This is a spin off from the monofilament sword thread. People are complaining that they miss the old rules where melee combat was an opposed roll with the winner being the one that hit the other.

Some people like it, but others dislike it because all it does is give the wired samurai who moves at 3IP, merely the ability to get pummelled three times as fast.

Proposed fix:

Go back to opposed rolls but use Reaction + Combat Skill instead of Agility + Combat skill. Now the wired reflexes / synaptic boosters have a significant effect, but can't make up for a complete lack of skill.

Comments? Thoughts? Abuse?

Not a bad idea. Another suggestion would be to have the Initiative modifier from wires/synaptic/drugs, etc also simply modify armed/unarmed combat.
Same basic result, that wired reflexes give an edge, but it doesn't change the linked attribute.
Not that Agility gets any shortage of love.

As I said in that the other thread, if that cybersammy runs the risk of getting pummeled in melee, he mybe should stay out of pummeling-range...

Are you suggesting rolling rea+skill both for attack and defense? People may worry that this departs from a core mechanic (AFAIK all attacks safe for blind fire use agi).

I'd just keep it as it is:
Attacker rolls agi+skill. (he's attacking, so he has to be fast and swift to get that hit in)
Defender rolls rea+skill. (competent fighter or no, he is defending, so he has to be alert and keep that mofo off his back)
Then:
Compare hits.
The guy with less hits gets bludgeoned/stabbed.
Rinse and repeat unil desired effect (usually death of opponent sets in) sets in.

This is complete garbage. Melee combat is already weak sauce because:

• It takes a complex action instead of a simple action.
• It allows targets a larger dicepool for their defense check.
• It only goes a few meters out from your body.
• It can't be used in burst fire or suppressive fire modes.
• It's very difficult to use from prone or other protected positions.

Given all of those weaknesses, throwing in an extra one in which even attempting to enter melee combat carries a non-trivial risk of you having your own head cut off on your own turn is bullshit. Seriously man, what the hell?

The counterattack rules were crap in every previous version of Shadowrun and made close combat a simple check to see who had more people on their side and whose entire team exploded. Bringing them back is a dumb idea that is really dumb.

Making a melee attack is already suboptimal compared to pulling a trigger. Increasing the costs of using actions to attack in melee is a really obviously shit idea.

-Frank

I was. But this idea occured to me about fifteen minutes ago. I throw the floor open to other suggestions.

You're entirely wrong about the old way being weak.

Entirely. You can call it weak all you want, but when you have a street samurai with 3 initiative passes getting 6 attacks with his dikote katana that does more damage than a sniper rifle, and is vs. impact, I dare you to call it weak.

As it stands, Melee needs help.

I was just talking to someone about doubling the damage of melee attacks before hits to make it more viable, but their are ways to make that freaking out of hand.

The other option I was throwing out was to make a melee attack a simple action instead of a complex. Melee would still have all those penalties Frank mentioned along with the character having to up his strength stat to be useful, points gun characters don't need to waste. Also, I believe there is a 2 dice dodge penalty if you are in melee and want to defend against gunfire....

Pretty rough road there.

I may be in the minority, but I like the old rules - it gave a much better flow, in my opinion, to melee combat. This is entirely subjective, but in my game, it never caused problems, so I'll use this a reflection of the rules we had in place before.

I liked the old rules because hand to hand combat is not "my turn - your turn." I wouldn't say gunfights are necessarily so either, but they certainly have the potential to be which melee doesn't really. An opposed roll seems much more suitable to me.

The only thing that the opposed roll system lacks in terms of capturing fight options, is a way to model someone who is willing to take the blows in order to strike the other person. There should be a fairly simple way to model that though.

one thought that dawned on me was to allow a defender to burn a waiting action pass to take a counterattack. that way one gets away from both the mundane fu master that can counter people into submission no matter what they are fighting, while allow a limited risk in going into a melee and introducing some kind of fluidity to it all.

hmm, was there not some redone initative systems for sr3 that had similar properties?

OK. In a pure opposed roll system, attacking enemies essentially gives them extra attack actions. Therefore attacking enemies in melee is a sucker's gambit. Even if all you have is a knife, you should still throw it at your enemy rather than deign to make a melee attack. So that's pretty much off the table.

We could also have an opposed roll system in which the target has to rob his next action to get his counterattack in. That makes full defense sort of not happen and in any case is much like the position we are in now save that it doesn't allow for neither or both characters to get hit.

So what if we made it two opposed rolls and cost an action to counter attack? You know, first you'd have an opposed roll to see if your attack hit, followed by another opposed roll to see if you were hit in return. That would make a lot of sense: attacking in melee wouldn't be obviously stupid, yet it would still carry the very real risk of you getting struck by your opponent in return. You know what would make this run even smoother? Having each of the opposed rolls going off in order of initiative, so that the faster character would have the first chance to land a blow and the slower character would get their swing later on...

Oh wait, that's the normal system out of the basic book. The one which actually works and doesn't do anything retarded. My mistake.

-Frank

Frank, you're hilarious when you're an a-hole. ;)

I still say leave it alone, and if you want hyper-speed initiative monsters to get a bonus in melee combat (not a bad idea, really), just give them bonus dice in melee combat for having initiative boosters.
Wired reflexes/synaptic boosters/adept powers/drugs/etc give +1 bonus dice per extra IP to melee attack and defense tests. Simple. Streamlined. Minimal change to core rules.
Hmmm, I might want to add this.
YMMV

You might be thinking of the Cain/Stumps Initiative system. My search-fu is weak, but I did find a description of it in this thread in the post by Modesitt (third post overall).

I used it with much success but it did require some extra bookkeeping. My group has actually even thought of trying to run it in SR4 just for kicks, though we seem to like SR4's base initiative system as a group.

he still can. even in SR4, unless i'm mistaken, the wizened old kung fu master gets to use his melee skill to defend himself, so the sammy's not going to get a hit in regardless--and when it's the kung fu master's turn, he'll lay the sammy out. but the master won't beat up the sammy faster than he'd beat up anyone else.

Undless of course the target tries to run away or past you - then it's a Free Action.

Hm... now that's something to toy with: Reduce the defenders Dicepool to Reaction/Skill only (whatever is greater) - plus Dodge/Gymnastics if he's on full defense.

Well, at least they get Knockdown and Subduing.

I find it hard to believe that more people don't think the old counterattack rules were a total cluster#$%&. Oh well.

Honestly, I'd just drop a melee attack from a complex to a simple action and call it a day. That'd double your damage potential per pass as well as allow people to sprint during a charge as opposed to merely running, increasing the melee characters effective move+attack range. It'd make rampaging cyber trolls with double digit athletics pools into mobile ginzu death machines. And yes, I'm perfectly fine with that.


Subduing would be pretty brutal though...

My only complaints with melee combat is its agility based, and I hate the rules for attacking multiple targets. If you are dividing your pool you minds as well say, you can only attack multiple targets if your going on a rampage in a kindergarten class.

Also if I wanted to add a counterattack feature into the game I'd just make the physical adept counterattack ability a default rule. Your net successes from a block or parry give you extra dice in your next melee attack.

Knasser, I have a question. If you are house ruling melee attacks to include counterattacks like SR3, what will you do with the Combat Sense adept power, which currently increases your Reaction for defending agaiinst attacks? Adepts with high levels of combat sense could go from hard to hit, to suicidal to attack.

Also, I'm not sure how I feel about both sides using skill plus Reaction. Trolls have no penalty to reaction - an elf street sammie and a troll street sammie are equally likely to have a base Reaction of 5. Agility-wise, though, trolls have a penalty and elves have a bonus. But suddenly, that super-agile elf and that lumbering troll are on equal footing (actually, reach will give the troll a slight edge over the elf). And dwarves would get screwed over.

I dunno. Trying to graft SR3 rules onto SR4 doesn't work that well - the two systems are too fundamentally different, to me.

so its better when elves have an edge?

Trolls should have an edge in melee combat they should have a large edge over others. Instead elves have a bigger edge and trolls can really hurt people when there fighting suckers.

I accepted it when trolls were the melee kings in SR3, but it seemed a bit off to me. To me, they should be more like they are in SR4 - less likely to hit you, but capable of laughing off your hits, and when they do hit you, you really feel it. You can still make a tough troll bruiser in SR4, but you do it by going the strong tank route, not by having someone who magically wins dice contests. YMMV.

We have a house rule that goes something like this:


When a character is defending against a melee attack he can dodge/block/parry as normal or counter attack.

Counter Attack:
Attacker attacks. Roll Agility + skill, as per normal.
Defender counter attacks. Roll Agility +skill.
Compare hits.
If Defender has more hits than the attacker he lands an attack using net hits.
If Attacker has equal to or greater hits than defender then attacker lands an attack using all his hits, not net hits.

I always make the defender declare this action before any dice are rolled of course, that includes NPC's so that players don't whine.

I kinda think that the 3rd ed was right in that trolls should be hitting someone more often, and hurting them more, than the other races. They have longer reach and are much stronger. When you see boxing that's why they always have a stat for reach and weight. If you're bigger and stronger than someone you'll hit them more and harder. Thats why there are weight classes, otherwise the little guy's would get creamed. It wouldn't be them dodging the blows and lasting a bunch of rounds the big guy would move in and land a couple of blows and the little guy would be done. Thats how the trolls should work. When they move in for melee, you don't dodge their blows because you can't. Being big doesn't make you slow.

indeed. in melee, speed and finesse are nice, but brute power is better if you can get it.

But you already have that brute power represented in the Body and Strength Attributes. The smaller, more agile guys don't generally have a problem hitting the big guys, they have a problem hurting them.

The elf uses his superior agility to land a hit with his katana, the troll says "Hurrrr, I soak more damage than that shavin'", then the troll misses a few swats with his bear-like hands before finally smacking the elf, who flies backward into the wall and makes a slight indentation in it.

I wouldn't compare trolls to boxing heavyweights, who are still lean and fast. They would be more like guys with giantism, or sumo wrestlers. Like one of the UFCs, before everyone was an MMA specialist and they still had things like sumo wrestlers and karate dans. They had a kempo guy facing a sumo wrestler. The kempo guy got in more hits, but when the sumo guy hit, he sent the kendo guy right through the octagon fence.

Now, the kempo guy actually won that particular fight (although he hurt his hand too badly to continue), but if you put two SR4 builds head-to-head, an elf with high agility and a troll tank, I would probably bet on the tank.

Frank: Chill out. It's a few house rules, not piss in your NERPS.