It's easier to slip a pair of shock-gloves into an interior jacket pocket, than it is to hide a stun baton. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I always wanted a telescoping stunstaff or a collapsible stun baton. You'd think that Ares would have made something to fill the niche by now...

Let's not lose sight of something important though: Melee is friggin' terrible in SR4 and ironically its role is to help hard-counter the poor fraggers that over invested in melee but aren't well-optimized. It's not really a question of lethality, but of context; a knife or taser club can plausibly defeat you in SR4, but the cost of having a reasonable melee defense is for the most part lower than the cost of having a reasonably threatening melee offense. In such an environment, what I really want for most characters is comprehensive melee defense at as low of a cost as I can manage, and that's where Unarmed wins out over Clubs in my books. Clubs may have a mild advantage in the form of reach, but I consider that to be less than a wash when you consider these three points:

1. Don't have to draw your weapons, can't be disarmed short of being tied or dismembered, blah, blah, nothing to see here that hasn't been covered.

2. Again, this has been covered, but subdual is one of the few non-magical ways to immobilize someone without resorting to injury. I'm not a big fan of strength, but your bog standard ork or troll with 5 or 7 Strength after muscle augs can likely drag off your average human or elf extraction target just fine. Note that Subdual damage is also just plain Strength, not Strength/2, so in pinch it can still lap pistol whipping someone to death after a turn or two and is reasonably safe in the meantime if you're fighting one on one.

3. Oh, hey, it's subdual again. Remember when I said "comprehensive melee defense" earlier? Well, once someone establishes a lock in Subdual combat the victim must resist with Strength+Unarmed Combat before taking any actions that require physical movement. Now, I don't really advocate boosting Strength beyond being an Ork with Muscle Augmentations as a luxury buy, but taking Unarmed 4 instead of Clubs 4 and at least having 5 dice plus Edge to throw at the problem if a rent-a-cop puts you in a headlock? It's a questionable use of points, but I can tell you from personal experience that people like retelling the story of how your slick elf samurai with dumped strength got noogied unconscious by a dwarf janitor.

Anyway, though, yeah, clubs vs. unarmed is pretty close and if you really like the flavor of being more than a dabbler in melee than I would actually recommend Clubs over Unarmed. Problem is, being more than a dabbler isn't something I'd recommend unless your char op fu is strong and feel reasonably comfortable that your character can contribute with bp to spare.

That can be done with blades or clubs as well.

Otherwise I agree with you, optimizing melee is only worth it if you have a way to avoid/resist having to run through a hail of gunfire.

Don't mind me, coming in and missing the point of the topic entirely.
What I say is, Automatics is perfect to use on the battlefield, but on the streets you want Pistols. A Heavy Pistol is likely to be less restricted than a Machine Pistol, which uses Automatics, and does more damage per shot. Also, weapons that use Automatics tend to be harder to conceal, and recoil is always gonna be a concern. With a handgun, you can just add Electronic Firing or a Personalised Grip and call it a day, leaving room for other mods, whereas getting a recoil compensation rating up to 9 (allowing two Full Bursts or one Long Burst with no recoil modifier) would not only use up all your mod slots, but also result in a heavily customised and noticable weapon. If you have a pistol in a concealable holster, I may never be able to tell, even with a close look, that you could shoot down up to 20 people in about 10 seconds. But I can see your assault rifle poking out there, and you couldn't add a chameleon coating, because you needed that auto-adjusting underbarrel weight.

When you bring a gun to a knife fight, make sure you bring the right one. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

A gunblade? *Noise of every gun in the thread getting pointed this way*

*Hands you an Ares Bravo* Go on, get cracking.

There is no rule for this. there are only three states an item can have. Freely available, Restricted and Forbidden. AFAIK There is no SR4 publication that further distinguishes in the Restricted group.

The skill is not responsible but the Firing Mode. A BF or FA modded Pistol will have even more problems with recoil than a machine pistol.

If you restrict yourself to SA this is true.

That is why you use two SMGs with 5 RC each in a short range firefight. Easy to get not very noticeable and packs enough punch.

I didn't mean Restricted, just restricted. The Availability for most pistols is lower. Didn't mean for confusion.

One of the only good things in War! is the Victorinox Smartstaff. I think arsenal also has a telescoping staff.

There's a few ways to do this.
The underbarrel weapon mod in arsenal has a special mention of being able to be used on melee weapons. Using the specific example of the 'sword with a pistol in the hilt' example, you can replace pistol with taser - and use a defiance ex shocker, which has melee capability. The special environment mod for being electrified/having insulation should protect the user.
The other is to start with a stunstick and add Powered Easy Breakdown. This lets it be assembled in two complex actions. A smartgun system(does nothing) and a pilot upgrade 1 gives it Actions it can use to extend itself on command. It's not ideal, but it works.
Theoretically, it's possible to just use a smartlink and a node script(the same kind that makes smartguns automatically eject empty clips), but a smartlink alone doesn't have actions it can spend.

Not exactly, and not without preparation, dealing damage and substances of questionable legality. The toxins which paralyze opponents without inflicting further damage are injection vector,* which means that in order to dose someone with Gamma-Scopolamine you need to come at them with a knife and deal damage on the initial attack or have them in a vulnerable enough position that the GM is OK with handwaving things and allowing you to get them on a no damage attack with a plain jane syringe--btw, one of the easier ways of scoring that vulnerable status is having your buddy hit them with a subdue attack for you first. Your other club and blade based options in SR4 all involve stun damage and otherwise beating someone unconscious. Which, incidentally, doesn't necessarily even work if they're under the influence of a Pain Editor or a sustained Awaken spell. On top of that, even immediate speed drugs don't take effect until the end of the combat turn, so it's actually possible to get your net hits on your attack and still get shot or knifed for your trouble whereas once someone is successfully hit with a Subdual attack they must win a test prior to taking other physical actions--in SR4 the half Nelson is seriously one of the quickest ways to tie up an inferior opponent without undue harm to either party. It's simply way more legal, way safer and makes much less of a scene if your li'l fight happens to be at the pub instead of some kind of black ops scenario.


*Ymir is a contact vector Paralysis attack but it is illegal like whoa and has a bad habit of giving people a bad case of dead.

You are mistaken. I'm not talking about applying poison to a target. You can subdue an opponent with clubs and blades as well as unarmed combat. You only can't improve your grip with the first two skills. This might be a mistake on the part of the writers.

Ah, yeah, that's right, strictly speaking you can initiate a subdual with melee attacks but everything else runs off of Unarmed.


In my defense, nobody's ran a primary melee character at my table in about 4 years because we're not masochists.

Strictly speaking only escaping the grapple and improving the grip needs Unarmed Combat, everything else either works with all melee skills or is independent of skills.

Forearm Slide + Collapseable Baton + (GM approved) Powered Slide = Fast Baton Wielding.


Machine Pistols have SA mode also. I use MPs as large-capacity pistols, not as short-lived death-spray.


From my archives...:
Gunblade

Vibro-Lasblade

Why does it need to be powered?
A Forearm Slide already gives you a free action to equip a weapon, and extending the baton is a non-action. Therefore no GM approval really needed here. *shrug*

Allow me to explain
*uses Tim Taylor Vocie* "MOAR POWA!"

That is something I miss from SR3, even if it was a hassle at times to consult the table. The varying levels of restricted.

If you make the Ares Predator into the underbarrel weapon, the Predator needs the Underbarrel Weapon mod.

It has never been clear whether the mod slots are applied to the weapon taking an underbarrel weapon or the weapon attached under the barrel:This implies the mod goes to the prospective underbarrel weapon.
Unless they really try to say only really big weapons can be made into an underbarrel weapon, this implies the mod goes to the host.

Maybe both weapons require the mod.

This would be ridiculous. How is slapping a grenade launcher bola launcher (to use an equally exotic weapon) on a rail any different from attaching a crossbow to the same rail?

The point being that the weapon with the underbarrel mod needs to be modded to accept underbarrels and the underbarrel weapon itself must be modded to be used in an underbarrel mount. That's why both could feasible require the modification.

This makes no sense if you can buy grenade launchers, flamethrowers and even bola launchers as accessories.

Subdual, while wearing armor or clothing with shock frills (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)