I personally think that the fighting styles giving a bonus to attack and dodge have always been kinda cool. I thought one of the best things about VE was that characters were completely customizable as opposed to BB where everything is pretty static.
The problem I forsee with this idea is that a mage will (theoretically) be able to keep up in a fist fight with the upcoming werewolves and werewolves will be able to make themselves able to stand toe-to-toe with a mage in a will fight in which case that will completely eliminate any customization of characters. Every character will wind up 12 12 12 with 12 in a fighting style, 12 in Evasion, 12 Reflexes, etc. I guess my question is, are the different styles going to give different abilities that are comparable or are they all going to be carbon copies of the others?
To give an example, it was one of the best (only) cool things about City of Heroes. The customization of your powers/costume and even the power customization was pretty limited.
I like the ability to say, “Well, you know what? If I want a really high attack I'm gonna have to suffer on initiative.” Whereas Joe Bob over here says, “Well I always wanna go first in a fight, so my Will is gonna have to suffer.” I like Steven's idea though about “Fighting Mastery A” and “Fighting Mastery B”. We don't need to have them be centered in some ancient style only taught by Taoist monks just to maintain a sense of realism in the Victorian era. Just a different fighting style.
I personally would love to see both customization on the CS as well as customization from a RP standpoint.
Just my buck and a quarter.