Can a defender use a firearm(pistol) to defend against a melee attack, if the defender already has the gun drawn.


Example: Bad guy drawns gun and points it at the PCs, PC #1 runs at bad guy and does a melee attack. Can bad guy shoot PC as his defense roll?

If there is a rule somewhere then i missed it. If there's not then I ask the all wise(ass) dumpshockers for their opinion.

No.

He could theoretically use it as a club though if he had the skill. Otherwise he has to wait until his turn to shoot taking either the movement penalty (if fleeing) or the shooting while engaged in HTH combat.

NT got most of it, but there's a few details that need to be clarified.

Basically, if the PC has initiative, and manages to close on him before the stooge's iaction, the guard can't shoot just then. That's the penalty of being slow. The stooge now has to defend with his clubs skill. If he doesn't have one, he's in for it. Once the stooge's action comes around, assuming he's still alive, he may opt to take a shot at a +2 penalty for being engaged in melee.

Now, this all assumes that the PC's have the higher initiative or surprise. If the guard has initiative or surprise, it's a different story. If the guard has the higher initiative, he can declare a held action: to shoot the first person who makes a hostile move. Now, when Melee PC charges, he *will* be shot at, at the ususal TN. From there, it progresses as described above.

I would say to Cain, that the goon could use Clubs or Unarmed Combat At least with a pistol in hand. For something taking up both hands, probably not.

If you want the other interpretation, here it is.

If I'm in melee combat only with Sammy, and I try to shoot Sammy, then I'm not engaged in melee combat with another opponent, just the one I'm shooting. Therefore the penalty doesn't apply.

That's the other interpretation.

...And that's where the other half of the sentence comes into play. If he's aware that someone within two meters of him is going to try and block the attack-- and someone who's facing you in melee is almost certainly going to try!-- then the penalty applies.

Granted, if he's not aware of an opponent within two meters, then your interpretation could make some sense. Natch, that means said shooter is going to have a lot more problems real quick....

"Trying to block his attack..." is also open to interpretation. I selectively apply the penalty where it makes some sort of sense (since melees can be quite spread out). Some guy attacking with a reach 2 weapon and you're trying to shoot him with a pistol? No penalty. Some guy attacking with a knife and you're trying to shoot him with a rifle? Penalty.

Frankly, if you bring a knife to a gunfight and you're not good enough to toast the guy in one round, you're going to get what you deserve with or without the +2 penalty.

come on! There has to be a penalty trying to shoot at someone who is close enough to grab your weapon or push it away. I don´t care what the precise words are, that has to be the meaning.

"another character" is a person besides the shooter, if it was a third person the penalty was referring to that's not "another character" that's "a third combatant"

Either way, I'm the GM for my game and my players agree with this. We also do it that if your last action was to aim and fire a gun ignoring melee combat, then you have +2 to your defensive melee Combat rolls. Prepare to eat some fist.

<just arghs at the "interpretations" herein>

you can interpret the wording to mean that, but since it doesn't jive with reality, there's no reason to do so. it's hard enough to maintain realism with the rules already; why would you work extra-hard to divorce them even further from reality?

Not being a rules lawyer, I'm not going to worry too much about the exact phrasing. Realisticly speaking, if a troll has just finished trying to punch/kick my teeth in, I'm not going to be shooting as well as I would without that little distraction. Hence a +2 penalty, whether it be at the troll or someone 50 meters away.

It doesn't jive with reality that the same penalty is applied to both of these scenarios, either:

A: Melee character has a combat axe (approximatly 2 meter reach) and is using his full reach. Ranged character has a cyber pistol implanted in his hand.

B: Melee character has a short bladed knife. Ranged character is holding an assault rifle.

Not that I think it particularly matters. If you get shot from 1-2 m away by a guy with half a skill, it's not going to be pretty even with the +2 TN modifier for him to hit.

While it might be distracting to have someone trying to pummel you while you're trying to shoot them, it's also distracting for a melee combatant to have to avoid getting a gun pointed at him... there's no melee penalty for fighting someone holding a gun (I know they're not the same level of distraction, but you'd think it would have some effect, even if it were small, possibly canceling out a point or reach or something).

Just to make things more confusing, I allow herding or zoning to work with a firearms attacker if at close range, too. Though, if you have it, disarming or disorient might be more effective.

Tink: Using a reach 2 weapon, it's actually fairly easy to deflect someone's hand-held item. I can't testify to your exact scenario, but imagine using a polearm in the SCA against someone holding a light crossbow, and it gets pretty close.

The larger blade and extra reach means I don't have to move as much to score hits-- and the other guy is going to be too busy trying to avoid being shish-kabobed to be able to aim accurately. That, plus the fact that it only takes one twist for me to deflect his weapon, is why the penalties are closer than you might initially think.

yes. just as it's a bad idea to bring a knife to a gun fight, it's an equally bad idea to bring a gun to a knife fight. guns are superior to knives, of course, but their superiority lies in their range and their ease of use--if you're close enough that the other guy can stab you, you've lost the advantage of range. the advantage in ease of use comes into play when you shoot at the guy trying to stab you (with a +2 penalty), and he doesn't get to counterattack with his own skill.

that said, i've come up with a pretty cool adept power that allows you to counterattack when someone in melee range uses a ranged attack against you. your counterattack negates your chance to dodge the ranged attack, and staging the damage of your attack up requires 4 successes per level--but you're effectively allowed to use your melee skill to dodge, as long as the shooter is close enough to punch.

I'm not saying that it's not hard, in most cases, to bring a firearm to bear in close quarters. It is, and even more so when someone is trying to cause you a serious injury. I'd argue that for some combinations (the rifle vs. the knife) the book's penalties are too light.

However, take the other case I mentioned. A polearm against an implant pistol. In this case the person with the polearm is using the reach of the weapon to his advantage to keep his opponent's ability to strike him in melee combat to a minimum (by lowering or raising a combat TN). He is not necessarily 2m away from his foe at all times, but he is certainly not as up close and personal as a knife fighter would need to be. The guy with the implant weapon doesn't exactly have a gun to pin, and aiming for him is almost as simple as aiming his hand at the other guy. I would not apply a ranged fire penalty in that case because of the distance between the combatants and the relative size of the firer's weapon.

In fact, it's deja vu all over again. From the thread where we discussed this exact same thing last time, here is my suggestion for expanding the penalty to be more realistic in a fashion:

If the gunman were actively engaged in melee combat with a melee weapon, applying the benefits of Reach and other unarmed modifiers would make sense. As it stands, the gunman isn't fighting back. He's just trying to aim and fire his weapon with his opponent slapping it around and otherwise making it hard for him to aim. Reach doesn't play a part there; it's just as easy for a skilled attacker to do it with his hands as it is a polearm.

If someone charges me while I have a pistol in hand, he's going to be pistol whipped (since in SR logic, I can't shoot a charging person but I can engage in slower melee combat). As a GM I'd run, Unarmed (or default) with Str-1L DMG for the pistol whipping.

Pistol whipping damage is listed in a book, though. I think it's CC, and the damage was STR+1 M Stun

In other wordsy, you can attack by shooting a firearm (albeit with the flat +2 TN penalty to reflect your opponent doing whatever he can to keep you from aiming it properly) but you cannot counterattack by shooting one. At best you can use it as a club.

The only way to defend against a polearm barehanded is to grap the haft of the weapon and start kicking. Anyone who thinks they can slap away a glaive or halberd has some screws loose. I know a man named Sasha who can demonstate this to anyone who's into pain.

BTW I'm impressed that such a simple Q & A thread evolved into this. Damn Dumpshock is fun.

no kidding. there's no way in hell you're going to shoot anybody with anything while someone is swinging a meat cleaver on a pole at you, without taking some sort of penalty.

with the adept power i mentioned, i'd orginally considered making it a combat option or even a maneuver. my first idea involved giving different firearm classes a Reach modifier based on size: holdouts would be reach 3, light and heavy pistols would be reach 2, SMGs would be reach 1, rifles and shotguns would be reach 0, and anything larger would be reach -1.

My issue is really that there is no skill which makes it easier for you to handle a firearm in close quarters combat. I don't like the idea that everyone, everywhere, with any kind of firearm against anyone with any kind of melee weapon has the exact same penalty.

The argument for the penalty keeps shifting, too, I might add. First, it's that you can't effectively aim because of the size of your weapon, and now it's that you're distracted. I'd wager that you couldn't hit someone with a meat cleaver on a pole very well if you were spending half of your time keeping them from pointing their hand at you (certainly not as well as if they were totally unarmed).

mfb's idea about giving reach to firearms works for me to balance that one out since you're effectively dividing your attention between attacking and not getting shot.

[edit]On another note, are there any real world fighting styles that teach how to deal with firearms without getting up close and personal? I'm not a widely knowledgable person in the field, so I ask because I don't know. Every technique I've seen involves getting very, very close to the other guy and staying inside the range where he can use his weapon. Disarming doesn't count since that's a seperate part of melee [/edit]

That skill would be firearms (well, pistols, SMGs, etc). You get the same penalty as everyone else, but higher skill still translates into more successes.

Given all other factors being equal, in a one second time frame of melee combat, who would be more injured, a defender with bare hands, or a defender with a pistol in his hand? Let's say the attacker has a katana, just for simplicity sake.

Well since I've never trained with a katana and know nothing of their techniques I cannot answer with 100% certainty. In defending against a firearm a handheld weapon is a disadvantage IMHO because you need at least one free hand to grapple, and the katant needs 2 to use effectively, and is better used a few steps back, the opposite of where you want to be in this case, which is right up close. In reality the katana really changes the scenario and not really for the better in my opinion. The "For simplicity sake" makes it much more complitacted.

Ideally though, you'd end up doing the same amount of damage to the person, it would just be done in different ways.

Actually any martial art worth its salt teaches that the best defense against an oncomming attack is first and formost to move.

Take aikido for example- they regularly train in disarming an attacker using a knife, a sword and a short staff (polearm).

The most basic technique is to avoid the attack an use a distractionary strike (what they call atemi), usually to the face, before disarming the person.

If you had a pistol in your hand, and you weren't into the whole "non-violent conflict resolution" that aikido teaches, you could just as easily move out of the way and shoot the guy in the face.

Personally I've trained in japanese weapon arts for about 10 years and various unarmed martial arts for close to 7. I'm not saying I'm and expert, or that I've ever been in a situation like this, but I would never even ATTEMPT to attack a guy with a gun, regardless of what melee weapon I had to work with. Thats just a really stupid way to get dead.

I like the penalty for firearms in melee combat, melee combat can be a turbulent environment considering all that is probably going on. No time to aim or get locked on someone who is all over the place.

This penalty also teaches folks to shoot people before they get too close.

I've always found that with any one handed weapon with reach/mass you got the gun weilder cold. Your off hand goes for the gun and you bring your weapon hand around at full speed his bare hand will not stop a sword/axe/mace. Knife, different story. Two handed weapon, different story. +2 modifier, good compromise.