Melee Combat Options

[mmu1]

I've had a chance to watch a lengthy one in a game I'm in, and it got me thinking...

Is there really any reason, when engaged in a 1-on-1 fight, to NOT throw as much combat pool as you can into the first roll in the fight, increasing your chances of inflicting a wound right off the bat and skewing the odds in your favor?

The only one I can think of is if you know you're outmatched and expect to get hit no matter what, but have enough armor that you feel your CP dice will do you more good on your damage resistance test - and that's basically it.

Can anyone think of other reasons? (remember - basically talking about a duel here, so saving CP just in case some 3rd party shoots you is a non-issue)

[Austere Emancipa...]

No. Having run a couple of dozen medieval fantasy-type games with slightly modified SR rules, it's pretty obvious that, with the one exception you mentioned, it's always a good idea to use as much CP as possible on the very first melee-related roll.

Perhaps if you were fighting some kind of freaky monster-type-thingy with very few dice for use in melee but lots of damage resistance (high Body, armor, Immunities, etc.) and you had some Maneuvers, then it might also be prudent to first attack with fewer dice to get some bonuses and then use all your dice on the subsequent attack. That's pretty damn rare, though. I'd wager such a situation will never arise in most people's SR careers.

[SFEley]

[Ryu]

If you can spend all your pool offensivly, you should. If you can´t melee is not for you.

As CP is usually enough for no more than two fully supported punches, there is the matter of allocation between attacks:

If you are superior in melee, your opponent will need to compensate by CP. Take advantage by using less pool, striking fully only when his pool is gone. Most melee opponents will have 4 close combat rounds per turn between them, so he will hit you a little or not at all the first two of those, and get smacked later. He will allocate max. CP as discussed before, as you would in this situation, so plan accordingly.

If your group practices hidden maneuver declaration (a suggested rule), not damaging maneuvers can be combined with less then maximum dice.You risk not getting an advantage next round, but your enemy spend more of his pool. (You should be able to soak a hit with one or two net successes though).

[Wounded Ronin]

If you're fighting someone who can't damage you, it's extremely funny to wait for him to use all his pool and then make a melee attack on your last phase using all your pool. If you cinematically scale him into over deadlier damage, the GM can describe his severed head flying away like in a low budget Hong Kong movie.

[BitBasher]

[Ryu]

Somehow I don´t get it. I would have thought 12 net successes+2 per body do the trick. But nevertheless, with my GM I could possibly get that to fly.

"You spend your whole karma pool to do WHAT?"

[ShadowGhost]

[Cain]

You also want to save your combat pool if you're facing a monowhip. That way, you can take advantage of the backlash.

[Glyph]

The only tactical disadvantage is if your enemy has equal skill, but better soaking ability. If you spread out your Combat Pool, then it is relatively even. But if you use all of your Combat Pool, then he uses all of his on his attack, then you've gone from a stalemate, to trading hits back and forth. And if the other guy is tougher, that is a losing scenario.

Most of the time, though, it does make sense to spend the maximum amount of Combat Pool on your first hit - same goes for ranged combat (and using spell pool for spellcasting).


Remember, though, combat isn't always going to be a one-on-one confrontation happening by itself. A lot of times, you will want to save Combat Pool dice to dodge attacks from other enemies.

[Ryu]

The attacker has to declare CP usage first.

The defender has the advantage of being able to adapt his reaction. If he uses just enough pool to make a resulting hit soakable, and "enough" is less than the attacker used, he just gained a relative advantage.

Provided your impact armor is high relative to the strength of your attacker, you might want to forego one chance at doing damage by not using CP on your defense. Against most opponents & runner armor, the TN for soaking will be 2. If you need CP dice to soak, it will be less than those you would have needed to win the combat test. Useability of this strategy depends on the strength vs. armor comparison.

If you are strong compared to your opponents armor, but he isn´t compared to yours, don´t use CP offensivly on your turn. He has to, as any lost round has a chance to hurt him, and his only chance is to give you some wound modifiers. You on the other hand strive to get one attack with max. net successes (as always), most easily accomplished when he was already forced to spend his pool. Should he attack you without CP, use all the CP you can.

(Yeah, just an aspect of glyphs scenario, I noticed. If your soaking ability results from high impact armor, defensive use of CP at the beginning of the turn, max. offensive as usual later. I will shut up now.)

[weblife]

Actually, noone has to declare anything. If two PC's fight, then stuff like Pool allocations should be handled with little notes to the GM.

Atleast, no GM I know would tell the players how much CP the NPC's has, or how they spend it.

Always strike first, always strike hard. Only exception is when modifiers stack against you, then you can go for full defence, but even then, the opponent might swing again later in the round, and you should be taking cover/using another attack that will disable the opponent(s)

Quickdrawing 4 grenades and dropping them, then moving away is always an option.

[Ryu]

All player dice are rolled for all to see, generally. In a PC duell I would either declare options AND pool hidden or both openly, to get a semblance of tactics into it. Strike first, strike hard is a bit boring for a duell.

Else: The GM still knows all and can put this plan to use in favour of the NPCs. Evil asymetric information thingy, I like!

[SFEley]

[ShadowGhost]

How to make PC characters worry... use all the same colored dice for Skill, and combat pool.... so an NPC with a skill of 5, and five combat pool rolls 10 of the same type and color dice.

Watch player decided how much combat pool to add.... then say, "Oh crap, I forgot to add combat pool! I'll throw them in next turn." :D

Watch player panic. 8)

[Vaevictis]

[ShadowGhost]

You're thinking of Complementary or Background skills.

You don't need a success on your main skill to count successes with your combat pool, so you don't need to use different dice for skill and combat. In fact, all your 'skill' dice can fail, while all your combat pool dice are successes and they still count as successes.

[Cain]

Nitpick: You *do* need to do differentiate them on the defensive, especially if you're using Full Defense. That's how you determine if it was a full miss or not. However, all successes do count, regardless of where they come from; but this can be very important, especially when facing touch spells or a monowhip.

[ShadowGhost]

When I GM..... NPCs never use Full Defense.... they don't need it. <Evil GM Grin>

But for PCs.... they use different dice so they can keep track of combat pool.

And using all the same colored dice as a GM means the players can't rely on "number crunching" to decide who much or how little combat pool to use, so they react more in character.