The rulebook clearly states rules for ranged combat and for melee combat, but unfortunately it doesn't for melee vs. ranged combat.
If one of my characters wants to attack an armed opponent unarmed, he needs to attack using the melee rules. But the melee rules state that the attacked opponent defends himself using melee too. Sometimes I just want the attacked opponent to shoot back at the attacking character.
Could someone help me on how this works?
Thanks.

You can't shoot while being the defender in melee.

John Doe (JD) with an Ares Predator has an init of 9.
Richard Roe (RR) is armed with his fists only and has an init of 7.
JD and RR initiate combat at a distance of 5 meters.
JD fires at RR on init 9. Blammo. Blammo.
RR runs to JD and slaps him around a bit on init 7. JD has to defend with his unarmed combat skill, or clubs (using his Predator as a club).
On the next CT, on init 9 JD can attempt to fire his Predator at RR again. This will be a bit tricky, because he is now in melee combat (modifers can be found in the respective tables).

We've houseruled it. If you have a firearm/ranged weapon in hand to hand, and its your action, then of you beat them by at least two net successes, you do no damage but can instead make one standard ranged weapon test with no combat pool to hit, staging as normal. This is to represent maybe wrestling with your opponent for the gun and getting a shot off. Never had to use it with projectile weapons, but I suspect if it wasn't a crossbow I wouldn't allow it. If you're the unarmed attacker and its your action, if you beat them by 4 successes or more again you do no damage but may attempt in a straight opposed strength check to get the gun off them - but you can't shoot it this action cos you've only just got hold of it.

It very rarely comes up, but when it does this seems to work ok.

But by the rules, its as Austere said.

Well, for someone talking out their ass, you sound awfully close to how I read it in the book, except you didn't handle what happened to poor RR as he ran into those bullets...

Maybe something along the lines of "+2 to tn, with an addtional +1 for reach, and +1 per point of the melee combat skill the attacker has higher than the defender"

My house rules are much like my first message in this thread: In order to have something useful as soon as possible, I just pull something outta my ass.

So if someone tries to fire a bow while someone is engaging them in melee unarmed, I'd slap him around a bit. With a pistol, I'd use the mechanic I made for the medieval fantasy conversion (basically a Full Defense for the shooter, whoever is engaging him in melee gets an Intercept, if even or Pistolguy gets net successes he can fire with +1) or simply give him some modifier that seems appropriate (between +2 and +4). With a bigger gun a bigger modifier, so long arms would get something between +4 and +8.

Another thing that might work well is to allow the defending charachter to use thier melee skill dice in the dodge test.

I see no need for that. It's what combat pool is for and representitive of. UltraMeleeGuy can either hold his Combat pool to dodge the expected gunshoot, save it to try to soak the damage from the next shot, or pour it all into pummleing the snot out pistol user before he gets shot at again.

Shrug, you have no problem with ubermelee guy having no special defense against his oponnant pulling a gun during a melee. Don't change the rule then.

Many of us find it somewhat annoying that the melee guy gains no advantage from his melee combat abilities if a guy he is in melee combat with decides to pull out his gun and fire beyond what his grandmother would also gain (the +2 t#).

Its like here you are dancing around, wrestling, feinting, etc and the other guy just pulls out his gun and shoots you. No chance for you use your 1337 melee skills to grab the gun, unbalance him, etc.

Oh, now you are asking for specific hand-to-hand maneuvers for things like grappling and disarming. Weren't those covered in Cannon Companion as martial art maneuvers?

But the fact of the matter remains, unless you are dealing with someone who has been trained on how to disarm a person with a gun, that 1337 melee guy is going to get killed going up against some one with a gun who is at all confident with it, especially if he does an all out attack and not position himself to doge, just in case (in other words, spends all his combat pool attacking and none for dodging).

No I am not saying the disarming should happen, in fact I hate the maneuver stuff. SR combat is abstract, leave it that way.

Sure he may get killed. My suggestion would not prevent the melee guy from dying. If he uses his combat pool on an attack he will still have used it up. For really low melee skill guys my way would make it easier to shoot in melee, for moderate it would be about the same (+2t# vs 4-6 dodge dice is sort of a tossup), for high harder. That is the desired result.

You could say that drawing/aiming a weapon at point blank is a 'melee' maneuver, and you use your pistols skill as though its a melee skill. The idea is that Pistol Guy (PG) is trying to aim, Melee Guy (MG) grabs the weapon and they're swinging it through the air. If PG gets more successes, he manages to aim the weapon properly, if MG gets more, he forces the gun into the air and gets a chance to hit the guy in the resulting tumult. That makes sense to me. The only case that I think it's not fair to apply it is if PG has higher init, in which case MG just wasn't ready for it. (Kinda like Spotlites idea, but simplier).

Talking about initiative.. that is another thing i don't really get in melee combat. If a character engages another in melee, both make an attack roll vs. TN4. This means they're hitting each other and the one with the most hits can possibly do damage to the other. But for some reason inittiative is not as important here as it is in ranged combat. I always loving firing at other characters first, possibly hurting them so they suffer TN penalties. But in melee, initiative doesn't have this advantage.

As a house rule we've now said that the character in melee with the lower initiative has to hit TN5 instead of 4, making it positive to have a higher initiative. Is this a good idea to solve this situation??

Thanks.

No, because then the attacker always has an advantage -- remember that the TN is not only for actually hitting back, it's also the TN for defending yourself. That's also a very significant modifier for what might often be the otherwise almost completely insignificant difference of 1 initiative step.

Several people (including me) have house ruled that situation. Mine are a bit too complicated (they hardly ever come into play so they can be), but I'm sure others will be along shortly. There are truckloads of variations.

We just use the simple whoever initiates that particular round of melee gets a point of "bonus reach." It's not really reach - it reflects the attacker having some element of control of the situation - but when the initiative rolls around to the other guy, he gets the bonus.

It seems to work but more importantly it's very easy to use. That's key for us.

Yeah, I have a house rule that I've settled on after a few years of trial and error.

Basically the attacker has to roll min. 1 net success to deal damage(staged normally).

While the defender only successfully blocks(no damage) with 0-2 net successes. For >2 success, subtract 2 from the successes then stage as usual. This way it makes the counter attack less likely unless you've got a good melee oriented character(who should be able to turn the attack back on the attacker.)


[Edited: Bad grammar, .]

Okay, here's another situation that kinda sucked last time I played out a melee combat.

One of my pc's (AD2) was attacking one of my opponents (called M.). AD2 was wearing an armorjacket (3/5 rating) and has ceramic bone lacing (+2 impact armor), giving him a total of 7 impact armor. M was attacking with a combat axe (6S damage). But no matter how much hits he had, AD2 could always defend himself perfectly, since the damage done by the axe is only 1 (power 6 minus 7 impact armor).

For example: M scores 4 hits more than AD2 (which is pretty good, since AD2 has a high unarmed skill), hitting him, and staging the damage up to 6D overdeadly. AD2 would need 10 successes on his body resistance test to receive no damage. The problem is, he is an orc, having a body rating of 10. Since a 1 is a success, it's virtually impossible for him to get hit by a combat axe (or for that, any other melee weapon).

Any thoughts on this.....?

Thanks.

SR3 rules state that you can never have a target number lower than 2 for anything. Ever. At all. So that ought to help a bit.

Per the standard rules, the attacker already gets a minor advantage. If he has successes on his attack roll, and the defender matches them (i.e. zero net successes) then "tie goes to the attacker" and the attack succeeds. The defender has to roll Body.

We all know that your number of actions in a Combat Turn makes little difference in the total distance you can move during a Turn. For whatever reason the game developers have decided that Skill and Combat Pool (and reach) should determine the outcome of melee far more that Wired Reflexes. I'm willing to play it their way for both these.