Knife fighting has always been a favorite of mine. Knives (to me) are scarrier then guns, mostly because I know how to handle a gun. SO I have two topics for discussion

1. What would be some of the RP aspects of a character who is a knife fighter.

2. What would be some of the cyberware/knives/skills etc you would want as a knife fighter.

i have to admit, im not a big fan of the knife fighter, or melee in general, because, well, while i only took kung-fu for abut 6 months, one leason stuck with me... "doint take a knife to a gun fight", its just generally a bad idea lol, but thats RL, and doesnt have to be that way in a game.

If i were to RP a melee/knife figter, i'd prolly go the "Bloodier than thou" route, where he uses knifes because he finds guns to be too "easy" and gets a trill of having blood spilled all over him as he slashes through his enemies.

In SR3 you would want to have high STR and high skill. Speed doesn't matter much due to the way that SR3 melee works.

In real life you'd want high speed and high skill, STR doesn't matter much due to the knife's function as a force multiplier.

In SR4 you want high speed, high STR, high skill, basicly high everything.

Interesting topic, I'll have to admit Knives tend to get little attention in my games. I would guess that this would be a prime area for a Physical Adept to shine. Knives are very versatile, able to be thrown or used in hand to hand combat. I guess Jim Bowie might be a good start for character qualities, but certainly not the only one.

Mechanically for SR4 a high agility is a must and good blades and throwing skill desirable. A knife fighter could probably make good use of athletics and acrobatics.

I'll have to give this some more thought, it's an interesting character idea.

2) Depends on your approach. If you're going for a brawler-type knife fighter, you're going to want a long Cougar Fineblade. If you're going stealthy and you don't mind the fact that it isn't used like a traditional knife, go with a katar, otherwise a short Fineblade. Whatever you get, dikote™ it—many people forbid dikote™ing Fineblades, but there's nothing whatsoever in the rules to even hint at that.

For 'Ware, muscle aug is going to be the name of the game. Bioware is preferable, as it makes boosting skills into the stratosphere cheaper. A good knife fighter needs to be quick, limber, and able to think on their feet, so any attribute that will up Combat Pool is good as usual. If you're making a specialist, one often overlooked feature is reflex enhancements—they aren't as valuable as they are in ranged combat, but the ability to both win ties and dish out damage with dramatically increased frequency is quite valuable. Wear loose-fitting clothing to conceal your knives and the exact location of your body, and make sure you've got a lot of extra clothes—knife fighters go through clothing, it's what they do. You want to not get hit, of course, but carry iron supplements for when that isn't possible. Never bring a knife to a Trollfight.

Edit:

Is there a martial arts style that uses knives and will let you apply the whirling technique to your knife fighting?

Pentjak-Silat and Kung Fu.

~J

Maybe I am missing something. I can get a throwing knife to 11M. Isn't that more than a pistol?

Yeah, you're missing something. You can get a throwing knife to at least 22M at chargen.

~J

Lower most of the time

One big question you need to think about-how broad is your definition of knife? If it is broad enough to include cyberspurs, that is probably the way to go, at least as far as Third Edition goes-that gives you 1.5 X Strength M [S with DiKote] damage [If you are more agro in chargen, and your GM openminded, you can even make a play to use the couger fineblade combat knife damage, as it is roughtly the same size as a spur and you can try to play it as a custom mod-and as mentioned above, I don't know of any rule that says that you can not slap a coat of DiKote on those sweat blades] Also, with the .3 essence cost for standard grade cyberware-depending on your resources and desire you can make those blades weapon foci and bond them to and adept [or mage with a lot of buffing/combat enhancing spells and sustaining foci].

whether or not you go with the spurs or a straight knife, if you have one or two cyberarms [two gives you bonus to body as well as the power of you're attacks, so I would recommend two in most circumstances], you can get cyberholsters hooked up to venom sacks, so either the spur or the blade comes out with a nice coat of the poison of your choice-which can be very nice for putting the bigger nasties down fast. Even if you go with the spur/cyber arm angle, I would still recommend gettin the cyber-holster and venom sac on that as well for the thown weapon angle.

Impact armor is generally lower enough that it makes sense to trade off even for doubled Impact armor over Ballistic. You just get screwed now and then when you come up against a dedicated melee person.

~J

In 4 you're going to want lots of initative passes to use full dodge (with a dodge of 5, specialized in Ranged, you'll be rolling 19 dice for dodging - assuming a reaciton 5). Use jammers to disable smartlinks and image enhancments (and drones!). And see if you can add shock frills to a knife.

5 (reaction) + 7 (skill) is only +12 against guns. What am I missing? Unless you meant full melee dodge, in which case just tell me to shut up.

Me stoopid. 12 against ranged, 15 against melee. Makes you think an adept with Combat Sense might not be so bad. Actually, you can do 17 against melee with Blades 5 Specilized in Knives, and then Full Parry... (5 Reaction + 5 Dodge + 5 Blades +2 Specialization)?

From a characterization aspect, I've always been amazed at the number of people I've met who carry a knife around with them to "protect" themselves. It's true that carrying a knife to a gun-fight is a bad idea, but the reverse is also true. Turning a Saturday-night fist-fight into a life-or-death situation is just as stupid.

What I'm getting at is that anybody who's using a knife is either an idiot or a real hardcore looking to kill somebody. A knife is an assassin's weapon.

Thats what I am talking about. Any idiot can carry a gun and think they are bad. But only a real bad ass carries a knife and knows hes bad.

they don't? holy crap, they don't. what terrible ninjas they are.

oh, if you don't mind houserules, Wing Lam Kung Fu allows the combination of whirling and edge weapons, as does Silat Mubai (second MA on the page).

That's just crap. Ninjitsu should get every maneuver available and be able to apply it to any weapon they want except guns.

If you want a knife fighter in SR3, then you definitely want the ambidexterity Edge, which essentially increases your skill by a multiplier of 1.5. Also, in SR3, adepts tend to outshine nearly everyone else in combat, since they can start out with +6 dice at char-gen, to use in an opposed dice contest. For real nastiness, you can make an adept of the magical way, so that you start out with a weapon focus, too. Speed is relatively unimportant, but Strength matters a lot (orks, dwarves, and trolls are very effective, especially a troll, with the reach bonus), since it is a major factor in determining the Target Number your opponent resists. A dikoted Katar is about the best - (Str+4)M, Concealability: 7.


In SR4, sammies can come a lot closer to adepts. Adepts can actually start the game with bound weapon foci, though, so they might still get the nod if you commonly run into things like spirits. Agility becomes as important as skill, and specialization is a must (yeah, it's a lot cheaper after char-gen, but two extra dice from the get-go is worth 2 measly build points). Ambidexterity is cheaper, but no longer a must-have. For your Dodge skill, specialize in ranged, since you will probably be using Parrying for melee combat. Speed becomes more important, since you can only defend, not counterattack, when it isn't your action. Strength is slightly less important - it lets you do more base damage, but if you are winning at both attack and defense, you can whittle your opponent down eventually.

I disagree about strength not being as important. Every point of strength will negate three points of body / armor on average as opposed to the one point of armor it would have negated in SR3.

Definetly want to an adept. I would think a knife fighter would possibly be a ganger backround. An orc would be good. If you want a maxed character in SR3 would would throw some bioware in to your adept. Throwing knives are definetly competitive against psitols at short range until you come up against heavily armored targets. The APDS ammo wins over blades. Now if you play an adept a weapon focus wins against spirits which in our game are much more common opponents that opponents in heavy armor.

No books handy, so I'm assuming that a knife in SR4 is Str + 1P. If so, then a strength of 5 or 6 would be able to overcome the immunity of a force 3 spirit. Every two net successes would increase the force of the spirit you're beating, so if you get 4 net successes you can hurt a force 5 spirit.

Maybe play an adept with improved ability (knives): 3, blades (knives) 6 (, and agaility 6 (. The +2 agility would be from muscle toner. That would give you 19 dice to throw. I'd have a good edge as well (at least 4). You'll want it if someone does show up with a force 6 or higher spirit. Also be sure to get a gun skill. Assault Rifles have decent damage and range, with the range making up for the shortcomings fo the knife.

Strenth in SR3 mattered a bit more, to me, because it helped determine the TN that the target would use to resist the entire attack. Strength is still good in SR4, but I don't personally consider it quite as important as it was in SR3. A Strenth of 3 in SR4 means that your opponent doesn't have as much damage to resist, and is likelier to be taking stun damage. A strength of 3 in SR3 means that an opponent with any kind of impact armor at all will be rolling their resistance roll against a TN of 2.

By the way, on the spirit thing, you definitely want a weapon focus for an adept, even if it is Force: 1. Sure, enough successes let you affect a spirit, but a weapon focus negates immunity to normal weapons. In other words, if you are fighting a Force: 5 spirit, that's 10 dice that it won't be rolling to resist your attack.

True, and a Force 1 focus for a reach 0 weapon is really cheap.

eh? i thought that in SR4, you could get killing hands for melee weapons. doesn't that apply to spirits any more?

Killing hands overcomes Immunity, and it's worth 5BP. A rating 1 focus (with reach or not) costs 11BP in SR4. The highest rating weapon focus for chargen is 2 due to avalibility. However, killing hands only works with unarmed combat.

ah, so it does.

I thought of making a Brock Samson clone once in SR4, but it never really turned into anything. Still though, he is the man.

I think that IRL there are very few "knife fighters" because dueling with blades is insanely risky. My testicles crinkle just thinking about it. So from a role playing perspective I think that someone who was really knife-centric would have to be a bit nihilistic or mentally unhinged.

I actually know a guy who trained silat a lot and once went to jail after cutting up some guys with a broken bottle. He described the moment and the thing is that at the time he was doing this he was in assertive rage mode. He was being attacked by multiples and he was focused on not letting them get him. He wasn't in a blind rage because he was cautious, but he was definitely in the mental state of self preservation/standing up for the self at all costs no matter what.

I'd also recommend looking for Dog Brothers clips. The Dog Brothers are the closest people get to the best of my knowlege to sparring all out with live weapons. Maybe you can pick up certain mannerisms or physical postures from them.

Just to clarify, I've been a pretty serious martial arts hobbyist for almost 8 years now. Unlike a lot of McFlippy lite martial arts hobbyists I like to get hit. As of right now I do full contact sparring twice a week using only gloves, mouthpiece, and shinguards. No cup, no headgear, none of that extraneous stuff. I enjoy getting bruised.

Nevertheless, my testicles positively crinkle at the thought of trying to fight someone who is armed with a knife. Because knives are that deadly.

Actually, the thing I like about SR3 is that skill is the most important factor.

Really, as long as your strength is decent (4-5) the power on the knife, particularly dikoted variants, will usually be enough to make their resistance test tricky.

Bioware, particularly the increased skill type, Quickness Intelligence and Will to have a high combat pool, high initiative so that you can close to close quarters quickly.

Still, you won't find many knife-fighters outside of gangers as knives are not a combat weapon per se. They are mainly for stealth kills.

Knives are good for self-defense because the best way to defend against a knife is to move away from the knife-wielder. In contrast, the best way to defend against a club or other blunt weapon is to move closer to the club-wielder. When one is defending oneself, anything that makes someone else back away is preferable to something that induces them to advance.

As always, individual technique errors, etc. can shift the most favoured response.

~J

Pretty much as above. As I learned at one point in my limited martial arts education, if 2 people get in a knife fight, one is going to the hospital, the other is going to the morgue.

One of my players started making a Battusai clone ... which later morphed into the Elven (3-Star Michellin) chef with a rating 2 weapon foci (meat cleaver).

He took Adept, Exceptional Attribute (Agility), and Aptitude (Blades), maxed out on Agility and Blades (w/ specialization to Knives) for 17 dice. Plus his foci and his Improved Ability: Blades 4. Grand total of 23 dice pool when slicing and dicing. Somehow he was even able to fit in Artisan (Cooking) 4 (+2) in the character design. Too bad he forgot to learn to speak English.

he can cut people. who needs more communication than that?

Well considering that he works in a Seattle hotel as a chef ... and all he speaks is French and Chinese ... I've been making him role-play trying to get into the shadows, the other players have already been in three runs this past 4 months and he still can't join them.

Why doesn't he just buy a French-English dictionary for his commlink? Sure, it'll be annoying, but after his first run he can use the karma to learn the language.

And people think I'm mean.

indeed. you use your knife to fight your way to your pistol, which you then use to fight your way to your gun.