Effective Melee Characters? Options

[Henraldo]

Why not a vampire physadept? Built right they could easily get in close, kill just about anything and soak up a ridiculuous amount of damage and get away.

- J.

I have tried a vamp phys ad. DIDN'T LAST TO LONG. Got any suggestions on how to make it the melle monster you envision?

[Whipstitch]

I have a phys adept who hasn't had to fire a single shot this campaign , the trick being to make them -really- good at what they do.. and use a chameleon suit (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The thing is, if you can sneak up on them with a chameleon suit, you can sneak up on them with a chameleon suit from across the room while armed with an SMG that's roughly as deadly as a high powered distance strike for well under half the points. Quite simply, melee is a weapon of last resort; anything else and you're just giving yourself an added degree of difficulty that doesn't exist when using ranged weapons. Hand to hand combat is something you should only do if you think it can get you back to your guns. That's why I'm an advocate of Unarmed Combat and Subdual combat as opposed to grabbing a combat axe; half the benefit of being skilled in melee combat is that your Close Combat skills can be used to defend against melee attacks as well as perform them, and Unarmed Combat is the most reliable and complete package in that regard. The only times I use melee offensively is if I'm disarmed for whatever reason, and if that's the case I'd rather be deadly with my hands than with a blade I may no longer be carrying. Maybe then I'll be able to knock someone out and take their gun, Edge and Dunkelzahn willing.

[The Jake]

I have tried a vamp phys ad. DIDN'T LAST TO LONG. Got any suggestions on how to make it the melle monster you envision?

Ok. I'll bite (no pun intended).

How.... ?

- J.

[Ol' Scratch]

Considering that being a Vampire takes up a staggering 100 BPs, leaving you with only 300 BPs, I find it hard to see how they'd be more effective -- and especially as well-rounded as a full character -- as a typical adept. Add in their lower Essence and thus lower Magic score, their inability to take implants during character creation, and laundry list of weaknesses (hello Severe Allergy to Wood; go up against a ganger with a baseball bat and you're fucked -- -4 to every action you make and extra damage to boot)... and yeah, I just don't see them being very viable characters at all. A one-trick pony, maybe, but those are about as welcome in any real group as a bullet to the head. And if you're going that route, you might as well go with a Shifter or any of the other Infected routes instead. Heck, even a Ghoul makes a better melee adept than a Vampire in my opinion; I'd much rather have 65 BPs and access to implants than be stuck with the castrated powre they call Regeneration now, let alone all of the aforementioned weaknesses.

[Glyph]

Yeah. Healing faster is nice, but having move-by-wire: 2 and reakt, and not getting hit in the first place, is even better. Vampires, shapeshifters, and drakes have powerful abilities, but in pure melee, an augmented street samurai or an adept with some bioware are usually the best builds.

Ghouls, despite their disadvantages, can actually make good melee specialists, mainly due to the Attribute bonuses that they get.

[The Dragon Girl]

The thing is, if you can sneak up on them with a chameleon suit, you can sneak up on them with a chameleon suit from across the room while armed with an SMG that's roughly as deadly as a high powered distance strike for well under half the points. Quite simply, melee is a weapon of last resort; anything else and you're just giving yourself an added degree of difficulty that doesn't exist when using ranged weapons. Hand to hand combat is something you should only do if you think it can get you back to your guns. That's why I'm an advocate of Unarmed Combat and Subdual combat as opposed to grabbing a combat axe; half the benefit of being skilled in melee combat is that your Close Combat skills can be used to defend against melee attacks as well as perform them, and Unarmed Combat is the most reliable and complete package in that regard. The only times I use melee offensively is if I'm disarmed for whatever reason, and if that's the case I'd rather be deadly with my hands than with a blade I may no longer be carrying. Maybe then I'll be able to knock someone out and take their gun, Edge and Dunkelzahn willing.

I never said anything about an axe O.o I statted her out to not need anything outside of herself to be effective, but -still- gave her proficiency with guns. Because I'm not stupid. I simply haven't had to actually -use- them. There are times when you can't have weapons with you. and powers don't show up on a cyberware scanner. It is nice to actually -be- a weapon, rather than to be reliant on them.

[sqir666]

Really?

Now this this funny as I've never had problems (in any edition, mind you) making melee centric runners.

Although the last one I did, used a mono-chainsaw. Honestly, I only used about half the nuyen available for bio- and cyber- ware.

So it can be done, you've just gotta know how. Most important though is to have the concept nailed down and firmly pictured in your mind before the creation process even starts.

[The Jake]

Yeah. Healing faster is nice, but having move-by-wire: 2 and reakt, and not getting hit in the first place, is even better. Vampires, shapeshifters, and drakes have powerful abilities, but in pure melee, an augmented street samurai or an adept with some bioware are usually the best builds.

Ghouls, despite their disadvantages, can actually make good melee specialists, mainly due to the Attribute bonuses that they get.

Long live the Fomorii ghoul CZ....

- J.

[Whipstitch]

I never said anything about an axe O.o I statted her out to not need anything outside of herself to be effective, but -still- gave her proficiency with guns. Because I'm not stupid. I simply haven't had to actually -use- them. There are times when you can't have weapons with you. and powers don't show up on a cyberware scanner. It is nice to actually -be- a weapon, rather than to be reliant on them.

I never said you did; I mentioned a grab bag of theoretically useful but ultimately unwieldy melee options, like Distance Strike, for example.

Anyway, I was just disagreeing with the idea that the trick to making a melee character work well is making them -very- good at what they do, since it implies that what they do is melee. In my opinion, that's a statement that needs to be extremely qualified, since for better or worse, the SR4 writers gave physical combatants a lot of very expensive ways to boost their prowess despite the fact that it's an inherently limited niche. You can spend literally hundreds of points on creating a character who can punch out a subcompact in 2 passes yet isn't actually a very good shadowrunner. The best "melee" characters I have ever seen were frankly better at sneaking around than hurting people. Basically, if a character is so good at melee that they can best be described as a melee specialist, odds are they've got a ton of wasted points on their sheet.

[Stahlseele]

Long live the Fomorii ghoul CZ....

- J.

He will never die.

[Jack Kain]

I liked the idea that if you in melee combat with someone using a gun you can "parry" their shots against you.
A guy turns to aim his gun at you and you deflect the gun to point away just as you would deflect a knife, axe or other melee weapon used against you.

It also be nice for some rules for striking the opponents weapon. How effective would an assault rifle be after being slashed by a monowhip?

[Sixgun_Sage]

If you are focused on melee be good at stealth or you are giving that sec guard with the assault rifle or smg waaaaay too much of an advantage.

[sqir666]

I'm going to have to disagree with that, though my playstyle is of the pink mohawk variety.

I tend to create my melee characters as semi guided missiles. Point 'em in the direction of the OPFOR and watch the parts fly.

[Stahlseele]

I'm going to have to disagree with that, though my playstyle is of the pink mohawk variety.

I tend to create my melee characters as semi guided missiles. Point 'em in the direction of the OPFOR and watch the parts fly.

best way to play there is ^^

[Sixgun_Sage]

I'm going to have to disagree with that, though my playstyle is of the pink mohawk variety.

I tend to create my melee characters as semi guided missiles. Point 'em in the direction of the OPFOR and watch the parts fly.

That only ever works in pink mohawk, and even then it is pretty easy for the opfor to deal with. Remember, that semi guided missile of a character has to close the distance to do damage whereas the security guards can move and fire, and honestly how often should a security guard not have smartlink? Seriously, it is the one vision augmentation I can see every corp giving their security people.

[Whipstitch]

Even if smartlinks aren't involved there is still the option of 550 nuyen SMGs that come out of the box with 3 points of recoil compensation and laser sights. That's dirt cheap and nearly as good as having a smartlink. Throw in a Take Aim action and a long wide burst and guards shouldn't have that hard a time of threatening a melee character, since by definition we're talking about relatively short range confrontations.

[sqir666]

Even if smartlinks aren't involved there is still the option of 550 nuyen SMGs that come out of the box with 3 points of recoil compensation and laser sights. That's dirt cheap and nearly as good as having a smartlink. Throw in a Take Aim action and a long wide burst and guards shouldn't have that hard a time of threatening a melee character, since by definition we're talking about relatively short range confrontations.

Seriously, do you gloss over a skill called dodge intentional?

Perhaps you also forgot a little thing like hiding behind cover?

[Generic_PC]

You can't dodge bullets unless you are on full defense. You just use your reaction score, IIRC.

And if you're hiding behind cover, you aren't moving towards the guards, are you?

[Whipstitch]

I glossed over it because frankly, dodging bullets is hard to do when someone is spraying bursts at you from short range.


Let's take Joe Shmo the Ares on-site security guard. He's got 3 Agility, and 3 dice from skill due to having 1 point of Automatics and a SMG specialization. His Colt Cobra gives him 3 points of recoil compensation and a laser sight. In his pass, he can Take Aim to add another bonus die, giving him a dicepool of 8, which is dropped down to 6 while making his Wide Long Burst due to the Recoil penalty, but that's okay because it's handily made up by applying a -5 dice penalty to his opponent's Defense pool. I mean, think about that for a second: -5 dice! Your melee specialist also needs to be a Dodge monkey and start with at least 11 Full Defense dice before he can hope to consistently break even on a short range Defense test in this scenario, and the guard in question isn't even particularly good at his job! It doesn't get much better when the razor boy has closed in either, might I add; there's a -3 penalty for firing a gun while in melee, but it's largely canceled out by a the +2 bonus to firing at point blank range. Should a well built melee character still win in such scenario? Of course; wide bursts aren't particularly damaging, and it's perfectly possible to create a character with over 11 dice for full defense tests. But it demonstrates pretty clearly that getting in the face of a man with an automatic is a dangerous proposition. Remember, the guy with the gun in this example has only spent around 26 bp on being a gunfighter. Try the same trick on an opponent with a Red Samurai level BP budget and I assure you it can get rather messy pretty quick.

And let's consider the other side of the coin: How does the guard do when defending against the melee artist's attack? Well, if he has 3 Reaction and 3 Dodge, he can burn his next pass on Full Defense, which will give him a defense pool of 9; not too shabby. Never forget that you get to count the appropriate defense skill twice while on Full Defense vs. melee, despite the fact that melee characters do not have any ability that evens the odds as well as a wide burst does. And again, this is with a pretty dang minimal investment in personal defense. Melee simply doesn't give you much bang for your buck offensively; against anyone remotely competent you'll need buckets of dice to consistently do your job, and dice are expensive in SR4. The primary benefit of having close combat skills is that you can skip Dodge and pick up Gymnastics instead while still having a fairly complete defensive package. After all, melee can still kill you, inefficient as it may be. The fact that melee is capable of countering melee in Sr4 is basically the saving grace that makes the Close Combat skills even worth considering.

[Glyph]

Close combat is not just good in conjunction with stealth. It is also good for indoors and other confined spaces, as well as situations where weapons are not allowed, or where weapons would represent an inadvisable escalation. Melee specialists do hold a niche role, but it will likely come up a lot more than sniping.

I kind of agree with Whipstitch, that you can be the "best" at melee and good for little else. But on the other hand, it depends on exactly how you are maximizing your melee ability.

Take a street samurai who gets bone lacing, dermal sheathing, move-by-wire, reakt, muscle toner, and an ultrasound sensor to boost his martial art skills. Sure, being super-tough, hard to hit in the first place, super-accurate, and able to "see" invisible or hidden enemies makes this guy a top-notch close combat specialist. But these qualities also make him very good in ranged combat situations. He probably has a 6 in unarmed combat and a 4 in a ranged skill, rather than the other way around, and the martial arts quality and maneuvers make him a bit less well-rounded in other areas. Really, though, it's not that bad for sammies.

Adepts usually wind up less well-rounded, because, well, they're specialists by nature. And their powers tend to be more specifically geared towards melee (killing hands, critical strike, etc.). But even for them, their buffs usually include multiple initiative passes, so if you make sure they have a ranged skill, they won't be useless outside of their main role.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, see, the thing is, I would look at the character Glyph listed and say "Hey, a samurai," rather than seeing a "melee specialist." Samurai work damn well in Shadowrun; they have so many dice flying around that having one or two more in Unarmed than Automatics doesn't hurt them so bad.

But the full-on Jackie Chan Adept who brings his fists and a cheerful grin to a gunfight? Not so much. He might win the battle thanks to his mad skills, but his points are going to be spread thin in other areas because melee is likely the most expensive path to combat dominance in SR4. That was actually one of my primary complaints about the Martial Arts rules that were brought in with Arsenal; as far as I'm concerned, melee is mediocre enough as it is to justify getting a maneuver or two for free with each point in Close Combat skills. It'd hardly unbalance the game, after all; Heck, most of my players who took the Krav Maga style only did it so they could more easily draw their guns.

Look, I appreciate melee, I really do; Any samurai I build isn't a guy you want to get into a pub brawl with. He'll leave you bleeding. But "Proficient at close combat" is going to be one of the smaller bullet points on his resume even if he embraces a martial lifestyle in RP. It's just the nature of the game that you must be branched into other areas to truly be a good runner.

[Ol' Scratch]

There's also the fact that the Firefight martial art negates a lot of the dangers of using a firearm in melee, too. Particularly if you take the advantages to lower the penalty for shooting at melee targets. Couple that with a few maneuvers -- most notably Clinch, Finishing Move and Set-Up -- and the Gecko Grip modification for firearms to all but make you immune to being disarmed, and melee specialists really aren't that fantastic. It's even better if they grab Two-Weapon Style and keep a melee weapon in their off-hand, gaining Full Defense while you do so, though there's a bit of argument to be had regarding that option.

[Whipstitch]

Heck, I'd just skip the Two Weapon Fighting and go with a Weapon Hardened handgun and Parry with that, Improvised Weapon penalty be damned!

This is why this topic kinda bums me out; I actually really like characters that are complete warriors and I encourage a li'l of the rough-and-tumble at my table. But when one of my players tries to build their entire character around melee it ends up being kind of a headache.

[Glyph]

I like the versatility and flavor that the martial arts rules add, but I'm not too fond of either the power creep, or the extra cost to be optimized for melee. You should never build your entire character around melee, though. Not in a game world with flying drones, people shooting from windows and balconies, and standoffs where two groups fire at each other from behind cover. Get a pistol, at the very least.

[Ol' Scratch]

To be fair, not all of the martial arts maneuvers are limited to melee. Iaijitsu, for instance, can be used to Quick Draw an assault rifle or rocket launcher. Set-up is another one (though it should be limited to melee in my opinion). Heck, if I'm not mistaking, you could probably even use Focus Will when spellcasting, and it's a very viable option when out of combat or using ritual magic or binding or something. Or do things like that not count as Willpower Tests?