Dodging in melee? Options

[Austere Emancipa...]

[TinkerGnome]

Reguardless of how you work it, I feel that melee with people holding guns should be left to the experts who can get the job done in a hurry (generally adepts). Anyone rolling fewer than 6 dice before CP should probably learn the lesson of their ways in a body bag.

Which is why my gun focused characters generally just take enough martial arts to get evasion and do a full dodge when they get assaulted. Then they've got a good chance to solve the problem with a firearm... I pitty the non-adept who would jump a guy holding an assault rifle with the skills and cyber to use it propelry. Even with the +2 TN, most melee folk would have a hard time surviving that one.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[TinkerGnome]

By all rights, it should be a rare occasion that the melee person gets close enough to the person with the gun to attack them in melee combat without surprise. And in a surprise situation, where the gun character is not going to get to use cp, the melee character should kill him and quickly.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Take the good old example of someone trying to pull a gun when an unarmed person is charging him. No surprise, and it's possible, if not likely, that neither has great unarmed combat skills. It might end in a long wrestling match.

5 meters away from someone with a pistol drawn who wants to kill you, your chances of survival are really fucking slim. If you managed to rush into melee with him, you might have 25-40% chance of coming out alive. That's good enough for most people to try. The fact remains that when that happens IRL, the advantage of the guy with the gun diminishes and almost becomes insignificant.

When two equally skilled people are in that situation, one with a gun and one without, neither capable of neutralizing the other quickly in unarmed combat, the rules should still reflect the fact that it is extremely smart for the unarmed person to try and engage the armed person in melee combat through any possible means.

[Cain]

[TinkerGnome]

If you're unarmed and charging someone with a gun, you can either deal with the person holding the weapon (ie, hitting them hard which is what normal melee combat results are meant to simulate) or deal with the weapon via grappling or disarming (the CC subduing combat and disarming actions). If those two options which very thoroughly deal with weapons weren't available, I'd be much more prone to go with having someone you're fighting count as someone attempting to intercept the attack.

The problem is that the rules cover a wide variety of situations. Take a troll with a polearm vs. a sammie with a pistol built into his cyberhand and then take a guard with an assault rifle vs. a ganger with his bare fists. The rules make it equally hard for the sammy in the first example and the guard to shoot (the lethality of the foe is already paid for in blood, likely). If I were to want to impose a penalty on the guy with the guy, I'd probably want to make a table out of it.

Something like a base TN modifier of +2 plus:

Defender's reach -reach (max -2)
Attacker's weapon is:
Conceal 6 or greater or cybernetic +0
Conceal 4-5 +2
Conceal less than 4 +4

Saving that, if you're running up against a guy with a gun... disarm him or subdue him. Don't rely on your 1337 |\|i|\|jA 5ki11z to save your hoop if you can't knock your foe into next week in short order.

[KillaJ]

Alright, I'm sure that I am about to make a fool of myself, but could someone please explain to me what 1337 translates to?

[TinkerGnome]

l337 or l33t = elite among certain gamer groups. It's stupid, I know, and I use it in a negative fashion ;)

[Fu-Man Chu]

Thanks for all the ideas and clarifcations - I think I like that table you've got there TG. Anyways, the situation occured last night in a low-power SR game I'm running (BeCKs 225 points) where a PC was caught unarmed by some gangers in a store. He ambushed a one of them who happened to be carrying a StreetSweeper. I gave a +2 TN but kept thinking that it should be a little harder because of the size of it. Anyways, his Karma Pool saved his butt on a failed roll from the gun.

I described it as the ganger trying to wrestle the shotgun to a position where he could fire it as the PC tried to keep him from doing that and hit him instead.

[KillaJ]

[Kagetenshi]

[moosegod]

The fact that you pulled that off raises questions that I would have prefered not to ask, Kagetenshi.

[KillaJ]

You gotta be shittin' me...

[TinkerGnome]

[KillaJ]

First of all, thank you for the much needed translation, second of all...wow. I'm impressed.
*tips cap*

[Kagetenshi]

[20thCenturyFox]

What's to stop your firearm user to just take a step back and out of melee range and take a shot without penalty? Or would he get the attacker walking penalty +2 so it's pointless?

While we're at it, do movement penalties effect Melee combat? Such as a charging (running) character getting +4?

[RedmondLarry]

Yes, movement penalties affect melee combat. See the description of Movement in the section that describes the Combat Turn. Movement penalties affect all success tests.

P.S. However, I personally don't apply the running penalty to the Athletics Test to increase Running speed.

[mfb]

i don't use movement penalties for melee, because they're not on the melee chart. they are on the ranged combat chart, which makes its absence from the melee modifier list conspicuous. movement modifiers are also not noted in the rules for charging attacks, in CC; a minimum +1 modifier in melee is extremely important--it makes charging useless, as a matter of fact, as +1 power isn't anywhere near worth a +1 TN. if it applied, it would be mentioned here. it also seems off, to me--i've never seen a fight where those involved just stand in place and throw punches.

[TinkerGnome]

[mfb]

eh, no sane person would try subduing combat in SR.

[TinkerGnome]

I did say desperate. I'd also rule that if you've grasp (grasped?) your opponent, they're not able to move away or use ranged weapons, as well.

[mfb]

yeah, but the roll to escape only requires one success. gaaayyyy...

[Austere Emancipa...]

To even grasp the enemy takes a lot of luck or one hell of an advantage in skill. +2 TN on the initial melee test? No thanks.