Pushing your way through the crowd, the first thing that assaults you is the smell of this place. A combination of sawdust, sweat, and dried blood, “the Pit” is a staple of Saturday Night entertainment in Puyallup. You get a few glares as you shoulder your way past the press of bodies, but most quickly lower their eyes when they see how big you are compared to them. A small fights are happening on the opposite side of the ring, but nothing worth bothering the guards on the catwalk above in the darkness. They’re mostly there to keep the “entertainment” safe, otherwise they’d have to take the bets off the table. Someone managed to get some Neurostun on a towel of one of the fighters a few months ago, and when the crowd figured out the fix was in there was a riot.

You open up your AR to scan the various bookies in the room; finding one with reasonable rates you start reading his summary of tonight’s fighters. The poor bastards owe money to the Yaks and the Vory respectively, so whoever survives will have their debt cleared. You suppose one advantage of losing would be you don’t have to worry about how they’d “inspire” you to come up with the cred otherwise.

The Yak’s boy is named “Grease”, and you see how he gained that nickname quickly; slicked back hair, a drek-eating grin, and an attitude that looks like he’s going something up his sleeve. You think that’s probably accurate on a figurative and literal level.

The other fighter isn’t Grease’s polar opposite, but he may be close. Whereas Grease was all subtlety, “Short Fuse” is anything but. “I have an enormous cyberarm, and I plan on hitting you with it” seems to be a fairly accurate description of his battle plan. Covered in buckles and other wires, you imagine he’s probably got serious back issues lugging that thing around. Of course, that’s probably the least of your worries when you owe the Russian mob 20 large. His quick temper could be his undoing; he wouldn’t be in debt if he hadn’t tossed that Vory-protected Stuffer Shack because they were out of his flavor of Soykaf.

A booming voice comes over the ancient sound system, but it’s drowned out by the flurry of noise and activity surrounding the pit. You’re sure it’s the same old spiel about the “rules”, such that they are. You know that for the most part they’re ignored, except the most important one; last man standing wins. You place your bet, and wait for the opening bell. Once the ring is cleared of everyone but the two fighters, plasteel barriers come up from the edge of the ring, nominally to protect the spectators. Now that they’re alone inside, the fighters prepare themselves with the weapons they bribed past the inspection for this “bare knuckle brawl”.

A toothy grin spreads over Fuse’s face as he unsheathes a cyberspur from the back of his cyberarm, and flexes his fingers as they start to crackle with electricity. The grin fades when he sees Grease casually remove his thumb and flick it out, revealing a full length monowhip. That must have set him back a fortune! The fading grin turns to a frown as a series of knives spike out of Grease’s back, within easy grabbing distance. The lights in the arena go down around the pit, and you know the fight is about to start.

Almost faster than you can see, Fuse ducks inside Grease’s defenses and swipes at him with his hand- he’s trying early to shock Grease and make him dizzy for the rest of the fight. He comes within millimeters of connecting, and some of Grease’s hair starts to stand on end from the static charge. He does manage to avoid the attack somehow, and backs Short Fuse back by cracking his whip.

Lashing out with his whip, Grease pulls a handful of knives off his shoulder and throws a pair at Fuse in quick succession. He dodges them easily, as they loudly clatter against the plasteel barrier walls. A cheer goes up in the crowd as he grimaces and attempts to press in, wary of the monowhip flitting about the ring.

Again trying to slap Grease with an open hand, Fuse barely whiffs, Grease’s luck still holding out (for the time being). It was close enough to making contact that Grease seems to ignore the knives in his hand and attempts use his whip to the full advantage.

With a quick flick of his wrist Grease flares his whip out towards Fuse’s neck. Abandoning his attack, Fuse ducks backwards and out of range of the whip, growling with frustration.
“Why don’t you put that toy away, and fight like a man?”
“I’d rather not, considering the circumstances.” Grease replies, indicating Fuse’s enormous, crackling arm.

As Fuse starts a witty comeback, Grease takes advantage of his momentary distraction to flick the whip out slightly, cracking it over Fuse’s ear.

The whole crowd moans “Oooooh” as the whip cracks over Fuse’s head and... Barely misses him. He reaches up instinctively and touches the blood coming from his ear. A half a second slower, and he would have lost the better part of his face from that attack.

His blood dripping to the mat, the crowd starts to frenzy as he goes chasing inside of Grease’s reach, slashing back and forth with his spur for the first time in the fight. Grease gives ground, circling Fuse as he keeps pressing the attack.

Once he’s backed all the way against the wall, Grease starts to lash back out at Fuse. Fuse is able to avoid the whip, but is stuck on his heels and is unable to respond further as Grease takes the initiative back. The crowd starts to chant something incomprehensible, eager for blood and violence.

Raising his hand instinctively to shield himself, Grease cuts it off cleanly with his whip in one stroke. What you thought was loud before seems to be near silence compared to the roar of the crowd now, as Fuse ducks his hand under his armpit, spraying bright red arterial blood all over the pit. The plasteel barriers start to shake as the entire arena can feel the fight approaching its climax, with dust shaking from the rafters above. Your AR display is overwhelmed with information as hundreds in the crowd start to bet heavily on Grease, spamming the bookies willing to take bets on a fighter with 1 hand. A few gunshots crack out, either from overeager spectators or possibly the snipers operating in the catwalks above as some start to climb the walls.

Growing in size with the crowd’s enthusiasm, Grease raises his hands to egg them on, and grins widely at Fuse as he staggers back in the ring. Taking his time, he pulls several knives off his shoulders and flicks them quickly at Fuse, toying with him.

Grease misses with 2 of his knives, but buries the 3rd in Fuse’s shoulder. Fuse grimaces but it doesn’t seem to have gotten much beyond being stuck in his armor. With an unearthly howl, Fuse charges, his scream amplified over even the roar of the arena.

Lashing left and right, blood flying everywhere from his stump, Fuse can’t close the distance between himself and Grease with the whip keeping him just out of reach. He manages to get one swing inches from Grease’s neck, but can’t connect as Grease ducks just in time.

Trying a show move to end the fight, Grease whips the whip around his head like a lasso and shoots it out towards Fuse’s eye. His triumphant grin fades as Fuse manages to easily avoid the attack, obviously having more fight in him than Grease bargained for.

The fighters meet in the middle at the same instant, but somehow despite his handicap Fuse manages to slide his spur in a split-second earlier- and connects! His slash cuts deep into Grease’s thigh, who stumbles backwards until his back is pressed against the plasteel. The noise from the crowd is mixed, half eager that their fighter is still kicking, the other half dismayed their rent money just took a wound that would have killed them outright.

Pressing the turn in fortune, Fuse avoids Grease’s whip, still cautious of the damage it could do. With Fuse inside his reach, Grease flicks his wrist, and an enormous knife appears in his off-hand. He staggers around the ring, favoring his leg, wounded but still dangerous.

Taking advantage of Grease’s leg wound, Fuse feints to his weak side, causing Grease to overextend his defense. Slashing with a backhand, Fuse appears to miss, until you hear the crowd around the edge of the ring roar in excitement. Grease turns towards you, eyes wide, as a thin line on his neck turns red, then starts spraying blood. He falls to his knees, then keels over in the ring, wide eyes staring blankly. The crowd starts to chant, “FUSE! FUSE! FUSE! FUSE!”, and you notice the bookie you placed your bet with is no place to be seen. You start to push your way through the crowd, thinking there may be another dead man tonight if you end up finding the man trying to lose you...

Why did you have him waste actions by throwing knives? Unless you were trying to demonstrate/test how useless splitting an attack pool for a low damage weapon is against someone that's good at evading.

P.S. Still enjoyable as always.

Initially, I wanted to see how well they worked. After that, I figured he might be able to put him down with the knives since Fuse was wounded. Fuse needed to go Full Defensive on the attack (taking a -10 penalty to his initiative, basically removing an action for the Turn) to get a decent enough dice pool to avoid getting tagged by all three. Only being able to choose Full Defense or standard evasion on ranged attacks makes throwing knives more potent than I would have initially thought. If Fuse had been optimized for throwing and tossed those knives Grease's way, 12P AP-1 x 3 attacks in a row could have been fairly brutal. As it stands, it was partially a flavor choice- the cocky elf trying to embarrass the 1 handed Ork.

EDIT: Actually, I wonder which makes more sense, 1, 2 or 3 attacks. Let's figure that out quickly. Let's say Grease is tossing those knives at a standard Corpsec from the book. He's got a Reaction of 4, an Intuition of 3, a Willpower of 3, a Body of 4, and an Armor Jacket (Armor 12).

1 Knife:

2 Knives:

3 Knives:


Ok, so in conclusion, the more knives he throws, the less damage Grease should anticipate doing. However, if the guard was unaware of the attack, he should net 5.33 hits on 1 knife, 5.66 hits on 2 knives, and 6.33 hits on 3 knives, meaning it makes sense to plug a guy a bunch if he doesn't know you're there yet.

EDIT2: I'll add that the Ork losing his hand was completely flavor-related; the rules don't support that type of thing, I just thought it sounded cool and fit the amount of damage he took. I'm sure a mage is patching him up as we speak!

Nice write up. These things are super helpful for understanding the rules.

Also, I'd rather find out that dodging is basically the only answer to an attack in some kind of a mock-up than forgetting / brushing off the tactic in a game and having a character get geeked.

So many of the SR5 mechanics are opaque at first blush that only in example do they really show themselves.

Awesome.

If you don't mind suggestions as to the next one, may I suggest something a bit more odd than the standard brawlers going at it?

I'm curious as to how a write-up between a dodge-heavy Technomancer with machine sprite assistance would work against a cybered up sammy (or equivalent). Could be a good way to show some of the benefits/drawbacks to the "wireless bonuses" that are so controversial.

Either that or a "cheater" who's got a decker friend in the audience messing with the opponent's cyber.

That would give me the opportunity to try and figure out the Matrix rules, which as always are slightly elusive.

I've been working with them to a point for my current game, and I think I've got a decent enough handle on them, so if you need assistance I'll be glad to provide what I can.

I'm playing a hacker in my campaign; it's slow going but certainly better than previous editions. I remember 3rd edition being a particularly lucid nightmare.

-DrZ

That's what I've found too. I'm the GM for my campaign, so I had actually pre-written up the host stats and all the options and tests that needed to be done for a particular data dive our group's hacker went through while doing some legwork. I don't think they've completely eliminated the Pizza Problem, but from the start to the point where he got punted out of the system by IC it only took about 15-20 minutes, and most of that was just getting a handle around the skill+attribute combinations needed for individual tasks.

I made myself an Excel "cyberdeck", complete with dropdowns for program slots and a page of actions characterized by color. Knowing which actions raise your OS at a glance I've found to be extremely handy.

-DrZ

That actually sounds pretty useful. Care to share? OS is one of the things that I think I've got a handle on, but probably still miss bits on.

That fight sounds rather one-sided. Sammy with deactivated wireless will curbstomp the unaugmented Technomancer. Having wireless on would make absolutely zero sense when any one of the betters outside would benefit from you loosing.

Just wanted to say this thread is way cool.

Prompted me to go back and reread some parts of the rules - very illustrative - and entertaining too.

Hoping for further SR5 installments.

Thanks, glad you liked it. I may consider writing up a mage-fight or somesuch, but I haven't had time recently. That, or the ever helpful "hacking" example.

-DrZ

I am so glad I'm not the only one that's been secretly building runners for the sole purpose of fighting each other to the death.

It's for educational purposes! I haven't created 20 shadowrun characters I'm never going to get to play, that'd be insane...

-DrZ

Practice makes Perfect...

That's a really nice write-up, Dr.Zaius. Thanks for sharing.

Not having played SR5, I'm interested in seeing how combat compares to SR4A. It seems to have some wicked large dice pools. Are these starting level characters?

Thanks. They are, but they're optimized for the pit fight. They don't have social skills or fake SINs, but otherwise they are completely legal. Some of the large dice pools are a result of dodging melee. If you look at the part where fuse is dodging the throwing knives, his pool is significantly reduced as a result of dodging a ranged attack. Punches are easier to avoid than bullets, it would seem.

DrZ