Exactly. The point of melee is just the same point as many of the other things in the game and the universe. Because it's there to give you another option, to make your story interesting and not just another shoot-em-up. I think people seem to lose that when they start breaking everything down to stats and efficiency models. Sometimes things can be just in there to make it cool.

To make an analogy, it's like a 50's Caddilac. They may have been huge, overweight land barges that couldn't steer very well and had gas mileage of a SUV, but hey, they're still cool and people want them for their collections.

And Stun Batons and such are useful!

Yes. Your character's corpse will be cool too.

Wow, for someone who's got the Zeroth Law in his sig...

Hey, another reason for Melee?

Because it's hard to get firearms into Prison, but shanks and clubs?

Magic >> Shanks and clubs.

Magic, is there anything it can't do?

And I love getting TMs into prison
"Umm Jeff, why did all the gates open?"

BlueMax

Magicians have a hard time in prison. They usually spend their time Magemasked, drugged, or other such problems.

If they don't have implants put into them to kill their Essence and magic ability.

The problem is the melee combat system is not in any way facilitating cinematic style battles. I don't remember very many movies where the hero takes movie terms 6+ passes to beat down a rent a cop.

If identified and not turned. Magic is rare right? I would rather turn a mage to my side. Or at least to my cause....

Assume the characters are not railroaded into prison, the mage could prepare an attempt at masking.

Bluemax

That is assuming they know you are a mage, masking might save a mage there. But yes, usually they are too jumped up on drugs, loud noises, sleep deprivation etc to throw much mojo. And I suspect a prison has a nasty background count by default. My interpretation of things though is that implanting them up to kill there magic is rare. It is probably due to that basically being a way to tell the player/character re-roll instead of run a prison escape scene, or get a deal from the prison to do them a job for freedom like DCs Suicide Squad

IIRC, they do the implant thing if the Magician is going to be away for a long time. Cheaper than keeping them drugged all the time, and more reliable.

Miss one dose... And there's a big hole where the wall used to be.

Well technically it is only more reliable if the persons magic is less than 6. IF my magic is 7 and you put 5.99 worth of essence crap in me I still have 1 magic, which you can eventually up through initiation to 4 or 5 etc. Don't mage cuffs zap you when ever you try to use magic, I can see a implanted version of those, or cells rigged for it. It wont really drop your magic much, but its a kind of permanent way to stop magic.

Whoa. Did you seriously say it's hard to intimidate with a firearm?

"Yeah, little bit of pain never hurt anybody. If you know what I mean. Also, I think knives are a good idea. Big, fuck-off shiny ones. Ones that look like they could skin a crocodile. Knives are good, because they don't make any noise, and the less noise they make, the more likely we are to use them. Shit 'em right up. Makes it look like we're serious. Guns for show, knives for a pro."

Harder. Unless it's a very impressive firearm, or you're dealing with a civilian, they've probably had so many pulled on them that you need to shoot them to make them pay attention.

Pull a knife, and let their imagination of what you're going to do, do the rest.


Someone who packs a knife to a gunfight is either a fool or very good.

Of course, the best is to bring both.

And grenades.

Keep your options open.

I totally agree. But RAW keeps that option exceptionally expensive, which is the problem imo.

I actually went with duel Ares Pred 4's modded for melee hardening and Ares FireFight and Krav Maga martial arts thats the best of both worlds

Psh. Unless they're tied to a chair, a gun is always vastly scarier.

Street Samurai A goes into a corp bar and gets into a fight with a salaryman...

a. he punches the corp and breaks the guy's jaw. police go in and street samurai is charged with drunk & disorderly, and assault. jail time and a fine.
b. he shoots the corp and breaks the guy's jaw. police go in and shoot the street samurai. the samurai is charged with felony possesion of a firearm, attempted murder (or manslaughter), felony endangering the public, drunk & disorderly, and a bunch of other crimes.

When using a fireamrs, the scale/level of violence (and repercussions) jump way up. So, yes firearms are more deadly than melee... but sometimes the message or level of violence you wanna perpetrate doesn't need to go that far up and extreme.

Burn Notice is a good source of this. Sometimes bringing in heavy weapons and firearms moves the pace of the plan faster than desired.

Just my .02.

I would say, walk up, pull a simple, small, not so scary looking pistol... blow a hole in his or her knee. And then you ask a question while threatening the other knee, ankle, wrist, hand, foot or genitalia, bet your arse they will want to answer.

In other words, firearms are scary just as easily. And if you get a knife out, use it or i would laugh at you, even when tied to a chair. Now when you start swinging, somehow my resolve falters... Same with a gun, not using it and i laugh, shooting out my knee and I may change my mind

We all see Shadowrun differently.. That's part of the problem. I read your example and think...

By Corp bar do you mean...
A. A bar run by the corporation the salaryman works for?
B. A bar run for salarymen by a third party (usually a subsidiary of one corp or another)?
C. A bar in the barrens salarymen visit to act tough?

In anything but C, things don't go well for the runner. Especially if its A and MCT turf (MCT runs the fake sin, find its fake.. runner dead). Or B and Organized Crime Turf.(Being that Organized Crime is really efficient. Broken jaws are not good business and the runner doesn't have a family or corp to miss him.) As for C, heck the cops don't even show up.

As for Burn Notice, its totally awesome. However, it occurs in a civilized world and not Shadowrun. AEG had a good game that would fit Burn Notice but its early and pre coffee so I can't remember the name.

BlueMax

What's a runner doing in a corp bar? (Obviously, either shooting people or breaking jaws…)

Please. This topic is crazy subjective. Speaking with any authority on the intimidation value of one vs. the other is honestly a li'l silly. I'm not afraid of guns in general and have spent my entire life around them, but I have had one pointed at me before and frankly, I was more than a li'l concerned. Intimidation is largely a matter of displaying intent and ability. A gun can certainly lend some credibility as ably as a knife can.

Or blending in and getting Intel.

Or working on Pornomancy.

You just completely hit the nail on the head. That's what I've been trying to say. The worth or worthlessness of anything in the game is up to the individual. YMMV.

Using the Club skill, no less!

What would be the result if you changed to defense check against Melee attacks so that you only get Reaction, or Reaction+Skill when doing full defense? Shouldn't that make things more even in a cleaner way than by altering damage codes?

In my world, (B) would end up costing the runner a bribe, but he'd probably walk away from it. He would not be welcome in that establishment for at least a year.

Also, I have places between B and C (for salarymen who want to act tough in a Corp-approved setting), that are basically mob or even gang controlled establishments, to whom a Corp has paid protection money to on behalf of some of its workers. The gang gets some steady income, plus they get to rob any hangers-on who aren't careful about sticking near their untouchable Corp citizens, and the Corp... well, they get to monitor what their salarymen are doing when the salarymen think they are outside the Corp's borders.

What's the point of melee?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkSFIWzi7aA



(Sorry, couldn't resist)

From my experiences combat seems to happen about 60/40 or so of indoor vs outdoor. Indoors, if people want to close in to melee it is usually pretty easy to do so. With imact armor usually being lower than ballistic especially when using a -2 or -3 AP weapon what does get through can really hurt.

I find that players who are really good in melee tend to take people out faster (when they can engage them) than many ranged attackers are able to.Especially when darkness, smoke, cover, flashbangs, etc. are added into the mix.

But you miss an important point, I think... Unarmed combat is not meant to be a lethal form of fighting, and that is what you are comparing it to. Look at a competant Melee person, say Skill 4 (Your choice above), Agility 6 (A level of augmentation, which is common), a Strength 5, and a Katana, and the fight looks a little different.

Guns are very deadly, Fists are generally not... Blades are somewhere in between... I think that this is adequately represented in Shadowrun. Of course, some will disagree...

I can tell you from experience, the guy with gel rounds in his silenced Ares Pred is still better.

I can tell you from experience, it really depends on the guy with the melee build and the guy with the ranged build.

And the situation
the GM
The phase of moon

The only thing I can tell for certain is different, is the /2

BlueMax

In my opinion, there's a difference between a 'melee focused' build, and just having the melee skill. I take a melee skill with every character, for the same reason I take athletics; if I don't, my GM will drown me. Or in the case of melee, attack me with ghouls or dogs or ghoul-dogs.

-DrZaius

Dog-ghouls.

You don't want a melee skill against ghouls. You want Dodge. And Running (specialization: for your life).

Yeah, Ghouls are a situation that you want an Autoshotgun for. AA-16 is a good suggestion.

I haven't been able to find any good research on this topic, but from various accounts I've read and heard, the difference is less in how much each weapon is intimidating, and more in how it is intimidating. People seem to report a more visceral fear of knives, while experiencing more intellectual fear of guns. "That object scares me" vs. "I know that object can easily kill me". It's been suggested that such a difference could arise from the fact that nearly everyone has been cut at some point, and thus has a point of reference for what a knife wound would feel like, while most people have never been shot. In lines of work in which an individual is more likely to have been shot (say, shadowrunning), the distinction might disappear or be reversed.

Ultimately, as you said, it's subjective, and depends on the character of the person on the wrong end of the weapon. Personally, I'm properly scared of both, and being confronted with either prompts an urgent impulse to have it not aimed in my direction.


On the actual topic of the thread: You can't make an attack of will with a ranged attack. (You could make one with a gun by trying to smack the spirit with it, though.) On the other hand, your melee skills won't help you, either, since it's a straight-up Willpower roll if you don't have Banishing. Of course, if you're reduced to relying on attacks of will, you're pretty much screwed already.

Erwin Rommel put it best when he described his bayonet charge. The man with the last bullet in his gun wins... (He was shot in the leg leading a bayonet charge in WW1).

One should be trained in both close combat and ranged weapons. Ever see the special forces and wonder why they train in both? There are times when you want to subdue your opponent and would like them conscious. There are times where you won't have a weapon. There are times when you will find yourself out of bullets. There are other issues such as a silenced firearm can be heard up to 1 mile and unsilenced weapon up to 5 miles. I think the last thing a shadowrunner want is every Corp building (including those who have nothing to do with the run) within a mile radius on high alert as they are trying to flee.

The general consensus in life has been a guy with a knife will kill you. A guy with a gun will shoot you and that may kill you. The crime statistics tend to show this to be true as well. The lethality of a knife is deemed at 21 feet which is where 40% of all gunfights occur. My friend tested that hypothesis and found between 2 armed opponents one with a knife and the other a gun it was about 50/50 when they tested it. The big difference was once the knife fighter closed the pistol wielder would have been killed and the knife fighter was usually wounded when shot. This is a huge difference.

I'm about as boss as you can get with a knife, a ranged build with half my karma is my equal in most circumstances-- better if he's cyber and there's a background count of 3 or more. I picked pistol, since I went knife-- closest comparison I could think of.

You've got to leverage the gear to your advantage, man.
1) Poison your blade, always. Narcoject adds 10stun to your attacks. If it doesn't put them out cold, it still adds cumulative negative modifiers from damage. Gamma-scopolamine causes instant paralysis, which is just another word for death. Suddenly, strength seems less important, neh?

2) Biomonitor + Auto-injector. Get several. Put them in your shin guards, forearm guards, everywhere. Biomonitor senses an overwhelming fear response, the auto-injector takes a non-action to dose you with Guts. You are now immune to fear. Damage = Stim patch. Toxin = antidote patch. Overflow = trauma patch. Having a pharmacopia at your fingertips can help you through some serious troubles.

Really, melee combat is about trapping a guy in an unfavorable position (-3 to shoot while in melee and you Intercept if he tries to disengage) and using Two Weapon Style maneuver to go on full defense while continuing to attack. Add on the Disarm maneuver and Arnis de Mano's damaging disarm ability, and, for less than 10 BP total, you will murder every chump who comes within arm's reach.

Sure, there are situations when closing distance with an enemy isn't a good option, but, when waiting around a corner with a held action is an option, walking into that is a bad scene even for a competent gunfighter.



But, we can all agree that the original scenario, as OP described it, was missing a bunch of negative modifiers.

Remember OP, you split up the character's dice between each gun, so that's 5 dice on one and 6 on the other. The gunfighter doesn't get smartlink bonuses when firing with two weapons simultaneously, so it is just 6 pistols + 5 agility.
Then, after being split up to 5 and 6 dice, there is a cumulative -2 penalty per target engaged in an IP. So, that's 5 dice for the primary target and 4 for the secondary target, or 6 and 3 dice.
Next, were there any negative modifiers? Did any of the targets have partial cover? Was the bar smoky? etc? That might shave some further dice off the first shots.
Now, it's time for the 2nd Simple action. So, that's two more guys for -4 and -6 dice respectively. Plus that stock character doesn't have any recoil compensation, so that's an additional -1 to the dice pool. So, he's left with 1 die on the 3rd target and -2 on the 4th, or -0 dice on the 3rd target and -1 on the 4th.

Not exactly four kills a pass.

Oh, and then there's defense.
The club-swinging attackers should be getting +2 dice to defense for running, since they'd likely be doing charge attacks. Possibly more for partial cover. Well, that's after they got caught flat-footed I guess..
But, once they do engage the gunslinger, his dicepool takes another -3 hit on all fronts, and if he tries to disengage to mitigate that, they can hit him again with a free action if they've got one available..

Don't worry too much about it. I've got some links for you though, which should help you keep track of all these overly-complicated things.

Cheet sheets here

Heh, Saint, suddenly I'm reminded of the RIFTS Juicer with all those autoinjectors and drugs

Maybe out in rural or other open areas (like the parking lot at your local Stuffer Shack). But in a built-up urban area, this distance is misleading. When you start taking in to account cancelling echoes, intervening buildings, ambient background noise, etc. the distances get much shorter; you'd be lucky to be able to recognize a normal, uncompensated gunshot 2 blocks away in New York City, let alone be able to tell exactly where it came from. Inside a building is even worse for sound carriage, since most buildings are designed to minimize how much sound will travel (absorptive materials, creative construction, HVAC white noise, etc) beyond the immediate area. It's perfectly plausible to hold a gunfight outside some corp exec's office, and when the team bust in have the exec be completely unaware...unless the team is using explosives!

Dude yeah. Wow, I am totally seeing a "mini-Juicer" in Shadowrun. It would work and make that dude addicted.

Hmm... I think I need to flesh that out a bit.

The perception tests on silence guns in SR4 are actually pretty low, esp. with mod/integral silencers and/or subsonic ammo.

My weapons specialist would drop people with melee constantly.

Unarmed 4 + Agi 6+ Skill Group Recorder + Optimized Cyberarm for Unarmed combat = 12 dice on average without mods like ally in melee, a Tacnet, or a spec. Since most characters I fought (and most in my group) lacked unarmed when I got in close I could actually drop them rather quickly. My general tactic was using thermal smoke for cover, run up close, disarm them and either beat them senseless (6 DV so it didn't take long) or in the case of groups get close, disarm, hold their buddy like a shield, and spray them with bullets from his gun. And for the record the negative mod to my pool for disarming was only -1 after my first mission because of a martial art and then taking a Spec in said martial art. Nothing says noob like taking a persons gun and shooting them with it.

Disarm is your friend, use him wisely. And since it requires Unarmed that is also your friend.

You have an optimized cyberarm for unarmed combat, but you -didn't- pump its Agility up to 9?

Oi! I knew I forgot something lol, thanks for catching that. His flesh was 6 but the arm was 9. You know I was looking at that 12 dice and I knew it sounded lower then I remember but I don't have my sheet with me so I forgot the arm had maxed agility. One other thing, my group doesn't allow people to take the martial art quality without a melee combat skill that matches. We don't know if thats in the book but we just play it like that so no one takes Krav Maga but can't throw a punch.

Oi! I knew I forgot something lol, thanks for catching that. His flesh was 6 but the arm was 9. You know I was looking at that 12 dice and I knew it sounded lower then I remember but I don't have my sheet with me so I forgot the arm had maxed agility. One other thing, my group doesn't allow people to take the martial art quality without a melee combat skill that matches. We don't know if thats in the book but we just play it like that so no one takes Krav Maga but can't throw a punch.