Exotic Melee Weapons require a skill per weapon. This is unarmed combat for an unarmed attack.

Actually, making an item a weapon focus does not make it a weapon explicitly and base items are not restricted to weapons. A glove or a sock could indeed be made into a weapon focus and the user would still be unarmed (since a glove or sock is not a weapon). Hardliner/Shock gloves or brass knuckles however are weapons.

Generally this is true. The hardliner gloves however have the following exception:
This exception only changes the used skill, it does not make an (obviously armed) attack with the hardliner gloves into an unarmed attack.

Or explains why an obviously unarmed attack is listed in a section of exotic weapons rather than creating a distinct section for unarmed combat aids.

Plain English:

Hardliner gloves definitely fit that description.



Emphasis mine.
Now tell me how an attack using hardliner gloves is not an armed attack.

I don't agree (on this specific point). When you use a weapon focus, whatever it is (feather, Kleenex, ring), it's a weapon you're using. The skill you use is a separate question, but as you say, not a relevant one for Adept powers.

So does a fist, particularly when combined with killing hands or bone lacing. Nearly everything that affects the effectiveness of a punch will improve the effectiveness of a hardliner punch. There may be a question of balance, but that's a separate question.

And again, I don't think it makes sense to argue that hardliners are a weapon and so unarmed bonuses do not affect a hardliner punch, but that enchanting a sock or glove as a weapon focus grants a bonus to unarmed combat.

It's a weapon when it is beneficial to me for it to be a weapon (so it can be a weapon focus) and not a weapon when it is not beneficial to me for it to be a weapon (so I can use Critical Strike with it). Schroedinger's Hardliner Glove +6.

LOL. It is simultaneously a weapon and non-weapon until it observed, when it is one or the other?

Pretty much exactly my POV of the munchkins Umaro.

It counts for their +focus dice on it but nothing else. But it doesn't do it's damage code, it merely adds to my already obscene damage code so that I get the absolute best of all worlds with none of the drawbacks. Any adept who takes a more traditional weapon like a sword is just a sucker because this clearly works differently than all other weapon foci in the game!


My favorite was the comment about for a mere +1 damage and a few dice... it stops being a few when that few can be a quarter or half your dice pool!!! (such as a force 6+ focus bringing you up to 18+ dice). Those extra dice are the big problem... increasing accuracy (and damage by an average of a third of the added dice as well!).

Not exactly...
Bone lacing gives its own damage code. Hardliner gloves gives its own damage code. Stun gloves gives its own damage code.

None of them ADD to your base damage code.

Bone lacing changes your base and stacks with adept abilities because you paid essence for it. Just like a mage with cyber eyes.

Besides... What would be the point of wearing a basic sock or glove as a weapon focus? The only real benefit is to make the attack dual natured so you can take out spirits. Adding dice is secondary and in a way is the balancing factor for weapon foci vs. unarmed since you can add more to unarmed then you can with attacks with weapons.

So, if I understand (one of) the general consensus(ses) right, shock gloves and hardliners count as weapons, and so can't be used with unarmed Adept powers, right?

How does Orthoskin (Electroshock) work? The RAW says it works "as if wielding a stun baton." I don't think that can mean it is a weapon (you paid good essence for it, and, fluff-wise, it's obviously embedded in your skin.) Do Critical Strike, etc. work with it? Or not?

At my table it would not. You may be using unarmed combat for the attack but you are not using your unarmed damage. You are trading that damage for the electrical damage instead.

I do understand your point on paying essence for it and for that alone I would see a case for its inclusion for adept abilities.

However, as a GM, I would see it purely as an attempt to break the game... Not that it is difficult to break the game; I just try and minimize it at my table. It is not really fair to the other players and if the players do it so can I which just makes everything spiral out of control.

More importantly they give you a different damage code. Most adept powers modify your base damage code. You can enhance it through the roof, those enhancements would still not be added to the damage code of the hardliner gloves/bone lacing etc.

You do not need to be dual-natured to attack spirits unless you want to attack astral spirits, and who but a mage wants to do that? What you want is a bypass to ItNW. A weapon focus as well as Killing Hands achieves that.

"as if wielding a stun baton" means you count as armed. So critical strike, elemental strike etc. won't work. There also is the fact that you do not perform normal melee attacks with a stun baton, you do touch attacks. As such the unarmed adept powers don't work anyways.

I only meant my statement as a way to bypass ItNW.


And I think you said it better than I!

Fine, use your Anti-Player Rules Lawyer GM arguments, but people can do the same to you. A normal unarmed strike is (Str/2), while hardliner makes it (Str/2 + 1), thus hardliner only gives a +1 to damage from base unarmed strike damage. Eat your own logic.

And a knife gives... and a sword gives... or a stun glove gives... What argument are you trying to make?

Hardliner gloves do not give you a +1 any more than a knife gives you +1... They have seperate damage codes and that makes them not unarmed combat (well, the knife is blades but you get the point) regardless that you are using the unarmed skill.

You forgot the important part, All4BigGuns. A normal unarmed attack does stun damage, an attack with hardliner gloves does physical damage. Using hardliner gloves does not result in an enhanced damage value. The damage value is replaced by a different damage value.

The same could be said for bone lacing and bone density augmentation, though. Purely by RAW, it is correct that hardliner gloves have their own damage code. I would probably let things like ceramic bone lacing stack with it, although that is a house rule, not RAW.

The problem with letting adept powers stack with it is that you are effectively letting them channel power from their fists through the gloves. So I would disallow it. You can either get hardliner gloves, or adept powers, not both. I wouldn't let two-weapon style be used, either - mainly because unarmed combat already uses both fists, by default (in addition to knees, feet, elbows, etc.). I reason that if unarmed combat can not be used with the off-hand training maneuver, it shouldn't work with the two-weapon style maneuver, either. Part of my reason is RAI, which is very subjective, part of it is a reflexive reaction against what I see as trying to loophole the system, and part of it is that dreaded specter, game balance - weapons should be better for some things.

I fail to see how in anything but a strict MMO type of "balance" a +1 to damage suddenly becomes "broken", or how it suddenly becomes "broken" being able to use a weapon focus an the intrinsic benefits of such for unarmed combat in any form--again without delving into D&D 4E style of supposed balance (read: total destruction of anything that actually brings enjoyment to the game).

A weapon is a weapon. Swords, knives, clubs, guns, etc. are weapons. A pair of hardened gloves is NOT a weapon, it merely makes a punch more effective.

...
...
...
Punch someone with a closed fist...
Then punch someone else with a hardliner glove (brass knuckles, weighted glove)...
Then see what charges would be brought up on you by the police.
I can tell you that in New York the first is assault; the second is assault with a deadly weapon.
(Unless you are a black belt or above in any martial art then it is assault with a deadly weapon when your unarmed)

As for game balance... the +1 is not the issue.. The problem is when you start making concessions for everything. If you give one thing away and something else is similar then, by default, you need to give that away... etc... etc...

Not in SR4.

Haha, really? Now that's an awesome law if I've ever seen one. Taking adepts into account 2012 in real life, priceless

All Magic counts as INTENT in Shadowrun Laws. No matter what.
Spells higher than Force 3 were simply illegal to have without a propper license, at least in SR3.

I remember that, except that no one could know if you had such a spell learned until you cast it, right?

That's what forensics are there for.
It doesn't really help at the moment, it just helps make higher charges stick better.
And over here, in germany, we have similar laws for assault with a deadly weapon for martial arts. And Boxing counts too.

Actually, i just searched around for quite a while about this and it seems to be a (common) urban myth. Btw, I myself am from Germany and also practice martial arts, and we definetely don't have such a law here. If you disagree, sources would be appreciated.

Punch someone with killing hands, what's the charge?
Does it matter if I punch someone with a meat fist or a cyber one? What about if it's a detachable cyber fist, does that change the charge?

The legal consequences do not have anything to do with whether the gloves work with adept unarmed attack abilities. The concession being made is whether a punch benefits from adept unarmed abilities or not. The rules lawyered approach is to say no because it is listed in a weapon section.

The right answer might be to disallow the combination, but I won't agree with an argument based on technicalities in a game system that, in my opinion, is not designed for technicalities.

A punch is a punch. Two things that improve a punch should stack. Hardliners plus adept powers and bone lacing should result in even more effective attacks. By the same token, wearing sparring pads will reduce the effectiveness of killing hands and bone lacing. This makes sense to me. Does this break the game? If so, how?

I disregard the table and section that the gloves are listed in, because I doubt that anyone at Catalyst was cognizant of the mechanical impact of such a decision. It's gear. Stick it here; it's where people will look for it. Beyond that, I doubt they paid any more attention to the section it is listed under.

And now for the crowning silly:
As far as i remember, Cyber-Hand/Arm STACKS with BONE-LACE AND BONE DENSITY. Despite there not being a single natural Bone left in the offending Limb.

Because Cabral the system is designed that you can either get the +10DV -whatever AP on a fist. Or you can get +10 dice on the attack for using a weapon. Pick one, Not both. Otherwise you screw over everyone and there is no reason to take anything other than unarmed melee.

Weapons are weapons are weaopns... the rules for using weapons are distinct and do not involve the rules for unarmed combat augmentations at all. The rules stop multiple suits of armor from stacking as well. This is no different. The only reason people go for this is because it's a munchkins wet dream, the damage, the accuracy, the concealability... it's all the good things with none of the bad.


StahlSeele:
Actually yes and no. Remember all tests are supposed to be full body tests. However, the rules do allow you to target with called shots with GM discretion (look at augmentation where it refers to called shots). In those cases... the test involves the limb and only the limbs attributes. Bone lacing/density specifically say they enhance the users body score for damage resistance. The rules for cyberlimb clearly state that each cyberlimb has it's own attribute score (seperate from the users augmented body score).

How is including the electrical component of the orthoskin any different than using elemental strike (Electric)? You've already lost a whole power point to get your damn othroskin + mod, and elemental strike is only 0.5PP.

<edit>
But Falconer - you can have all your limbs replaced by cyber + have bone lacing.

The orthoskin modification in question specifically states that you have the option of doing the regular damage instead of doing regular damage.

The adept power works slightly differently - it adds the elemental effect to the damage you are already doing. In other words, it doesn't do 6S(e) and the adept's normal unarmed damage.

This is how SR4 has chosen to balance electrical attacks - I prefer SR3's approach, but it is what it is. Logically, you would think whacking someone upside the head with a steel baton would do damage from that and the electrical damage, but it doesn't work that way. It's one or the other.

The orthoskin + electroshock mod is actually a pretty good combo. You get the equivalent of 3 points of mystic armor in the deal, too, and electroshock is better than elemental strike in some ways - not only is it not obvious and available to use without expending any actions, but it can also be used subtly (just touching someone) or defensively (against someone grappling you). The downside is that you don't get to combine electrical effects with the high damage that an unarmed adept can inflict.

OK, here's my non-rules lawyer for what you should do with hardliners.

Hardliners shouldn't stack with bonelacing because it changes the whole structure of your punch. Compared to having titanium or ceramic bones, weighted gloves would actually do less damage since it spreads your impact area and provides some shock absorption (from the leather that is glove is made of). So if you were going to treat hardliners as modifying your base unarmed damage, then it would supercede any of your bone lacing/density first. So you could get:

(Str/2 + 3) bone lacing
+X Unarmed damage from martial arts
+Y damage from adept powers

OR

(Str/2 + 1) Hardliners
+X Unarmed damage from martial arts
+Y damage from adept powers

But, thats if your GM allows you to use your unarmed damage bonus bonus from martial arts to work when you wearing heavy/awkward gloves that should reduce your manual dexterity, except for maybe Boxing...and that would be it.

So the best you could get would be

(STR/2 + 1) hardliners
+2 Boxing
+y Adept powers

Not too different from a Katana now.


Edit: Also, if I do that, now I have to allow my player to take shock gloves or electroshock orthoskin and add martial arts and adept powers to that.

On a related note, i think that cyberlimbs in general should do (STR/2)+3 damage. There is just no reason that some bone enhancement should be more dangerous than FISTS MADE OF STEEL. Also, more power to cyberlimbs could surely not hurt. The only downside is that there would be less reason to get spurs, which are flufftastic and have always been core of SR fiction. But one could argue that cyberlimbs still do Stun damage, while spurs do Physical.

Which hits you harder and why? 100kg of steel or 100kg of pig fat.

depends entirely on the size of the package.

They could be fragile-ish cyber-fists. Their purpose is mostly 'to be hands', after all. But sure, there's room for balancing those numbers.

More likely is that they're going to be built out of strong but lightweight materials. Arguably, a cyberlimb is going to weigh less than or equal to a meatbag limb.

I could definately see a cyberlimb mod that increases the density/durability of cyberlimbs in order to increase damage....

But really adding cyberlimb armor should do that already.

I was just about to say that. Given how much space they take up, how about each point of cyberlimb armor adds +1 DV to unarmed attacks using that limb?

+X DV, -X Dice Pool where X is the amount of armor. Maybe go offset the X based on the cyberlimb strength value so 10 armor and 6 str on the limb applies a -4 penalty at +10DV.

If armor is increasing the DV then it must be doing so through increase weight which is going to make it more difficult to effectively hit something.

Well, both the STR upgrade and probably the agility upgrade already do that already . .

Not exactly. The STR upgrade simply equates on the (Str/2) portion. Which means punching with a steel arm is less effective than a bare hand with bone lacing or bone density. The armor is obviously increasing the weight and density of the arm, so why not have it add a small bonus to punching someone?

Because you can already get to ludicrous levels of Unarmed damage? Why do we need to make it even more ludicrous?

It would of course not add to the bonus from bone lacing and the like. It's just meant to make it able to do the same amount of damage with a steel fist. Which you should be able to do.

And i don't think it should have anything to do with the armor upgrade.

If ANYTHING . . .house-rule that redlining a limb ain't as ridiculous useless as it is right now . .
So the one big bonus point of cyber-limbs can actually be made use of:"overclocking yourself"
This, coupled with the pain shut off capability should be pretty much enough . .

Whether its tied to the armor upgrade or not, it should be possible. And as it is, attacks with cyberarms to do not gain the benefit from bone density/lacing upgrades.

What I would do is have it as a separate cyberlimb accessory that works in combination with armor. Call cyberlimb hardening or something.
Make it roughly the same capacity but a little cheaper than a cyberspur, something like capacity [3] costs 1k, which increases the amount of damage your cyberarms add by an amount equal to your armor enhancement (so up to +4).

To get full +4 you would pretty much have to have a full obvious cyberarm.

Depends on a number of variables you haven't provided for.

The average density of stainless steel (as given by Wolfram Alpha) is 7.9g/cm^3

The average density of pig fat (as given by Wolfram Alpha) is .92g/cm^3

So a 100kg sphere of stainless steel will be significantly smaller than a 100kg sphere of pig fat. If you're getting hit by a 100kg sphere of either material, the steel will hit you harder, as it is more dense. However, this is a simplification that doesn't account for plastic and elastic deformation performance (which will have an effect on terminal effects) and doesn't account for differing shapes of our material. If the steel is in the shape of a cylinder with a 1cm height (and consequently with a radius of ≈63.48cm) and hits you with its base, it will have significantly less impact than a meter long cylinder of the same mass striking you with its base.

But if your point is that steel, being more dense and much harder than pig fat, is going to cause much more severe terminal effects, then yeah, yeah it would.

You really do not want to do that unless you want ridiculous damage. Hardliners are one-handed weapons with reach 0, ergo they qualify for two-weapon fighting and two-weapon style, since they are weapons you can make them into weapon foci.

So you either have two attacks with a pool of (AGI+Unarmed Combat)/2 +2 (applicable specialization)+X (weapon focus)
each doing STR/2+1 +3(martial arts)* +y (adept powers)

or

Have one attack with a pool of AGI+Unarmed Combat +2 (applicable specialization) +X (weapon focus) with the same damage as above while going on Full Defense with REA+Unarmed Combat + Unarmed Combat +2 (applicable specialization)

At least the latter version could possibly even work with distance strike

Now tell my how that is comparable to a katana.

*While boxing is capped at +2DV the rules state that you can still take another Martial Arts Quality from Musti Yudha or Rince an Bhata Uisce Bheatha for another +1DV

That's a question of balance. That's fine. I just have less of an issue with opening up some balance holes because I don't normally have players that abuse them. At my table, it's more of an issue of just letting what makes sense work together.

That said, what are the unarmed adepts missing out on? 1 die for custom grip, 1 or more from reach, and the focus rating? That's a potential 9 die difference (2 reach) at character generation. Approximately equivalent to +3 DV. Assuming a No-dachi, 7 DV and -2 AP better than the basic unarmed strike with no power point expenditure. Unarmed, the adept could have +6 DV, -3 AP, and physical damage for 2.75 power points. They could both burn 3 power points on extra melee skill dice, but the sword adept will have 3 power points left for improved strength. Assuming that you don't allow stacking DVs from multiple martial styles, the sword user can get +1 DV from Sangre y Acero while the unarmed user can get +2 DV. I would say that they come out about even, at least, at character generation. The difference being 1 AP.

That doesn't address concealability and it seems like a pretty extreme case.



At what point does the unarmed combat adept become so much stronger than the sword?

Since we are, or at least I am, arguing that hardliners should be considered an unarmed attack, that also rules out two-weapon fighting.