House rule: Use either Agility or Strength for finesse melee weapons, Whichever is higher Options

[Zednark]

Okay, this is intended to fix a (possibly perceived) problem with melee in SR4/5. If you want to build an elven knifemaster kind of build, Strength is your go to stat, even if you're using the knife as a precision tool. Moreover, all but the heaviest melee weapons are useless to low strength characters, and even then are of dubious utility (a combat axe at Strength 2 gets outdamaged by an Ares Predator) so while it might make sense in real life to carry a combat knife as a backup, in SR it makes no sense, unless you're a melee build to begin with.

Finesse weapons are small swords, knives and anything else that's more about hitting the right place than hitting like a truck. So no combat axes or claymores. Generally anything that outdamages a katana isn't finesse. Finesse weapons can use either Agility or Strength to determine damage, whichever is higher. So a Nocturnal Blademaster (Augmented Agility 10, Strength 2) deals 12P (Agi+2P, SR5) with a combat knife, for instance, while only dealing 7P damage with a combat axe (Str+5P).

This means elves, gnomes and other agile yet weak metatypes can be melee builds, when previously an unaugmented troll with a kitchen knife would outdamage them.