and for people with access to spirits that have the guard power.

If you've had any hand-to-hand training you'll realize you can block/parry with or without a weapon. Although blocking a mono-whip would be painful using your own body parts, lol.

In the nature of simplicity, you could rule that blocking/parrying is using environmental items (yourself, carried items, chairs, walls, doors, etc.) to avoid the attack. I'd GM call on what you can or can't block/parry given the attack and what you've got handy and maybe a structural test to see if it breaks if the item is important enough.

In other words, Shadowrun meets Jackie Chan.

A-freaking-men. But shhhh...someone might hear you.

They miss becasue the target moves before you shoot or knocks the gun away with there hand. Assuming they aren't helpless and are aware of the attack dodging gunfire can be easier at close range. Thats why you face a -3 penalty when using a ranged weapon while in melee with somone.

*You'd parry a monofilament whip by striking the weighted tip that's used to guide mono wire.
You could also rush in close and parry the arm away.

You won't find a monowhip on any gangers or low-level corp security. But a Tri-Ghost level foe might use one. The monowhip is for guys with last names not red shirts. (who would kill themselves)
But for those who have the attributes and skill. The Mono whip is death to your enemies.

My own elf uses one and he rolls 12 dice when attacking with his whip. 14 if he adds reach into the attack. His reaction is one lower then his agility so to parry he'd roll one less.
Now at 12 dice he'd need at least six ones and no hits to critical glitch.
Any math wiz want to caculate the chance of a critical glitch coming up on 12 dice?

The Dice Pool is split before any modifiers are applied. That means you take (only) Agility + Weapon Skill, halve that, and only then apply any and all modifiers to each seperate Pool.

Do you have to split it in half? Example, you have a dice pool of 12, and you are going against a human mage in la-la land and the big ass troll protecting him. Could you decide to throw 4 dice at the mage and 8 dice at the troll, since he might take a bit more to deal with?

Sounds like the time my SR2 group's street sam "Pork Chop" pulled the same stunt with a fleshform while clearing out a UB chapterhouse. When he slapped his hand on the bug man's forehead, he bellowed in his very best televangelist voice "Be HEALED my brother!" then triggered the cyberarm shotgun.

There is no mention that I know of in the rules that specifically states that the split has to be even. I might make a house rule that the Pool cannot be split any more than what was in your example, but then that would make things messier when a character is thrying to handle three or even four opponents.

As it stands though, there is no reason why a character could not do what you describe.

Except that it really just seems wrong to me, somehow.

I can't pin down how, but it seems very likely that you can do something horribly broken with that.

It seems to me that this provides a lot of potential to make nasty nasty melee attacks.

Get a troll with a dice pool of 16 or so. Split to 8 each. Add weapon focus 2 katans in each hand (+2 from reach/+2 foci) while charging (+2). Do it from higher ground, and you're +1. So now you're looking at 15 dice *per* attack. 12 if you're just standing still. It's a bit expensive, but not bad, and not much more than having a single focus 2 katana 4 bp to buy, 2 to bond).

I'm also not 100% sure how things like reflex recorders and such that add dice would impact the split - pre or post?

Don't forget to do a +4DV called shot on each attack, which still gives you a 11 dice pool on each attack, doing an insane amount of damage, more if you use a axe weapon focus.

16+2+2+3=23. He could have 23 dice if he did not split the pool. The rules allow a master swordsman to cut several low-skill people in a single complex action. I don't think it's all that different from a full auto weapon kiling three different targets in the same complex action. The SR world can be brutal. Personally, I have no problem with the rules as they are (in terms of splitting the pool). Called Shot is broken, but that's a different issue. See Serbitar's house rules for a fix.

I would think that if the first target qualified for the charge bonus ... and the second target is with the required range from the first target for a legitimate attack ... and the second target would also have qualified for the charge bonus if he was the sole target ... and both attacks are carried out on the same action without any movement in between (probably obvious, but still ... ) ... then I would add the charge bonus to both attacks.

The key, though, is that the DV *isn't* split. So if you have a DV of 9, then getting enough dice rolled to consistently hit with both attacks means that you're getting a huge boost.

23 dice with 9 dv vs 2x 13 dice w/9

Let's say 13 is enough to get a single net hit. So you're looking at 10 dv x2.

If 13 gets one, then 23 will get, say, 3, so you're looking at 12 dv x1.

I think I'll take 10 x2 vs 12 x1....

Because of the way the combat works, and the huge increase of DV, you're better off with two blows that barely hit + dv than one that hits fairly well.

What he said... (If you prefer, you can rule that the weapon focus bonus applies before the split - and, actually, I think that's how I would read the WF rules. I think that limits abuse quite nicely. The rest of the modifiers, well, you just need to remember that if there are five bad guys around you, they each get a 4-die bonus.)

EDIT: But I think the other modifiers are attack-specific and would apply to each roll separately

does he have throwing skill too? large rocks should be the specialisation of course, and he'll need those adept powers to go with it...

(or did i just pick up on a reference that was never there in the first place?)

I think you may have just elegantly solved nine out of ten rules discussions on this board.