I wonder if Accuracy of weapons will change based on range rather than a dice pool modifier?

I think that's quite intentional. Melee has been somewhat of a red-headed stepchild of Shadowrun combat for a long, long time. Making those punks with knives actually dangerous really adds more tension to combat.

You ain't just whistling "Dixie."

It's going back to SR3 Numbers more or less.
This whole thing seems more like SR3.5 than SR4.5 or let alone SR5 to me right now.
I am NOT sure what to think about all of this as of yet . .

Could that be because melee is kinda subpar in RL? From what I remember, anyone with access to firearms arms their military with those, not with axes and clubs.

For me, it is AWESOME! It wasn't even a month ago that a friend and I were discussing SR3 & SR4 and how we would like to take the good things from SR3 and the good things from SR4 and modify the system to the best it can be. I'm hoping that what comes out of this system will be just that.

Also, I noticed the condition monitor is different. With a body of 7, the Sprawl Ganger has a physical condition monitor of 13. This means either it is 6+body, 9+Body/2(roundup), 10+body/2(rounddown), or any other myriad of possibilities. My guess is it is 6+body because the stun condition monitor looks like it could easily be 6+Willpower.

Are you accounting for the cyberlimbs? I'm pretty sure we had this conversation a few pages ago.

But but, in the movies a 85 pound woman disarms and knocks out 6-8 250lb muscular guys with pistols in 5 seconds.

Deckers/Wired Matrix?
Yep, back in there.

SR3 ini-system, as bad as it was, to make things a bit more random?
Yep, also back.

SR3 Close Combat Damage being way up there with Shotguns and the such?
Also back. Wonder if the Trollbows will be awesome again as well.

SR3 was way more over the top than SR4 in this regard.

I must have missed that.

I found in my fiction that Jason likes Max Headroom references. Though that was sort of by accident, as it's a term I've come to use often enough that I didn't even think about it when I used it, but it's distinctively Max Headroom

I agree, but it should still be subpar. They are raising ranged damage, too - combat overall looks like it will be more deadly, although higher armor values and lower overall dice pools might ameliorate that a bit. The thing I do like about this is that it makes Strength, one of the least useful stats, mean a bit more.

Look at my sig, then look at this.



-k

I take it you've never been stabbed, then?

I take it you've never double posted, then?

(Stupid iPad.)

Hallo Leute,

Ich mochte die Vorschau#3 sehr und rechne es Euch (Schreiberinnen und Schreibern/ Entwicklerinnen und Entwicklern/ Mitarbeiterinnen und Mitarbeitern) sehr hoch an, daß Ihr Euch "unseren" Fragen stellt (und solltet Ihr je aufhören, dürft Ihr nie wieder das Schaf knuddeln!).
Die "Girls with Guns" Kurzgeschichte hat mir sehr gut gefallen. Ich liebe die Erste-Person-Erzählperspektive und finde es gleichzeitig sehr nerfig, wenn sie schlecht gemacht sind (MMN ist es wirklich schwer Erste-Person gut zu schreiben). Die Geschichte passt sehr gut als Einleitung ins Kapitel Charaktergenerierung weil sie auf sehr schöne Art das Augenmerk darauf legt wie die Charaktäre, welche die Spieler bauen, die Welt Wahrnehmen werden.
Als ich "Alles hat seinen Preis" in den Ankündigungen las, war einer meiner ersten Gedanken "Prioritätensystem, Yeah!" Ich denke es fühlt sich sehr viel "Cyberpunkiger" an, wenn man eine Entscheidung treffen muß. Und jede Entscheidung kostet letztendlich Möglichkeiten.

Ich hab die fünfte Edition schon gekauft und werd' sie jeder und jedem in meinem Unfeld ans Herz legen.

thick (austrian) german accent in writing:
doont srust se englisch schbeeking matschoriti on sis forum! do jur oohn sranslaschons!

Hoi Chummers,

I liked the preview#3 very much and appreciate you guys (writers/developers/staff) for enduring the trouble of having to explain yourself to "us" (if you don't you'll never get to cuddle the sheep any more!).
I really enjoyed the "Girls with Guns" shortstory as I love first person writing and finding it a hell of annoying at the same time if not done well (It is imo really hard to do well). I also think it fits perfect for an introduction into the chargen chapter, for it places the focus nicely on how the characters players create will percieve the world.
When I read "everything has a price" in the Announcements one of my first thoughts was "priority system, yeah!". I think it has a much more "cyberpunkish" feeling to it if you have to make a choice. Every choice will ultimatly cost you options.

I am already sold on the fifth edition and will gladly "pimp" it in my circles.

love,
Sunshine

Man, anyone that thinks melee is subpar hasn't been cut.

I cook for a living. Trust me, a knife will take a person apart as easily as a chicken, and if someone's within 10 feet or so, you'd best hope you've got wired reflexes. Otherwise, you're getting cut before you can get the gun on target.

It's situational of course, but the same can be said for any weapon. Your average sniper rifle's not much good in close quarters, and that holdout pistol's not going to be much use in a snipers' duel.

I think the only things combat wise I'm holding out for now is a sensible vehicle damage system (given that it was essentially impossible to kill a pedestrian with a car in SR3), and seeing if adept powers got toned down a bit to keep melee buffs from making them unstoppable.

Anyone who thinks it isn't subpar hasn't seen someone shot.

I do have a huge issue with melee outdamaging guns, we'll see.

bullet to the heart or sword to the heart. Either way, there's a hole in the heart.

I've unintentionally cut myself several times and lived, how many people can say that about shooting themselves?


IRL yes, but with the Accuracy mechanic the reverse might actually become true in the game: If an enemy suddenly jumps in front of you, you have to make every hit count to negate the enemy's dodge roll (even more so with the larger dodge pools), ergo you want a gun with the highest possible Accuracy. But if you snipe somebody from far off he does not get a dodge roll, so all you need is one hit, and accordingly a sniper is fine as long as his gun has Accuracy 1 after modifiers...

The advantage firearms gives is distance, and modern firearms also gives the additional advantage of increased combat effectiveness due to ammo counts a soldier can carry. But don't ever think that blunt force trauma and lacerations are any less lethal. In close combat the meth fueled dude with the knife you just got surprised by can put you in a world of hurt before you even draw and aim your gun to squeeze a shot off. That, and all militaries still equip their soldiers with melee weapons and training as well. If things go REAL bad, you may run out of ammo, but you never run out of tomahawk.

I'd much rather be stabbed than shot at point-blank.

Agreed, using the forums from an iPad is goddamn hell. Especially forming complex quotes with its crippled copy-paste functionality.


I haven't been cut in a fight (because the only time my opponent produced a knife I used the most effective maneuver and ran the hell away). However, it is extremely obvious that modern firearms do more damage for less effort on the fighter's side than melee weapons ever did. Firearms are just straight up better: even in the close-quarter combat, bayonets mounted or what have you, shooting point blank comes first, and melee second.
Going with the heart example: at the distance where you can puncture someone with a sword, a sword in heart means punching through the sternum or the ribs (which requires quite a bit of effort) to leave a blade-sized hole, a bullet in heart means the chest cavity turned into a bloody mess, a fist-sized exit hole, all at a slight squeeze of a finger.

It does not matter wether or not you think guns need to be better than melee.
This is a game. Melee has to be a viable alternative mechanically.
You can deal with magic, dragons, cyber/bioware but not with people employing magic or ware dealing as much damage in close combat than a heavy weapon?
A Troll hitting you with a big axe is going to do more damage than an HMG would do to you.

Mechanics are meant to represent believable, internally coherent interaction systems. Melee being just as good as firearms is not, for the humanity has been eager to replace melee with firearms for some thousand years now. It might have certain different advantages (for instance, it's a bit easier to bring martial training aboard a plane than an assault rifle, and a melee fighter never runs of ammo or has to reload), but straight up doing equal damage just does not make much sense.

My uncle. Turns out falling asleep while deer hunting is a really stupid thing to do.

Physads are going to have a hayday with the higher melee damage!

hmmm . . . a thought just came to me about the melee damage. It used to be that melee damage was defended by impact armour (which was usually lower than ballistic armour), but it now looks like they have abolished the impact rating of armour and just gone with one solid armour rating. Perhaps this is their way of simplifying it?

Melee in SR isn't about realism.

Melee in SR is about being fraggin cool. With a sword. Preferably a katana, because hey, 1980s.



-k

Physads are magical, they can do whatever without ruining the suspension of disbelief.


Shooting is the same, so their relative coolness has no reason to be different than in RL :ь

Yes, Melee has the fact that it never runs out of Ammo and you don't have to hide a Gun on your body . .
But you still have to close the gap with the other side and that evens it all out.
If you manage to get close to somebody with a gun, you should be able to deal the same kind of damage to them just as easy as they tried to inflict on you while you could not retaliate.
An Assault-Rifle does minimal Damage to a Body when fired. The only reason why it's so deadly is the fact that a Body is fragile.
The Assault Rifle will punch some maybe finger thick holes into a Body. An axe will split the Body in half if it's big enough and swung hard enough. That is way more damage than any gun can do.
Short of a vindicator minigun sawing through it at least.

On the whole melee/ranged thing: It is a proven fact that a knife beats a pistol inside 21 feet. Additionally, while it only takes 1 well placed bullet to kill a person, it also only takes one well placed stab to kill a person. In fact, because of the tendency of non-hollow point rounds to produce "through and through" wounds versus the tendency of blades (depending in part on sharpness and serration) to tear, knives can actually produce more serious and difficult to treat wounds.

Real question is, are melee attacks still a complex action?

Melee has been replaced by firearms because firearms do not require the wielder to be a strong, well-trained person in good health to win a fight.

Firearms allow the weak, female, elderly, and young to be as deadly as a fighting man. That is why they are the preferred weapon, not any inherent superiority in damage applied.

Hell, from a purely physics standpoint, an axe blow is delivering a -lot- more kinetic impact than a bullet. Equal and opposite reactions, remember, that bullet is not leaving with any more force than your shoulder and the springs are absorbing from recoil. It's just applying it to a very small area.

A good sharp knife in the hands of a weak, female, elderly, or young person can still kill a person. It just depends on the circumstances.

It can, but generally not before someone stronger and fitter can kill them.

Yes, but speed matters a great deal in a knife fight.

Melee has been replaced by firearms because strong, well-trained person in good health carrying a firearm tended to win against other strong, well-trained person in good health carrying only a melee weapon.

The difference in required training for mastery of the weapons also certainly was a factor.



-k

My kendo Sensei was elderly, and he was faster than anyone in the dojo, if he had had a real Katana in his hand rather than a shinai, his opponents would be dead, no matter how weak he was. Women are very fast. The young are quick. Even the weak can wield a knife with skill and speed. Strength is important when using a bludgeoning weapon, but not nearly as useful when wielding a knife.

I would never underestimate anyone who's been training in the martial arts for an extremely long time, certainly (and suffice it to say I have the good fortune to have some firsthand knowledge on that subject). Strength isn't a component of this, but general anaerobic fitness certainly is.

I don't like the idea that Strength is such a big component of damage with bladed weapons, though - I can see why they did it, and it works for the system, but it's not a good model of how bladed weapons actually work.

I've posted about melee vs firearms here before, so I'll just sum up my arguments.

The cold hard facts of reality are that melee weapons inflict far more damage. It's just physics. Getting hit with a four pound hammer being slung around by the human body delivers VASTLY more energy than getting hit with a 7.5 gram bullet traveling at supersonic speeds.

The difference is speed and range. Firearms aren't effective because they hit harder. They're devastating because you can hit from farther, faster. At point blank range, with a simultaneous exchange, a guy with a gun is definitely gonna wound his foe with a solid hit, but the guy with a katana is going to literally eviscerate the firearm user.

The problem with melee isn't the damage. It's getting close enough to cut your opponent to ribbons without being shot repeatedly. If the militaries of the world could instead use swords from hundreds of yards away and swing them several hundred times per minute without tiring out their wielders, no one would bother with guns.

Hence, I'm all for extremely lethal melee weapons in SR. You want to do crazy amounts of damage in a single blow? Drop a sledgehammer on someone's brainpan. But remember, you've got to actually run up to them without being turned into swiss cheese to do so. So if any of you gunslingers out there want to complain about melee doing too much damage, maybe try shooting people a few times before they're close enough to actually do anything, instead of trying to give them a hug?

~Umi

*nods*
if you are a shooter, don't let the troll close to melee
if you are a troll, don't be too far away from a shooter

That and firearms made armor pretty much useless.

Now we just need Dune-type shields to bring us back full circle.

The whole firearms vs armor thing is somewhat more complicated. Many types of armor could already be defeated by arrows and quarrels, as well as melee weapons. It was mostly there to protect against glancing blows and stray missiles, not to defeat a determined and accurate strike. When you hear stories about axes or katanas cleaving through helmets and breastplates, it's not exaggeration.

Historically, most warriors wore light armor. Heavy armor was not only expensive, but severely limiting to the wearer. We in the west tend to think of medieval knights in full plate armor, but chain and especially leather were orders of magnitudes more common. A helmet and a cuirass were pretty much all you'd want or receive most of the time, and only the elites and the leaders wore heavy armor, for a number of reasons.

The introduction of firearms did result in the phasing out of heavy armor because it no longer gave sufficient protection to compensate for it's high cost and encumbrance, but light armor continued to be used for centuries all across the world. Missile weapons of all sorts could still penetrate it, but that'd always been the case anyway, so firearms didn't really change much outside the heavy end of the armor spectrum.

Today, modern militaries have much the same sort of philosophy about armor that has always existed - just enough to protect against stray shots and glancing blows without sacrificing mobility. A helmet and a chestpiece has been the universal standard for pretty much as long as humans have been working metal, and it continues to this day. Heavier armor is available - we can pile on all sorts of extras to help stop bullets from penetrating - but lighter armoring is prefered because it doesn't impede the wearer's movement.

~Umi

But melee and ranged often had similar damage values in SR4. An ork with a Strength of 7 (like that sprawl ganger archetype) would do 5P damage with a club, and 5P damage with an Ares Predator IV heavy pistol. Damage values have gone up for melee and ranged weapons, and armor ratings have gone up. As Black Swan noted, they seem to have simplified armor and done away with separate ballistic and impact values. That means the armor jacket's value of 12 is 4 better against bullets (compared to SR4), but 6 better against melee.

Melee was subpar in SR4 because it was a niche role; only good in close quarters, or when you could sneak up on someone. It wasn't any good against gangers sniping from behind an overturned car or from two stories up a rickety fire escape. It also took a complex action to attack, and the defender rolled Reaction + skill to defend against it (rather than only Reaction, as for ranged attacks). We don't know what, if any, changes they have made to these rules, so it is a bit premature to assume that melee combat is suddenly overpowering. If anything, it might get nerfed. In SR4, you had the cheese that involved two-weapon fighting style, as well as augmented adepts who stacked bone lacing/bone density augmentation, martial arts bonuses, and critical strike to get assault cannon-like damage codes. Both of these things might be gone/rebalanced in SR5.

Very well said. I just wanted to add something. (I'm sure that most, if not everybody on here already knows this, but I'll say it anyway) Different types of armour have always been intended to help protect against a specific type of attack. Padded armour was good for defending against blunt weapons, chainmail was good against edged (but lousy against blunt and piercing), plate was good against edged and lighter piercing, (but not superb against blunt), and modern body armour is designed with bullets in mind (not worrying too much about blunt, piercing, or edged).

Most modern armour is made with material that disperses the kinetic energy of a bullet over a wider area (causing less pressure, after all it is pressure that makes bullets so dangerous, not the energy itself). This energy cannot be destroyed, and so the person is still being struck by the energy just over a larger area which results in bruising rather than puncturing. However, this same material is much less useful against edged weapons. Kevlar can be cut quite easily, and the energy behind that 4 pound hammer is more than the Kevlar could handle. I suspect this argument may be why melee weapons now have a higher damage value than they used to; to compensate for the single standard armour rating that now exists.

I know, I know. . . . I'm babbling on. I'll stop now.

I know we will have to wait and see, but I hope that the rules will have a differentiation between a delayed action and a readied action.

Modern armor is actually currently trending towards composite construction designed to handle multiple threat types, but there's only so much you can do without it getting too heavy, bulky, costly, or specialized.

If we assume the same trend exists in the future timeline of Shadowrun, most armor would probably be designed to protect chiefly against knives and guns, because they'd be the most common types of threats faced, and therefor would be the most cost-effective to design against. By the same token, your average armor vest probably isn't going to protect a whole lot against a sledgehammer, because such heavy blunt trauma is far less common a threat and effectively defending against it is so much at odds with defending against the far more common knives and guns. Still, it's a lot better than nothing!

Hence, in my mind, that only reinforces the idea of having large melee weapons with high damage values.

~Umi

Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing your point, but could you direct me to some specific reading on this? I think it would be an interesting read.

So wait is this the part of the discussion where people argue melee weapons are just as good as firearms in spite of reams of statistics and history to the contrary based on perfect scenarios.', anecdotes, and the words of people who have a vested professional interest in telling you that that sword is totally practical bro especially if you take my class two nights a week for the next 6 months.