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[Hyde]

Why does it only give a -1 AP where a monofilament whip gives a -4? What's the reason?

[Ddays]

It can't cut as deep cause you have the nonfilament part?

[Whipstitch]

Well, first off, a disclaimer: Super fine lightweight monofilament whips make no freakin' sense from a physics standpoint whatsoever. So I realize the distinction I'm about to point out amounts to practically nothing, since in the end the sword would be a much better idea for all practical purposes. At least it has some actual mass behind it.

That said, in the RAW, the broadsword has a "superfine monofilament". Note that a monofilament only means that it's made out of a single fiber; thickness and other properties could vary significantly. For example, fishing line is often described as being monofilament. By contrast, the monofilament whip is described as being made from nanowire. Which, frankly, doesn't make a lick of sense, but this is shadowrun so monowhips have to be awesome and way sharper than swords in order to preserve William Gibson's honor. :cyber:

[FrankTrollman]

I think the idea is that people are supposed to use Katanas occasionally. The monosword only does as much damage as the katana, so from a raw numbers standpoint it's no big deal. It's much smaller than the katana is, using only one hand instead of 2. So to that extent it is superior to the archaic blade - but not enough to make every munchkin go on about how katanas are "teh useless".

That being said, it's kind of a pain in the ass how very hard it is to take enemies out in a reasonable amount of time with melee attacks of any kind.

-Frank

[Whipstitch]

Tell me about it. My standard "melee" strategy is to knock the guy down with a shock glove and then shoot the bastard.

[Kyoto Kid]

...not a bad technique.

As a variant, I could have KK load one Warhawk with S&S and the other with EXEX. Shock them on their butts then shoot them dead. Heck with a Warhawk even Gel rounds are pretty effective for bowling people over.

I am beginning to re-asess the need for the Katana or any sword for that matter (even if it is a WF). The only time I can see using a reach melee weapon is to keep certain foes, like Ghouls out of reach of you. Yes it is stylish, but with the old counterattack rule gone, melee has lost a bit of it's attractiveness. And besides, bullets and even flechettes tend to keep ghouls out of reach just as well.

Since she is on "forced sabbatical" (the campaign she was in folded) looks like it may be a good time to rework her as the Fists and Guns of fury Adept. Might even get her a Shock Glove too just for fun, or better yet: Elemental Effect - Electricity (always there & never have to recharge).

[hyzmarca]

I'm just waiting for dikote to come back.

[Fortune]

[Naysayer]

The monowhip has (or used to have) this small counterwight thingie at the end of the monowire, so you could actually swing it. I guess the damage is supposed to stem from getting caught in the tightened string...
Whatever. Monowhips don't make sense. Never did. But if you don't have at least one ganger slicing up his friends accidently per campaign, the OldSkool police will come and revoke your gaming license...

As for the sword, the old street-samurai catalogue, where the baby made its debut, had a shadowtalk entry that basically said that the sword is just one big PR-hoax. The poster said something like "So what? My shoelaces are made from monofilament, you don't see me cutting people in half with them".

And yeah, the old counterattack rule is missed. It made it easier to visualise SR melee as a series of attacks and counters. Now, it feels even more static...
Ach

[Wakshaani]

[MadDogMaddux]

I've only ever played 4.0. Explain how the counter attack rules worked, if you please?

[Naysayer]

If I'm not mistaken, you rolled melee as an oposed test, with both attaacker and defender rolling their combat skill plus allocated combat-pool dice.
Whoever rolled more successes (that is, beat the target number) hit, damage was done and the lesson that going into melee against an angry troll bouncer with your katana and an armed combat of 3 is a very bad idea indeed was bitterly learned...

[MadDogMaddux]

Almost identical to the MW3rd Ed. melee rules. I daresay, I really like them, because it allows for your SKILL to give you defense, and you can hurt the other guy while defending....

[Naysayer]

MW?
Is that MechWarrior?

[MadDogMaddux]

Yes. Now know as the Classic Battletech RPG. :twirl:

[odinson]

[mfb]

if it's so easily stopped by armor, then the whip should actually have a lower damage rating. something that has a hard time getting through armor is going to be stopped cold by bone, which means that the worst such a weapon could do is give you lacerations. it's not going to kill you unless you get hit with it so many times that you bleed out--no way you'll hit any vital organs; the best you can hope for is maybe an artery.

[Jaid]

it could tear off chunks of skin, though... depending where it hits, that could be pretty bad...

[Whipstitch]

Oh, I realize wire and stamped metal can be incredibly sharp. That's not the issue. I just think a monofilament whip would be wildly impractical due to its overall lack of mass. It'd be like trying to kill a man with the world's deadliest fishing line. You'd have to wield it more like a flail than anything else. Get the weighted end spinning and try to make sure the other guy gets in its way. Anyway, I'm perfectly fine with monowhips being in the game, since I love the concept and they are so wonderfully cyberpunk. But I do believe that trying to rationalize how powerful they are in relation to other weapons is mostly an excercise in futility. I mean, really now, the monowhip outdamages anything short of the panther cannon or elephant rifle.

[mfb]

sure, it'd hurt, but it'd still be a lot harder to do real damage with it than it would be to do real damage with, say, a knife or a sword. the whole reason a monowhip is supposed to be so lethal is that it's supposed to be able to penetrate almost anything. if you decide it can no longer penetrate almost anything, then the monowhip loses most of its ability to do damage.

[hobgoblin]

I guess that if it managed to slip between two ribs it could cut a lung. And dont underestimate the damage a bad abdomen wound can do. Sr do not have bleeding rules so i guess that the damage done by the whip incorporate that. Oh and the whip can in theory cut in all directions just as long as there is a force pulling on it.

As for the counterattack rules, they had one flaw. A unwired old fu master could win against a wired sammie any day, without going on the offensive...

[Jaid]

[Whipstitch]

Heh. Screw the defiance ex-shocker. A burst of stick 'n' shock from the lowly Steyr TMP or the Yamaha Sakura Fubuki is where it's at. Technically, the rules say that stick and shock just replaces the base damage code. Says nothing about ignoring burst modifiers... Another personal favorite is a pair of Streetline specials loaded with good ol' sticky, in case I feel like being extra sneaky.

As for the troll bow, I prefer to pretend that that particular build doesn't exist. Especially since there's technically nothing stopping them from lacing the arrows with some (wildly unnecessary) narcoject either.

[mfb]

yeah, but to get to a lung, you'd have to get around the guy's arms andget a luckyish shot between some ribs. and there can't be much deflection--pretty much gotta be a straight sidearm swing, and it can pretty much only come in from the side (ie, he's facing towards or away from you when you attack, not standing sideways to you). you can't even do a whip-crack thing to lick the tip across him, because the tip of a monowhip is a heavy sinker--you'd just bruise him. if it's a really long monowhip, you could maybe loop it around him and pull--that'd suck pretty bad, but i'm not convinced it'd be more likely to stop someone than a knife in the heart.

actually... how do most people imagine attacking with a monowhip works? i mean, the classic image is Johnny Mnemonic, where the guy just kinda waves around some sparklies and people fall apart. the butler dude from Hellsing would be another example. to be honest, i kinda think that sort of monowhippery would be best mechanically described as an area attack. it's not precise, there's no finesse per se--you wave your sparklies, and everybody in front of you has to dodge/soak. glitch, and you get caught in the effect.

[hobgoblin]

question: how noisy is the defiance compared to a steyr or fubuki doing burst?

[Jaid]

[hobgoblin]

[Jaid]

[hobgoblin]

so, shock glove on overload and some in close action it is then. hmm, better make sure the armor is modded for non-conductivity as well...

[apollo124]

As I recall, the monowhip is supposed to be made of Buckminster Fullerium, that is to say it is a buckyball string. In simpler terms, it is a strand of carbon molecules made in such a way as to be incredibly strong and resilient to breaking. So what you would have is a string that is as thin as a single molecule with the counterweight to give it a little mass. In theory, it is supposed to be slender enough to slip between larger molecules while slicing things up. How it slices things apart while sliding between the molecules is where the "I believe" button gets pushed.

[Whipstitch]

You know Jaid, we really ought to come up with a better term for the doombow projectiles than "arrow". I mean seriously here, at this point what we're talking about is more like a a supersonic rebar.

[DrPeteCastle]

speaking of melee and unarmed attacks and their usefulness. i recently made a unarmed adept w/ alot of adept powers concerning unarmed attack (i.e killing hands and deadly strike) is this a waste? my unarmed skill is 5(+2 martial arts) my guy should be pretty freaking awesome, any suggestions on what do do/edit with this guy or just scrap the unarmed part?

[hobgoblin]

[Whipstitch]

Melee has its advantages, namely stealth and the ability to bypass immunity via killing hands and weapon foci. That said, to be a competent melee character, it's often better to focus on Athletics and Infiltration more than your actual damage potential. And even melee oriented characters should take a projectile/gun skill of some sort at 2 (with a specialization) or higher. The last thing you need is to get pwned just because you have no answer for a guy firing at you from a balcony or other such nonsense.

[DrPeteCastle]

Yeah but if some is at the end of an alley 15 meters with a gun pointing at you is their an effect of way of reaching him or just run straight on?

[apollo124]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminsterfu...insterfullerene

This is what I meant, a monowhip is supposed to be a nanotube made of Buckminsterfullerene. It's all explained on the incredibly relevant wikipedia.

[odinson]

[Solomon Greene]

[Whipstitch]

I like your style solomon.

In response to DrPeteCastle, I'm afraid your options are fairly limited. Basically, you can charge the guy, which nets you +2 dice to hit as well as +2 dice to defend against incoming gunfire (moving target bonus). You could also use Full Defense (complex action) and a run (free action) just to get right on top of the guy while still enjoying as much defense as you can get without having cover (if he's got a hand free as well as a free action left, he can take a swing at you though). That's really just more or less a bit of a stall tactic, however. I suppose you could end up in a situation where there's no cover available and you would like to be able to just stay on top of the guy on full defense while threatening Intercept actions if he moves, but really, you'd probably be better off just fleeing, charging or returning fire in most cases.

[Cadmus]

[odinson]

that is a good attack.

[hobgoblin]

[mfb]

[MadDogMaddux]

[hobgoblin]

i never said anything about a adept.

just take skill 6+, and go into combat.

thing is that the unwired martial artist would get a potential free attack each time he was engaged by the wired attacker. this resulted in a unwired person having 4 attacks in a round (3 counterattacks, 1 attack of his own). or maybe even more if mbw was in use by the attacker.

basically, it would be suicide for anyone not of equal skill to go up against such a person. and thats with some of the best cyber out there. and this was a person that had no magic, no cyber, just a high skill and the backing of the counterattack rules.

[Naysayer]

I don't see why that would be a problem. 'Ware can't buy you talent, and a real Martial-Foo master should be backhanding newbs and wannabes, one arm tied behind his back, withut breaking a sweat.
Also, the same rule also works for you - an average sam or adept had a fair chance of taking down two or three sec-guards in melee if he played his cards right.
With the new/current rules, Mr. Jack Chan, facing a couple of wimps, would still spend several IPs doing nothing but dodging, running away and getting kicked.

...the more I think about it, the more I see myself reintroducing the old counterattack rules for defending with a combat skill.

[mfb]

'ware can't buy you talent (unless you have skillwires), but it should buy you the ability to move quickly, rather than buying it for your opponent. under the SR3 counterattack rules, unwired people fighting wired people became inexplicably faster.

[Naysayer]

It does buy you the ability to move more quickly - along with the ability to throw more inept flailing at a superior opponent...

I see your concern, and I'm not trying to convert you or anything, but I still think that a well-versed martial artist should wipe the floor with semi-talented brawlers, cybered or not.
Also, why is that supreme martial artist uncybered anyway? That's totally not, you know, cyberpunk ; )

[knasser]

Hmmm. 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.

It takes away from Agility, but melee combat is a small part of the game for most and everyone will still want it for shooting each other repeatedly.

EDIT: New thread for this here.

Seemed like the melee rules discussion is branching from the current topic.

[Solomon Greene]

Yoink!

Good stuff, Knasser.

[mfb]

nm, other thread.

[Apathy]

[KarmaInferno]

Guy walks into the middle of the room, jerks in surprise like something hit him. Then he slowly falls apart into small fleshy cubes.

A second later a nano-wire grid retracts back into the ceiling.


-karma

[RedRum]

All we really need is a monofilament garrote for the stealth crew :D

[laughingowl]

[Whipstitch]

N/M

[eidolon]

For totally bad ass monofilament whip usage, see Johnny Mnemonic.

[Shinobi Killfist]

[knasser]

[Shinobi Killfist]

[knasser]

[Hyde]

It's just not street anymore, but it seems fairly normal to me.

[Shinobi Killfist]

[Eryk the Red]

Killfist, his point was that getting up to Magic 8 requires a huge amount of karma, and starting at Magic 6 requires a lot of BPs (especially because of the six point costing 25). 74 karma is nothing to sneeze at. (I think my math is right.)

[knasser]

[Hyde]

Well I, for instance, give at least 10 karma/game so it's not that hard. It all depends on the GM :).

[FrankTrollman]

[knasser]

[knasser]

[Jaid]

[Whipstitch]

I'd rather save the power points and work on creating an attuned monofilament whip and bond it to a high grade focus.

[Kyoto Kid]

[Shinobi Killfist]

[Critias]

[Shinobi Killfist]