Melee and lots of init passes...bad? Options

[Mr. Woodchuck]

We are all aware that you can disengage melee combat on your turn with no penalties or checks or other silliness. You can simply disengage and shoot if your character is not up to a melee brawl. Also there are a couple of maneuvers that favor the first attacker such as herding and zoning. There are also maneuvers that will allow you to expend less combat pool due to less penalties close combat, full offence\defence, or whirling. There is also the element of suprise which will go to the first attacker only and cut down on the defenders available combat pool. All else aside in an even fight initiative alone will not give you any bonus.Then again neither will your charisma score no mater how high. You do not need to make up cheesy rules to succeed, simply fight smarter.

[Person 404]

Try looking at it from the other angle, as Lime hinted at; instead of adding a cheesy bonus to high-intiative characters, the idea is to remove the current cheesy bonus to the melee defender: that they never get less effective, no matter how much faster they're forced to react, and they effectively gain extra actions because other people move faster.

[Kagetenshi]

Shift the point at which the defender does damage. Make one net success for the defender be nothing either way, two successes be base damage vs. the attacker, three successes be base plus one stage, etc.

Defender still too powerful? Shift it again.

~J

[A Clockwork Lime]

It's easier to only allow a single Counterstrike per normal Phase you have available to act. All other times, they're stuck defending themselves, holding off damage instead of dishing it out.

I can see the development of a martial arts maneuver or adept power that allows more counterstrike actions, but it shouldn't be there by default.

[Nikoli]

I didn't mean to say Combat pool is rarely used, I'm saying that phys ad would be able to save their combat pool for bullet-dodging or pounding the attackers face in when it became their turn.

[Cain]

I've run the numbers on multiple threads before, and the net advantage goes to the faster character, at roughly a 60/40 split, given equal skill.

Look, you guys are thinking about "counterattcking" the wrong way. If you come charging in at high speed, and miss, what's going to happen to you? If you just miss, you're going to keep going, and likely trip over the guy; congratulations, you just gave yourself roadrash/punched a brick wall full-force/ran into his fist.

I don't have to move in order to hurt the other guy-- he can do that to himself.

[A Clockwork Lime]

So now you're trying to say its a psychic power that causes the defender to simple step out of the way (a reaction), thus causing the attacker to trip and hurt themselves without the defender having to do anything. Doing, remarkably, the exact amount of damage their weapon does. Oy.

The simple fact is that melee combat, as the rules currently stand, give opponents the exact same Reaction boosts you have, even though you may very well be operating at superhuman levels (ie, anything about +1D6). I don't care how good you are, being attacked by four superaugmented opponents is not going to increase your reaction time... and if you're counterattacking, you are reacting.

This post has been edited by A Clockwork Lime: May 1 2004, 12:43 AM

[Kakkaraun]

[BitBasher]

If you're competent, the act of stopping an attack can harm your opponing. Just blocking can hurt someone quite badly. I never even have to leave my defensive zone to do it.

[Dashifen]

[Arethusa]

[BitBasher]

I didn't even mention abstraction, and at the extreme pretty much everything seems to break down. While not at the extreme I don't see a problem with the system at all.

on that 4,000,000th attempt that round he's not forcing the attacker to do anything, he can not attack and pursue other venues of survivial. That's darwin in motion if he keeps swinging and losing.

If really fast but unskilled people beat them selves unconscious against a more skilled opponent that just makes them morons. It's pretty easily avoided. If you're getting your ass kicked stop swinging. If you're that much faster you are going to have a lot more options than the slower person.

[TinkerGnome]

The rules aren't quite realistic, but they seem to work fine from a balance point of view. The fast character can take advantage of a lot of options that the slow character can't (positioning, etc). In a melee engagement, the advantage goes to the first character to deal a damaging blow to his opponent. The faster character acts first and thus can dictate the circumstances of the initial engagement giving him a stronger chance to deal the first damage.

I feel that giving the defender a limited number of counters is the wrong way to go if only because of the way damage is staged in hand to hand. Would you like to have that dikoted katana swinging at you with +4 power because of the successes you couldn't roll against?

If I were to change the rules, as I've said before, I'd simply remove the "if the defender has more successes" portion of the exchange and let only the attacker deal damage with each combat pass. Since it's rare that the defender is going to win these engagements, it really doesn't do much against the defender (again, if you're not built for melee, why the hell are you doing it? Unless you have surprise, that is, and dump mucho CP into the attack) and lessens the effective number of attacks the slow character gets.

[I Eat Time]

[I Eat Time]

[TinkerGnome]

There are reasons not to go full defense even with that type of ruling. If, for instance, you intend to attack back during your next phase, you can't go full defense. The shift in probabilities is pretty small since the defender does have to use and succeed with combat pool dice in order to actually avoid the attack completely (actually, it doesn't say that the attacker doesn't win a tie. It makes no statements at all about ties under the full defense section)

[I Eat Time]

Ack, you're right. I thought on Full Defense, if you tied, because the Defender is actively Defending, you missed. Meet or beat successes was going through my head. Guess I was wrong last game, Smiley. Next time I'll just sit in a corner and cry.

[Cain]

[A Clockwork Lime]

[Cain]

[TinkerGnome]

[A Clockwork Lime]

Woohoo! That dikote treatment you applied to your katana just increased the amount of damage your attacker did when you stepped out of the way and he tripped and bumped his head on a rock.

Is there anything Dikote can't do?

[BitBasher]

ACL please reread your own "grasping at straws" argument above and apply it to yourself, thanks.

[A Clockwork Lime]

Why? You guys are the ones claiming that a counterattack -- despite the fact that it's called a counterattack -- includes things like this:

[Herald of Verjig...]

The defender could slightly shift the sword while sidestepping so that the attacker passes right through some of the blade. All with minimal defender action and the defender staying in a defensive position in regard to other opponents.

It's not hard to explain after the event how the damage occured. That's what the SR combat system does well, it lets the GM decide just how the damage occured.
It is hideous to try to explain beforehand how the damage will be done. There are house-rules to change that so it is easy to explain how the damage occurs, you just have to roll on a few extra charts.