http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azzRisbdXx8...related&search=

Watch the above Lone Wolf McQuade montage. Next, heed my words!

In Shadowrun, melee combat is pretty fast and deadly. From a game balance perspective, if we assume that the game designers wanted melee to be worthwhile to put point in, it has to be. Melee needs to be able to incapacitate characters very quickly for it not to be retarded to execute in the context of firearms that do 9M damage twice per character and scale up from there.

However, it means that it's difficult to have epic movie-style martial arts battles. If you had two massively initiated melee adepts go at it what would probably happen in practice is that one of them would get unlucky and take damage and after that the TN mods would basically suck that one into the whirlpool. If we disregard the rounds in which nothing happens just because of karma expenditure (let me reroll failures, lolololololol) most epic melee battles probably only would last 6-9 seconds.

So it takes us back to the example of Lone Wolf McQuade. In Lone Wolf McQuade Chuck Norris one-shots a lot of characters either by shooting them or kicking them once for immediate incapacitation. However, at the end of the film, when Chuck Norris must martial arts duel David Carradine, the fight goes on for like 5 minutes.

Clearly, SR3 would benefit from a cinematic martial arts duel rule in which there's more refined micro-management of resources such as combat pool AND damage codes are way lower so that characters can stand around beating the crap out of each other for 5 minutes of game time.

Perhaps whenever two melee physads get into a melee battle and they both have at least one level of initiation the regular combat rules go out the window and are replaced by HYPER HIGHLY REFINED AND NON-DEADLY MELEE SYSTEM. Furthermore, all of a sudden when this melee combat has been joined nobody is capable of intervening in the fight or in attacking either of the fighters. By movie logic they ignore the martial artists and continue shooting each other.

Just lengthen the melee round time and per attack roll instead of saying "Shonuff kicks you." say "Bruce Leeroy launches a flurry of kicks.*describe where the kicks are*" Depending on the result damage occurs or is avoided. Add grazing attacks that land yet do no damage, where the combatants got hit but rolled with it. Even if the intitial attack failed. One thing my original group did which I miss and only works in RL is we'd demonstrate what we were trying to do. Not actually fighting mind you but standing up with another person and showing where we were trying to punch, kick, how we were trying to toss them, etc. It didn't actually lengthen the combat but it made it funner.

Also keep in mind the badguy doesn't have to attack every round or even at all. Shonuff can only counterattack or manuever the PC around and attack in places he feels he has the advantage. Don't have CC on me atm but iirc there are somekind of fighting defensivly options that will drag things out.

I believe that the idea is to turn melee into a real tactical challange for the players, essentially making what could be described a version of Street Fighter II played with dice instead of simple rolls.

This is a very noble but very difficult goal.

The key is to create multiple attack and defense options and provide a meaningful differentiation between them while retaining balance. You don't want the characters to use the same crane kick over and over again.


I must agree with WR and SR3 melee is extremely lacking in epicness and can use a big dose of Chuck Norris.

Copy the Virtua Fighter style and use a Rock/Paper/Scissors approach with unequal returns. Virtua Fighter's "objects" were the Attack, the Throw, and the Block-and-Counter—you could use those, or pick new ones. Attack beats Throw, Throw beats Block-and-Counter, Block-and-Counter beats Attack.

Then the choice is how you make the payoffs unequal. Do you make some attacks easier, or do you make some do more damage? Do you do a little of both?

~J

In order to make this post as pleasurable to read as possible, I recommend having the following playing in the background while you read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhMD0-nym5U

SR3 optional Chuck Norris melee ruleset

In Shadowrun, melee combat is designed to be fast and deadly because it needs to be in order to compete with the relatively deadly firearms system. However, this makes it hard to have cinematic martial arts duels. Because it's imperative to always have rules for everything, here is the Chuck Norris melee ruleset which is designed in honor of Lone Wolf McQuade and which is used to simulate cinematic duels between important martial artist characters. The following is the result of ideas and input from the indomitable members of Dumpshock Forums.

The Chuck Norris melee ruleset engages between two characters whenever two characters who are considered to be important martial artist characters fight. As soon as the Chuck Norris melee ruleset is engaged no player character or NPC is allowed to interfere in the fight by attacking either character involved with it. This simulates ninjas circling and attacking one at a time, all of Chuck Norris' friends staring and doing nothing while holding assault rifles when Chuck Norris fights with David Carradine in Lone Wolf McQuade, and so forth. The only way that the melee ends is when one of the combatants is defeated OR if completely unintentional indirect fire causes the fight to be broken up, i.e. the combatants are fighting in a bunker and then the bunker collapses on them both when mortars that were actually directed at some tank hit the bunker instead. This actually allows for Hollywood-esque breaking up and later continuation of man to man martial arts fights.

The first thing to do when two sufficiently tough characters initiate a Chuck Norris melee ruleset battle is to make a separate note of their Physical and Stun damage tracks, and then restore both combatants to full Physical and Stun health for the purpose of the battle that is about to ensue.

The Chuck Norris melee ruleset is actually a rock-paper-scissor style ruleset, in contrast to the rest of SR. The three possible actions are (CHUCK NORRIS) ROUNDHOUSE KICK, (DAVID CARRADINE) COUNTER AND THROW, and (SONNY CHIBA) REVERSE PUNCH KIAI. Consider ROUNDHOUSE KICK as paper, COUNTER AND THROW as rock, and REVERSE PUNCH KIAI as scissor. The rationale is that ROUNDHOUSE KICK is too masculine for COUNTER AND THROW to handle, but too slow to deal with REVERSE PUNCH KIAI. REVERSE PUNCH KIAI is too linear to prevail against COUNTER AND THROW but it beats ROUNDHOUSE KICK to the punch. There is no T3H GR4PPL3 because that isn't a part of 1980s martial arts drama beyond the scope of COUNTER AND THROW. Both players involved in the duel (or the player and the GM) must do rock, paper, scissors at the same time so that there is no chance of fudging and quite a lot of unpredictability!

The character's attributes, of course, behave differently under this system than under ordinary SR. The player who loses must subtract the sum of his Body, Reaction, and Willpower from the sum of his opponent's Strength, highest melee combat skill not including magical bonuses such as Improved Ability which the character has the appropriate equipment to use, and Reaction. All the attributes involved in this equation are base attributes, so magical bonuses or cyberware bonuses do not apply. The result is the number of boxes of stun damage that he takes from his loss in the rock-paper-scissors hand, which will never be less than 1 box. Each hand of rock-paper-scissors is considered to take 3 seconds of time in the game, filling up an entire combat turn.

However, what would a martial arts showdown be without the chance for a character to make a dramatic comeback after taking a ferocious whipping? Before any hand of rock-paper-scissors after the first, the two combatants involved must roll 2d6 a number of times equal to their unmodified Charisma score. Each time they roll an 8 or higher on the 2d6, they may regain 1 box of stun damage back as though it never occurred. This represents how if a character is cool and badass-acting enough he can make a convincing comeback on the big screen. Think John McClane from Die Hard. On the other hand, the lower your charisma, the more and more you're akin to a boring, faceless mook, so you're less likely to benefit from such a comeback.

When one of the combatants has finally been defeated by receiving a full track of Stun damage and whatever physical damage he or she is entitled to, declare the Chuck Norris ruleset melee battle to be over, and then add all of the Stun and Physical damage the characters had before the battle back onto their condition monitors! In that way, it is possible for a simultaneous double KO to occur. It is also up in the air whether a character will be killed by a fight under this ruleset or whether he or she is merely knocked unconscious, or knocked unconscious but badly injured. It's even possible for a martial artist to heroically die defeating his nemesis!

Wound, status, or environmental target number modifiers to not apply in any way to this rule set.

Weapons and their damage codes and reaches have no effect on the Chuck Norris rules. The only impact that weapons carried have on this ruleset is whether or not you can use a weapon-based combat skill as your highest melee skill for the purpose of calculating damage.

In order to preserve the dramatic tension of the no-fudging, open-handed Chuck Norris rules, karma pool may not be used in any way in conjunction with this ruleset except for Hand of God, with its normal drawbacks and restrictions, to prevent a death at the GM's discretion.

I like it. Its got style. Its inspired.

I do think it would benefit with some more variation between attacks than just Rock Paper and Scissors, just to give players a reason to favor or fear certain attacks and make combat less random and more poker-like. As Kagetenshi stated, weighting each option somehow.

How about using different stats for damage for each type of attack. Roundhouse kick would use Strength, Reaction, and Skill; Kiai Punch would use Quickness, Reaction and Skill; and Counter & Throw could use Charisma, Intelligence, and Skill (because Kwai Chang Cain's combat prowess is based entirely in his ability to believably spout Shaolin Proverbs, which somehow overcomes his slow telegraphing and allows rocks to the placed in just the right position for people to fall and hit their head on them).
This would encourage people to favor certain attacks based on their stats, but not so much that it becomes spamming due to the fact that spamming would be countered by any intelligent RPS adversary.

To avoid making a completely different mini-game, I would probably just ignore all wound penalties, double the combat pool (or limit everyone to one initiative pass), and allow the defender continue to throw in more combat pool on any defensive roll at any point. Also the defender never causes damage to the attacker (or at least requires an additional 2 successes or somesuch).

So if Able attacks Bob and gets 4 successes, Bob knows how many successes and can put in more CP to compensate. Bob only gets 3 successes, so he can decide to put in a little more CP to get that final success. He gets another 2 successes. Bob successfully blocks Able, but fails to do any damage.

Reading through very quickly on very little sleep, it seems like rock paper scissors with more chances to heal stun. I prefer dice which are related to my character's actual skills to rock paper scissors, plus it just breaks the game mechanic so much. It's one thing to have decking use different rules from casting spells, but to have it use a completely different way of determining a success? And how would you run it online?

For running it online, it comes down to trust. The GM, since he or she is already in a trusted position, should just decide which attack the opponent is making before the PC declares his or her action.

~J

Easy house rule:

Each Combat Phase/Initiative Pass is one to five minutes long (set it to whatever suits you best) and simply assume the dice rolls and resolution is a summation of that step of the fight. Determine the outcome, how long it lasted, and sit back and have fun describing it so that it matches the roll. If that phase/pass didn't end up with one of them dying, continue on to the next.

It really is just that simple. Especially since most of these types of "duals" end up being "I hit you, you hit me, we both just stand up and show how tough we are."

What about a system where net successes aren't immediately turned in to damage at the resolution of an attack, but instead could be used for other types of advantages, or even accumulated/banked from turn to turn? As you accumulate more, you could cash them in for various advantages/bonuses for the next turn, hopefully allowing you accumulate more. I haven't worked out the details, and I'm probably too busy to, but it sounds like a neat idea to me.

The first thing I thought of when reding this was the 'runes' in YuGiOh: Dungeon Dice Masters.

That's either a black mark against the idea, or against me, I haven't decided yet.

I realize that Wounded Ronin is trying to add a bit of "cinematic flair"--for lack of a better phrase--and, dare I say it, *fun* (or at least excitement) to the game, but I have one small objection:

If you don't mind me uttering a cliche`, that sort of thing *only happens in the movies*.

As a reviewer once pointed out about the Wesley Snipes flick The Art of War, if two martial artists with equal skill squared off IRL, the duel would last only until one of them made a mistake--the one who screwed up would be dead very shortly thereafter.

Unless, of course, they weren't trying to kill one another, i.e., they had agreed beforehand that the fight would (a) continue until one of them cried "Uncle!" (I believe that the phrase used in martial arts or wrestling matches is called "tapping out"), or (b) they fought until one combatant or the other was too badly injured or tired to continue.

Just my 0.02, folks.

As always, YMMV.

--Foreigner

Yes, but when you have two masters paired off and fighting, there may be a whole lot of wall-jumping and backflips before any mistake is made. I still think this should be settled with use of maneuvers (if there aren't enough, add a few) and otherwise normal melee.

To defend on my call of maneuvers, I (and many I've played with) house-rule so that the maneuver costs are:
up to half as many as your skill: free
up to skill level: 2 karma
more than skill level: 8 karma

This results in some people not taking 'brawling' for their unarmed combat and actually tossing in a bit of functional melee style while not having that as thier focus.