This has always bothered me about Shadowrun.

The Blades skill theoretically enables the use of any bladed weapon, so a 6 in Blades would make you a master of anything with an edge.

Now as someone who spars regularly, being proficient in one bladed weapon does NOT equate to proficiency in all.

If I GM, I have a house rule that Blades MUST have a specialization and if you use a bladed weapon that you dont have proficiency with, you use half your skill rounded down.

I realize sometimes things need to be simplified for the sake of brevity and that getting too picky about rules quickly makes a good game bad, but this seems to be stretching the suspension of disbelief just a touch.

What do you think?

I wouldn't go as far as that.. *but* I might break it down into groups, such as:

Two Handed Heavy Bladed Weapons (Claymores, Greatswords, Flamberge, etc)
Two Handed Light Bladed Weapons (Great Scimitar, Bastard Sword, Katana, etc)
One Handed Heavy Bladed Weapons (Longsword, Tulwar, Falchion etc)
One Handed Light Bladed Weapons (Shortsword, Wakizashi, Rapier, Scimitar, etc)
One Handed Small Bladed Weapons (Dirk, Dagger, Knife, Long Knife, etc)

Let them pick a weapon group from above instead of a broad "Blade" category. If they wish to specialize in a specific weapon, then they can do so.

That would be my opinion.. so it would look like:


One Handed Heavy Bladed Weapons: 6
- Specialization: Longsword (+2) : 8

Something like that.

I think that if I want reality, I will fence or spar.

If I want to play make-believe in a world where mythical creatures throw spells while pretending to be the Six Million Dollar man, I want simple rules to let me have more fun with a story; even if I know that the simple rules don't have a true basis in reality. Call me strange that way.

Very many skills have the similar method of grouping together fairly similar stuff. However, I'd rather see the vague skills with specialization options, as opposed to seeing skill listings for every single possible type of skill. Skills would be a nightmare.

I expect that the developers have balanced the skills so that it costs a certain amount of BP to do something as opposed to doing something else. Cracking only has 3 skills but Electronics has 4, but I'd imagine that in a mean average over time you'd make roughly equal rolls for both Cracking and Electronics skills.

The general understanding is that someone with the Blades skill knows how to use all types of blades, and has probably trained with all kinds, even if s/he almost certainly prefers one particular type, designated by a specialty.

Depending on whether you play or run the games, the GM may or may not allow you to buy proficiency in only just one type of weapon (perhaps a rapier) for half the usual cost for all blades.

As I think about it, though, I would consider that many kinds of blades would hold similarities. If you understand a rapier, you may practice with a knife or a broadsword, understand the similarities between them all and learn to understand them all pretty well.

Admittedly, the rapier is an unusual type of weapon, but would it be fair to say that your rapier skill is perhaps 4, and your assumed skill with knives and claymores would be 2 based on what you've learned? If so, that would be Blades 2 with a Specialty (Rapiers).

Just my thoughts. I could be wrong.

I sorta agree with Caadium on this, however I also think that maybe Catalyst just decided to make some assumptions namely along the lines as having a skill rating in blades means that you've gone through the time to get enough of an understanding of multiple class of blades where a person's "proficiency" is equated as a specialization.

As an example, and don't take any offense Socinus: You as a regular sparer lets go and call that a skill 1 or 2 blades, because i would assume you don't always spar with the same weapon. Know let's say you favor, oh the longsword, as such you are better at using it than a knife or claymore but you still have a basic understanding of those two weapons.

For the actual rule though, it seems kind of unfair to just apply it to blades when i can see a 2 foot long stick(a club) and a 5 foot long stick(a staff) needing to be wielded differently and a throwing knife, a shuriken, and a grenade needing to be thrown differently.

The word you were looking for was "abstraction level".

The relevant question is not "is this a hundred percent realistic?" but rather "is this overly complex?"
It all boils down to playability. Does splitting up blades into more categories add anything to the gameplay? I doubt it.

A lot of the skills in shadowrun are weird like this. The automatics skill is even worse, you try firing an uzi after firing an AK and then tell me if they have anything to do with each other. You really just have to accept it, it's a facet of the system that can't really be altered without severe balancing issues. If you try splitting the skills up into more specific weapons, you make each individual skill useless, or atleast highly BP inefficient. If you try giving out heavy penalties for not having a specialization in your chosen weapon, well, you can only ever have one specialization, that basically makes it impossible to ever create a character who can use more than one type of blade, the opposite end of the problem you seem to be having.

Really, the only way to have both realism and balance is to reorder the entire weapons system, grouping weapons based on how they're used rather than how they look or how they deal damage, but you would also have to distribute the weapons in such a way that the overall distribution of useful weapons across the various skills would remain unchanged. The problem with this is that each weapon would have to be classified differently than the way it is in the book, making finding the weapons you can use with your primary weapon skill a matter of inconveniece.

Overall, the combat skills system itself needs reorganizing and rebalancing, it's not something you can fix with a simple house rule, and if you try you're fairly likely to throw the balance of your game off without providing any real benefit. I'd suggest that if this is really bothering you, then try creating a new skills grouping system and posting it here for debate, its certainly something that a majority of the dumpshock community has opinions about.

If you want to split weapon categories out by the way they're used, you could do some combining with blunt weapons as well. Swinging a maul is similar in technique to swinging an axe, and an escrima stick is similar to a short sword/long knife. If you were going to break things up this way, I'd imaging the groupings might be similar to this:

One-handed (Includes saps, clubs, knives, hatchets, one-handed swords)
Two-handed (Includes axes, mauls, spears, great swords, pole-axes, etc.)

Some 'cross-over' weapons would allow user to choose either skill, like katanas or 'hand-and-a-half' blades.

You have to consider that blade weapons are usually not very effective. Having to pay for extra skills means that blades user gets suddenly less versatile. Since they already can't do much, it's really not a great thing.

Agreed on the effectiveness. They could have broken it out into multiple skills and then had a "Blades" skill group, but its not a good balance.

In SR3 and previous, this was covered by people taking specializations; the base skill could be very low, and the specialization (once raised with karma) could be very high. Now that specializations are a flat +2 dice, you can't do that. It might be worth introducing multiple specialization levels to address that, but then you'd get stuff like get folks with a 6 skill and +6 specialization.

Heck, SR2 had "Armed Combat". Heh, that was fun...

We try not to talk about those days. As if the whole, Skill/Concentration/Specialization wasn't annoying, you can't really get into SR2 skills without the skill tree. In order to keep from seeing a pshrink I will no explain the tree to those that don't know. Just be glad you didn't have to walk to school, uphill in both directions, through the snow, with your sister sitting on the bike you had to carry!

What are you talking about? It was completely obvious which skill derived from what other skill and which root attribute supported the respective skill tree branch. Just one quick glance and you could instantly tell the modifier for defaulting to another skill or attribute. It was design gold, I tell ya!

If guns are broken down into like 5 or 6 subsections I dunno why blades or other weapons couldn't be..

Because blades would sucks so much if it was the case.

Think of it like this: Each guns skill tend to give a distinct advantage to the user. While all blades does the same thing.

Even among guns, you have two more or less specific skils (longarms, pistols), one extremely broad skill (automatics), and one skill which covers everything from water-cooled WW 1 machine guns to ATGMs...

Those classifications are a question of game balance, not of logic.

hand weapons are broken down into multiple catagories blades are one of those catagories and remember that doesnt include axes, which are part of polearms. breaking down blades any more than it is makes them basically useless. Also, its completely unneeded. remember getting a 6 in blades means you have practiced and become a baddass in every blade you could find. making the argument that blades are just too far from each other for blades to be one skill is as bad as making the arguement for pistols. And yes I have a fair amount of experience in both catagories; I go to the range every chance I get and am buying at least one gun a year with few duplicates; I have in my past done a fair amount of fencing, and any fencer will tell ya using a foil or saber is two differant worlds; I have also dabbled in some traditional Okinawan weapons. So yes using a foil and katana are worlds apart but having a 6 in blades means you have studied them all. and specialisation already has a penalty for defaulting to it and it is already very nasty.

Sorry sir, but an axe is a blade weapon.

I think it's dumb. The Blades skill doesn't mean "I use all weapons under this category in the exact same way and somehow it magically works." It means "Under the game rules, I can use these weapons without a penalty." How the PC learned to get there is left to background fluff and frankly shouldn't really be worth worrying about in most situations. The same conversation often comes up when people discuss firearms here, and really, I think people's familiarity with these subjects clouds them from thinking in terms of what's best for the game itself.* Basically, combat skills are inherently some of the narrowest options in the game, and melee skills are generally the most limited of them all. At their very core, they all boil down to "Roll dice to harm bad dudes who are right next to you." Once you can accomplish that task, the ability to do so with different implements rapidly becomes rather redundant. It becomes even further amplified when you consider that melee skills are often most useful for the defense pools they provide and actually aren't very good at hurting people without relatively massive karma investment. With that being the case, everyone who doesn't plan on being a burly troll should just grab Unarmed with the Parry specialization and call it a day. At least that way you won't be helpless just because you left your cutlery in your other long coat.

*It really is a matter of recklessly applying knowledge where it isn't needed. Shadowrun isn't an individual skill simulator. It's a RPG. Think about it this way: The Gymnastics skill somehow lets you dance, dodge bullets(!), tightrope walk, tumble and high jump. If a gymnast came in here and said that all of those disciplines require long hours and loads of training to perfect the nuances of each application, I would agree with them. But I'd also keep the skill in one piece because I'm trying to play a game here. You know what the worst part is though? The Gymnast has a better case than the swordsman, from a game balance standpoint. At least Gymnastics lets you do different things.



Because some of us would argue that splitting up the guns was a fairly dumb idea in a game with so little granularity. To do so again would be a kick right in the teeth to melee characters everywhere. And god knows they don't need any more nerfing when compared to gun bunnies and magicians.

Well put. There really isn't any skill in the entire book that shouldn't be broken down into multiple skills if you want to get 'realistic' about thing. Rock climbing is entirely different from climbing a rope. Throwing a grenade is entirely different from throwing a knife. Dodging a punch is entirely different from dodging a bullet. Knowing how to camouflage yourself has nothing with knowing how to apply rouge. Balance has nothing to do with jumping. Hearing has nothing to do with seeing. Knowing what is acceptable in Japan has nothing to do with knowing what is acceptable in Hungry. Torture has nothing to do with knowing how to crack your knuckles in a scary way. Knowing how a motherboard works has nothing to do with knowing how a camera operates. Knowing how to give someone chicken soup has nothing to do with performing surgery. Knowing how to drive a car has nothing to do with how to drive a motorcycle. Knowing how to fly a plane has nothing to do with knowing how to fly a helicopter. Driving a seedoo has nothing to do with operating a submarine.

I could go on and on. There are a small handful of skills which likely don't need any breaking up, but the vast majority of them include skills which are fairly unrelated in their execution.

Weapons skills just have this a bit harder because they are examined the most, and so are noticed to be dissimilar the most. We also might have a high proportion of people who have handled various weapons compared to used alot of the other skills. I mean I don't know how many climbers are out there, but I climb, and I can tell you that knowing how to climb a rope has nothing at all with knowing how to climb a rock wall, and vice versa. There is even less correspondence in the muscles than you might thing.

My brother introduced me to wall climbing and fake bouldering very recently and even though I knew some stuff going in (I compulsively read up on things ages before I try something), it's still rather funny how remarkably counterintuitive some of that stuff feels when you're up there doing it for the first time. It was even funnier watching other newbs trying to do everything with their upper body. The owner of the place had the greatest "We always tell them not to do it that way, but still they try," face ever.

I think if you're going to start imposing "realism" on one skill, you should then impose it on others (not just the one or two you feel you have a solid working knowledge of), and then before you know it the game will go to shit because no one has enough points to be any good at anything. The end.

Couldn't have said it better myself. /thread

It would be kinda cool though, if you could buy levels of specialty. Instead of a flat "+2," buying increasing specialty (just like a skill) in +1 increments at a reduced cost. The specialties would need to be reworked a bit though (no more "semi-automatics" pistol specialization).

That way you would have Skill Groups (really broad), Skills (broad), and Specialities (specific).

I do agree Angelis. It would be cool to have a character that can fire a sniper rifle well without necessarily being any good at firing a shotgun, or a knife fighter who doesn't know how to handle a sword.

On the other hand though, I think this is something you could RP perfectly well. There is no reason you couldn't take a few dice off your own pool when your knife fighter picks up a sword because she isn't used to using such a large weapon. Or an SA specialist who loses a couple dice because they don't know how to aim properly with a holdout.

So yeah, if anyone really wanted to impose a weapons (or any skill) restriction, there is no reason you couldn't just RP it and take off a few dice for some things instead of having to go through all the trouble of a new set of skills or a house rule or anything like that.

as long as I stick my head in the sand and pretend sr4 doesnt exist then axe is still classed as a polearm.

Sure, if you start houseruling stuff, there could be any skill.

My next character will have 6 ranks in "Refer to herself in the third person." and "Talk in a smooth voice." and "Maneuver food from plate to mouth through the use of a fork." She'll have to keep working on mastering the spoon though

My character can handle a commlink, build one, and handle any program. But don't dare giving him a keyboard. He doesn't have the keyboard skill.

A keyboard! How quaint.

In the world of AR interfaces and full VR, that might actually be a problem =)

Ooh, I think we've just hit on a solution to the deservedly-maligned Ineptitude quality. Players can take Ineptitude only for skills they have already specialisd in and the quality applies whenever the specialisation doesn't. Optionally, this could still work with an unspecialised skill if the player specifies which area of the skill is unaffected.

How about that?

On the subject of skills being too broad, a special mention for the Pilot skills.

Learning to ride an unstabilised bike makes you just as capable at pilotting a heavy goods vehicle.
A blimp works on the same principles as a stealth fighter.
All playboy yacht-enthusiasts make great kayakers.

Really...?

Those are hardly the most radical separations out there.

Perhaps the only skill that I would actually support a splitting up of would be Artisan. Currently skill in it allows you to dance, sing, paint, draw, act, whittle, sculpt, use every musical instrument in existence, and likely several other things I'm forgetting. Personally I think it would be simple enough to make it like exotic weapons where you have to get a different skill for each artisan ability.

Oh yeah, forgot about the laughable Artisan 'skill'.
I outlawed that on my first reading of the BBB.

"Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end.
We'd sing and dance forever and a day.
We'd live the life we'd choose.
We'd fight and never lose.
For we were young and sure to have our way!"

While not very realistic, having a single skill for each type of artistic talent means it's pretty much impossible to create a Shadowrunner who is also multi-talented in several art forms. Such people do exist, you know.

Also, the very fact that I've never seen Artisan in a build means it is not overpowered.

So instead of ruining the fun of the occasional player who wants to have some talent in his runner in addition to having useful skills, how bout you just assume that a certain character has the Artisan skill to represent one or two different talents? Yes technically he can do everything, but it's fairly easily to prevent the silliness simply by assuming a few areas the character actually is skilled in.

Say if you want to play a former tridstar or some such, you could assume a skill in sim-acting, trideo acting, dance, singing, dramatic swordfighting, oratory. In short, Artisan skill. If you want a more crunchy limit, you could say that you maximum could have 1 talent per skill rank, thus someone with skill 7 and specialization would be able to do an astounding number of things. Would that do it for you. I've played with systems where there is one skill per talent, and given the cost of skills in shadowrun, that's a sure fire way of making sure no-one will be stupid enough to actually take those skills. In other words it will be reserved for NPCs and thus useless.

Yeah, but they aren't shadowrunners, and they aren't also world class marksmen and black belts and master infiltrators and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound and able to run at Olympic speeds and have all the various other things that runners have.

I do agree though that simply RPing the inability to use more than a couple of the artisan skills would be reasonable. Could also do a compromise if you really want rules to enforce it that you get to pick three skills for artisan to cover.

I also agree, it isn't like being able to play the viola and the piano is going to make a runner ultra powerful. It is handy for a spy though because they can disguise themselves as any kind of musician or artist or whatever.

Oh I don't disallow the players from picking creative skills, I just define them with the players at the point of chargen.

I am happy to be broad-minded about what a single creative skill could encompass, but the multi-talented people of which you speak have not only spent most of their lives training in distinct disciplines but will also have a high attribute (whichever one covers Artisan, I forget) for defaulting in those they haven't specifically learned so the points-saving feature of a having single artisan skill is not warranted IMO. As Karoline intimated, thematically shadowrunners rarely have much in the way of creative expertise so there's no reason to make it easy for them to be artistic savants.

Some of the more abstracted game systems work better because of broad skill definitions, but the detail you go into with Shadowrun characters doesn't lend itself that way. Essentially I just don't want an ex-rocker using his guitar-playing dice pool for carpentry tests.

I have no problem picturing a world class marksman who can also play an instrument or three. Didn't you see Desperado? El Mariachi?Guitar, singing, joke-telling, gun-toting, badass-looking Mexican.

I didn't say you couldn't be a world class marksman and an Artisan (One of the actors who played Robin Hood in one of the older movies was in fact a world class archer), but you aren't going to see three instruments, marksmen, and all the other things that makes up a runner without having to sacrifice in areas to have spent all that time learning to play three separate instruments.