Firearms:

• Defended against with [Attribute]
• Ranged
• Simple Action
• Penalty vs. adjacent combatants

Close Combat:

• Defended against with [Attribute] + [Skill]
• Melee
• Complex Action
• Interception

Melee is inferior to Ranged combat in SR4, which few contest. While Melee does have some distinct advantages, it is generally agreed they do not compensate for the three distinct advantages using a firearm gives - Simple Action to attack, no skill on Defense, & the distance advantage.

This is an issue that has bothered me for quite some time, as I somewhat strongly feel the two should be roughly balanced against each other. When I began my current game, I brought this issue up with my players and asked for their opinions, proposing adjusting Ranged Defense to Reaction + Dodge (+ Dodge if on Full Defense) in an attempt to balance the two against each other. My players voted against that option, instead suggesting making melee attacks a Simple Action if I wanted to make them more powerful. In the end, I decided to try the Simple Action approach, but have found it quite unsatisfying (I do not think anyone has even used this ruling - players or me - and one of the players is an unarmed specialist).

As such, I am revisiting my original idea; instead of making close combat more effective directly, doing so by reducing the overall effectiveness of ranged combat. I will not be implementing this change in my current campaign (unless all players vote for it), but am interested in opinions on this house rule for potential future campaigns.

There are three primary effects I foresee from this change.
1) Melee combat becomes viable (in comparison to Ranged) - this is the desired result, & so I do not see any problems arising because of it.
2) Combat in general becomes less dangerous - this is not necessarily a bad thing, & if it becomes a problem, can be easily compensated for by increasing opposition.
3) Dodge becomes a "must-have" skill - this is the potential problem I am concerned about. If the change brings the importance of having Dodge up to that of other notable skills, such as Perception, there will be no real issue. However, if it makes Dodge the single most important skill, it becomes an issue, and one I am unsure how to fix.



Observations / Suggestions?

I toyed with another, smaller houserule:

When in melee range, use melee rules - even for 'ranged' attacks.

We use the same houserule. (It wasn't even intentional)
I'm the GM and didn't even notice that this was not the default rule until we were about 2 years into our campaign.
Goes a long way to increase the survivability of HTH combatants.

I see no reason to change anything. The firearm IS superior, but melee is still needed when the distance is short. There is a reason why people adopted handheld weapons over fists and feet. The distance weapon is the next logical step--and firearms are the current implementation of personal distance weapons.

Rather than change the rules, change your attitude. Put melee combat where it belongs and use the right tool for the job at hand.


***

If I were going to change the rules, I'd simply change damage. It is less disruptive and the higher damage reflects the truly nasty nature of impact weapons hitting the body.

For hands, feet and biological weapons, I'd set damage to STR/2 + x.

For any sort of handheld weapon, I'd use STR + x, unless it was crudely made or not intended for fighting. At that point, it would be STR - [1,2,3].

Lousy rules, completely unnecessary. That and "don't bring a knife to a gunfight"

There's lots of ways to get your ranged defense pool up... or penalize the other guys. One of the biggest is the good old 'full defense'... learn it, love it and how to use it.

Melee has two big rolls (which actually make combat MORE deadly, not less). The first is movement control, melee is one of the few things which can pin people in position unable to move. The second is, penalizing defense pools. By 'pinning' a target in melee, I make it easier for my allies to shoot (-3 defense, in melee... normally slightly offset by the GM by -2 cover from ally.... but when your pool starts bigger, 1 for 1 trades are normally in your favor).

And makes people using firearms more worried about keeping their distance.

There's a reason why people are trained to keep a minimum distance: People trying to bring a gun to a knive-fight usually end up dead.

Guns kill people. You can't dodge bullets. Swords kill people too, but you can dodge them. More importantly though, why are you/your players taking melee combat skills if they suck? Guns are cheap. Spend a day looking through alleys, and you'll probably be able to pick up a free Predator.

Now, I'm not saying that Melee is bad, nor underpowered.

Troll with a Combat Axe.
Strength: 16 is easy, right? 18 is even possible I think.
Agility: 6 Since we're making a melee character, we can probably swing it.
Combat Axe - DV: (Str/2)+4P Reach:2
Axe Skill: 4? Yeah, ok.

So, base DV: 12.
We roll our Agility+Axe = 10 dice.
But we have a friend in melee, taking us to 11 dice.
The defender (using his gun) can take a -3 from our reach.
d6 → [1, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 6] = 4 hits. Cool.

The defender will dodge. We'll give him 10 dice for his (Dodge + Reaction). But then he get's a -3 from our reach, leaving him with 7.
d6 → [1, 2, 3, 4, 4, 5, 6] = 2 hits, leaving us with a net 2 hits.

DV: 14.
Defender rolls Body(4) + Impact(4) = 8 dice
d6 → [1, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 5, 6] = 3 hits.

Defender takes 9 boxes of physical damage.

Yep, I'd never play a melee character. That dude with the gun didn't even die!

*Troll stabs himself if the face with the Axe and dies*

Chibu...

Good trick (especially w/ pistols above). Melee harden the pistol, get the clubs (pistols or block/parry) skill... and use it to parry the incoming blow.

Ending of Cowboy bebop was great in that way.. classic case of gun adept vs. sword adept.

Hell yeah! I definitely agree. One of my favorite characters did just that. I eventually had a custom Pistol made whit the 'sight' on the top replaced with a sharpened blade that formed around the barrel for the absurdity of counter attacking (SR2/3 if you have more net successes on counter attacking, you hit instead). However, Mr. Random Security Guard probably doesn't have that =( Poor guy...

Edit: Do note, that I was simply trying to explain that I believe that melee combat is already good enough. If you still do not agree, that's fine as the game should be fun for those who play. But after showing 9 boxes of physical damage, I can't really think of a good way to 'balance' it more than that... I suppose that, I think that if you made it STR+X DV (as opposed to STR/2) in most cases it would turn out to be similarly powerful to guns. However, when a troll like that shown would be doing a base of 20 DV... I think that becomes quite out of balance.

Sounds like one of those stupid gunblades from final fantasy.

Really, though just treat it like a bayonet or survival knife and you're fine.

Well, it's probably not what you want to hear, but melee combat *is* less effective than guns IRL. That's why even the countries famous for martial arts carry assault rifles. You can bet the Chinese military is trained in kung fu or something of that sort, but you can also bet they don't go charging into battle armed with nothing but tai chi swords. That would be highly insane.

Now game wise, if you want a game that's more cinematic, more kung fu oriented, more choppy and less shooty, than go for it. Might be fun. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with balancing melee and ranged combat, other than the issue of realism. But realism shouldn't get in the way of game mechanics, because the system's not that realistic anyway. IRL you can't dodge bullets -- you can make yourself a hard target, but you can't literally dodge them like you do in Shadowrun. And IRL, there's a huge penalty to trying to block a sword with your hands, but not in Shadowrun. So, whatever floats your boat. I prefer the status quo, however, because guns are clearly superior in any kind of quasi realistic world.

Yeah, Final fantasy minus the hugeness and (overt) absurdity was the inspiration. And yeah, i was planning to put on a bayonet, but it would have looked dumb on a pistol and well. And looking dumb is not an option in a cyberpunk game (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

'Attitude' has nothing to do with this. Nor does realism (although someone trained staying out of the line of fire is usually capable of doing so).


Which creates an inconsistent rules set, which is (in any game) at best undesirable. Further, damage is not the issue I am attempting to address, & increasing it could potentially unbalance it.


I covered those two advantages already, & as I stated, they are not enough to offset the downsides.


1) You do not 'dodge bullets' - you move out of the line of fire (aka you see where the gun is pointing, & move so it's not at you).
2) I did not say melee sucks - it still has some uses, but is greatly inferior to ranged. Also, we are not powergamers - we typically play what we want to play.
3) Using an extreme case in an attempt to justify melee being as effective as firearms does not support your position (16 Strength is not easy, & impossible except on a Troll). Further, firearms can easily obtain similar damage.

Hmm, what didn't work with the Simple Action for melee? Did it swing the ball too far into the other court and make Melee way to effective?

The Dodge thing could be a concern. Good skills are good skills but 'must-haves' might not be a good idea.

I wish there were a way to work with the counterattack option that was in SR3, but to soften it a bit so it's not as overpowered. A limit, or a penalty imposed on every counterattack could be possible. This is leaning more toward the court of buffing Melee, but still. (Perhaps melee can get SR3 style Defender Wins counterattacks as many times in a round as half their skill, round somehow? It would also make having a high skill rating mean something.)

However, those oldschool counterattacks don't really solve the melee vs. ranged issue. I mean, guns *should* be dangerous, absolutely. But...there shouldn't be such a huge discrepancy in the name of fun. Problem is while melee combat CAN get very, very nasty, this requires the use of maneuvers, martial arts styles, and high skill/attribute ratings. If you want to get good with a gun, you need a smartlink and decent/skill and attribute.

The toughest part of this is managing to keep firearms still a very credible threat(being guns and all), getting melee so it's at least somewhat even, and making neither of them a total-nobrainer while preventing the use of any ''must-haves.''

I considered one way-make a martial art maneuver(usable with any melee style, not just unarmed), that sort of plays on Watchful Guard called ''Cautious Advance'' or something of that nature. Allow one with this manuever, to, while they are advancing only(to prevent what you mentioned with Dodge becoming a must-take for anyone), to use their Reaction + Dodge/Gymnastics Dodge to defend normally. (Though I don't think they'd be able to do this and Full Defend-or can you advance and Full Defend? If so, then Dodge would kick Gymnastics Dodge ass here.) Of course, they couldn't parry or block the bullets. It might help-they could use either Dodge or Gymnastics Dodge(which a melee is likely to take anyway), and helps to fix the biggest problem of closing in on gun combatants, which seems to be the biggest block to them. Of course, it's not an auto-gimme; a Gymnastics Dodge of 4 and a Reaction of 5 is still 9 dice, which, against an excellent shot, isn't a sure-fire win.

Of course, it becomes a 'must-have' for martial artists, and on top of it requires that the melee combatant HAVE a level of martial arts to begin with to purchase the maneuver, but it might be a starting point of sorts.

Heh, mentioning Cowboy Bebop reminds me of something my friend said-''Don't bring a knife to a gunfight-unless your name is Vicious.'' (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

Even if guns are generally more effective than melee combat, magic and cyberware makes melee combat a possible solution as main combat skill for a character.

One way is to boost the character's stealth so that the enemy just don't see/hear/smell/touch him before it's too late, another is to boost the character's dodge abilities and speed so that the enemies can't hit him while he charges them. It might not help much at long ranges, but most fights in Shadowrun are close quarters anyway. But even then, it's likely that the gunbunny would have killed everyone before you got close enough.

And even in melee combat, a gun can still be very dangerous. Especially when it's a scattergun hidden in your arm.

First, just don't like it (evidenced by us just not using it). Second, I am of the position melee is excellent as it is - the problem is ranged being better in comparison.


All of which can be applied equally to ranged combat.

Yeah, I have a problem... I try really hard not to be condescending in my posts... but it comes out wrong alot. I don't mean it though... =\

Also, I agree with your points. And, I didn't know whether or not your players were 'powergamers' or not. Were they, I simply wanted to note that it could be hard to balance because of extreme cases.

Was using the "Dodge" skill what you were refering to in the OP when you said you were going back to your original idea of limiting Ranged Combat?

If Yes: I think that could actually work pretty well to get them to similar levels. As noted you can, in fact, dodge before a bullet. With being able to shoot twice as fast as melee still, it might not be quite enough to make them actually even.
But other than those two things, they do work about the same. Did you get a chance to try out using Dodge with ranged as well? I assume from the wording of your post that you did not, however, if you did, I was wondering how it went (even in fake scenerios).

IF No: Do you already have somethign in mind?

On the one hand, I agree with everyone on the board who says that firearms SHOULD be better than melee weapons. In the real world, they ARE better, pretty much every time, unless you're trying to deal non-lethal damage.

On the other hand, I realize that this is a game which sometimes sacrifices realism in favor of balance, or of promoting certain play styles. So if you want to make melee combat a valid alternative to firearms because you like encouraging bad-assed axe weilding beserkers to charge the machine gun nest, and you don't care about realism, there are several ways to make melee more effective.

An idea that I've been toying with is to allow melee combattants to use their choice of either agi or str as their linked stat for unarmed and melee weapons (with exceptions for specific 'finesse' weaponss like monowhips, which could never default to str). Strength is an easier stat to pump than agility, especially for orcs and trolls. This makes the troll polearm melee specialist very very scary. There's also a decent arguement that for some styles brute strength would make more sense than agility as a linked stat. But it means that there's no longer any contest between the frail-but-agile elf versus the brutally-strong troll in HTH or using a sword.

I was going to write a long explanation of this, with supporting material and design elements, but then I thought, "meh." So here's the short version.

My suggestion is to stop thinking of it as Reaction + Skill vs. Reaction + nothing and start thinking about it as Reaction + Skill vs. Reaction + cover.

This isn't the greatest idea I've found. It's cool on the surface, but not in practice. It's been toyed around with, and what happens is that Strength goes from being rather dumbed down to kind of uber.

3 of the 5 regular races get Strength bonuses(don't forget Dwarves have equal strength to Orks.) It would greatly swing that in their favor. The damage, IMO, is just right; the Strength is halved, making it not too bad, and with the additions of other outside damage modifiers(Critical Strike, +DV to different melee styles, bone lacing, etc), it basically equals out, which is a good thing.

The problem with linking Strength is that it actually is an *advantage* in the end, even with a human or elf. If you are making a straight-up melee combatant with little in the way of ranged(enough to cover yourself), you likely are not going to really care about pumping Agility at all at that point. The +1 Agilty Elves get ends up being an average of 1/3 of a success. But pump Strength on any of those races(hey, they can get to 9 and there are ways to take it higher than that), and not only do they get their die pool, but their damage all in one shot. Agile fighters would then be more at a disadvantage at the end of the day rule-wise, since they would always have lower damage. At least now, overpumping Strength will give a few more DV, true, but you can't neglect Agility or you'd never land a hit.

To put it more simply, imagine(assuming you can choose)

Elf Dood A goes the Agile route. He takes a basic 3 strength, +3 DV martial arts, and a 6(9) agility with cyber or bio(hey, restricted gear is cheap.). He gets Ceramic Bone Lacing(+2 DV). His skill is 6. Die Pool=15, damage Str/2+2(5), +3=8P. It's scary, no doubt. BP cost for Attribues are 20(strength 3) and 40(Agility 6).

Elf Dood B goes the Strength route. He takes, instead, a 4 agility(well, a 3, but the elf +1), 5(9) strength with cyber, same bone lacing, and chooses to link to Strength. His skill is 6 as well. Die Pool=15, damage Str/2+2(7), +3=10P. BP cost is 20(Agility 4), and 40(Strength 5.)

So the second guy gets everything the first guy does, for the same costs, and is better in the end. The only thing Elf A has is that if he really wants to learn the agility based skills, he'll be a lot better at them in the end-but for a character who has no interest in them, it becomes rather pointless. (Stealth would come in handy.) Put races with a Strength bonus in and it becomes more than a no-brainer. (The one way this might balance out is if the character also wanted to be an expert in firearms, stealth, and the like. But in THAT case they'd likely boost Agility over Strength.)

I mean, I want to see Strength and melee boosted as much as the next person, but this isn't the way to do it, sadly, IMO. I really thought about it myself, but after looking at it-decided against it.

You know, I loathe the concept of 'balancing ranged and melee combat.' The idea of balance between these two is like 'balancing' armored and unarmored combatants. There is no balance. That's the point of ranged combat. It's one of the reasons why we have guns and don't run around sticking eachother with swords any more. In an Exalted or Final Fantasy type game, sure, I could see it. But in Shadowrun? No.

Trying to 'balance' ranged and melee combat is like trying to 'balance' Hendrick's Gin and Natty Ice. There is no balance. One is clearly superior.

Best argument so far. However, because you are bringing in situational modifiers, I respond with (although not exactly equal - usually) it being Reaction + Skill + Reach (or Friends in Melee) vs. Reaction + Cover.

Ranged combat still comes out ahead. Situational modifiers should never be included as a 'standard' modifier, & thus have no place in discussions revolving around said standards.

You speak as though having a skill isn't a situation. Is armor a situational modifier, or is resisting damage really Body + Armor? Or is the difference that the skill is not on a table?

Look at it this way: defense is [attribute] + [ability to mitigate opponent's accuracy]. In melee, that's your ability to put yourself or your weapons somewhere that will counteract your opponent's attack. In ranged combat, it's what's between you and your opponent. This way, you have your parity.

In case I need to support my point further, would anybody who is not me and has experience in the infantry care to chime in on whether cover and concealment ("C & C" in the lingo) just happens to be there or is something you arrange for yourself?

And that's pretty much the reason why you should keep your distance while using firearms, as well as the point of my houserule.

I've never bothered to mess with unarmed house rules. A pure melee adept can dish out plenty of damage under the current system and while making changes will empower non adepts it would seriously tip the scales further for melee adepts.