Different methods same result. However, it's pretty obvious the recoil rules in place (regardless of which way it plays out) are balance oriented rather than logic oriented.

Why shouldn't recoil compensation apply to the second attack? Why does the gas vent 3 system suddenly cease to work on the second burst? Does a heavy barrel suddenly get lighter?

But then with the method I utilize why does the mitigated recoil still apply to the second attack?

Consequently, this is why I favor 2 recoil compensation on a Short/Short burst yielding a 0/-1 recoil penalty.

I figure if you're putting 9 rounds downrange in two bursts in less than three seconds, physics is going to already be tracking that barrel up regardless of the compensation you've got on it.

Mechanically that recoil doesn't magically disappear off the long burst when you pull the trigger again, unless you're into the next IP and you've stabilized the jumping barrel.

I guess I'm mainly saying in your average run, why bother putting any points into melee when even using one gun at close range has a huge advantage?

Other than "it's neat".

Yeah, IPs and actions are way too nebulous of increments to determine stuff like that. It takes very little effort to recover from weapon recoil in most instances, but it does take at least some effort and time. The rules as written decided that if you're firing two bursts in action phase, you haven't taken that time, so the recoil penalties are cumulative.

There is no difference between

-5 + 2 (-3) for the first burst / -5 -3 + 2 (-6) for the second burst and
-5 + 2 (-3) for the first burst / -3 -3 + 0 (-6) for the second burst

The end results are the same and I feel that the rules support the former interpretation more than the latter since I saw nothing that says recoil compensation is only applied once per action phase or that the recoil penalty is eliminated by recoil compensation.

However, I will concede that there may be some obscure situation that benefits from one interpretation over the other.

And here it just comes down to your idea of what you mean by "sword," really. Do you actually mean a purpose-built weapon, crafted to be finely balanced, wielded with skill and finesse, and -- historically -- a symbol of wealth and nobility as well as martial prowess?

Or do you just mean a bastard cutter, that would be wielded in Shadowrun with the Blades skill? Because there's plenty of fairly compact (relative to the bulk and awkward shape of a full-on katana) machetes, khukuris, tomahawks, etc, that are comparatively practical to carry around, even when trying to be sneaky. They tend to be designed for utility first and combat second, but they'll still get the job done if you need 'em to. Heck, just look at the good ol' entrenching tool, for that matter.

You don't have to go for a full-blown katana as a means of using the Blades skill to good effect. It just comes down to how much your game is run by the Rule of Cool, compared to practicality/realism concerns.

Generally that one, as that's what I've got mounted on my walls in the library.



True, though the concealability modifiers on melee weapons is not-so-hot, from what I remember.

For a more rules implementing answer... the memory blade from Arsenal. I'd say that isn't terribly big and clumsy and still likely to kill some folk. Although at that point you could also just being using a monofilament whip. (What, my shoelace is monofilament, you don't see me trying to swing it around at people do you?)

I like it when a character defaults using a mono-filament whip and still have a pretty good chance of cutting his opponent.

Yes. Furthermore, I see me doing that. Next time I make a character, I think I'm taking a monowhip proficiency.

Make sure you put it in a fingertip compartment too, that way you can easily justify grabbing the tip of your finger and using it like monofilament garrote as well. Sadly, my character that had one ended up using his sidearm more.

I used the katana because it's the iconic example. That, and because with its damage, it's going to be common for melee build characters.

But you're right, most melee weapons are still going to be cumbersome to carry, even ones smaller than a katana. Because, after all, they have to go somewhere. Load bearing is an element of the game quite often ignored. And while a modern hatchet might not weigh all that much, you still need somewhere to put it that will be easily accessible for you to ready. That takes up a lot of space for the other things you might want easily accessible like ammo, sidearms, electronics. You can fit a moderately sized knife in a lot of places. A machete is a little different. Even the best set up tactical vest runs out of convenient slots real quick, and there's nothing more frustrating than having to turn to someone and say "Hey. can you grab that for me?"

"Make sure you put it in a fingertip compartment too, that way you can easily justify grabbing the tip of your finger and using it like monofilament garrote as well."

Johnny Mnemonic called, he want's his scene back...

Ssshhhhhh, don't let them in on my secret. Next they'll figure out that my cyberdoc named Spider is really just Rollins...

From a purely crunch perspective? Depending on the gun, the melee weapon, and who's wielding them a melee weapon/attack can very plausibly hit harder. (Short of heavy gear (which you can only bring if subtlety is totally not a requirement) melee-focused adepts will always punch for more damage than any handgun shoots.)

And, also there are situational factors like unless your GM is very lenient or is not paying attention, there will ALWAYS be situations where you can't, shouldn't, or it would not be wise to pull out a gun. Guns will always shoot more (unless it's like a Ruger Super Warhawk or Eichiro Hatamoto or something) and can do it from farther away, but that isn't always worth the tradeoff for more damage and being available in situations where guns are not.

Also, I don't know why I didn't mention monowhips before. Monowhips are the best argument for melee ever, especially in 3E.

I dig the conversation going on with Critias about using melee weapons smaller than a Katana. My adept is also knife-based in addition to unarmed because, to paraphrase the character he's based on, "swords are for pussies".

Not everybody wants to/can be an adept? What do they do?

And monowhips are: Asburdly illegal, hard to find, and not available to starting characters under traditional rules.

You can build a pretty sick chrome-based melee character too? I mean if you don't want magic OR cyberware, then yes, melee is probably not for you except as a 'last resort' type skill.

There's some pretty nasty cyberlimb options out there, along with spurs, bone lacing, etc. Mundanes, particularly if they go the metahuman route, can still get plenty nasty in close.

In my experience, most people that really have a "melee guy" sort of concept are already leaning towards Adept, but that doesn't have to be the case.

Monowhips should be the melee weapon of choice for a firearms focused character, since strength doesn't factor in to damage at all! In fact, if it wasn't so counter archetype, I would have my firearms character use a monofilament whip (even while defaulting) because of his 9 Agility.

Agree with Critias. Another PC (who with my GMing frequency I may never play) was a sword-and-chrome-based Elf samurai and was pretty effective. I made him while first learning SR4 so I'm sure he's not optimal, but with some tweaking I think he could be very deadly indeed.

@StealthSigma:

Not sure if my memory is serving me correctly, but aren't there potentially very nasty consequences for using a Monowhip untrained?

The problem is, once you've gone the crazy cyber close combat route, you're more often than not sacrificed the subtle route, heh.

That's why so many players opt for the adepts in the melee route. It bypasses all the difficult decisions in character creation.


I guess not that subtle factors into everyone's games.

No. Just the -1 default penalty. There is nasty consequences for glitching/critically glitching a test with a monowhip.

Critical glitch a Monowhip roll, you lose a chunk of flesh. Or more than one.

Anyone who wants to go swing a jump rope around for a bit will tell you why there's no way in hell any sane person would ever consider defaulting on a monowhip, heh.

Just to keep the Keanu Reeves theme going, I'll play the Devil's Advocate.
Melee is cool mainly because very few people are trained for it.

If you sneak up on a gun bunny, or they can't get to their gun for some reason, a melee trained character has a huge advantage.
Knock the gun out of their hand, then knock them silly.

"whoa"

Well, since the average human has 3 agility and defaulting would drop your dice pool to 2..... Yep, makes perfect sense.

Yep, its just the superhum Sammies with 7-9 agility that can pull it off unskilled.

You can totally hide a katana under a long coat. I saw it on highlander.

I always assumed he just pulled it out of his ass

Ah yes, the Transdimentional Buttcrack.

I remember when someone wrote up a World of Darkness conversion for Highlander Immortals, back around '94 or '95 or so, and gave them the Arcane background. It was essentially a stealth boost, but a really crazy over the top one, the way the old WoD mechanics worked. Their sole justification for it being available to Immortals was the trenchcoat katana thing.

In Shadowrun, at least, weapon concealability isn't ALWAYS going to be an issue. There's places in The Sixth World you'd be looked at strangely if you didn't have a weapon on you; whether it's socially acceptable for that weapon to be an Ares Predator or a katana is largely up to the GM and what "flavor" of over-the-top Shadowrun they're going for.

Walking around, sure. In fact, in a lot of places, a sword isn't even illegal to carry openly, thought you might get charged with a felony for a collapsible baton, how silly is that?

More what I was getting at was climbing and sneaking and crawling and trying to fit into tight vehicle spaces with three and a half feet of inflexible sword clattering off of everything.

The weird part of this with Highlander is that in the movie the fact he COULD NOT easily conceal it when being directly observed was a crucial plot point. He had to sneak back to the head-dispatch scene in the parking garage to recover the stashed sword. The long coat only worked for not sticking out quite as much in public (and of course, now more than ever, there is an exaggerated subtext that tells people "maybe's got something to hide like a shotgun"....unless you are somewhere where wearing an oilskin isn't that much out of the ordinary, like a rodeo).

Or when it's raining.

Seattle would be a big place for Highlander-esque immortals.

Yeah. Seattle's winter rainfall is pretty constant and enough of a threat that you could get away with a coat when it was dry.

In the summer months though, it's actually pretty dry and pleasant. At least from my experiences there.

Considering SR Seattle rain is a bit more that just water (some H+ are included as well), I wouldn't take the risk of going out without a proper coat, event in summer.

Already sounds better than the places I lived.

We didn't have rain in the winter there. It came down as snow, when it wasn't too cold to snow.

I'm from an equatorian country whom never seen snow in RL™, so, how the hell is possible be too cold to snow? I mean, doesn't snow when the temperature is below 0ºC (32ºF for you britishs and former british colonies)...

Also, London isn't nearly as rainy and foggy these days since heating homes with coal fell out of vogue.

The colder it gets the less water vapor is in the air. Too cold to snow is more of a saying though than a reality in most cold places people live. But at really epic colds like arctic colds it can get cold enough that their is so little moisture in the air that is is highly unlikely it could snow.

What Shinobi says. Basically to have snow, like any kind of precipitation, you must have a warm, moist air mass that gets cooled. Mountains on the windward side/top get lots of snow because the air is being forced upward to colder elevations. On flatter terrain you must have a warm air system, cold air system front for the instability to create snow. This presents an effective limit on how cold overall it can be.

Also, snow formation warms the air up. The energy that comes out of the water vapour during it's conversion into a solid is substantial.

I lived on top of a mountain in Northern Ontario, and now in Winnipeg (Which is cold by Canadian standards).

It has, quite literally, been too cold to snow in my lifetime far too often. First by ambient temperature, which is bad. Then by wind chill, which is far, far worse.

The more you know...

So, anyhow, an advantage of a cold city, armour wouldn't be as out of place as it would be in a hot climate. Armour is heavy and insulating, which is very advantageous when it's -30C without the wind chill.

Try wearing ballistic clothing in Aztlan or Amazonia and watch how fast you overheat and dehydrate.

Which gets us back to bullets and blades.

at the end of my last campaign, one of my players had a Troll named Toast. Toast was kind of dumb, and would beat things with his nail-bat. The group constantly poured spare money into Toast, eventually getting him wired reflexes and some muscle augmentation (and a custom all-metal baseball bat with railway spikes coming out of it). One of his greatest moments was a melee with a freakish humanoid military drone, where Toast PUNCHED a hole in the things chest with a fist full of grenade. He lost his arm, and was out for a month of game time, unconscious from the blast. But it just took a single melee roll to leave him with more street cred than he knew what to do with. IT was amazing.

You know, I have played gunslinger adepts that walked in to sniper ambushes with just a handgun and walked out with half a clip to spare. Toast punching a hole in a drone's chest with a fistfull of boom is still cooler.

Awesome Indeed...

What are the rules for chest-hole-punching, by the way?

The greatest rule of all:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RuleOfCool

Speaking of said trope:



I've seen that animated film. It is awesome.

The book/film is about the history of Rock and Roll (although clearly parodied and satirized). The main group is The Band With Rocks In. The drummer is a troll who knocks out one of his own teeth* so the guitarist can buy this magical guitar from this strange antiques shop (which vanishes when they leave). Said troll also names the group.


*TP trolls are made of rock, their teeth are diamonds. They think better when they're cold (the troll brain being a lump of impure silicon, works better at lower tempuratures) and they practically worship, "Mr. Shine, him diamond." Mr. Shine does exist and he is made of diamond and is the smartest troll ever because he can alter his crystalline structure to keep his brain at whatever temperature he wants to. So the band's name is a double-pun: they're a rock group and the troll is a rock.