[SR3]What was the idea behind melee fighting in SR3 Options

[sk8bcn]

Ok, I'll describe what I consider beeing the problem.

M. Mike Tyson is an un-cybered boxer. He faces Bloodwing, an elf ranged-assassin, with extrem wired-reflexs. Bloodwing doesn't know melee combat.


Bloodwing dosn't turn on his reflexes, and Tyson knocks him out in something like 10 secs.

But, a day later, Bloodwing comes for revenge, turning reflexes on! And suddenly, Tyson doesn't blow him twice a round, but 4 or 5 times! Out in 3 secs.




Ok so here we go with my question: Why did FASA write melee combat this way (in a melee attack the more successes in the contest hits the other one)?

Was it in order to mak "tank builds" viable and wired reflexes not a must have?

Was the rule not well tought?

Something else?

[Maelwys]

Well, you could argue that in the second example, Bloodwing was opening himself up more by attacking, and that left him open to being attacked, rather than in the first example, where all he did was hold his gloves up infront of his face, giving few openings.

I always saw the SR3 rules (and SR2 and SR1 mostly) as sort of cinematic combat where during a melee fight, both people are swinging at each other in a flurry of blows, trying to hit the other. Sort of Errol Flynn on the stairs with a sword. He may be the one that swings first, but if his opponent is good enough to parry and riposte, its possible Flynn's taking damage.

As opposed to the SR4 and SR5 combat where the rules lead you to believe that melee combat is simply one person swinging away while the other does nothing but block. Sure, there are probably fights where its something like that, but its not very cinematic.

So yeah. SR3 makes sense to me.

[tisoz]

I'm not sure about 1st edition as 2nd edition came out about the time I was starting to understand the basics of 1st edition. In 2nd edition, if you didn't have wired reflexes 2 or 3 or some sort of cranked up initiative doing the same thing, you got to at best, watch the rest of the team fight or at worst, take a lot of damage. I'm sure it was different in some games, but not in any I was involved.

If they nerfed wired reflexes in 3rd edition, then good for them. Initiative was KING in 2nd edition. Any wired up, no melee skill character trying to go hand to hand with a brick needs to be shown their place in the universe. If anything, the rules were trying to make melee characters viable. Broken? Maybe. But when the game industry leader's audience one is trying to lure to one's game system is not used to having firearms in their current system, melee is something they can understand and one is inclined to make it viable.

[Stahlseele]

compared to 1st/2nd in 3rd wired were nerfed pretty harshly if i remember correctly.
they cost more in both money and essence i think?
and in SR3 we had basically the same initiative system they recycled in 5th?

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Melee Combat in SR 3rd Edition was always an Opposed Contest.
Whoever won that particular contest each round dealt the damage.
So yes, If the Attacker was a Professional Speed Sammy and the Defender was a Troll Ganger who was a brawler, the fight often went to the Troll, even if he was slower.
Moral of the Story: Shoot the Troll... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Built a character on that very premise.
It was brutal, and I really liked it a lot. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Stahlseele]

MOST Melee Fights went to the Troll.
AS IT BLOODY WELL SHOULD BE!

I think somebody did the maths on that once, a normal Troll could win a fight against 4 or 5 humans with knives . .

I usually built maxed out STR Trolls as well. 20D Damage with a 3 reach? YES PLEASE! I'LL TAKE THAT AND MORE!

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

MOST Melee Fights went to the Troll.
AS IT BLOODY WELL SHOULD BE!

I think somebody did the maths on that once, a normal Troll could win a fight against 4 or 5 humans with knives . .

I usually built maxed out STR Trolls as well. 20D Damage with a 3 reach? YES PLEASE! I'LL TAKE THAT AND MORE!

Indeed... Trolls were brutal... Which is why you SHOOT THEM till they are Dead. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Of course, some of them are bulletproof as well, which makes that pretty difficult. Mine ignored anything under a Heavy Weapon pretty regularly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Stahlseele]

*snickers*
Shotgun with 10D Slug Base Damage. To the face.
*Troll-Body-Roll* *marks one Box of physical damage* "ow."

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

*snickers*
Shotgun with 10D Slug Base Damage. To the face.
*Troll-Body-Roll* *marks one Box of physical damage* "ow."

One whole Box? Piker. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
But yeah, I know that particular scenario... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Sendaz]

*snickers*
Shotgun with 10D Slug Base Damage. To the face.
*Troll-Body-Roll* *marks one Box of physical damage* "ow."

Isn't that a Troll Facial Cleanser? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Isn't that a Troll Facial Cleanser? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Indeed... Equivalent to Clearasil in its effectiveness... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[Glyph]

Melee combat as an opposed test was not a bad idea, but they didn't think all of the implications through. One of them was what the OP posted, that faster characters didn't get an advantage from being faster - they just got their asses kicked faster. The other thing was just how crippling the TN modifiers from friends in melee were. Rolling versus a TN of 8 when your enemies are rolling versus a TN of 2 is where you get the complaints about a troop of girl scouts with pointy sticks being able to take down a kung-fu master.

[tisoz]

I just remembered how in SR2 a character could get 3 turns before an opponent got to act since initiative was rolled, the highest roll got a turn, you subtracted, and the next highest initiative got to go, etc.. High reaction/initiative guys usually got 2 turns before most characters got any. 3 or 4 turns a round were common, so if you only got 2 or 1, you got to watch or die.

High Quickness is already factored in by increasing Combat Pool. Ties go to the attacker so higher initiative players get that benefit. High Quickness characters can use it to gain Superior Position or stay out of melee range.

Quickness and Reaction are already critical Attributes, having them not heavily influence melee doesn't seem unfair.

If one wants to claim it is more about high initiative, then maybe one needs to remember that initiative is not how quick a character is, but how well they react to conditions. Maybe there should be a modifier for noticing an incoming attack and being quick enough to block or deflect it. Or is this already incorporated in Full Defense?

[Maelwys]

Melee combat as an opposed test was not a bad idea, but they didn't think all of the implications through. One of them was what the OP posted, that faster characters didn't get an advantage from being faster - they just got their asses kicked faster. The other thing was just how crippling the TN modifiers from friends in melee were. Rolling versus a TN of 8 when your enemies are rolling versus a TN of 2 is where you get the complaints about a troop of girl scouts with pointy sticks being able to take down a kung-fu master.

I dunno. Under SR3, the faster character doesn't have to engage. He can get away (or atleast force his opponent to move to catch up to him, and that's not guaranteed since movement rates aren't fixed), or use his speed to make the fight more advantageous to him in some way, such as getting into a superior position. And in the beginning of the fight, he might be able to get his weapons ready before his opponent. Its going to suck if the faster guy can get his sword out while the other guy is stuck with just his bare fists. So no. There isn't a mechanical advantage for the faster player in the actual melee combat roll, but the faster player can certainly make use of his speed.

The friends in melee modifiers maybe should've been handled like reach. One modifier, either applying to your attack or your opponent's, not both.

Of course, the 4th edition rules have their issues too. Since its not an opposed test, as far as I can tell, the character with more Initiative Passes can simply beat on a NPC without any worry about being struck in return, and since there are potentially multiple attacks, the defender's defense pool also decreases. There's no drawback not to swing.

[sk8bcn]

Melee Combat in SR 3rd Edition was always an Opposed Contest.
Whoever won that particular contest each round dealt the damage.
So yes, If the Attacker was a Professional Speed Sammy and the Defender was a Troll Ganger who was a brawler, the fight often went to the Troll, even if he was slower.
Moral of the Story: Shoot the Troll... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

What you say is true.

I'll take another exemple:

Mr Troll with no wired reflex, a pole staff fights an Elf assassin who has a katana and good wired reflexes. Both have melee at 6. But the troll has more damages.

If both fights melee, the elf will have trouble winning (range+damages). But if he holds out a gun in his off-hand, shoots at the troll at melee range (with offhand penalty and mlee penalty) at his own initiative passes: taddaaaa! his winning chances just went up by a lot.

[sk8bcn]

ok I'll ask another question:

What effect would it have if I'd modify the rule into an attack test vs a defense test?

[Stahlseele]

depends on implementation. generally nothing good. specifically, breaking the whole system in a different direction than the one agreed upon.

[Cochise]

I think somebody did the maths on that once, a normal Troll could win a fight against 4 or 5 humans with knives

That math would have been awfully "off". On average that situation would however lead to a stalemate. The troll would constantly be hit by his attackers and then simply shrug off the damage. You could rinse and repeat until either side rolled a critical failure.

One of my (not necessarily) fondest memories involves such a situation where a GM tried to get players to aid a then "unknown" player character who happened to be a melee troll. But players were meta-gaming players and simply knew that those three elves with knives wouldn't be able to harm the troll while the troll wouldn't be able to hit the elves ... so they (including me) opted for watching the spectacle for a while. When the GM decided to increase pressure by having one of the elves draw an Uzi III things got ugly: One of the (stat wise) worst SMGs in the hands of a just average shooter was met with no successes on the attempted Dodge roll and the consecutive Damage Resistance test ended in one of the few "all 1" rolls with more than 10 dice that I ever witnessed. The Uzi III instantly became a weapon of legend that day.

I usually built maxed out STR Trolls as well. 20D Damage with a 3 reach? YES PLEASE! I'LL TAKE THAT AND MORE!

Let's just say that maxing out strength had a clear point of diminishing returns in contrast to maximizing dice pools and simply killing via net successes ... and "as always" in pretty much every Shadowrun Edition magic ultimately was what said "the sky is the limit".


**********************

Now as far as the original question is concerned I can only guess what the devs had in mind there. But going by the description of how melee supposedly works - as a series of blows, kicks and dodges - I'd say that they had a Hollywood-esque approach to visualizing and resolving melee combat: combatant A engages a combatant B as the attacker but ends up with broken nose due to combatant B being the superior fighter. Add in one of the most basic doctrines many reasonable Martial Artists teach and you can see where they came from: Being a successful Martial Artist is not about being fast or strong, it's about using the right technique at the right time with the least amount of thinking.

A high reflex character getting his butt handed even faster when using his reflexes is just a byproduct of the general weakness of the combat sequence with multiple passes.

The thing however is this: The high reflex character is never forced to engage the melee character in the first place. So that 10 second K.O. vs. 3 second K.O. can only occur if the high reflex character is literally dumb enough to pursue the conflict after he received the same amount of beating in the first initiative pass that he'd otherwise have received in one combat turn (where no further initiative passes would have occurred). So the seemingly "unrealistic" result is not only influenced by the mechanics as such but also by the sheer "stupidity" of doing something just because the rules allow you to do it.

[Cochise]

ok I'll ask another question:

What effect would it have if I'd modify the rule into an attack test vs a defense test?

Chances are that you'll "kill" melee as a valid game play option even more. A dedicated melee character is already forced to close the gap between himself and his target in order to bring his skills to bearing. Combining high reflexes with high melee effectiveness in SR - at least SR3 - isn't that easy either. With that kind of solution you'd restrict a melee expert to only ever causing damage during his own combat phases which by all accounts is identical to the situation where he used a gun instead.

Additionally it wouldn't bode too well with the attack of opportunity rules that characters (players and non-players alike) get when someone passes within 1m of their current position outside of combat sequence.

[tisoz]

I dunno. Under SR3, the faster character doesn't have to engage. He can get away (or at least force his opponent to move to catch up to him, and that's not guaranteed since movement rates aren't fixed), or use his speed to make the fight more advantageous to him in some way, such as getting into a superior position. And in the beginning of the fight, he might be able to get his weapons ready before his opponent. Its going to suck if the faster guy can get his sword out while the other guy is stuck with just his bare fists. So no. There isn't a mechanical advantage for the faster player in the actual melee combat roll, but the faster player can certainly make use of his speed.

The friends in melee modifiers maybe should've been handled like reach. One modifier, either applying to your attack or your opponent's, not both.

Building on the this idea, the faster guy can also use his speed to keep the opponents friends out of melee range.

[sk8bcn]

The thing however is this: The high reflex character is never forced to engage the melee character in the first place. So that 10 second K.O. vs. 3 second K.O. can only occur if the high reflex character is literally dumb enough to pursue the conflict after he received the same amount of beating in the first initiative pass that he'd otherwise have received in one combat turn (where no further initiative passes would have occurred). So the seemingly "unrealistic" result is not only influenced by the mechanics as such but also by the sheer "stupidity" of doing something just because the rules allow you to do it.

It's not that easy because what doesn't ease me with that rule is the following fact:

I have a samourai who likes to fight melee.

But the point is, how do I trully justify that my cybered adept is not trully better than the go-gang melee fighter?


In reality, quickness and reflexes remain a key in fighting.

[sk8bcn]

Actually, in SR3's system, there's no real room for the fast-agile dodgy melee fighter. The only model that works is the strong and resilient one.

[Maelwys]

It's not that easy because what doesn't ease me with that rule is the following fact:

I have a samourai who likes to fight melee.

But the point is, how do I trully justify that my cybered adept is not trully better than the go-gang melee fighter?


In reality, quickness and reflexes remain a key in fighting.

Because speed isn't everything? If you want your cybered adept to be better than the go-gang melee fighter, then he needs to have a higher skill than the go-ganger.

Quickness and reflexes get you alot. They get you more combat pool, they allow you to go first so you can position yourself in the melee better, your quickness influences how fast you can move so that allows you to position yourself better, going first allows you to activate powers that need activation, or cyberware, and it also lets you to get your weapon out and ready it. They're major advantages in combat, but they're not going to let you attack a person with impunity.

[Maelwys]

ok I'll ask another question:

What effect would it have if I'd modify the rule into an attack test vs a defense test?

One thing to keep in mind is that SR3 does have a full defense rule in the main book. Page 123 and 124 allow for full defense in melee combat where the attacked character doesn't get to do damage if they get more successes.

[Cochise]

It's not that easy because what doesn't ease me with that rule is the following fact:

I have a samourai who likes to fight melee.

But the point is, how do I trully justify that my cybered adept is not trully better than the go-gang melee fighter?

Incorrect stipulation right there: If you have a samurai / cybered adept who favors melee then it's reasonable to assume that he should have a melee related skill that's equal to or exceeds the melee skill of that go-gang melee fighter. And now things get interesting: With multiple initiative passes where your samurai / cybered adept is the attacker he "gains" the advantage of ties going to him instead of his opponent.

In reality, quickness and reflexes remain a key in fighting.

As I tried to point out earlier: While quickness and general reflexes do have their part in melee fighting, they aren't necessarily the most important aspects. It's far more important to be "skilled" to a degree where your techniques become "reflexes" themselves. Shadowrun models that aspect via skill ratings and not via the Reaction attribute.

As far as Quickness and "reflexes" being part of the SR3 melee model:

1. Quickness affects both Reaction and thus Initiative and Combat Pool size. The former influences the number of attacks your character can make within a given time frame while the latter heavily influences the outcome of any opposing tests in the melee resolution mechanic
2. Quickness also directly affects the amount of armor a character can wear without suffering penalties to Combat Pool and Quickness relates aspects (which includes running!) which in turn has impact on "survival chances" during Damage Resistance tests.
3. High "reflexes" in form of high Reaction / Initiative provides multiple Initiative passes with the destinct advantage that whenever you're the attacker ties against an otherwise equally skilled melee fighter will still be treated in your favor

Actually, in SR3's system, there's no real room for the fast-agile dodgy melee fighter. The only model that works is the strong and resilient one.

I would heavily object to that notion. I'll give you the importance of "Strength" simply due to the fact that it's the (oversimplified) linked attribute to all melee skills just like Quickness is the (equally oversimplified) linked attribute for pretty much all relevant ranged combat skills. Its importance grows due to it also being the base for the vast majority of melee Damage Codes. However, depending on weapon of choice you'll hit a point of diminishing returns quite early.

Resilience in form of high Body however? For a melee fighter not more important than for any other character. If you really aim for a "dodgy" melee fighter chances are that you'll rarely ever see him use his Body because he never gets hit (at least not in melee). The core melee rules are a bit limited as they only provide the Full Defense combat option to support the "fast-agile dodgy" build but once you add things like the Martial Arts rules from Cannon Companion and / or dedicated magic like adept powers and/or spells to the mix you'll end up with a lot of different "fast-agile dodgy" melee builds that only rely on STR as far as getting their melee skill high enough at reasonable karmic / build point cost is concerned.

Side note: The only thing that simply cannot be made viable in SR3 is the Nerve Strike adept power. Whatever you do to make that thing work, will automatically mean that you could just outright K.O. your opponent with a single standard attack.