Useless weapons?, A look at some unlikely items Options

[Moonstone Spider]

I'm trying to figure out why anybody would use some of the lower-end shadowrun equipment.

Take knives. Say two people with roughly equal stats and skills go at it, one with a knife and one with bare hands.

The guy with bare hands will do a moderate stun wound.

The guy with a knife will do a light physical wound.

All other things being equal, the guy with the knife is screwed. The fist man only needs 4 successful melee attacks (Assuming he never manages to stage up/down) while the knife guy needs to land 10 to win. Armor works against each equally. While the fist man will only knock his opponent unconcious, 9 times out of 10 on a shadowrun that's good enough, and on the 10th you can take the knife from his unconcious body and cut his throat anyway. And since the fist does damage faster, the knife guy will lose initiative and gain + to TNs faster, making his chances of success even lower than they look. On top of that the fist can't be taken away (well, most of the time), doesn't set off alarms, and won't attract Lonestar's attention. Overall, a knife is a totally useless item.

Even on the boards people joke at how silly light pistols are. Given how much armor even average joe wears, a light pistol is useless. If that's the case, how the heck can you expect to ever use a holdout pistol? 4L damage = 0 damage against anything other than no armor at all, even with only armor clothing or a cheap armor vest a person with body 2 will probably never take damage from any holdout pistol without tons of staging up by a person with pistols skill 12.

Things only get worse when you consider a few other weapons. For instance, cyber fangs and horns. While they at least do strenth +1 (L) rather than the knife's pathetic damage, they have a -1 reach that makes the odds of success nastily low compared to good only reliable Mr. Fist. Of course the fact that you could buy several assault rifles for the price of a cyberfang or horn (not to mention essence cost) only makes things even more absurd.

Worst of all is the adept power missile mastery. Goody, you can toss credsticks and do half strength(L) damage. If the GM is kind enough to let you be near them at a critical time. Armor defends against it normally, it's so unlikely that you could ever do damage with missile mastery that I have never seen an adept take it. While it's theoretically useful when combined with Shuriken, they are basically a knife with a range lower than a holdout pistol.

Perhaps it's just my inexperience but does anybody ever use these items/powers? If so how can they be successful with such gear?