What's the point of melee? Options

[StealthSigma]

Anyone who wants to go swing a jump rope around for a bit will tell you why there's no way in hell any sane person would ever consider defaulting on a monowhip, heh.

Well, since the average human has 3 agility and defaulting would drop your dice pool to 2..... Yep, makes perfect sense.

[TommyTwoToes]

Well, since the average human has 3 agility and defaulting would drop your dice pool to 2..... Yep, makes perfect sense.

Yep, its just the superhum Sammies with 7-9 agility that can pull it off unskilled.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I used the katana because it's the iconic example. That, and because with its damage, it's going to be common for melee build characters.

But you're right, most melee weapons are still going to be cumbersome to carry, even ones smaller than a katana. Because, after all, they have to go somewhere. Load bearing is an element of the game quite often ignored. And while a modern hatchet might not weigh all that much, you still need somewhere to put it that will be easily accessible for you to ready. That takes up a lot of space for the other things you might want easily accessible like ammo, sidearms, electronics. You can fit a moderately sized knife in a lot of places. A machete is a little different. Even the best set up tactical vest runs out of convenient slots real quick, and there's nothing more frustrating than having to turn to someone and say "Hey. can you grab that for me?"

You can totally hide a katana under a long coat. I saw it on highlander.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[sabs]

You can totally hide a katana under a long coat. I saw it on highlander.

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I always assumed he just pulled it out of his ass

[CanRay]

I always assumed he just pulled it out of his ass

Ah yes, the Transdimentional Buttcrack.

[Critias]

I remember when someone wrote up a World of Darkness conversion for Highlander Immortals, back around '94 or '95 or so, and gave them the Arcane background. It was essentially a stealth boost, but a really crazy over the top one, the way the old WoD mechanics worked. Their sole justification for it being available to Immortals was the trenchcoat katana thing.

In Shadowrun, at least, weapon concealability isn't ALWAYS going to be an issue. There's places in The Sixth World you'd be looked at strangely if you didn't have a weapon on you; whether it's socially acceptable for that weapon to be an Ares Predator or a katana is largely up to the GM and what "flavor" of over-the-top Shadowrun they're going for.

[Kruger]

Walking around, sure. In fact, in a lot of places, a sword isn't even illegal to carry openly, thought you might get charged with a felony for a collapsible baton, how silly is that?

More what I was getting at was climbing and sneaking and crawling and trying to fit into tight vehicle spaces with three and a half feet of inflexible sword clattering off of everything.

[Dwight]

The weird part of this with Highlander is that in the movie the fact he COULD NOT easily conceal it when being directly observed was a crucial plot point. He had to sneak back to the head-dispatch scene in the parking garage to recover the stashed sword. The long coat only worked for not sticking out quite as much in public (and of course, now more than ever, there is an exaggerated subtext that tells people "maybe's got something to hide like a shotgun"....unless you are somewhere where wearing an oilskin isn't that much out of the ordinary, like a rodeo).

[CanRay]

Or when it's raining.

Seattle would be a big place for Highlander-esque immortals.

[Kruger]

Yeah. Seattle's winter rainfall is pretty constant and enough of a threat that you could get away with a coat when it was dry.

In the summer months though, it's actually pretty dry and pleasant. At least from my experiences there.

[Paul Kauphart]

Considering SR Seattle rain is a bit more that just water (some H+ are included as well), I wouldn't take the risk of going out without a proper coat, event in summer.

[CanRay]

Already sounds better than the places I lived.

We didn't have rain in the winter there. It came down as snow, when it wasn't too cold to snow.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Already sounds better than the places I lived.

We didn't have rain in the winter there. It came down as snow, when it wasn't too cold to snow.

I'm from an equatorian country whom never seen snow in RL™, so, how the hell is possible be too cold to snow? I mean, doesn't snow when the temperature is below 0ºC (32ºF for you britishs and former british colonies)...

[Dwight]

Considering SR Seattle rain is a bit more that just water (some H+ are included as well), I wouldn't take the risk of going out without a proper coat, event in summer.

Also, London isn't nearly as rainy and foggy these days since heating homes with coal fell out of vogue.

[Shinobi Killfist]

I'm from an equatorian country whom never seen snow in RL™, so, how the hell is possible be too cold to snow? I mean, doesn't snow when the temperature is below 0ºC (32ºF for you britishs and former british colonies)...

The colder it gets the less water vapor is in the air. Too cold to snow is more of a saying though than a reality in most cold places people live. But at really epic colds like arctic colds it can get cold enough that their is so little moisture in the air that is is highly unlikely it could snow.

[Dwight]

What Shinobi says. Basically to have snow, like any kind of precipitation, you must have a warm, moist air mass that gets cooled. Mountains on the windward side/top get lots of snow because the air is being forced upward to colder elevations. On flatter terrain you must have a warm air system, cold air system front for the instability to create snow. This presents an effective limit on how cold overall it can be.

Also, snow formation warms the air up. The energy that comes out of the water vapour during it's conversion into a solid is substantial.

[CanRay]

The colder it gets the less water vapor is in the air. Too cold to snow is more of a saying though than a reality in most cold places people live. But at really epic colds like arctic colds it can get cold enough that their is so little moisture in the air that is is highly unlikely it could snow.

I lived on top of a mountain in Northern Ontario, and now in Winnipeg (Which is cold by Canadian standards).

It has, quite literally, been too cold to snow in my lifetime far too often. First by ambient temperature, which is bad. Then by wind chill, which is far, far worse.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

The colder it gets the less water vapor is in the air. Too cold to snow is more of a saying though than a reality in most cold places people live. But at really epic colds like arctic colds it can get cold enough that their is so little moisture in the air that is is highly unlikely it could snow.

The more you know...

[CanRay]

So, anyhow, an advantage of a cold city, armour wouldn't be as out of place as it would be in a hot climate. Armour is heavy and insulating, which is very advantageous when it's -30C without the wind chill.

Try wearing ballistic clothing in Aztlan or Amazonia and watch how fast you overheat and dehydrate.

Which gets us back to bullets and blades.

[DeadLogic]

at the end of my last campaign, one of my players had a Troll named Toast. Toast was kind of dumb, and would beat things with his nail-bat. The group constantly poured spare money into Toast, eventually getting him wired reflexes and some muscle augmentation (and a custom all-metal baseball bat with railway spikes coming out of it). One of his greatest moments was a melee with a freakish humanoid military drone, where Toast PUNCHED a hole in the things chest with a fist full of grenade. He lost his arm, and was out for a month of game time, unconscious from the blast. But it just took a single melee roll to leave him with more street cred than he knew what to do with. IT was amazing.

[Sixgun_Sage]

at the end of my last campaign, one of my players had a Troll named Toast. Toast was kind of dumb, and would beat things with his nail-bat. The group constantly poured spare money into Toast, eventually getting him wired reflexes and some muscle augmentation (and a custom all-metal baseball bat with railway spikes coming out of it). One of his greatest moments was a melee with a freakish humanoid military drone, where Toast PUNCHED a hole in the things chest with a fist full of grenade. He lost his arm, and was out for a month of game time, unconscious from the blast. But it just took a single melee roll to leave him with more street cred than he knew what to do with. IT was amazing.

You know, I have played gunslinger adepts that walked in to sniper ambushes with just a handgun and walked out with half a clip to spare. Toast punching a hole in a drone's chest with a fistfull of boom is still cooler.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

at the end of my last campaign, one of my players had a Troll named Toast. Toast was kind of dumb, and would beat things with his nail-bat. The group constantly poured spare money into Toast, eventually getting him wired reflexes and some muscle augmentation (and a custom all-metal baseball bat with railway spikes coming out of it). One of his greatest moments was a melee with a freakish humanoid military drone, where Toast PUNCHED a hole in the things chest with a fist full of grenade. He lost his arm, and was out for a month of game time, unconscious from the blast. But it just took a single melee roll to leave him with more street cred than he knew what to do with. IT was amazing.

Awesome Indeed... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smokin.gif)

[Yerameyahu]

What are the rules for chest-hole-punching, by the way? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Summerstorm]

What are the rules for chest-hole-punching, by the way? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The greatest rule of all:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

[Draco18s]

The greatest rule of all:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

Speaking of said trope:

This trope brought to you by Death playing an electric guitar on the peak of a mountain with a shard of his own scythe.

I've seen that animated film. It is awesome.

The book/film is about the history of Rock and Roll (although clearly parodied and satirized). The main group is The Band With Rocks In. The drummer is a troll who knocks out one of his own teeth* so the guitarist can buy this magical guitar from this strange antiques shop (which vanishes when they leave). Said troll also names the group.


*TP trolls are made of rock, their teeth are diamonds. They think better when they're cold (the troll brain being a lump of impure silicon, works better at lower tempuratures) and they practically worship, "Mr. Shine, him diamond." Mr. Shine does exist and he is made of diamond and is the smartest troll ever because he can alter his crystalline structure to keep his brain at whatever temperature he wants to. So the band's name is a double-pun: they're a rock group and the troll is a rock.