How do you make Melee strong in a setting where Gun combat is prolific? Give options to close in the distance for melee specialists?
>>93440827Consult pic related.Or even better, consult it's melee-centric sequel, All For One - Regime Diablique
>>93440827Why do you want to?
Melee is always strong in situations when you are within effective striking range. It's actually really difficult to hit someone reliably up close with guns, for instance when someone suddenly strikes you from the side, or when that person can control your weapon. Especially with long guns.Of course, if you are working on something like a sci-fi games, dedicated melee specialists could go for some teleport shenanigans or sudden bursts of movement to get past the effective firing range and fuck up shit. But you can also think of ways players could create these situations in the first place without specific abilities, like ambushes and surprises, or good positioning, or trapping foes within areas and rooms where ranged combat is obstructed (poor vision, lots of obstacles), and give them appropriate maluses and bonuses for that.
>>93440827There should be a reason for it, right? Maybe new handwavium for a better type of melee weapon. Say you have firearms, well there's a new element that was found that makes super melee weapons and just give bonuses to attack and damage or a better crit chance. It also makes good armor. Due to its make-up, it's useless in firearms manufacturing. Lasers? Blast shields and plasma swords.Probably the easiest way of doing it.
Ammo scarcitySound concernsGun control by authorities
>>93440863All good examples. Homemade or poorly maintained guns tend to explode, too.
>>93440827Make the combat between things that won't die if one of several squishy organs get pierced. Mechs or aliens with redundant organs, for example. Putting a bullet into a mech probably isn't going to cause that much damage unless you hit the reactor. Digging a chainsword directly into its chasis is going to tear shit up.If you're insistent on using human(oid) combatants, there's always the option of energy shields which are more easily depleted with an energized melee weapon than they are with the relatively low energy charge capable of being stored in a bullet.
>>93440911That's bullshit, everything has vital parts. Hell, a human can fight through many injuries running on momentum and adrenaline, a Mecha with a busted servo, a broken brake fluid line, a rapture fuel tank, a broken control chip, would at best be severely weakened and at worst immediately shut down or explode. Biology has reduntancy and can self-regulates effectively, technology is efficient, single-purpose and fragile
>>93440827Reduce the lethality of guns via techno-jargon. Maybe humans can heal better now as long as stuff remains attached. Maybe there are kinetic-dampening shields that work on light projectiles like bullets but not heavier ones like melee weapons. Maybe human speed and reflexes have advanced to the point that bullets can be dodged or deflected at range and its easier to get a kill by forcing an opening in your opponent's defenses up close. In a setting where guns aren't a one hit kill, it's hard to land several shots against a guy actively swinging a melee weapon at you.Mechanically, melee weapons should always do more damage than their ranged counterparts. Melee weapons should also offer better "area-control", being able to more effectively lock down space or control an opponent's movement. Is it realistic? No. Does it give melee a niche and reason to be used over ranged options, yes.
>>93440931>Military tech is more fragile than meat-bodies.Sometimes "OK, retard." is the only reply that makes sense.
Everyone is vampires and bullets through the heart don't work because they don't.
>>93440969Against equivalent scale weapons, yes. If you use an anti-tank gun on a human that's not really comparableMilitary tech is more durable only because it's armored. Your argument was that that mechs would be able to take far more penetrating shots than a human because they're less reliant on their internal organs (or equivalent), which is nonesense. Warfare aren't empty space on the inside, if they were they would just be made smaller Instead. Even structural parts are filled with tubes, wires, and load bearing connections. See how easily space rockets blow up when something goes wrong, or how even tanks and planes go up in flames when hit by modern anti-armor weaponry
>>93440827Power levels. If the main characters are strong enough then throwing weapons will be better than guns and melee weapons will retain their basic advantages relative to throwing weapons.This doesn't mean a gun is useless, it means a gun is a powerful weapon used by weak people to kill each other or possibly hurt heroes. If you're doing scifi or mechs then the logic should probably be different but you really just need personal shields that can be penetrated in melee, you could do that with plasma-swords (powered by backpack batteries to explain why plasma canons are weaker) or you could do like Dune and have nobles learn to knife-fight. We've had this thread before and we'll have it again.
>>93441017I dig this. Just raise the power level so much that brute force overshadows chemical weapons
>>93440827The same way you make anything strong>Damage>Odds to hit>Avoiding armourWhich you specifically choose depends more on your setting and tone.>Cybernetics, power armour, mechaWhen a punch can shatter concrete you only need a gun for reach. A bullet may be able to punch a fist sized hole in someone but a punch to the jaw can disintegrate someone’s skull in an instant.>Animu guy with a katana vs guy with a gunBeyond blocking bullets blades can be controlled mid-swing a bullet can’t be controlled mid-shot so you can adjust for accuracy. In other words a guy can dance around bullets but when a guy gets up close with a sword he’s probably going to run you through.
>>93440827I don't get it, why did she shoot Link?
>>93441257Because BotW the franchise
>>93440855This post. Melee has not stopped being good, in it's proper place./thread
Are there any games out there where ranged weapons have a minimum range requirement to use? Not just lumping in a bunch of penalties if someone tries to use a ranged weapon against a nearby target, but straight up CANNOT do it any more than a guy with a sword can swing it and hit a target outside of swinging range.
>>93440827Guns have ammo, need to reload, and can be disarmed or dropped. It's a weapon, not a magic power.
>>93440855The strong point here is the surprise element and the sneaking, not the knife.>It's actually really difficult to hit someone reliably up close with gunsWhat bullshit are you making up? Just shoot.The only situation you want to use a melee weapon is to be silent or when your range weapon isn't ready (out of ammo or jammed) and even then you can use your gun in melee.>>93441417Wrong, melee is completely inferior to guns.
Bodyarmor has advanced to a point where the technology required to easily defeat it is too expensive or too complex to include into a single-use projectile. Therefore ranged weapons need to either sandblast targets down with many shots or have to be outrageously oversized to deal decisive damage, like firing a rocket launcher at an individual soldier. Melee weapons are reusable and therefore an efficient place for a technology that is expensive but bypasses the armor somehow.This is how Metal Gear Rising does it. Everyone's wearing or outright made of carbon nanotube musculature and/or nanomachines, but bladed weapons have been adapted into high-frequency blades that can melt through it while bullets are still just bullets.
>>93440827Realistically? 21 foot rule. Gunman doesn't get a reaction against the charge if the charge begins within 21 feet. He has to beat them in initiative and shoot before the charger acts.>Realism is for faggotsThen I just give dodge reactions out like candy. Though if there are guns involved I'm usually playing capeshit.
>>93440827Tech. Say everyone can cheaply buy superkevlarsuits(TM) or shield emitters (TM) that stops pistol and rifle rounds. You would need a critical hit or say an anti material rifle to do damage. But they are useless against the old stabby stabby.
>>93440855Or, as a simple-r solution - energy shileds, that stop both bullets in, but also bullets out, so you cant shoot, if you use one.
>>93442900Did OP state that he wants to do a scifi-game?How lazy can people be?
>>93442967>>93442967It can be a magic shield.
>>93442991This is so lazy. You could implement reasonable and fun mechanics that make melee combat in ranged-heavy systems viable by giving some thought to its advantages and disadvantages.But nah. Energy shields, magic shields. In any system or setting.I forgot how averse the traditional games board is to talking about the game-part.
Make it cost less points/xp to make a character good at melee, or make melee provide other advantages like being able to deflect bullets. A lot of it comes down to the fantasy you're creating with the system. If it's high tech hard sci-fi then there's no point in even trying
GURPS: Ultra Tech solved this.
Just do like some video games do it.>limited ammo>long reloads>less outgoing damage and more incoming damage/inability to use higher defense gear
>>93440827Specialized evade, resource driven. Extend the native Zone Melee band into the Ranged band, a la LotW. Increased action cost matches archaic ranged weaponry. Inflicting a scalable targeting check linked to Ranged/Marksman implies some forms of Cover, Evasion etc Add robots with Armor. Fill the world with death ray wielding lemmings, who have the crippling weakness of only precisely auto-blasting anyone Targeting them with a (Potential Ranged Damage + Targeting Value) (3) Attack. You must slay the lemmings with tooth and claw! They’re still lemmings in every other respect, easily stomped by children.
>>93440827>How do you make horses a viable thing in a setting where the average household can access an automobile?Firearms made clobbering each other in the dome pretty much as close to 'obsolete' as possible- at least as long as a firearm is in the equation, melee combat will always lose. "It's almost as if revolutionizing weapons technology happens for a reason, like to 'improve' rather than 'add another option'.
>>93442144>can be disarmed or droppedSo can melee weapons. Somehow, despite many systems having blocks, parries, disarms, and so on as options in melee combat, people forget all of this can be done to a knife when this topic comes up.
>>93443015>You could implement reasonable and fun mechanics that make melee combat in ranged-heavy systems viable by giving some thought to its advantages and disadvantages.Post your idea then. This entire thread nobody has suggested a single interesting mechanical way to make melee viable, just plot contrivances and nonsensical bonuses
Just have feats and shit for Melee and ranged weapons. It's that simple.
>>93440827Supposing the setting is sci-fi, I can think of a few reasons off the top of my head:>Close CombatYou're at a huge disadvantage whenever you're in a situation where your opponent is closer to you than the length of your weapon. This applies to both melee and ranged weapons, but is a bigger disadvantage for guns, especially longarms, because guns have to be oriented to their target, while something like a knife or sword can still cut along its edge. Guns also tend to be complex contraptions with lots of moving parts that may jam or otherwise stop working, especially if it gets tangled up in a scuffle.>Logistics and RegulationsMelee weapons are just simply cheaper and easier to build, maintain, and transport. They're also a lot less likely to be banned or regulated than guns.>Escalation of ConflictUse of firearms often signals an escalation of force that might not be desirable. Heck, even in real life in recent times, there were soldiers and militia at the Sino-Indian Border Dispute fighting with sticks, stones, clubs, and swords. Though plenty of people have died in these disputes, they've somehow managed to avoid escalating into all-out war.>Energy ShieldsIn Dune, the ubiquity of omni-directional personal energy shields that only allow matter below a certain velocity to pass through means that things like projectile attacks and explosions get deflected, but stuff like air and slower melee attacks get through just fine.>OverpenetrationIn the Legend of the Galactic Heroes, boarding parties on space ships sometimes use melee weapons, because any weapon that would pierce power armor would also pierce the hull of the ship and risk explosive decompression. So weapons without any risk of overpenetration are desirable.
>>93440827(Part 1/2)>>93444021>>93440855>>93442607>Close CombatThat's why pistols exist. Also swords require more space to swing than a rifle does to shoot. So no. You can fire a rifle point blank but a notable issue with melee weapons, especially swords and polearms is that they are not good within hugging distance. Firearms do not have this problem.>>93440863>>93442144>>93442694>Logistics and RegulationsIf you're abiding regulations that ban you from having guns you've already lost. Because if the other side has them and you dont you're absolutely screwed. Swords are cheap yes, but one gun is far more cost effective. You're going to lose hundreds of swordsmen to machine gun and rifle fire, while training a few riflemen and machinegunners of your own would have been more cost effective, because those suicide troops you just sent to get mowed down in droves have to eat and require clothing. Also are you not going to give them armor? That's also expensive. Seems like cheaping out on their weapon may not be the most sensible option.>Escalation of ConflictMost melee weapons are lethal weapons. Your enemy is very likely going to respond with armed intervention should you conduct a mass stabbing in their territory. Not to mention they may get rather pissed that you are in their territory to begin with. And what you are describing is very much an edge case, that isn't militarily relevant.There is a reason we are not using melee weapons anymore people.
>>93444172(Part 2/2)>Energy ShieldsThat doesn't make any sense. Why not make the shields able to be recalibrated as the situation warrants? You're not going to immediately suffocate if you cut off your air supply for a minute or two, and give yourself a moment once in a while to let the shield down and take in new air. Dune is a setting that only works because of handwavium and author fiat.>>93440911A bullet will always have more kinetic energy that a sword swing. Also, if a target has redundant organs, just use more bullets.>OverpenetrationThis explanation makes even less sense. If a gun that can pierce power armor would cut a hole through a ship's hull, so would a sword that can pierce power armor. If you're worried about overpenetration, just use Frangible ammo.>>93441231>Cybernetics, power armour, mechaIf you're strong enough, then just use a bigger gun. No need to punch anyone.Real life is very hostile to melee weapons which is why they get put in scifi universes, since they are completely obsolete and pointless irl. And that's fine, but i dont get why people keep trying to rationalize it.
>>93444183>just use Frangible ammoI don't think you understand Frangible ammo works.
>>93444266Even if the bullet doesn't penetrate, it should still cause internal trauma through armor if it carries enough energy. Just widen the bore to reduce penetration and range without reducing muzzle energy.
>>93444172>That's why pistols exist.Pistols don't exist for close combat, they're a side arm. They exist because you need a backup weapon in case your rifle is damaged or empty.>They can be used in close combat thoughMovies lied to you. Trying to use a pistol in a grapple is how you shoot yourself.>I'm not talking about a grappleIt's close quarters with an armed opponent, it's a grapple.>swords and polearmsOnly one of the posts you quoted mentioned swords, none mentioned polearms. Knives are the modern melee weapon of choice and should be considered the default when the variety of melee weapon is not explicitly mentioned. But I get it. Knives are rather dangerous in hugging range and wouldn't serve your argument to mention.>But I'd still want a gun over a knifeYES YOU FUCKING IDIOT ANYONE WOULD! Saying 'a determined attacker within 21 feet is close enough to be a threat to a man with a gun' is not the same thing as 'fuck guns they're weak.' The only person arguing otherwise is the retard you invented in your head.
>>93444557Close combat and hand-to-hand are not the same thing. Militaries and law-enforcement train for close combat with firearms.
>>93440827The good old force field.
>>93443015>This is so lazy. You could implement reasonable and fun mechanics that make melee combat in ranged-heavy systems viable by giving some thought to its advantages and disadvantages.Whatever the justification, it will be inherently unrealistic, because in reality swords cannot compete with guns unless the situation is extremely contrived.
>>93440827>How do you make Melee strong in a setting where Gun combat is prolific?Just make melee users stronger than gun wielders dumb fag. Dragon Ball already figured this out over 40 years ago.
>>93444183>That doesn't make any sense. Why not make the shields able to be recalibrated as the situation warrants? You're not going to immediately suffocate if you cut off your air supply for a minute or two, and give yourself a moment once in a while to let the shield down and take in new air. Dune is a setting that only works because of handwavium and author fiat.For one, that's a step up in technology, so it's not handwavium yet.Two, you'd have to do that manually, because how can such technology determine friend from foe without becoming overzealous? That really IS a step up in technology if you want it to be highly responsive, compared to the totally passive barrier you don't have to worry about.Also, how would it interact with the ground? Or other matter you approach? or your own weaponry and armor? These do have answers, but they are another big step up in technology... So as it turns out it's not handwavium at all.
Have you tried not being a weakling?
>>93444607Nta, but both terms are being conflated as the same thing because the thread discussion is about fantasy guns vs swords, where the two are allowed to mean the same thing, but falls apart when the topic naturally shifts to the modern real world version, where they don't.
Melee will never be a viable option for a PC in a "grounded setting" for the sole reason PCs are meant to scale off one another, and if guns are the primary form of combat in this setting, they'll naturally gravitate rather than try to become a Baki the Grappler esque superhuman due to not being allowed to be so much superior to their allies as to make them worthless in their presence.
>>93445028*gravitate towards that rather than try
>>93440827If gun combat is prolific in a setting, it's because guns are more effective than using melee weapons. Melee combat still occurred in WWI and WWII, look at examples of melee combat there to see how melee can be relevant. Melee is best in close quarter environments (like trenches), when visibility is low (like night or thick fog), or when you need a quiet way to kill someone, like slitting their throat. Try making melee weapons very lethal at close range by allowing them to bypass armor or hit vital weak points.
>>93445007Even in medieval context you can include ranged combat into close combat. Throwing weapons and stuff like those old repeating crossbows. They lacked range and power and thus were meant for relatively short ranged defensive action, such as home defence.>>93445164WW1 and 2 melee was also spurred on by rifles being relatively long, had small magazines and bolt action. Sub-machine guns and pistols (and shotguns) were used when available.
The way I approached it is that Armor work as a static damage reduction. So If an armor (the setting is cyberpunk, so even the most basic civilian clothing are made with a very cheap and accessible carbon-thread, that it is at the same time light, cheap, accessible and quite strong for something basic). Fire arms deal damage by bullets (duh), so you make an attack roll for each bullet, and then you make a damage roll for each bullet. So let's say a character shoot 6 times at a target with Armor 1. Roll the 6 shots, 3 miss and 3 hit.For those 3 hits, roll 1d6 for each bullet. The damage is 3-18, but if we take in account that for each one of those bullets the Armor 1 will deduce 1 Damage, the Damage then looks 0-15. Now for let's see a sword strike. Roll to hit, it hits, damage is 1d12 + 3 (strength) . Now we are looking at 4-15, but considering Armor 1, since it is only one sword strike, then the damage looks like 3-14. All this is without taking in account critical hits and other effects. Now if we take the same situation but with a target with Armor 2Gun hitting 3 shots for 3-18 looks like 0-12Sword hitting 1 strike for 4-15 is 2-13Armor 3Gun 3-18 becomes 0-9Sword 4-15 becomes 1-12Guns deal a lot of damage on targets without protection or when hitting critical hits, while melee weapons fare better against well armored target. There are other stuff like Armor Penetration being present on some ammunition, or Armor Breaking in some attacks, but this is the gist of the system.The lore deal
>>93445246>Even in medieval context you can include ranged combat into close combat. Throwing weapons and stuff like those old repeating crossbows. They lacked range and power and thus were meant for relatively short ranged defensive action, such as home defence.This is true, but the context has been conflated another way as well, by speaking in terms of military engagements.This is fine for a wargame, but when talking about the average ttrpg, most people will think melee range when they heard close range. Ironically, even most rulesets will define short range specifically as somewhere under 50 ft.I think the mistakes are twofold, though, because one anon mentioned military engagements when most anons were probably thinking street fights, gang scuffles, or dungeon crawls.Personally, I don't like guns being weak just to make melee combat effective. I'd rather let people dodge bullets that just take them or block them with some generic barrier thing, since having to dodge bullets implies that it's deadly and fired from a real weapon and not some nerf toy you can just take a bunch of hits from while also letting melee characters fight against them.
>>93445772Depends entirely on the setting. If we're talking about something relatively modern, don't try to make rushing the opponent strong, but enable sneaking attacks, flanking maneuvers, distractions, etc. and having a strong melee character be effective at dispatching people who aren't expecting it or aren't trained in close combat. Guns are noisy, even silenced ones, and will draw attention. A party, no matter how well equipped, might not want to take on a whole army, but can utilize sneaking and close combat to take down key enemies in their path to the objective. Once things go noisy, it's time to pull out the big guns.
>>93445830Big Boss was a racist?!
>>93445837>white man>American>born in 1935I refuse to believe Big Boss hasn't dropped at least one n-bomb in his life.
>>93444021>In the Legend of the Galactic Heroes, boarding parties on space ships sometimes use melee weapons, because any weapon that would pierce power armor would also pierce the hull of the ship and risk explosive decompression. So weapons without any risk of overpenetration are desirable.ackshually the reason given in LoGH is the doctrine of flooding decks with zephyr particles that will explode under laser fire which makes ranged combat suicidal
>>93440852spbp
well in pathfinder 2e the melee fighter runs a train on the entire game and the gunslinger can't even light a trash bucket on fire so how about you go see how they did it (it almost entirely comes down to the fighter having +4 to hit over the gunslinger)
>>93440827Why do meleefags think it needs to be viable in every kind of setting? Play something different for once.
>>93447485This. Unless your game is:>Medieval/Pre-Modern>Supernatural>Martial Arts focusedYou don't have any right to complain about melee sucking.
>>93440827In a post apocalyptic game I ran that was similar to Metro 2033/Underrail, guns were common but functional ammunition was rare. Most expeditions carried bolt or lever action weapons or revolvers and only the most wealthy parties could afford more than 20 rounds per person. Furthermore, the underground was such that you'd have wide open caverns for a little while give way to claustrophobic tunnels where long weapons were much harder to use. When traveling between settlements, most groups had everyone trained in how to use melee weapons first and foremost, either short spears or other polearms, hacking weapons like machetes, or just clubs.Guns were a last resort because using them was very expensive to the point where ammo expenditure was a significant tally on caravans traveling between settlements, because the noise of firearms could attract even more creatures to your position, and not all creatures had vital organs that a small, piercing round would affect. Some things, like corpses animated by fungal growths or radiotrophic fauna, shrugged off bullets and had to be hacked up to destroy. Explosives were even worse in this way, the sound was deafening and threatened to collapse natural tunnels used in some routes of travel.The more common 'exotic' weapons used were flamethrowers (these were great against a wide variety of things and didn't attract things from miles away, but the fumes they produced were toxic in confined spaces and required breathing apparatuses to move around) and crossbows due to ammo being easy to make and mostly reusable. Acid and incendiary grenades also were used, both offensively to clear things out of hiding and defensively as area denial.
>>93440845>Took the Money & RanBased Beyond Belief
>>93442198An attacker can be on you before you can draw aim and fire your gun if they are within 10 ft.
>>93448195An attacker can be on a fucking novice before they can draw and fire Someone trained in pistol cqb is still going to kill you if you don't get a first strike in that's an outright killing blow
>>93440975I ]really like this idea.
>>93440827the guns shoot fists
>>93440975>>93448379In Vampire (I played The Masquerade), Bullets deal bludgeoning damage. The damage type doesn't matter for mortals as much, but Vampires all take half damage from bludgeoning, including most guns. One of the Ventrue clan's discaplines, Fortitude (shared by some other clans as well) makes them even tougher, and lets them soak even aggravated damage.Aggravated damage comes from particular sorces, such as warewolf claw and bite attacks, and THE SUN.A Movie called "Only Lovers Left Alive" is about a Vampire who spends his unlife making sad bangers. He has a wodden bullet made special; he spends a long time trying to commission someone who can make such a bullet that does not instantly burn when shot from a gun. He wants to shoot himself in the heart with it, like shooting yourself with a stake.
>>93448195>if they are within 10 ft.You take the situation where you're already up close and I'm unprepared. For you, a gun would be better because you could just shoot me without even closing the distance and it's over. For me, a gun would be better because I don't need to aim at this distance and I would still need to draw and defend myself with a melee weapon which isn't faster.So yeah, maybe a guy armed with a melee weapon could take on a guy with a gun by surprise but it doesn't mean the melee weapon is the optimal choice.
>>934408271) You put the combat into a very tight space where someone has 100% chance of reaching you with a knife in first 5 seconds>Argument in a bar/tavern when people are sitting next to each other>Escalation on the street where people are pushing each other>"Fun free zones" like schools/administrative buildings>Crowded busses2) The characters have a longer time drawing a ranged weapon due to environment>Underwater environments>Weapons are stored in the back unless players want to experience march/patrol fatigue3) Guns have a time/value price gimmick>make them take long to pull out/reload/use>making them a high value currency that players would rather save up (bullets) by going melee>Gimmick air conditions that could damage the ranged weapon
