Unarmed Combat: martial arts vs brawling?

That makes perfect sense and feels totally fair.

Also, post all you want, that's why we're here.

Here was my final version (yes, I wanted to seriously increase the power of martial arts):

Unarmed Combat & Brawling
Consider Close Combat to include the basics of brawling. One rank of Expertise in Close Combat grants a basic skill in brawling, allowing the standard Unarmed Strike (1+2DS) at no penalty and no increased Repercussion range.
Unarmed Combat as an advanced skill of Close Combat now makes sense. Unarmed Combat (aka Martial Arts) is now much more effective.

Further, a character with Focus 2+ in Unarmed Combat gains Vicious 1 on all Unarmed Strikes. A character is also always considered to be dual-wielding when using the Unarmed Combat skill, reducing the cost of Swift Strike to one Momentum. Finally, a character with the Martial Artist Talent may add the total number of Unarmed Combat Talents to his Strength for purposes of computing his Melee Damage bonus, but this bonus only applies when using the Unarmed Combat skill.

For example, a Brotherhood Mortificator has Unarmed Combat Expertise 3, Focus 2 and the Martial Artist, Quick Grab, Avoidance, and Sensitive Area Talents. His Strength is normally 9, granting him a +1DS melee damage bonus. For his Unarmed Strikes, his Strength is considered 13, giving him +3DS bonus damage and an Unarmed Strike damage of 1+5DS Vicious 1.

I'm considering stealing these rules for my games.

You bet. I'm considering simplifying a bit. You get Vicious 1 as part of the Martial Arts Talent and then rather than confuse the issue with Talents and effective Strength bonus, I'll just say you get your Focus added as dice of damage. That automatically limits bonus damage to 5 bonus dice just like Strength and gives a good reason to make Unarmed Combat a signature skill.

Another random idea for martial arts is to allow the old "focus mechanic" if you buy a certain talent. Basically, if you make a Daunting D3 Willpower test as a Free Action, you can use Exploit Weakness as a Restricted so long as your next attack uses Unarmed Combat.

Or maybe I should come up with some "style" talent trees for martial arts and incorporate these ideas into those Talents...yea, I like that.

Or maybe I should come up with some "style" talent trees for martial arts and incorporate these ideas into those Talents...yea, I like that.

A long time ago I played Spycraft 2.0. They had an incredibly good martial arts system based around three types of talents.
The first talent called "Style name" Basics would give a small flat bonus plus a special stance giving a bonus to certain actions and a special action, like a double punch that is weaker and harder to hit with but gives two spearate attacks.
The second talent was called "Moves" and gave three special modifiers to certain actions, in MC3 game terms it could provide weapon qualities like Gruesome etc.
The third talent was called "Supremacy" and gave a single significant flat bonus (think extra attribute point or skill focus) and two powerful tricks (like breaking necks of people your character has pinned etc.).

The only problem with Unarmed Combat is that right now the system is quite bare when it comes to things like grappling, kicking etc.
Want to tackle it together?

Homebrewers, unite! Hell yes.

Here are some shower thoughts about what we need to do:
-Grapple action
-Divide Unarmed Damage into Punch, Kick, and Grapple damage.
-If we go with my suggestion to do 3 talents per style we could name them Student, Adept, and Master.
-Besides flat modifiers the talents could give the player ways to modify the three damage options, with only one modifier per attack allowed to represent different moves. E. g. the Boxing Adept uppercut attack would add +2d6 and the Knockdown quality to punch damage.

Different styles we could do:
-Boxing
-Wrestling
-Wolfbane Close Combat/combat krav maga
-Capitol Commando Training
-Mishiman Karate
-Mishiman Powersuit Combat (Oni inspired, I have some crazy ideas for it)
-Kickboxing
-Sumo?

First draft of the Grapple action:

Grapple (Standard Action)
The Character makes an Unarmed Combat test, opposed by his enemy with an Unarmed Combat test. If successful the enemy is then considered held. The grappling character may, but is not forced to, apply grappling damage to the held character.

A held character can only perform two actions, Break Out and Reverse Grapple.
To Break Out of a grapple the character makes an opposed Athletics test, if successful the character is no longer considered held.
To Reverse Grapple the character makes an opposed Unarmed Combat test, if successful the character is no longer considered held and the opposing character is considered held. The successful character may apply grappling damage after the test.
A character holding another character in a grapple can release the held character as a free action.

Monstrous Creatures cannot be grappled by humanoids.

I'd allow either a Strength roll (Athletics, I guess) or Acrobatics to escape a grapple in addition to Unarmed Combat. More later on this!

The problem with too many options for escaping a grapple is that it can easily become useless.
I would rule that escaping with Unarmed Combat is a normal opposed test, and with Athletics and Acrobatics you need to have an extra success on your roll.

Another idea, I spoke about having 3 different damage values for punching, kicking and grapple. I think it would be better to have one unarmed damage and then modify it with the grapple or punch quality as applicable.

I have experience with a wide array of grappling rules in games. Most recently, I've used GURPS Technical Grappling. And let me tell you, that title is no lie. It's crazy detailed. MC3 does not need that.

I think we need the following basic "grappling" moves:

1. "Judo throw"
2. Joint (arm/wrist/leg) locks and damaging versions thereof
3. Pin
4. Choke hold

It should be possible to use grappling to injure someone in armor (joints are always vulnerable). It should be possible to subdue someone with grappling.

I would not bother having different damage ratings for punching and kicking--the "Unarmed Strike" is intentionally vague and I don't think 2d20 has the resolution required to make meaningful differences between punches, kicks, knee strikes, elbow strikes, etc. (GURPS does though!)

I would use a lot of opposed rolls but I'd be careful of penalizing untrained resistance rolls too much because raw strength is important in grappling (up until the grappler gets you in the joint lock).

I have experience in getting punched, and kicked, and grappled. Not really proud of that though.

The four types of moves can be distilled into two:
-Throw
-Grapple with and without damage

About damage:
Ok, if we simplify the system and keep a single Unarmed Damage, we should find a way to provide unarmed fighters a way to add various weapon qualities to their unarmed attacks.

If there are too many ways to get out of a grapple easily then it will become useless. Thanks to talents like Rigorous Training a strong character can easily rack up enough successes to outspend a skilled grappler.

True, we don't want Athletics to be the "I escape" skill.

As for appropriate weapon qualities, I think we allow: Stun (obviously), Nonlethal, and possibly, after a joint-lock, Unforgiving.

As for appropriate weapon qualities, I think we allow: Stun (obviously), Nonlethal, and possibly, after a joint-lock, Unforgiving.

Are you talking Unarmed Damage (general) or Unarmed Damage (grapple)?
Because if it's the former then I do not agree at all. I agree if it's only for grappling.