Well, the katana is specifically designed to make it a quick-draw weapon, but the SR system doesn't have a high enough resolution for that to matter much, time-wise. In the specific example of the bow, check this out:


So getting a firing rate of 2 shots per combat round is very possible for an unaugmented human. Given that we play a game where the rules allow someone with Wired Reflexes to hold down the trigger of a machine gun and fire three times as many bullets as a regular person holding down the trigger for the same length of time, I don't think it's too much to allow a similar performance for shooting with a bow, since it's actually far more realistic.