QUOTE (Johnny Hammersticks @ Aug 13 2010, 08:33 PM)

The real answer to the question "what's the point of melee?"
Melee is for the times when you use the Escape Artist skill.
Hypothetical situation:
My 9 Agility sniper also has 1 rank in escape artist. Our team, which consists of a pistols user, a guy that prefers to fight with his fists, a guy who prefers to fight with blades, and myself who fights with longarms/assault rifles/smgs depending on the situation. We get into a situation where death is very likely and escape is improbable. We surrender. We're captured and bound and loaded into a van for transport to X location with 1-2 guards in the van with us. During the escape, I'm wriggling my way out of the bindings. Once I am free I don't act, but give an acknowledgment to the team that I am free. The pistol and blade guy cause distractions for the two guards while I either knock out one of the guards or try to free the unarmed guy.
The point of the extraneous skills is to get your character out of situations where it is outside of its comfort zone and running at lessened effectiveness. Melee firmly falls under that category for -most- characters.
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QUOTE (CanRay @ Aug 14 2010, 01:47 AM)

Someone who packs a knife to a gunfight is either a fool or very good.
Of course, the best is to bring both.
And grenades.
Keep your options open.
Tactical nuclear weapons. You gotta be sure afterall.
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QUOTE (Omenowl @ Aug 14 2010, 10:46 PM)

Erwin Rommel put it best when he described his bayonet charge. The man with the last bullet in his gun wins... (He was shot in the leg leading a bayonet charge in WW1).
Just gotta say, one of my Top 5 military leaders of World War II.
#5 - Omar Bradley
#4 - Otto Weyland
#3 - Isoroku Yamamoto
#2 - Erwin Rommel
#1 - George S. Patton
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QUOTE (WyldKnight @ Aug 15 2010, 03:31 PM)

My weapons specialist would drop people with melee constantly.
Unarmed 4 + Agi 6+ Skill Group Recorder + Optimized Cyberarm for Unarmed combat = 12 dice on average without mods like ally in melee, a Tacnet, or a spec. Since most characters I fought (and most in my group) lacked unarmed when I got in close I could actually drop them rather quickly. My general tactic was using thermal smoke for cover, run up close, disarm them and either beat them senseless (6 DV so it didn't take long) or in the case of groups get close, disarm, hold their buddy like a shield, and spray them with bullets from his gun. And for the record the negative mod to my pool for disarming was only -1 after my first mission because of a martial art and then taking a Spec in said martial art. Nothing says noob like taking a persons gun and shooting them with it.
And that is why I make sure my firearms guy has every possible vision modification, including ultrasound, but we're not talking runners vs runners. This game is meant to be deadly. If you character can't reasonably take down your opponents without suffering a lot of damage, you either bunker down and let them get closer or run.
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QUOTE (CanadianWolverine @ Aug 15 2010, 09:15 PM)

As far as the OP goes, I too have encountered the problem of characters with more IPs than others on the team having the spotlight heavy on them in combat as a player of the higher IP character. It wasn't a particularly fun experience when the GM thought I was being munchkin with my character which I found odd for a whole host of reasons. Ever since I have wondered why that GM couldn't have seen their way to perhaps creating some scenario where the other characters could shine, you know perhaps not focus so heavily on combat being the end all be all to a role playing game. But that all depends on how the GM sets the stage and the players making choices that don't all lead to combat being the forgone response of the NPCs. *shrug*
Agreed. I think that's a subconscious reason why I haven't put a lot of effort into gaining more than one additional IP. I regularly see myself doing 12P damage without called shots using my firearms. If I don't kill something with a single shot, it's either got a metric crapton of damage resistance or it's badly injured and stacked up on wound modifiers. When combat his, I prefer to play tactically, taking targets in the most logical order.
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QUOTE (CanadianWolverine @ Aug 15 2010, 09:39 PM)

Just because I make a character that is good at a particular area of combat doesn't mean that from an in character perspective I think that character even wants to have to blow away sec forces, to leave that as a last resort to keep the heat off or effectively accomplish that task if that is the part of the team he was hired on to do. I'd rather not have a character who is just another mindless murderer on speed.
I agree with this fully. My firearms character (when looking at it from an outside perspective) would appear to be a sniper. You would think I would jump at the opportunity to open up and drop people, but I actually hate doing it. The reality is that his best utility is observation and stealth. 9 Agility, 5 Intuition, 5 Infiltration, and 4 Perception not including vision modifications, specializations, equipment, or other augments that otherwise boost the skills. I try to play as a wild card in combat and prefer to enter only when the situation tells me that the rest of the team may be overwhelmed or injured by an individual in combat.