~erm~ I can't do more than providing the numbers ... and they clearly state: 27 dice for attacks prior to combat pool at bare minimum for the Mk I version. Disarming and/or being defender just adds more dice. You might want to re-read the Mk I section and potentially the advanced melee Cannon Companion rules on calculating dice pools - in particular for ambidexterous characters.

Still not seeing it. Two weapon fighting adds half off-hand skill, which with Ambidexterity III equals base skill. So, we add three dice. The wording is confusing as to rather or not you get adept powers, but if we allow that, you get three more. 18 + 6 = 24. The weapon focus doesn't apply twice-- in fact, it doesn't even seem to apply to off hand weapons at all. You can make a case to allow it, but even then, that would only apply if the off hand weapon was also a weapon focus. So yeah: twin weapon foci would be devastating, but I'm not at all sure you can get two Force 6 weapon foci at start.

Also, with Ambidexterity III, you're taking a +1 TN penalty every time you use them. Which is arguably offset by the increase in dice, but still needs to be considered.

The rules actually are pretty clear on adept powers:

p96, CC: "Only half of any bonus dice applied to the off-hand skill (from adept skills and so on)

While you could try - in vain - to argue that adept skills are not identical to adept powers (albeit there is nothing like "adept skills" in RAW, thus indicating a mere misnomer there) the "any" as well as "and so on" provides legitimacy for any source of bonus dice ... up and including to



... the weapon focus. And no, there's no ...



... question that the focus is actually applied to the off-hand, because either the weapon focus is considered as bonus to the weapon skill (thus providing the bonus as per p. 96) or the weapon focus adds its force to the base skill (here clubs)... which gives us the same overall numbers: 12 skill for main hand + halved skill off-hand = 18 vs. 6 skill + halved skill + 6 bonus main hand + halved bonus off-hand = 18.

In both cases we'd have to add 9 dice from adept power => We're back to 27 dice.

The fun part there being: A weapon focus does grant its power when wielded in active state. The rules nowhere make any demands in which hand the focus has to be held.
So:



Rule wise there simply is no need for secondary weapon focus. A second focus would however push those numbers even further. You are however correct that it's not possible to get two force 6 weapon foci ... unless ofc. the Mr. Johnson's litte Black Book rules for creating "high power" characters are used.



I suggest that you re-read those rules yet again. Because that +1 TN modifier would - by RAW- affect ranged attacks only.

Edit: We are however entering the "beat the dead horse" territory here, so I won't discuss this any further ... since it's highly unlikely that you'll stop trying to make incorrect claims about SR3 RAW in order to invalidate those numbers I gave

Something confuse me. I've thought that people had 0 in driving because they were much more assisted through auto-pilots which lessened they're ability to drive

This is what I don't get. You already added it once, why does it count a second time? Even halved, it shouldn't apply twice. I think you're saying that weapon foci increase the base skill, which they don't actually do-- they're just a bonus to the base skill, which technically isn't the same as the off-hand skill. While the main-hand skill and the off-hand skill are equal with Ambidexterity 3+, that doesn't apply to bonuses to each skill, which is where I get confused.

Anyway, I'm just arguing for arguing sake. It doesn't really matter, since I won't be running a SR3 game anytime soon, curse the dark.

I'm sure that helps, but truth be told, people having 0 in driving has been common since the early days of Shadowrun. According to SR1, vehicle skills were only for driving under difficult conditions; ordinary driving didn't require any tests, or any skill, whatsoever.

And that should actually be the most obvious part:

Base condition for ambidextrous fighting according to Cannon Companion is:

(base skill + whatever bonus applies to base skill) for main hand + (halved off-hand skill + half of whatever bonus applies to the off-hand skill) for off-hand.

Ambidexterity edges of levels 3 and 4 remove the necessity of having a dedicated off-hand skill => The aforementioned dice pool calculation becomes:

(base skill + whatever bonus applies to the base skill) for main hand + (halved base skill + half of any bonus that is applied to the base skill) for off-hand

A weapon focus - just like adept powers like improved ability - is a bonus towards the base skill => Since the off-hand skill is now the base skill, any bonus applied to that base skill automatically also turns into a bonus that is applied to the skill when used as "off-hand" skill.



But "technically" it actually is the same. That's what the edge does.



Not just "equal" but "identical". The edge at levels 3 and 4 removes the necessity of having a separate off-hand skill in the first place ... and thus the totally valid interpretation that a weapon focus' bonus applies to the base skill and subsequently to both the main and off-hand since either use the base skill.

As I said: a weapon focus' bonus is only reliant upon the focus being in active state and not upon which hand it is held in. One could even try to argue that an active weapon focus in form of a knife would provide its bonus to the edged weapon skill while its owner leaves the focus in its sheath and wields a katana instead ... That however is a totally different debate and one with a less certain outcome.

If I was the gamemaster, you could argue as much as you want, I would say that the weapon focus bonus isn't applied to the off-hand unless you had a magical weapon in the off hand.

e.g.
GM: ok you just found a sacrificial dagger
Mage: Is it magical?
(rolls dices)
GM,: it's a weapon focus lvl 3
Troll adept: me, me, need!!!
GM: ??? it looks like a butter knife in your hands?
Troll adept: who cares? it will give me +3 dices to use my troll axe! Ha ah!
GM: ...you're just dreaming...

As per RAW, he'd be 100% correct in that.

And "you" making such decisions would be something that "I" would have agreed upon when accepting "you" as current GM. However, that neither changes the fact that per RAW "I" would get the focus' bonus regardless of which hand it's wielded in nor the fact that I personally would opt not to play with you (note the distinct lack of quotation marks here) as GM if you were to make such decisions "just because".



There was a good reason for me mentioning that a discussion about an active, yet sheathed weapon focus granting its bonus for a different weapon would be a different beast than the scenario where the weapon focus is actually used in a dual-wield combat situation (where the hand in which the focus is held is still of no importance rule wise).

i don't see why the sheathed yet active focus should not give the bonus dice, even if not held in hand . .
it's the same with all other kinds of focus too right? so if the adept has to hold it in his hand to get the bonus, a mage has to hold his spellcasting or power focus or whatever in his hand too, to actually use it, not just have it close by in a pocket or something . . focus is focus after all.

and yeah, i would not play with a GM that goes against raw like that just to fuck over an intelligent player without that having been made clear prior to the start of the game.

When making a comparison with other focus types such an interpretation certainly would be fitting, since none of them seem to have requirements beyond activation and being "in touch" with either the owner or the target of a spell. However:

p. 191, SR3: An active focus adds its Force to its owner's appropriate combat skill when wielded in combat.

Actually wielding the focus is thus made an requirement for getting the skill bonus, but - and I already tried to hint at this earlier: A weapon focus adds to the skill itself and is not just a bonus, thus making weapon focus bonuses for off-hand 100% certain.

Ah, right, that makes a clear difference then.
So, Troll Size Laser Combat Axe with Dikote in one Hand.
Knife Weapon Focus in the off hand, PROFIT! ^^

What if they have Kali arms?

Provided that you resort to dual-wield combat and have a high enough ambidexterity edge ... Otherwise you wouldn't strictly "wield" the knife in combat and/or get your off-hand[edged weapons] skill boosted (by half of the focus' force) but not the skill for your main hand weapon.

Kali arms were no part of SR3 and there simply weren't rules on how to treat more than two arms in melee => No RAW-based answer possible.

But of course, i am still going mostly by your idea here, i just prefer to play trolls is all ^^

The catch is that while the skills are identical, the bonuses aren't. So, Improved Ability and weapon focus dice would not apply.

Then again, you know it's questionable-- it's just a fun exercise with the rules. So I applaud your effort, I think you know it wouldn't really fly, for perfectly valid reasons.

Cain mentioned 28 dice in a CLUE file, so that might be 2nd edition, in which case Fields of Fire rules would apply for a second weapon.

IIRC, there was then a mostly non-functional setup with a Human Physical Adept, requiring 3 power points, 24 skill points and 1,000,000¥/50 Force points.

Armed Combat: Dagger 4( 8 )
Special Skill Ambidexterity 5 (cost: 15 Skill Points)
Special Skill Dagger and dagger 3
Enhanced Physical Skill (Armed Combat) 4 (cost: 2 Power Points)
Dagger Weapon Focus, rating 6 (550,000¥ and 6 Force Points to bound)
Dagger Weapon Focus, rating 4 (400,000¥ and 4 Force Points to bound)

Dice pool is 8+4+6 in one hand and 8+4+4 in the other, for a grand total of 34 dice, because that's how it worked with Fields of Fire. You can add only 3 dice from the Dice pool, the limit being the Dagger and dagger Special Skill.

What makes the build non-functional (besides the fact it has no other skill...) is that the Ambidexterity skill increased your Target Number by +3 for being 3 points lower than the skill used. So unless the card were heavily stacked in your favor (which will be far from commonly occurring with Reach 0...), you wouldn't roll a lot more success than you would have with only your main hand.

EDIT : Wrong calculation for the second focus. You can only buy rating 4 (but have 50,000¥ remaining). Also, I took concentration while I could take specialization, but in both case the Adept power cannot go past the General Skill level (using Specialization however allows to spend the 4 remaining points on getting +2D6 to Initiative).

IIRC, that was for a casting roll, and included Spell pool. I'm still not sure how he got that much, although I do recall fetish foci abuse could cover a lot. I'm not sure if I can link to something in the Wayback machine, so I'll just quote the story:

That story was published in the CLUE files in November of 2000, so it would have been 3rd edition.

SR5 is pretty weaksauce compared to SR3. I can only get up to 30 melee dice for a starting character.

Of course, my min-maxing tends to be straightforward, meat-and-potatoes going through and nabbing dice pool bonuses, rather than bending the rules into pretzel shapes. And that's with the main book - the other SR5 books might have more power creep. Actually, I could only get 20 dice for a starting melee character in SR3 using just the main book (no adepts of the magician's way or two-weapon fighting style), so maybe 30 dice isn't that bad.

How?
Nothing in chargen gives that many bonus dice aside from magic.

Magic is pretty much it, or at least a lot of it.

The build I did was A: Attributes, B: Magic (Adept), C: Resources, D: Metatype (elf), and E: skills. For Agility, start with 7, then add three points of used muscle toner, then 1 point of improved ability: Agility, for an Agility of 11. For skill, one of my starting qualities is aptitude in unarmed combat, so it starts at 7, then a specialization in cyber-implant weapons. Skills have changed fundamentally from SR4 in some key ways. First, the maximum improvement with improved ability is half the skill, rounded UP. So you can take four points of improved ability for the skill. Second, there is no longer such a thing as an augmented maximum for skills, so you can also add a reflex recorder (alphaware, because I need to fit one more augmentation in without going over 1 Essence loss), for another +1. Now for dice pool modifiers. First, my final augmentation is hand razors, also alphaware, and they are a force: 3 weapon focus, bound, for +3 dice. Secondly, my other positive quality is the Shark mentor spirit, which gives me +2 to unarmed attacks. So the final dice pool is Agility: 11 + skill: 12 + specialization: 2 + weapon focus: 3 + mentor spirit bonus: 2 = 30.

So you can have a character who regularly goes over their limit and has to throw away successes.

Of course, since the dice system was different, it was harder to get that many extra dice. And their benefit wasn't as direct.

I certainly do know that both apply because they happen to be either direct increases of skill level or bonus towards the base skill and I even provided RAW proof on either case.



I'd like to hear how you'd get to 20 dice in case of SR3 ...

For 20 dice, 5/7 skill/specialization, 7 dice from Combat Pool, and 6 dice from a force: 6 weapon focus. Obviously, it needs to be an aspected magician with A: Resources. It is a bit counter-intuitive, because you would normally think adept, but adepts can only get to 19 dice, since their bonus dice from improved ability are capped at the base skill.

Err, Combat Pool only applies to base skill, not to specialisation/concentration in SR3 i think.
And yeah, i was asking about the SR3/20 dice as well, getting 30 dice or so in SR4/5 is pretty trivial . .

The main reason I asked is:

SR3, p.43: The maximum number of Combat Pool dice that a player can add to any offensive test is equal to his or her character's rating in the skill for which he is making the test.

The distinct lack of words like "base" or "specialization" does open that sentence to interpretation. And from my experience in discussions on that matter it's easier to argue for a limitation of Combat Pool usage to the base skill than arguing for specializations being the relevant rating. This would limit your example to 18 dice (same for Adepts btw.) [edit: when ignoring the fact that a weapon focus is actually a skill increase].

Another interesting aspect of that sentence is the use of "offensive test" when trying to look at Combat Pool limitation during melee when being attacked.

So, the highest Dice Pool for an SR3 CharGen is always an adept with a weapon focus then i guess.
No other way to get +12 dice for anything.

No, when restricting yourself to SR3 core rules it's Glyph's aspected magician with 18+X dice because physical adepts have no legal way of binding a weapon focus during chargen and improved ability definitely cutting off at a max skill rating of 6 and not benefiting from a 5(7) specialization which limits him to 18 dice max (skill + improved ability + combat pool).

The saving thing for Glyph's build is actually something I previously quoted: a weapon focus adding to the skill level of the associated skill instead of being a mere bonus ... thus increasing the upper limit for Combat Pool beyond 5 in his example right up to 11 (or 12 if you aren't using a specialization). So the upper limit is higher than 20 when going "one trick pony" in numbers there if you manage to increase Combat Pool beyond his assumed value of 7. Which is possible via attributes as well as a Combat Sense spell plus sustaining focus

The challenge there would be: Try to determine the sweet spots for such combinations as well as the average and upper limit of such a build.

The Sweet Spot due to diminishing Returns is 18 Dice.
For everything above that, you pay through the nose in both ressources and versatility.
And if you can't land a hit with 18 dice, chances are you won't hit with more dice either.
And if you do hit with 18 dice, let us be generous and say you get 12 hits (2/3), it does not matter how low the power of the attack is either.
Let's take the worst case scenario. 2l Damage on 1 hit. On 2 Hits, that is 2M, on 4 it is 2S, on 6 it is 2D. And now you have still 6 hits left.
There was a rule somewhere that melee combat damage rises in power for each 1 net hit above deadly, so that would be 8D damage then.
Else you stop at 2D Damage, and now whoever you hit still has to roll 12 or more body dice to have a chance to stage it back down to nothing.
If you hit somebody who does not have double digit body, the probability of it being a one shot kill is high enough, even with 2l BASE damage.

And even if the focus/adept improved ability allowed it, i still probably would not use more than 6 dice of combat pool for an attack roll either.
Because shit can still go wrong and i could still need more dice in defence, if the poor sucker on the other side is either not alone or ungodly lucky.

Hard maxing rarely reaches the "sweet spot", although in both the SR3 and SR5 cases, the builds are viable ones without glaring weaknesses. Stahlseele is dead on about paying too much for overkill, though. I tend to have dice pools more in the high teens, so I can broaden out my characters more.

The SR3 weapon-focus dude is good, as long as you stick to a Reach 0 or 1 weapon; Reach 2 is doable, but leaves the character more bare-bones. In SR3, you actually can make sorcerers who are good at hand-to-hand combat.

The main problem with the SR5 version is that it is a character with an Edge of 1 who will usually roll more hits than his/her physical limit. And while the character doesn't have any glaring weaknesses or omissions, I still feel the opportunity costs. Not having a super-high initiative and passive dodge, not having a troll's massive damage code, and not having a human's super-high Edge.

Actually being versatile and not wasting resources however wasn't the premise when trying to maximize said dice pools in hard-maxed character types that deserve the label "one-trick pony". Their "sweet spots" simply do not lie in ranges where normal game play occurs. Just look at my dwarfs: They literally cannot do anything beyond melee and a bit of spell defense and would suffer at pretty much everything else (even without resorting to hanging them by their flaws).



But you will seriously alter the outcome if you actually do hit. And that's were larger dice pools do the actual killing beyond your 18 dice "sweet spot".



For the record: In melee it takes two net successes to increase power level by 1 after you have staged to damage level D with net successes. For the sake of your example let's assume that those 12 successes with 18 dice are also net successes against your opponent and really assume that (after deduction of armor rating) the opponent would have faced 2L against a single net success or a draw in the opposing melee test => The final damage code would be 5D in case of 12 net successes. Note that - unless the optional "deadlier over damage" rules come into play - melee damage in SR3 will never demand more than 8 successes to completely resist damage. Ranged combat vastly differs there.

The consequence of that is: The more dice you can actually throw against an opponent the better because it makes it progressively harder to resist damage. Up to point were diminishing returns actually kick in a meaningful way. One such diminishing return point would be the exploding dice requiring to at least hit another 2 after rolling a six. If you really want to get to 8D in your example you'd need another 6 successes and since you operated under the assumption that only 2/3 of all available dice actually show successes that would require 9 additional dice above your 18 => 27 ... let's just not wonder why my dwarfs were built with the aim to get to that number as close as possible without having to resort to Combat Pool usage

But you don't necessarily have to stop there, because a much safer point of diminishing returns would occur at the next exploding dice transition to TN of 14 after armor deduction and for that you'll need - depending on base strength and weapon of choice - some more dice .. particularly once you no longer assume that your melee opponent doesn't create any successes during the opposed skill test.



That's why one would try to aim at not having to use Combat Pool in the first place or having an abundance of available Combat Pool dice

As a side note: SR3 does have some nice features that would allow for some rather creative ways of countering my dwarfs in their field of expertise with the template that Glyph used for getting to his 20 dice.

Yeah, in Melee, getting Net Hits ain't all that hugely important in SR3.
Getting your POWER Level up is WAY more important. More than the Damage Level even.
This is why Trolls were the undisputed Melee Monsters in SR3. Low skill does not matter.
As long as you can reliably hit, even one Net Hit from a Troll(STR10) with an Axe with Dikote will usually mean 11D before armor to resist.
After Armor, because IMPACT ARMOR was usually lower than Ballistic, it was closer to 7-8D to resist against. Which is hard enough, but doable.
Instead of doing that, you could always go with Bone-Lacing. Ceramic will make that 13M Stun to resist before armor. Which is harder to do already.
Or Titanium Bone-Lacing for 14M Stun before Armor. And now we get to the point where the lower damage output does not matter as much, because in the end you will be dealing more damage consistently, because the enemy TN to resist rises higher than your actual damage does.

Don't forget that Body was actually meaningful in SR3. When you soaked damage, all you got was Body. Armor reduced the TN, but if you couldn't get enough successes to soak, you would get hurt. So, regardless of armor, someone with Body 2 couldn't stage the damage more than once. Starting with SR4, body simply became another factor, so piling on the armor became much more effective.

Yes, i know.
I prefer the 3rd edition system, i know less about SR4 and 5 together than i think i know about SR3 <.<

No worries, I was just posting that for the benefit of those here who have't played SR3.

Oh. Right. Yes.
I forgot we allow that kind of people here now <.<;,

I 95% agree.

I guess we wouldn't play together.


The 5% remaining is because of:



Not "just because", because I would overrule the RAW rule by deciding that the magic sword helps using that sword, not granting a bonus to the skill.

I don't think the spirit is exactely the same than a Magic Focus. If it was the case, we could imagine an amulet being a weapon focus (what I never saw).


And if despite of this reasoning, you'd say: "I won't play with you", I would answer: nice seriously, it's better that way. Because turning down a game because the gamemaster house rule a thing that limits your 27 dices to 21 something... erm, yeah, just leave...


ps: I have no intention to be offensive and really, don't read it that way. It's a difference in perception I've already discovered between my view of gamemastering and several dumpschockers around. I have no problem with altering the rules I don't like (but I always want to understand RAW before doing it) whether several here are very attached to RAW.

Such an "overruling" yet again assumes that I as player would actually allow you to make such a particular call without consulting the group - including myself - and without providing serious reasons prior to making the change.
As of now and within my perception you haven't presented any such serious reasons and firmly remain in "just because" territory of "your" alleged GM-powers. Matter of fact there: It's unlikely that I would accept you making that call and subsequently would still exercise my individual right of not playing with you.



You're bringing nothing new to the table there: An amulet as weapon focus doesn't work within RAW due to the "wielding in combat" requirement. So your not providing any "reasoning" that explains as to why I should accept your decision that RAW should be replaced in that particular manner.



Your misconception there is, that I'd actually be demanding to play either one of those two dwarfs in one of "your" games. Our clash in philosophy concerning you exercising your "gamemaster house rules" rights would start way before that, so you wouldn't even get to point of making such a comment.



I haven't perceived that as an attack and haven't read it that way either. I'm just being rather blunt myself there.



Yet another serious misconception as far as my person is concerned. I certainly am somewhat "attached" to "RAW", but that's due to the fact that over a rather long period of time I acted as GM in several SR groups simultaneously and had my fair share of convention play, thus making the smallest common denominator (RAW) with as little house ruling as possible the best choice in order to keep things easy for me as well as my fellow players. Additionally RAW also happens to be the common ground for internet discussions, so I'll put my focus there until the premise is explicitly changed. There have been numerous times where I provided non-RAW suggestions to players and GMs who asked for a particular house rule on an issue that they perceived as a problem.

In this particular case however we're clashing right at the point where I as a GM see myself as part of the group and subsequently have to rationalize whatever change I suggest as a "primus inter pares" and not simply based on the role as GM. In turn my fellow players actually do get the right to propose changes of their own. I'll only exercise the GM-rights in direct gaming situations where the available rules either are lacking or their application would interfere with the current narrative. And that's something my players have to subscribe to before we start playing (or they can opt for leaving the table just as I would leave yours). The question whether or not a character like one of the presented dwarfs or even a seriously toned down version should get focus bonuses as per RAW regardless of which hand he's holding the weapon in is no such thing of direct gaming situation or ("one-time") change for sake of narrative. That's a fundamental question I'd want to resolve before play starts - both as player and as GM - and so you'd have to convince me ... which you haven't. So my choice would be restricted to leaving.

I dunno, I'd say it's a pretty major thing in SR3 at least to have focuses apply to the skill rather than the weapon.

weapons with high reach have a significantly increased cost to bond as a weapon focus. if I can bond, say, a combat knife with reach 0 (an edged weapon), and have that apply to a combat axe (another edged weapon) with reach 2, that's pretty insane karma savings (also, I'd probably have to be pretty massive myself to wield both of those weapons at the same time, but that's beside the point )

it's also a pretty significant impact if you're crafting your own; you can use a poorly-made stone knife into a weapon focus (considerably easier to do) and who cares if it turns out to be a piece of junk, you're using it to augment your use of a superbly crafted dikoted katana which would normally be substantially harder to enchant.

It certainly is, but there are several constraints that come with that.



Constraints there:

1. No legit way of dual-wielding a reach 2 combat axe with a reach 0 knife, not even as troll due to the allowed primary, secondary weapon combinations (under RAW). The best you can get is a difference in one reach point.
2. Unless the character in question doesn't also posses an ambidexterity edge of level 3 or 4 a weapon focus held in the off-hand would only increase the appropriate skill which then happens to be "off-hand [edged weapons]" and not "edged weapons". And the bonus would still be halved for the dice pool calculation
3. Even in situations where someone successfully utilizes ambidexterity plus an off-hand wielded weapon focus he'd still only get the dice but none of the other magical weapon focus effects which tend to be of more importance - at least within my experience

So the question would be: How often do you actually see an adept or a mage (who both happen to be karmic black holes anyway) displaying that kind of melee proficiency so that it's a "must" to remove a bit of karmic saving and removing that commonly rather small dice bonus? From personal experience I can count the number of times where weapon foci beyond power 3 (which would amount to a maximum of 4 additional dice while dual-wielding) were actually used on a regular basis with two hands.




Significantly enough to warrant a house ruling against it?

I wouldn't quite call it a house rule. The sentence at the heart of the dispute is "An active weapon focus adds its Force to its owner's appropriate combat skill when wielded in combat." This could be taken to mean that if you have a weapon focus in hand, the skill increases, so the off-hand weapon gets the usual half of it (if it is the same kind of weapon). It could also be taken to mean that you only get the skill increase for the weapon focus that is actually being wielded. I lean slightly towards the first interpretation, but I could see where the GM was coming from if he/she favored the second interpretation.


Out of curiosity, because I don't have Run and Gun yet - did they make two-weapon style ludicrously overpowered, like it is in SR3 and SR4?

You be the judge.....

Two weapons style using as offense uses the following
Each weapon (club / blades only) can only have a reach of 1 or 0. Two-weapon style combat treats both weapons as one. When attacking, use the lesser Reach of the two weapons, but add 1 to the Accuracy and Damage Value of the longer weapon. The character must be able and ready to use a weapon in each hand in order to perform this style of attack.

On defense they do :
The character receives a 2 dice bonus when using Full Defense against Close Combat attacks. The character must be able and ready to use a weapon in each hand in order to perform this style of defense.

you don't have to dual-wield them. you just have to wield both of them. and so you swing your axe (or katana, or whatever) in your main hand, and hold the knife in your off hand. depending on situation, you may be able to pull off even more (for example, if you were to make a stone bayonet and mount it on one of those special gun arms you can have. can't recall the supplement, but it does exist and was around before SR4).

other possibilities might include extra arms from SURGE, a toe blade, wielding a weapon in a prehensile tail, etc... and just not using them for a dual-weapon attack. after all, if the argument is that you don't need to be using the weapon to make the attack for it to give the bonus, then why do you need to be using the weapon to make *any* attack to receive the bonus? if all that is required to receive the bonus is to wield the weapon, then all of these (very cheesy) tricks should be possible, and probably others that I haven't thought of.

The crux there would be that going by the rule setup and used terminology you'd be hard pressed to support the notion that you can fight with just one melee weapon (using standard melee rules) while being considered to actually wield that off-hand weapon as well.



The articulated arm? That one was limited to characters with a cybertorso. Not the "best" (or likely) combination for a magically active character but certainly possible as long as the rules allow you to incorporate that arm into melee and can be considered as fulfilling the "wielding" requirement.



However, that wasn't the argument. The argument was that you'd get a weapon focus' bonus for a skill regardless of which hand you're holding it with as long as you're actually wielding it in combat. Merely holding it wouldn't qualify just like having it on you doesn't .



That appears to be a "magical" RAW condition associated to weapon foci in SR3



I guess that would still depend on the semantics of "to wield". And last time I checked that verb included the notion of something actually being used during the associated action and not just being present ~shrug~

That actually sounds a lot more reasonable than the SR3 and SR4 versions, which gave massive bonuses.

For SR4, it was not about the bonuses as much as it allowed an Attack AND Full Parry action (IIRC) in the same pass. The bonuses were just icing on the cake after that.

That's the bonus I'm talking about, and it is a huge deal. Melee combat is basically skill + Attribute vs. skill + Attribute, so it is hard to hit someone of equal skill using passive defense. When they get to add their skill dice again, the defender has a huge advantage. Not to mention how even more broken it can get when you combine it with the disarm maneuver and the martial arts advantage that lets you do damage on a disarm; or the adept counterstrike power, which lets you take your extra defensive successes and add them to your attack dice pool.

Then we are in agreement.

You summarize the problem well I think.

You see the gamemaster as a part of the group with one additional power that is, interpreting rules and validates new one when RAW is lacking.

I don't see it that way. The gamemaster has, for me, a power superior that is the control of the game. To me, his duty is to make the game fun for the group.

For that, I did:
> houserule things to limit overpowered options in game (like heavy multiple attacks in Earthdawn that was totally OP compared to spellcasting).
> did ask players not to munchkin if it wasn't into the theme of the game
> said to some players, prone to group betrayal, not to do it because it destroys a campaign quite easily.

I don't feel like the GM is part of the group. The success is only mesured on the fun at the end of the day.

(ps: And it's not an ego-thing, because I accept all this as a player too).