What's the point of melee? Options

[StealthSigma]

Yeah, but in SR, a decent melee weapon is more expensive than a decent revolver.

If you can't hold LOS, you probably also can't really hit with a blade. But your point about collateral damage is a good one. Unintended wall-perforations are something to keep in mind as an evil GM. *cackle*

I threw a flashbang into an elevator as it opened without waiting to see if it was friend or foe. It was night time, I just got shot twice by a sharpshooter, and I knew there was probably at least two guys in a suspicious van sitting outside my safehouse. Luckily for the people inside the elevator, they were my opponents and not someone's grandmother who would have probably died from a heart attack triggered by the flashbang.

[Kruger]

I guess one minor point in favour of melee, going back to one of the archetypes of cyberpunk:

At the beginning of Neuromancer, Case couldn't afford a gun.

The beginning of Neuromancer would have been a pretty typical "Street Level" campaign. I don't think anybody is suggesting melee doesn't have its place. It's just that it is never going to be the equal in a fight that involves guns.

Unless you're playing W40K where 40,000 years of technological progression has boiled down to running across the battlefield and hitting someone with a glowing stick and the guy with a rifle is the weakest dude on the battlefield.

Yeah, but in SR, a decent melee weapon is more expensive than a decent revolver.

And, realistically, combat quality melee weapons are expensive in real life too. Look at home much you'd pay for a katana that was actually properly forged. A hint: It's way more than you should ever consider spending on a sword. Probably due in a large part to the market for true combat ready swords and such is pretty niche. I wouldn't imagine, despite some of the artwork, it being much different in 2050+. Most of the expensive melee weapons were made of high grade alloys, had monofilament edges, or in some more silly cases, frickin' laser beams. Simple but effective firearms pretty much have always, and will always, be cheap to make. Stamp out some parts, some injection molded plastics, and bang.

Thousand nuyen Fineblade knives were probably a bit over the top though, heh. I think a good House Rule of thumb would be to halve the costs of all edged weapons.

[Mooncrow]

Unless you're playing W40K where 40,000 years of technological progression has boiled down to running across the battlefield and hitting someone with a glowing stick and the guy with a rifle is the weakest dude on the battlefield.

You need to play against more Dark Eldar^^

[Mayhem_2006]

The beginning of Neuromancer would have been a pretty typical "Street Level" campaign. I don't think anybody is suggesting melee doesn't have its place. It's just that it is never going to be the equal in a fight that involves guns.

Unless you're playing W40K where 40,000 years of technological progression has boiled down to running across the battlefield and hitting someone with a glowing stick and the guy with a rifle is the weakest dude on the battlefield.

Well, if some strange techno-magic suddenly meant that most infantry weapons had a range no greater that the distance a fit person can sprint in 6 seconds, and no military engagemtns could be fought outside of a square area across which a fit person could sprint in 12 seconds, powerful melee weapons might make a comeback (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Kruger]

I gave that game up years ago when they ruined it. The only decent product to come out of that line in the last decade was the Dawn of War PC game.

[Yerameyahu]

DUNE!

[jakephillips]

A while back someone suggested that instead of using the Attacker in Melee penalty modifier to gunfire, you could let people in melee range use melee defense (Reaction+Skill or Reaction+Skill+Skill on full defense) instead of the ranged defense (Reaction or Reaction+Dodge on full defense). It would make some sense I'd think.. It also means that melee skills would be a serious assets in CQC even for a gunfighter (also, gun hardening!)

I do that in my game. I also do NOT let folks shoot long arms in HTH without breaking away and letting the opponent get a free swing. pistols in melee ok with opponent getting reaction +skill.

[Androcomputus]

I noticed that with all the hackers around, smartlinks make guns a liability... at least with my club, I do not need to worry about the electronic warfare that is going on...

[Yerameyahu]

You don't have to worry about anything, because you got shot already. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[CanRay]

I noticed that with all the hackers around, smartlinks make guns a liability... at least with my club, I do not need to worry about the electronic warfare that is going on...

Or Software Patches. Microdeck Smartshot 4.2 is notorious for needing them at the worst times!

[DingoJones]

Melee is very good and powerful when you are really good at it and your opponents, gun wielding or not, are not good at it.

[Whipstitch]

Basically, it's a skill for bullying. Which, really, is unfortunate, since anyone with a Dodge of 2 and a specialization can be surprisingly slippery on a Full Defense action just because they can count skill twice. With melee you really want to have Charge and Reach bonuses if your GM tosses up anyone outright competent against you.

[Ascalaphus]

I noticed that with all the hackers around, smartlinks make guns a liability... at least with my club, I do not need to worry about the electronic warfare that is going on...

There's a lot of talk about that, but in practice, if someone's smartlink is set up properly, hacking it in time to matter in combat is pretty impossible.

[sabs]

There's a lot of talk about that, but in practice, if someone's smartlink is set up properly, hacking it in time to matter in combat is pretty impossible.

skinlink, slaved, smartlink to your commlink.
Now they have to pwn your commlink, in order to muck with your smartlink.

Now a good hacker /can/ do this. But not in real time, after the combat has started. This is something the hacker should be doing before the combat ever starts.

[Surukai]

a Technomancer with proper threading easily sits on 10+ exploit + 5-7 skill (with specialization) and can beat even Firewall 4-6 in matter of 2-3 initatiive passes, with up to 5 ips he can rape your smartlink and cyber in the first combat turn. A mundane hacker limited to rating 6 (even that requires options or restricted gear response upgrade) might have a little harder time but too can be done in one combat turn.

The cheapskate hacker who don't run agents to spam scan might need up to a combat turn extra to get the access id.

A rating 9 sprite will eat your guns for breakfast and you need a commlink cluster full of agents to even have a remote chance of even detecting the intrusion, even less chance to actually touch it. (4 agent + 6 program vs 27 dice defense (with shielding) means you need to spam at least 15-20 attacks per action phase to wear down the matrix defense enough to actually hit it)

You can manabolt people to death with 7 dice, a pool of 10 is enough to flachette someone to Stun country but you need to be near the dice cap of 20 to hack stuff in combat, so in that sense you are right.

[Ascalaphus]

Or you just skinlink your smartlink directly to your contact lenses/cybereyes, and turn off the wireless on both. Unhackable, because unreachable.

[Surukai]

Or you just skinlink your smartlink directly to your contact lenses/cybereyes, and turn off the wireless on both. Unhackable, because unreachable.

We're getting a bit derailed but that also means you no longer have ability to run tacnet or even communicating, relaying info or doing tactical stuff with your team. In practice I remind my players that while under radio silence they can NOT coordinate targets, alert each other by other than screaming with their free actions and not run and help each other and require a lot of more surprise tests and observe in detail than you would by knowing where your friends are fiering and what they report. The advantage is of course immunity to hackers but unless all PCs have good perception and initiative rolls they'll loose most of the "PC" edge you have with perfect target calling, instant fire support and near immunity to getting backstabbed.

In a weak attempt to relate to melee vs ranged... even with mundane blades, melee tend to need at least as much "hackable" cyber as a ranged character do. Without celerity/raptor legs/skimmer discs you don't move fast enough and without cyberlimbs etc you don't hit hard enough and you need a much heavier dice pool to even hit somone in melee (Since base defence is twice as high with Reaction + skill instead of just reaction) etc so the hackable or not discussion might at best reinforce the massive advantage ranged has over melee.

I suggested to my players that melee attack as simple action but all melee weapons as "SS" (may only fire once per action phase), both giving a meaning to dual wield but a twohander can use his other simple action to kick or sweep his opponent. This would effectivly nearly double the "dps" of a melee char but since his attacks are much easier to defend against in addition to that he need to waste the first combat turns moving still means melee won't come near ranged.

[Kruger]

Why not just use... radio? lol I mean, wireless silence isn't necessarily radio silence. A transceiver is still going to transmit radio waves. In this rush to make everything high tech, I think a lot of people forget there is still good old regular tech too.

[Ascalaphus]

You don't have to put everything into one network; you can keep communications and smartlink separate. Compartmentalization is a tried and true security strategy. Sure, you miss out on the TacNet, but you have to weigh between more options or more security sometimes.

While combat hacking was a neat concept, in practice it doesn't work so well, because everyone else but the hacker will be taking steps to make it impossible. As they should, of course.

[sabs]

It's true
You have 1 commlink that goes to the matrix, and handles your 'internet' access stuff. Has your subvocal mic, and your glasses with imagelink on them, though if you want to be able to VR with it, it needs access to your DNI which opens up some loops.

You have 1 commlink that does /not/ go to the matrix at all. Only has skinlink connection, and is only used to talk to your implants, and your DNI, and your smart links.

If you had cybereyes, they would have to be slaved, to one or the other, and not to both.

[X-Kalibur]

Basically, it's a skill for bullying. Which, really, is unfortunate, since anyone with a Dodge of 2 and a specialization can be surprisingly slippery on a Full Defense action just because they can count skill twice. With melee you really want to have Charge and Reach bonuses if your GM tosses up anyone outright competent against you.

At least the specialization is only added once... and given the sheer prevalence of firearms, I would assume most people specialze dodge for ranged combat, not melee.

[Yerameyahu]

No way. You want your smartlink in the TacNet. It's thematically appropriate. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Neurosis]

There's a hundred million posts here so I'm just gonna respond to the OP.

So basically me and my group started Shadowrun three weeks ago. None of us have experience with the system. Last week we fumbled a bit with the combat system (missed on the initiative passes and a couple of modifiers). But this week we got into full combat... Basically it was the last combat in "Everyone's your friend".

The characters are, a Radical Eco-Shaman, a Street Samurai, a Gunslinger Adept (straight from the book) and a Bounty Hunter made from scratch.

Point is, the character with the Gunslinger Adept, could make with two pistols, 12 attacks on a turn (3 initiative passes, 4 with two simple actions per pass), on the other hand the bounty hunter who fought in melee with two katanas, only had 1 attack with 1 complex action.

The deal is, the gunslinger dispatched 3 guys in 2 turns, while the bounty hunter just hit one. Needles to say, the bounty hunter felt kinda useless.

We all felt on the table that ranged combat was clearly superior to melee combat...

Am I right? Or did we do something wrong?

Not to be flip, but my human adept punches for a base damage of 8P. With his bare hands. Which he is never disarmed of. I'm not saying that guns aren't innately deadlier in Shadowrun, but melee is far from pointless. In a protracted combat with his (disgusting) four initiative passes (not innate, but thanks to the horrible combat drugs I was on) my puncher (actually he is a practitioner of kali) was able to keep pace easily with the rigger's Steel-Lynx and its Ingram White Knight with Explosive Ammo. Neither outperformed the other. Which I think is a credit to the overall balance of Shadowrun.

My adept is not at all power gamed and is also basically a starting level character. If the adept wasn't built to a specific flavor/concept and was just cheesed out, he could punch much harder. Also if he was a troll. : )

That is the point of melee?

Also it's just COOL.

Reading your post it seems more like you're saying "what's the point of being restricted to just one initiative pass", because that to me is the major difference between the gunslinger adept and the bounty hunter described in your anecdote: the # of Initiative Passes. Also are you remembering to split dice pools and apply cumulative recoil penalties for the 4 Shots/Turn gunslinger adept?

Sorry if other people have said the same and I am beating a dead horse.

This post has been edited by Neurosis: Sep 2 2010, 05:13 PM

[yesferatu]

I'll take a quick stab at this quickly dying horse topic....
Neurosis...the main differences in melee vs. guns are:
1. Melee is defended with reaction and dodge/parry/whatever (potentially Attribute + skill) and only has to be mitigated once an IP.
2. Guns are defended with reaction only, can be used at a distance, from multiple sources, and must be mitigated at least twice per IP.
3. The problem only multiplies with additional IPs, but it's essentially the same.
4. Each gun attack further reduces the defender's reaction until it's gone. At that point, the gunslinger only needs 1 success on however many hits they want. That doesn't even include the difficulty of avoiding different auto/semi-auto firing modes.
5. Guns attack twice as often and are resisted with half the dice.

Melee is at a disadvantage. Period.

[sabs]

The Martial Arts rules in Arsenal help with this a little.
Multi-Strike allows a melee person to attack more than once per IP with basically similar penalties to shooting twice with a gun.

Martial Arts really does improve melee.
If Melee was not both, easier to defend agaisnt AND limited by range. I think they would be balanced well.