I picked up Green Ronin's Hero's Handbook for their DC Adventures game, because I'm a sucker for superhero games and I happen to have recently reread Birds of Prey and Suicide Squad. It's pretty clear how you'd use it to do mainstream DC Comics stuff, but I'm not sure how you'd build distinct martial artists. There's this sub-genre of DCU stories about characters like Bronze Tiger, Cassandra Cain, Lady Shiva, and so on — Chuck Dixon writes a lot of them — who are martial artists with varying styles and subtle differences in approach and so on. What elements in DC Adventures can be used to reflect these?
In the Hero system, I'd do it by buying different maneuvers — some focus on accuracy, some focus on controlling an opponent's movement, some focus on damage. I guess removing the DCU aspect of the question, I'm asking how you'd model the difference between a hard striking style like karate and a grappling style like jujitsu.
Best Answer
Keep the PL low, and concentrate on the Combat Advantages (née Feats) listed on page 70. That's where you find elements analogous to HERO's maneuvers. A practitioner of a "hard style" might use Accurate Attack, Improved Critical, and Takedown; someone using a grappling style could use Grabbing Finesse, Improved Hold, and Prone Fighting.