I just thought I'd bring up that in contrast to the Shadowrun firearms system, the Shadowrun advanced melee combat system is unrealistic and weird.

Here are some of the things that I have a problem with:

1.) Individual fighter > Individual Training Methodology > What You Call Your Martial Art

In reality, it matters less what you call your hand to hand combat training, and what you actually practice doing. Sometimes you can spend a great deal of time training in something but still suck because your training is retarded; the entire www.bullshido.com website is devoted to this phenomenon. It would make more sense to pick your feats/technique/special moves rather than grouping these into exclusive groups connected to specific martial arts.

2.) Called Shot has many of the same problems that Called Shot with firearms has in terms of it not making a lot of sense alongside damage being scaled by successes. See, usually, in, like, a boxing match, or a judo match, or something, you do end up targeting body parts, like the nose, the solar plexus, the joints, the liver, or what have you. But you don't just say, "Okay, I'm going to punch his liver now," and then scoot right in and keep throwing low hooks at the guys' liver. Usually, because of your training, while you are boxing with someone, you will reflexively react to particular openings and use them to slip in, say, your liver punch. But ignoring the context and going for one particular target repeatedly tends to make you get beaten. Damage scaling from successes makes a lot more sense than making Called Shot work.

3.) Full Defense is kind of iffy. Like, it depends on the range. If someone is over a meter away from you, and then they basically start running away very fast, it can be hard to catch up with them. But, if someone is really close to you, like, not attacking just makes it easier for you to go to town on them. But I guess this can't really be implemented unless you differentiate between ranges within melee combat, which SR dosen't.

4.) Subduing Attack is sort of the same thing as Called Shot. If you're playing judo with someone, and you get a submission on them, usually it's because the circumstances of the match became such that you had the chance to get a submission, you went for it, and it succeeded. But, it's premature to think about a specific submission at the start of the match before the chance presents itself. If you keep going for an armbar repeatedly through the whole match and lack sensitivity to your other opportunities (for, say, pins or choke), it just makes you fight worse.

5.) Herding simply dosen't work outside of point-fighting. In point-fight, people tend to over-react to any attacks since they will lose if they so much get hit. In reality, people can actually absorb a lot of hits and basically ignore them and the concept of Herding basically becomes too difficult to practically implement. There is no way Herding would work against someone who isn't bothering to leap out of the way when you attack.

6.) Whirling simply dosen't really happen in real life. When one person beats up three people, that's usually because either 1.) the three people didn't really want to fight, and when the one person attacked them all aggressively they were caught off guard or 2.) the three people were very weak and incompetent. #1 is actually the more common occurance.

7.) I don't really think that Sweep and Throw should only have Half power. Like, that might be true of throws you do softly to people for the purposes of competition where there are mats and such. But throws on asphalt are really serious, and if someone who is throwing you really wants to hurt you they can throw you on your head or land on you in a superior position and proceed to pummel your head against the ashphalt. This kind of damage is actually harder to resist by being tough, I think, than someone just hitting you when you're standing up. This is because landing on your head on cement or having someone sit on you and bounce your head off the ground repeatedly is not something that muscles and such can absorb as well as they could absorb, say, a punch in the stomach.

These are the most aggregious things. I could give more details, but these are the things that annoy me the most.



That's my personal beef with the advanced melee combat rules. Because I have trouble dealing with this, in my games I always just use the basic melee combat, which is abstract enough that it dosen't mess with my suspension of disbelief.

PeopleWhoHaveIssuesWithUnarmed++

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~J

Spurs for your feet?

Not a bad houserule. I might vary the cost depending on what gets taught, but it's a lot better than what we're given in canon.

~J

Man who be talking smack about Bruce Lee. I would love to see you talk shit to him, if he were still alive and in your face....It is so cool how people on roleplaying game forumns are more skilled in martial arts, then say people who live the whole life training in them....

This entire board could easily take him.

Keep in mind that that's not individually.

~J

Herding don't work? so the time some punk tried to mug me in an alley and I used swings to make him back up against the wall, ready for a sla, never happened?

The ones (mixing options and maneuvers, or whatever the two categories are called) I like best are:
Subduing
Throw
Close combat
Kick attack
Charging


Subduing is something that shadowrun absoluetely needs: a way to grab somebody. It comes up all the time. Is it still in the BBB rules? I am pretty sure it was a core rule in sr2. It is quite easy to do something like what you are saying with waiting till the correct time, just fight normally till you get a bit of stun damage on the opponant, then go for the grab.

Throw is similar, just something people want to do sometimes. I think there used to be an attack to knockdown, or something which was the same idea but everyone could do it.

Close combat and Kick I like because they give a good unarmed guy some chance against a less skilled person with a weapon. I also like the way kick is an unbalanced offensive move, something you might want to do against a person you only have or need one shot at.

Charging is another thing that just ought to work. It is a lot like using partial cover in ranged combat, when you are rushing at a guy it is cooler (whether realistic or not) that you get to hit them a little bit harder.

good post wounded. I train in muay thai and fight in the ring (and in bars occasionally), so i definitely identify.

On topic, herding works also in boxing, Thai boxing, and ufc, mainly because those are controlled environments (one person vs. one person) and the participants have TRAINED to fight. all of the fights i've been in outside of a fight sport have much more basic and over quickly, usually because most people don't know how to fight. something like herding would almost never come into play. despite this, i don't see a problem of it being in SR. it puts more options out there for a player who isn't experiencing the fight real time, and a chance to emulate what a lot of people do instinctively(shove a guy against a wall, push them back against a car, etc).

brazil - i love bruce lee movies, and his athleticism was incredible, but the myth of the man is much bigger than the reality.

And that's why, IIRC, high skill prevents Herding from being effectively used against someone.

~J

But it's not necessarily a question of skill. Someone might just not respond to your attacks. They might get KTFO before you can effectively "herd" them anywhere because they simply don't run away from your attacks at all.

The maneuvers themselves are what's so horribly damn broken about advanced melee combat. They are just 90% of the time stupid unused and unnecessary, the others are totally overpowered. It's wholly and totally a whackjob.

I am two inches away from your face. Is ranged combat > melee now?

~J

yes because youve been shot a few times.

like totally, in the first world war, when all the rifle guys were running towards the machine gun pit, they totally put a hurtin on the machine gunners. hoo doggy

LOL, that's funny.

Unless they're unseen or around a corner. You're right that melee has been mostly superseded, but it's still incorrect to say that ranged is categorically better.

~J

Herding is both possible and effective when using melee weapons with different optimal engagement ranges. I normally fight sword and shield, and use Herding all the time against polearms.

If I come in on a pole, they have four options - they can kill me on my way in (easier said than done), they can disengage in some direction other than the direction I want them to go (again, easier said than done... I will be actively trying to prevent them from doing so), they can stand their ground and fight me at my optimal range where they're disadvantaged (not a good idea... a middling-competent shieldman can take a master polearmsman more often than not if allowed to fight at his preferred range), or they can go where I want them to (into a corner or the trees where their pole is hindered, into a group of my buddies, whatever).

Of course, that's all armed combat, which doesn't get maneuvers by the CC rules, unless you learn them in an unarmed martial art first. This despite the fact that I regularly use at least three of the CC maneuvers (Close Combat, Full Offense, and Herding) with broadsword and shield, and have no unarmed training worth speaking of.

I think the CC martial arts system just adds too much detail onto a framework that's too abstract to support it. I'd advocate making Full Offense a combat option just like Full Defense (and maybe, y'know, changing the rules for it a bit so that it isn't totally worthless), fixing the Reach rules to make Close Combat obsolete, and throwing all the rest of the maneuvers out totally.

Herding would make more sense in the concept of bladed weapons than it does in the context of unarmed combat, which is what I'm most familiar with. Basically, there are a lot of unarmed attacks you can ignore if you want to. However, there are not a lot of things you can afford to ignore/absorb with edged weapons.