*cracks knuckles*
As part of my general streamlining of the combat system: The involved skills train faster, the penalized skills train slower (unless you practice another style that favors them), and the style still gain bonuses in combat if you use the style's techniques in accordance with the style's practices (i.e., overwhelmingly offensive one-on-one punching for Goku stylists). In essence, nothing there has changed; the bonus you get occurs under the same circumstances. In fact, the new way of doing things adds more stuff by virtue of the training time buffs. Additionally, Mastery in a style now constitutes an acceptable achievement for breaking into Elite+ levels on the involved skills. Finally, the mechanical bonus for a fully-mastered style has been re-balanced so that it now compensates for three skill ranks. So styles now have more benefits. One other thing is that the style gives bigger benefits the higher you go. So while a Novice style or a Practitioner style grant relatively tame (but, in a tight situation, decisive) improvements, Expert and Master will be far more significant. Previously the progression was +5/+10/+15/+20. That did not adequately reflect what I wanted Styles to model, so it is now +5/+10/+20/+30.
The sole nerf is that it only compensates for a 10% difference in PL now, given that while 10% is decisive under BOD, 20% is meant to be overwhelming, and style alone can't compensate for that. But yeah, the bonuses to combat performance for styles were always contingent on the PC fighting in a certain way.
So: aside from the PL compensation, what I've done is, variously, improve styles in general and make them do what they're meant to do in a way that's easier for me given the staggering amount of math the combat system involves.
