okay,

my brain has melted but I think I have this down correct, if you guys can chime in for my sanity?

I'm wondering if you apply different skills against different attacks if you declare full defense ?

for the sake of simplicity lets assume the combatants have 2*IP's

first pass

init 12 Guard 1 pistol
init 11 Guard 2 club
init 10 Criminal unarmed

so Guard 1 shoots for 2 sucesses
the criminal decides to sacrifice his firs IP complex for full defense, thus adding his dodge skill (2) to REA (5)
he gets 3 successes and avoids being shot

on 11 guard 2 takes a melee swing at him again 2 successes
the criminal is still on full defence (?) and thus rolls REA (5) + unarmed (3) + unarmed (3) again,
then -1 for the second defense ?
he gets 2 successes and is not harmed

on 10 criminal has used his complex and so can run or other free actions, he runs...

Second pass

guard 1 shoots again for 2 successes
criminal is NO LONGER in full defense as he has had his next go, but decides to burn this pass in FD as well.
so he rolls his dodge skill (2) to REA (5) (are there cumulative penalties still ? or do they refresh each pass ?)

on 11 guard 2 takes a melee swing at him again 2 successes
the criminal is still on full defence and thus rolls REA (5) + unarmed (3) + unarmed (3) again, then -1 (or minus 4 ?)


and on 10 he keeps running, and now screaming !


does that sound right ?

The criminal used "full dodge", so he would roll REA+Dodge+Dodge or REA+Dodge+Melee Skill (SR4A, p. 160)

that's not how it is worded ? it's a full DEFENSE action, not specifically full DODGE

so unarmed or melee weapon vs melee weapon

His full defense action lasts the entire pass as you indicated in your original post, and is indeed a Full Defense Action (Not Full Dodge).
And no, in answer to your final original question, it is not cumulative across passes. Once the pass is over, he resets his DP for the new pass (assuming he chooses to go Full defense again in IP 2).

Or did I completely misread what you were asking?

only partly missed it, that answers the cumulative penalties.

question is : when in Full Defense, do you apply different skills vs. different attacks

i.e. in the same IP

REA+DODGE Vs. gunfire
REA + BLADES + BLADES vs melee
or
REA + DODGE + GYMNASTICS vs. melee

or any combination there-of

or is Full Defense as NiL_FisK_Urd describes

i.e. you nominate Full Dodge vs all attacks against you and CANNOT apply any other skills vs further attacks in the same IP
dodge bullets and dodge melee , not allowed to switch to your better unarmed or blades skill or better gymnastics

thanks all

Yes, at least we do apply different skills, dependant upon what is incomming. You will never be as good against Ranged attacks as you will against melee attacks, and you still suffer the cumulative penalty in the same IP pass.

Full Dodge works against everything, so I can see Nil_FisK_Urd's opinion on that as well.

However, From What I understand, the Gymnastics Dodge is special and works against everything as well. I never use it because I think it is ludicrous, myself, but others like it. For us, whewn in Full Defense, we use either Melee Pools (Parry/Block) for Melee or Dodge Pools for ranged attacks, whichever applies. IIRC, anyways.

If we had a Karma button ... well, here, have an internet cookie instead
+1

Thanks

I would handle it this way too.
I have read the rules a few times now and they really don't seem to be clear. You can read them the one and the other way.
However, the situations where it makes a difference are very rare, so I would simply allow to choose the best full defense method for every single attack.
No one will switch between Full Dodge and Gymnastics Dodge anyway, because you are either have a better rating in Dodge or in Gymnastics.
People will only switch between Full Dodge and Full Parry or Gymnastics Dodge and Full Parry, because if your meele skill rating is the highest, you still can't use Full Parry against ranged attacks.
And only characters which are stabbed and shot at in the same initative pass would have to switch between Full Parry and Full dodge. I would say that you should allow it to these poor bastards, since it is far to easy to shot into meele in shadowrun without hitting the wrong one anyway.

I don't know how this could be read in another way.

They should have written "or" and not "and" if you would either have to focus your whole energy on blocking or dodging.

Also, a character how uses Full Parry is obviously on Full Defence.
And they wrote:

If a charakter on Full Parry wouldn't be allowed to use his Dodge skill to defend against ranged attacks, than that sentence would be wrong. They should have written "Character on Full Dodge may add their Dodge skill to their dice pool when defending against incoming attack" but they didn't. It wouldn't be the first times that the devs make a mistake, but I am reluctant to read a sentence and say: "This is clearly an error, I will simply ignore it."


This could mean that you choose when you spend the complex action, or it could mean you choose whenever you have to defend against an attack.

This is the other way to read it. I clearly see your point, but its ambiguous.
Because it will rarely make a difference anyway, I would simply allow take the Full Defence style that is best for every single attack that is incomming.

After all, if you aren't on full defence, it's no problem to switch between parrying and dodging individual meele attacks.