Using Melee, What is it good for? Options

[Nikoli]

True, the lameness of your post far exceeds mine :D

[Shellshock]

He wasn't called the Sphincter. He was called....



The Spleen!

There was Invisible Boy
The Bowler
Blue Raja
and Mr. Furious


Each of them would make awesome SR characters if you actually put the concept together. :)

[Nikoli]

Invisible boy had the best Gaesa I ever saw.

Knack: Improved Invisibility, when not being looked at.

The Bowler: Spirit Foci/Ally spirit (Spectre of Father)

Mr. Furious, Force 6 Strength Boost

[Shellshock]

Invisible Boy : Knack Improved Invisibility Force Geas : Can't be looked at. Not even by self.

The Bowler : Conjuring Adept with Ally spirit (Ancestor Spirit : Father) Homonculied into a bowling ball containing his skull. Force 8. Powers of Fear and three dimentional movement.

Mr. Furious : Physical Adept. Force 6 Strength boost Geas : Must be Furious. Pain Resistance: 6 Geas Must be Furious.

Blue Raja : Physical Adept. Missile Mastery + Missile Parry + Improved Throwing Weapons 6. Geas... Must use utensiles, only. And wear funny outfit.

The Spleen : Magician specalizes in Toxic spells. Geas: Must not perform any form of personal hygene, and diet of high gas producing foods.

[Phaeton]

Well...*apologizes for thread necromancy*

...You want to REALLY know when melee is useful?

Jungles.

I learned that the VERY hard way from being piked half the time in the Guadalcanal level in MoH: Rising Sun.

Such. A. Pain. In the hoop. Level...

[ShadowGhost]

Melee is very useful. Character caught by surprise by melee attacking adept/ork/troll/ganger etc?

Still gets to defend himself using Full defense - chance to reduce successes by attacker.

Using a gun in melee combat? + 2 TN (SR3 pg112) to shoot target.

Using gun as club in melee? Gun has to be melle-hardened or it will be damaged.

Unsilenced gun is much louder than unarmed combat, doesn't leave potential blood splatter that will be noticed by NPCs - i.e. take out a guard in a hallway from behind with a club - very little, if any, mess. Shoot the guard, and the bullet may pass right through, splattering the wall/floor with blood, something that will be fairly obvious to the next NPC who passes by. Not to mention the bullet hitting something else after it's gone through guard.

Even if the gun is silenced, using explosive ammo, or EX ammo still produces a noise almost as loud as a gunshot when it hits the target. The only advantage to using a silencer here is that it's much more difficult to determine where the shot came from.... a case of "phut...BOOM!"

A fistifight may draw a little attention to yourself in a public place, Gunfire puts your PC in a friggin' spotlight, and depeding on the security rating of the place your in, may have local authorities hunting you.

Lotsa good reasons to have melee skills.

[Cursedsoul]

See, for silent ranged combat you use a heavy crossbow with dikoted crossbow bolt heads.

I don't see why this can't be done, and you'd have a 7D attack with no sound. :D Even if you can't dikote the heads, that's still 6S with no sound.

[Fresno Bob]

Of course Melee is useful! Didn't you all play Metal Gear Solid?

[Wounded Ronin]

I don't understand how you can fail to see that melee is powerful. If you take a troll with a dikoted claymore who is a physad you can roll 12 dice vs TN 2 for something like 13 D damage resisted by impact armor.

That is almost as powerful as an assault cannon.

How can you say that melee isn't powerful?

Also, remember that if the whole party gangs up on one big boss, the boss suddenly gets like +4 TN to his melee when they beat him down en masse. The people I play with have done that trick more than once.

Melee is very useful. More powerful than small arms if you twink it right.

[Cursedsoul]

Of course a troll with a dikoted claymore can't really walk around town with that claymore. ;)

Extendable Baton would work nicely. 9 conceal when collapsed, 5 when extended, Str+1M stun, 1 reach.

Say a 10 strength troll, that's 11M with 2 reach and you can conceal that weapon fairly well.

Get some plastic bone lacing and you can have tons of fun with that troll.

12M stun or 6M physical. Since you can wear shock gloves (conceal 9) that could be 11M stun +7S stun (shock) or 5M phys with a 7S stun(shock).

Then again, a troll walking around town will probably have people running in fear of them or be running from the police so the conceal doesn't really matter. :D

[Phaeton]

[Cursedsoul]

Well I'm sure after enough Panicbutton alerts the police will just up and drop some mortar fire on his position or something. ;)

[Phaeton]

It's a troll physad. Your point? :P :grinbig:

[Cursedsoul]

I'm supposed to have a POINT?! :eek:

[Phaeton]

[Siege]

[Phaeton]

I rule that this thread constitutes cruel and unusual PUN-ishment. :please:

EDIT: ...Must not interpret Siege's comment in a disturbing way, must not interpret Siege's comment in a disturbing way, must not...

FURTHER EDIT: Drek. That means I already did... :dead:

[Cursedsoul]

You mean I'm getting a dikoted Ork for Christmas!??!!

[Phaeton]

A dikoted Night One half-ghoul were-Citymaster?

With two smartlinks?

As a hidden unlockable character in FF7, Rainbow Six 3, and Halo?

[Cursedsoul]

:D

[ArianFaol]

To get back on the topic

realworld situations where hth skills are useful.

Combat in inhabited areas. (what we silly norwegians often call our military small unit tactics training). First of all, you're not going to be carrying tons of ammo in such a scenario (something I enforce in the game as well). this means that if you come upon an opponent and he hasn't discovered you, slit his throat, choke him out, whatever, the ammo for your SD is sacred. (this is a lot more viable in a shadowrun than in the real world where he most likely will hear you, but since the mp5 is trained on him, all he gets for his effort is a couple of rounds)

Disarming: sure you can plunk a couple of bullets in him, but he will either still be a threat or mortally wounded, not good in a case where you might have to move your mark a considerable distance.

just about any surprise situation, hit him before he manages to react or draw his weapon,(this is in the scenario that both are surprised).

gaining your opponent/victim/extraction mark/hostage's cooperation, sure a gun to the back of the head persuades just about anyone, but so does a good solid grasp of how to lock someone down as well. and a bit of pain can loosen the tongue quite easily.

[Young Freud]

[Cursedsoul]

Indeed, but chances are if you're using a pistol to shoot at someone they're at close range and thus that pistol is all you're going to have in/at hand to beat someone's noggin' with.

bayonets are nasty. Str+2M and reach 2. Best part is they can be detached and that AR can actually be disassembled and left in the trunk of a car as opposed to a halberd which is kind of hard to hide.

"Is that a halberd sticking out of a metal base?"
"uhh...no. Its umm...a lamp."
"With no lightbulb?"
"Oh well lah-de-dah Lookit me I'm Mr Asksfourthousandmillionquestions."
"Look, all I'm saying is..."
"Its not always about YOU you know. You people disgust me."
"But I'm not..."
"There you go again! That's it! I'm sick of your shenanigans! GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
"But its my house and I pay the rent. You're just freeloading."
"I think its a LITTLE late for THAT, don't you think?"
"No, not really. Not at all in fact."
"Why are you always so difficult?"

[John Campbell]

[Cursedsoul]

Clarification:Bayonet on a rifle is str+2M and reach 2 as per the CC. If you just use it as an edged weapon its a standard knife, which is apparently Str(L).