Great White Games/Pinnacle Entertainment Group

[PenBoy99]

I finally ran into the problem other's have described, where a player never gets to be "cool" because they're in mêlée, and it's very easy to get a ≥ 7 parry and toughness, which makes hurting your opponents difficult (whereas shooting them is trivial). Also, his strength wasn't massive (we were thinking fencer). He actually handled it with Élan (worth a Benny) - after round after round of miss then hit-stun they unsound you miss you hit they un-stun he took the multi action penalty and shot them, which ended the combat quite quickly.

I understand the argument and believe it to be true that the Pinnacle rules reflect reality fairly well - it's much easier to hit people with a gun from a distance then close up in sword-to-sword combat - most modern army type battles involve guns, not soldiers hacking each other with cutlasses.

That being said, I'd like to emulate the movie-book high-adventure genre in which:
- agile people are harder to hit than normal people with a distance weapon
- some people are able to translate their finesse rather than strength into damaging their component in hand to hand combat (I think this is actually true in real life - I saw the Shao-Lin monks on their tour)
- if hero X is equally talented with mêlée and ranged, it's no harder for him/her to damage their opponent with either method

So, has anyone built a semi-official, or at least tested, Genre Convention rule that achieves something like the above? I've searched but my search-fu is week.

[Clint]

[Rÿche]

For ranged attacks instead of a TN 4 you could use an Evade (works like parry, but is 1/2 Smarts + 2). I stole this from SPF's Star Wars house rules. Then Dodge and Improved Dodge add to this. You could use Agility instead of Smarts if you want to have that more of the uber stat.

[PenBoy99]

THank you both. I think what I'll do is try experimental combats with using more tactics and, failing that, go to the nice genre options.

You have to agree, though, the "character" getting fed up with the toughness thing just pulling a gun and shooting, saying "this has gone on for far to long.

[Zadmar]

[ogbendog]

[ValhallaGH]

[PenBoy99]

BTW, Clint, you don't get to make jokes. I swear my book didn't have all those combat options before you mentioned it...

I had occasionally used aim, but using all of the options changes the option from endlessly boring hit you hit me to an actual dynamic combat.

[PenBoy99]

So, to summarize, the options are:
20120531 0905 Thu #RPG #SW How to simulate the "meele is good even after guns" genre:
1. if you meele and may not have great strength but good fighting, use as many tactics as possible (such as Wild Attack or Called Shots) to get additional damage (no rules change)
2. the target for all meele attacks is TN 4. Cover and range penalties offer half their penalty: light cover, 0; medium cover, -1; heavy cover, -2; short range, 0; medium range, -1; and long range, -2. (rules change)
3. the target for ranged attcks is the opponents Evade (1/2 Smarts + 2) (rules change)
4. agile characters take Dodge and Improved Doge, adding a penalty to opponents ranged attacks (no rules change)
5. good, low-strength Fighting characters take edges like Ambidextrous, Trademark Weapon, Florentine; 2-Fisted (no rules change)

None of which we used. If use 1, 4, and 5, which I could encourage with a handful of additional starting XP, you'd get the effect I'm looking for - for skilled characters, they can be hard to hit at range and be effective in meele without having to change any rules. The other ideas are all great, but I'm always worried about rules changes since I can't imagine the side effects.

[Clint]