No, this is the part of the argument where people point out that studies done by people with a vested interest in knowing how close they can let that guy with the knife get before they have to shoot him have demonstrated the particular ranges involved - often using people off the street as the attackers with the blades rather than trained individuals. It's a very simple matter of the fact that it takes a certain amount of time to actually ready and aim a weapon at someone; the distance is a function of how much distance can be covered in that timeframe.

Maybe, instead, it could be the part of the discussion where everyone just drops it because they realize they're not going to change anyone's mind, and then we all just accept that sometimes action movies with guns are awesome, and other times action movies with swords are awesome, and that we're glad we can have both at the same time in Shadowrun?

Why would I be glad for that? Tell me do melee weapons have equivalent to the accuracy limit? I presume no and they are based on the character's physical limits (which I whould imagine would typically run higher)

The sample character in the preview has Accuracy on his melee weapons.

Cool I guess one less concern

If they're going to do that, though, I'd hope melee attacks become simple actions.

Because sometimes the rule of cool is a perfectly valid game design principle, instead of dice-slinging games with trolls and dragons trying to make hardcore claims about realism? Because Sally Tsung had a sword on the very first Shadowrun cover ever? Because both hardcore cyberpunk and fantasy are rich with tropes where melee weapons (implanted or otherwise) are dangerous, stylish, and genre-appropriate all at once? Because some people clearly like that melee combat is a viable option, and someone else having fun "wrong" doesn't actually hurt you in any way?

You presume incorrectly. Have you read Preview #3, the (nominal) topic of this thread?

No, I think it's the part of the discussion where people argue melee weapons are different than firearms, and that they excel at different tasks and are suited for different purposes and scenarios, based on science and historical usage.


This page is merely a wikipedia article, but it's pretty well written and cited, and goes into a decent amount of depth. Specifically the section a bit down about Stab Protection and Combination Armors.

~Umi

OK, so I may have misread this, but what I get is that it has stab/piercing (in regards to a knife) protection but the cutting action of a knife (or sword) would still cut in. no?

Hmmm . . . we know that a laser sight will increase the accuracy of a weapon. I wonder if a smartgun will increase accuracy, add dice, or both? I also wonder if range will reduce accuracy and if aiming will increase it.

It's already been shown via the Ares Predator that the smartgun adds +2 accuracy. As for extra dice... Candidate for a wireless bonus, perhaps?

You've got the right of it. It has strong tensile strength, so it can withstand a puncture type impact where the threads of kevlar are placed under a "stretching" strain, but it doesn't have anywhere near the same level of compressive strength, so a sawing or clipping action will still crush and cleave apart the individual fibres, allowing it to be cut that way.

For example, a kevlar vest will resist a strong jab from a knife, but at the same time if you had to cut it off of yourself for some reason you could saw at the straps with a serrated blade and wear through them. In the case of a sword, it kind of depends on how much you drag the blade. Thrusting will of course be least effective, but a slashing motion will produce mixed results. A straight-on impact will the full length of the blade will still produce mostly tensile strain which will be largely resisted over the large impact area, but any sliding of the sharp edge across the fibres will likely do some damage to them. It's a lot like a razorblade - pressing the blade against your skin straight on won't do much, but once you start sliding it laterally across the surface, you get severe laceration from just how sharp the dang thing is.

In the modern age, puncture wounds are probably what you want to worry about most. Surface damage from slashes can be both immensely painful and potentially life-threatening due to blood loss, but having your organs punctured is far more fatal. Bleeding can be stopped and blood can be replaced, heck, even hacked-off digits and limbs can be reattached, but a ruptured lung takes major surgery to correct, and that assumes you don't just drown in your own blood before you get any help at all.

~Umi

Let's keep in mind that in the world of Shadowrun, armour design would factor for trolls - who are capable of producing some serious blunt force trauma, and with whom claymores are a fairly popular weapon.

Also keep in mind that this armor is made in the world of Shadowrun. Done by the cheapest method and with the cheapest materials they can get away with. The corps don't care if you die.

They do, however, care if you buy - and if you buy again. And about keeping their top people alive for exactly long enough for them to do whatever it is they need them to do.

No matter how dystopian it gets, effectively engineering the deaths of your customers isn't a good business strategy.

Agreed. But they design the armor to stand up to the average attack. Which is not going to be a troll with a combat axe, or APDS ammo coming out of a minigun. It's all about tolerances and margins.

I imagine there's a spreadsheet on some Ares Corpers desk that says that they estimate they can save .2 Nuyen per unit of armor sold by reducing the amount of kevlar coverage by 5%. They sell an average of 10 million armor units worldwide per year, so this would save them 2 Million Nuyen each year. And they estimate that the failure rate would only increase .01% because the tolerance no longer withstand an attack by a large bladed weapon wielded by a troll. His boss smiles and says "acceptable risk" and off it goes.

Hell, that's not even Dystopian. That's real world right there. The amount of corners that get cut and how often risks are trivialized like that is terrifying.

In Shadowrun, when the corps own the courts and can intimidate, buy off, or flat out eliminate lawsuits and no one can do anything about it? *shudder*

So Dikote was taken off the market because it kept too many people alive? Anyone else remembering "Fight Club"?

Dikote was never taken off the market. It just became a standard part of manufacturing in SR4.

Every now and them, restaurants and fast food joints find a new buzz word. Chipotle Peppers. Angus Beef. Cilantro. Real Idaho Potatoes. Whatever. Often it's nothing special, and may not even be anything new. But it's a buzz word that catches a lot of attention and suddenly every restaurant is serving up "100% Angus Beef Burgers!"

3 months later, after the interest has died off, the advertising stops. The buzzword disappears off the menu. But those same burgers or whatever are still being sold. It;s just no longer the new hotness, so no one cares. Dikote's much the same.

I imagine that sometime in the 13th or 14th century, metalsmiths developed Steel. ANd suddenly, Steel was all the rage. It was Steel Plows and Steel Swords and Steel breastplate and Steel Shovels! They advertised "Upgrade your iron to steel!"

By the 18th or 19th century (look, I did a 2 minute google search. I'm not about to spend all night researching dates and such for a fraggin' Dumpshock Forum analogy, ok?)... Steel was standard. So now it's just "Get your shovel, gets your sword, whatever."

That's my own personal rationalization for it, anyway.

I'll also note that their "top people" don't get Armor Vests or Armor Jackets. They get heavy armor suits and the like. They do get armor that's going to keep them alive.

That's true - but there's also discreet armour to consider for high-class bodyguards and, for that matter, for VIPs. Form fit would obviously be a component of this, but I would expect not the only one.

Discreet is still going to only go so far, because there's a limit to what you can do and be, well, discreet. VIPs don;t get themselves in situations where they're going to be facing down heavy artillery or trolls with combat axes very often, and then they do, they have a fleet of guys around them.

And considering the cost, I'd say it's reasonable to assume that Zoe and Vashon Island armored clothing is a higher quality type of armor than what goes into your average armor vest or armor jacket.

It's all about degrees.

Fear not, my friend! A historian is present! *mighty flex*

Okay, so, you're technically right about the 13th or 14th century... just, uh... BCE. Not a lot of it at that point, mind, but the ancient Egyptians did produce it, and even older samples from modern day Turkey date back to around 2000 BCE. The first really big steel users in the West were probably the Spartans, followed thereafter by the Romans (they used quite a lot), and in the East, early China had some very sophisticated metalworking going on to fuel their constant warfare. Damascas steel, although a famed product of the Middle East centuries later, was already being produced and exported in India around this time as well. And all this before the life of Jesus.

Now, what I bet you were thinking of was the modernization of steelmaking - specifically, the refinement to higher carbon contents made possible by new furnace designs, as well as improving mechanization and industrialization over the course of the Rennaisance and the Industrial Revolution. Fully "modern" steel is generally agreed to have come about in 1858, with the Bessemer Process, which made steel relatively inexpensive to produce and purchase for the first time. At which point, yes, marketing helped popularize it as an everyday metal for the common folk.

~Umi

Not just them.

Don't know about the 14th century, but the 19th century was full of it. Some firearms manufacturers advertised "New Model" pistols that were identical in design that had various "Brand Name" types of steel in them.

In reality, just regular gunmetal replacing parts that were brass or iron in the earlier guns.

Yeah, probably. Like I said, I just did a quick 2 minute search, pulling the first couple sites off Google and Wikipedia. I figured SOMEONE here would know though, so I put in that comment to say "Hey, I KNOW I don;t know this, don;t yell at me )

Either way, the analogy mostly stands, pointing to the progression of when an advancement is new and shiny to when it's just standard use and standard ops.

And then there is The Raid, which has both, and is double fraggin awesome! Ergo, Shadowrun. Is double fraggin awesome!

And throwing knives are cool!

Maybe it's because it was just on tv earlier tonight, but I was expecting that to be the pertinent scene from Desperado.

That would have read like this: Throwing knives are COOL!

Melee weapons tend to do a lot of extra trauma. Bullets are small but contribute a lot of force. Blades are relatively big, and tend to cut up all sorts of things that a bullet would miss. Heavy clubs tend to shatter things, and the shattered things tend to pierce other nearby things. Injury-wise in SR, getting a 2 pound shard of metal shoved through your chest should probably be on par with getting shot.

Melee is still going to have its disadvantages. If the heavy pistol is doing 8 damage or however, a submachine gun is going to probably pop out 10 on a short burst. Basically, if you start within one or two rounds of movement, melee will be viable. If you start beyond that, you're going to have a problem.

One thing I'd like to see is various categories of weapons have serious advantages if used in their optimum setting. That is, I'd like to see the SMG dominate the back-alley, the shotgun be the go-to for breaching and clearing a room, and so on, and have a mechanical benefit. Weapons have tended to work too much exactly like each other, so there's no reason for the Assault Rifle expert to branch into Shotguns except for style points.

On the note of different weapons excelling in different areas, from my own personal observations I always got the sense that shotguns were generally undervalued by most players in SR4.

No other firearm lets you 1) hit multiple enemies with a single attack without splitting your dice pool and 2)reduce the enemy's ability to dodge by a significant amount (which also helps mitigate the loss of DV and AP). Sure, you could deal 7P, -1AP to a single target with a single slug round, but with flechette rounds on medium choke you could deal 7P, +6 AP to 2 targets who both have -2 to dodge. If you value 3 AP as 1 DV, the comparison works out to 7.33 damage to one target vs. 5 damage each to two targets for a total of 10 damage. If you also factor in the enemy dodge reduction at the same value as the armor penetration (although it's technically even more valuable), it bumps up to 5.66 damage per target for a total of 11.33 DV.

And that's all per shot. If you fire twice in a round, you end up with a comparison of 14.66 damage versus 22.66 damage total. You even get similar numbers with 3 targets on a wide choke, ultimately working out to 10.98 damage per shot, and 21.96 damage per pass. And you're applying a stack of the "Defender has defended against previous attacks since last action" debuff to all three targets simultaneously per shot, -2 to each for a net reduction of -6 dice for the enemy team, which further boosts your damage potential, especially if you have more passes than your enemies, and it also benefits every attack your allies make against those targets as well!

And if you're only facing a single enemy? Narrow choke for 9P, +4AP, which averages out to 7.66 damage, which is still higher than an ordinary slug round. Or just switch out your ammo to EX-Explosive slug rounds for 8P, -2AP which is an effective 8.66 damage. Why not? Shotguns can fire both!

~Umi

Not to mention all the useful submunitions available for shotguns.

They really are unfairly ignored by a lot of players.

Lime jello and razor blades?

This historian approves of your analogy.


On topic: awesome preview! I absolutely cant wait for 5ed. Keeping the good stuff from 4ed whilst going back some awesomeness from 3ed and earlier...
Deadlier: I love it!! Deckers: yess! Random initiative dice: greeeat! I even like priority char. creation.

If the matrix system is what you guys have said it would be then im officially in love.

Good work!

We are gettin more missions rright?

Submunitions? Are you refering to ammunition, or underbarrel weapons on shotguns, or cluster bomb bomblets, or what? *head scratch*

Because I only know of 2 shotgun-only ammo types aside from flechettes. They're underrated, for sure, but there are only the two of them.

(Seriously though, how many people realize you can use a shotgun to deal Elemental physical damage, resisted by Impact/2 +2, using completely legal, unrestricted rounds?)

~Umi

Bull's the man with the plan (and, err, the schedule, in this case), so he's got more details -- but yeah, Season Five of Missions is on the way, and all Fifth Edition.

Whatever that "someone else" can use, the GM can use.


Now let's just compare that to burst-firing assault rifles...

And then to Burst Firing Shotguns.
And then to Burst Firing Heavy Pistols.

I enjoyed the short story. I am also one of the people who don't usually like first person narrators, but it felt nice and old-school all the same. The premise of giving a squatter a gun because of good bearing and an armor jacket at first felt a bit weak, but it meshes well with the resolution of the story.

I'm still on the fence about priority system. I absolutely hate the concept, but I have to admit that it's reasonably well done with the freebie karma, even if it feels very White Wolf. But after all SR4 already borrowed the attribute+skill concept from their games.

I am worried about mystic adepts as well. They seem like physical mages without many drawbacks right now, but I guess they needed a little boost. Now they seem like a viable concept at least.
However, I sincerely hope that they can't buy their PP after character creation for a measly 2 karma, and, in reverse, it seems like karma during creation is a different beast than during advancement.
As an outspoken supporter of karma creation, this makes me a sad panda.

My biggest worry with mystic adepts comes from the existence of adept power foci, as introduced in one of the earlier previews. Giving them ways to buy up both power stats with and a minor karma cost could get out of hand pretty quickly.



On a side note to melee, I just realized something else I like about it getting stronger. Less reason to have street gangers hauling around guns worth triple what they bring in a year, simply because without them they're not a threat.

Good bearing and an armor jacket and a hunch on the kitchen manager's part got him an interview. The whole time he's talking with Hauser and the ork's playing in his AR windows? Hauser's running facial recognition and hitting a bunch of databases. He knew more about Frank than he was letting on, I'd wager. And besides, it's just a gun that got stolen from a shipment a while back; it can't trace back to Hauser, so he's not that worried.


Give the man a cigar....

It was a bit of hyperbole, Patrick
The premise made me wrinkle my forehead a bit, but in the end I thought 'Well played, Mr. Goodman'

It seems hitting someone in combat will become much harder. If dodge is limited only by physical tresholds, the ork from the preview has 8 threshold for dodge but his weapons have max Accuracy 7. Of course, said ork has no dodge skill to match the treshold...

On your other concern we will have to agree to disagree, on this one I am just now sitting down to do so after a few days away from a personal computer.

That also is a clear case of "depends". Just one counterexample, if a stab narrowly missed a major blood vessel the recipient just had his lucky day, whereas the hydrodynamic effects of a passing bullet might still rip that vessel wide open.


Also, what KI said: Rule of cool because Katanas are awesome

Yea, i'll accept rule of cool (evne though i think it makes for poor game design) everytime I see someone arguing that melee weapons are somehow more damaging just makes me weep for the youth of today and their poor understanding of physics and anatomy.

Critias:
Re; attributes being even MORE important and trolls and lifestyle.

Sorry but this is one of my absolute biggest beefs with SR4... attributes went from middling importance to stupidly important. SR4 caused the entire problem of people with no skill defaulting had more ability than trained professionals due to completely screwing up the skill/attribute balance. As much as I liked the mechanical changes... attributes are still grossly underpriced for what they do in relation to skills and skill groups.


And forcing a troll to pay nearly as much for a low lifetstyle as a normal pays for a medium isn't going to do much at all. 100% is pretty much chump change on that scale.

In the long past I argued for a troll lifestyle increase because it made sense (they need bigger apartments, more food, etc.). But to slam dwarves with the same penalty is just silly. They need less space, no more food, only a small metahuman customization in some cases to fit their stature (or a handy step stool).


Also your points that the trolls stats are irrelevant also miss other changes that have been mentioned so far, such as melee damage reverting to the god awful broken strength, instead of strength/2. This means a return to the days of stupid where a troll can cut a main battle tank in half and the bad old days of SR melee stupidity.

The biggest thing SR4 got wrong was not giving bows the Str/2 treatment after hitting melee with it. So the news that this is coming back is not good.


Sengir: re; sniper rifles...
I'd rather see precision degrade with range. Sniper rifles should get high values... but a situational penalty for using them 'at short range'... say ~50m wouldn't be a bad thing.


Umidori:
Actually no... your understanding of armor and melee weapons is severely flawed.

Most melee weapons designed to deal with heavily armored opposition by European standards are piercing crushing weapons. Slashes are the easiest thing to defend against. Yes even axes which would pound through mail are more of crushing/piercing than slashing weapons.

Japanese weapons like katana were never designed to deal with heavy armor. Only light armor. High quality metal ores being rare in Japan. A katana pointedly will break if used to thrust and this use is highly discouraged (the tip flexes and snaps the edge). A standard training technique for katanas was to attack the leather & cloth straps holding the armor in place with draw cuts, then go at the unprotected areas.

In SR especially with highly advanced armors... no some guy with a knife is not going to be a huge threat to a guy in an armor jacket with 6 points impact armor and be 'gutted' quickly. This is as it should be.


Critias:
Because many of us are sick and tired of the whole... melee must be awesome garbage. Melee is in general not awesome... it's outdated outside some applications. So it annoys us to see people rewarded for bringing a knife to a gunfight... One of the big things pathfinder did was to ungimp ranged combat so suddenly playing a competent ranged fighter (not necessarily a hyper-specialist) was a desirable option.

SR is generally a game dominated by room to room combat... where reaching melee range is not a huge problem provided you're willing to leave cover. The single biggest advantage to melee in the game is movement control... you can impair people from moving around you in melee if you left free actions open for intercept attacks.

For us, we find overpowered melee the exact opposite, the 'rule of uncool'. Especially overhyped katanas.

Can we please not turn this into a melee-vs-ranged catfight, any more than it already is?

The Raid?
But yes, Shadowrun is Double Fraggin' Awesome.

The Raid!