Keep in mind characters with high initiative aren't moving faster, they're reacting faster (yeah, I know the line gets blurred). People have spent a lot of energy arguing over what martial arts are all about, thrown numbers relating to human reaction time at each other, and generally bitched a lot. Don't be surprised if you get a lot of sarcastic and generally useless responses to your question.

I personally don't see what kind of additional advantage "fast" characters are supposed to get since ties go to the attacker.

I'm astounded. We actualy agree on something... somebody check the weather in Hell for a cold front.

The real problem here is that, under the current rules, someone with a skill of 5 and an infinite initiative still loses to the guy with a skill of 6 and 1 initiative about 70-80% of the time. At the same time, there's no contest at all between two gunslingers: the guy with skill 5 and infinite initiative will beat the guy with 1 initiative and skill 6 in all but the most ludicrous of dice rolls.

I like the idea of limitin a person's ability to counterattack by their number of Initiative Passes; that seems like a good way to go about it.

except that this creates a hard line where on one side you can put up a fight, while a single pass later you get massacred with no chance whatsoever.

It will, actually. I think you're underestimating the impact TN changes have. A one-pass difference, under your rule, will give the faster character TN 3 and the slower one TN 5, assuming no other modifiers. That means that the faster character will score, on average, twice as many successes per die as the slower one. That makes a 3-skill character with a one pass initiative advantage the equal of a slower 6-skill character. Better, actually, because the 3-skill guy won't run out of Combat Pool as quickly.

And a one pass difference is well within the margin of randomness even for characters that have the exact same Reaction and Initiative.


My group's solution to the problem has been to only allow the attacker to actually do damage. If the attacker wins, the defender resists damage normally. If the defender wins, the attacker takes "balance damage"... which basically amounts to having to soak the damage using Strength, and applying any resulting "damage" penalty to their melee tests for the next pass, after which it goes away.

This lets a skilled defender take advantage of winning the dice contest, but still requires them to have actions available to exploit that advantage, which means a less skilled but faster attacker can throw a couple extra attacks without risking getting dismembered by the counterattack. He'll probably lose, but it's worth it for him to take the chance and hope he gets lucky, because he won't get killed if he does lose.

It also gives strong characters a bit of extra advantage in melee.

Which differs how from the similar example of people shooting at each other? In that scenario the guy with infinit initiative wins hands down, almost every time; in fact he would win even if the disparity in skill points had been far greater. Is melee really that different?

Yes, because typically the TN's for gun battles should be much higher. Typical TN's for ranged shots fall in the 6-10 range while in melee thaey are 4. This typically offset by the fact that melee is opposed.

I would think, for this rule, even if the 3-passes-faster skill 1 guy gives a modifier of +2 to the Master and -2 to himself, the Master's still rolling 5 more dice, and five times as much combat pool if he wants. Still pretty fair.

My own personal variation of this rule:

Melee Combat happens. Both players check their Init score. If one beats the other with 2 passes or more (roundabouts 11-20 points), he or she can apply (just like reach) either a +1 modifier to the opponent or a -1 to the attacker. It scales up as well. At one initiative pass difference, there is no bonus. At 2 difference, a +/- 1 Modifier. At three, +/- 2, and so forth.

Here's my rationale. If there's only one initiative pass difference, that's only a difference of (on average) 1/3 of a second. In gunfights, that's a critical amount of time, and in melee it's critical, but not SO critical. Moving 1/3 a second faster than your opponent doesn't let you do all that much, especially if you're not even really MOVING faster, just REACTING faster.

Secondly, the reach-like bonus/penalty. If you can react faster, you can either make it harder for your opponent to hit you with a flurry of blocks mixed in with your attacks, or you can make it easier to do damage by getting "straight to the punch" just a little faster. I imagine it's a little hard to do both at the same time with only a 2/3 second difference.

Opinions? Critiques?

Wow, my first post in almost a year, and it's to nitpick that melee has half visibility mods, not the same as ranged. Whoo.

That's a good point really. Like I said, I'm not terribly familiar with the melee rules, and I just sort of came up with this on the fly. Given that lack of skill and resultant lack of dice (even with special mechanics to allow for multiple successes on a single die) are the issue, do you think it's feasible to apply the bonus only to the attacked, but no penalty? To some degree, I'd really like to see speed reflected at least somewhat in combat; I just don't want it to be unbalancing.

That is contingent on the fact that the faster kid cannot react while the older man is making his move. How do you defeat someone who views all you moves in slo-mo? If I am able to react so fast as to be able to react to your block/dodge/etc, wouldn't I be able to literally predict your every move?

For example. I throw a punch and you block, but as you are blocking, I see your block and am able to react to it fast enough to change the direction of my punch to hit you.

Faster does not automatically = better. Laws of physics still apply - the faster you move, the harder it is to stop, and even harder to change direction.

Yes, that's right, laws of physics still apply. That guy with an initiative of 1 should not be able to make 200,000 *extra* counterattacks in a Combat Turn, just because his opponent has an initiative 1,000,000 higher than him.

I apologize to the readers of this thread for the sarcasm of that retort, but sometimes sarcasm can only be properly responded to with more sarcasm. Frankly these kinds of remarks are ridiculous and completely out of place in SR; if laws of physics were going to be religously followed then there would be no magic, no metagenes, and *certainly* no shapeshifters. To talk about the total of all human ability to date we would have to limit out universe of discourse to initiatives no higher than 15-17 or so (Reaction of 9-11, init die roll of 6.) You simply cannot apply RL experience to SR concepts like initiative; even the lowliest of Wired 1 sammies may well have initiatives twice that of the fastest human currently in existence.

This is referring to actually trying to strike a target, not a character's initiative/reaction.

Trying to compare RL to SR doesn't apply as you say, and the reverse is also true. Some game mechanics may be completely unrealistic, but they're there to provide game balance, so that a character with a particular skill, magical ability, or piece of cyberware/bioware doesn't suddenly become overpowering and skew the entire game in their favor.

Melee Combat is an Opposed Test - and Game Balance is why someone with an initiative of 1 can defend themselves against more attacks than they have phases in a initiative Pass.

And don't forget, even the guy with an initiative of only 1 can engage as many opponents in melee combat as he/she wants on their pass, with no restrictions based on skill, reaction or initiative.

Allowing a character with initiative of 42 to endlessly attack a character with initiative of 6 with no drawbacks or chance of ever being hurt would completely skew the game in favor of the character with the high initiative. After all, they have absolutely nothing to lose by attacking a character who is out of actions in an initiative pass, if the defender is not allowed to do damage.

If the creators of Shadowrun wanted characters with high reaction/initiative to be able to pummel characters with low reaction/initiative simply because they are faster/have higher initiative, they would have added rules to that effect to Reaction Enhancers, Boosted Reflexes, Wired Reflexes, Muscle Toner, etc, etc.

As it is, only Enhanced Articulation adds both a reaction bonus (of 1), and 1 extra die to all Physical, Technical, Combat, Build/Repair and non-rigged/datajacked Driving skills.

Otherwise someone with a low initiative who has used their one and only action in an intiative phase shouldn't be able to dodge bullets, resist spells, defend themselves in melee combat or anything else, cause gee, they're just too slow and out of actions.

Consider the second paragraph of Melee Combat on page 120:

Melee combat is not Attack then Counterattack. It is simply a combat test, and the better fighter usually wins. Tie goes to attacker. That is the main advantage to being the attacker. Defenders always have to beat your successes. That is the disadvantage of being the defender.

The ordering, with the attack and defence happening simultaniouly before the adept can take his centering action, implies that it is not possible to center in defence.

This is of course a valid point, but I do want to say: People are using the example of the extremely slow, extremely skilled person against the extremely fast, extremely lame person in order to make the point, but the problem still exists when the speed difference remains large, but the skill difference is very small. Even a skill difference of one or two leaves the slow defender able to whoop his attacker quite handily.

In reference to my previous optional rule: Yet another variant of that rule (and you'll have to read up the thread and read my suggested rule for this to make sense) is that the defender can still do some damage, but the defenders successes have to start staging up from nothing (or from base damage, as a different option) AFTER they've already staged the attacker's attack down to nothing. I never bothered to implement this option or test it, but in the EXTREME case of mismatched skill and speed it would still allow the slow person to damage the fast one.