Melee Weapons and RoF

[N.H.Alicia]

Title. I want to create an ability that allows a melee attack with RoF. Any suggestions?

[Nereidalbel]

At a minimum, this would require a 50% Cosmic to break the normal rules. Otherwise, any Melee attack could use Rapid Strike rules.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by N.H.Alicia

Title. I want to create an ability that allows a melee attack with RoF. Any suggestions?

By Extra Attack (Multi-Strike, +20%; Single-skill only, -20%) [25] for ever extra attack you can pull off with out penalty for that type of weapon.

[AlexanderHowl]

Or just have a very short range ranged attack with RoF and an alternate ability to turn it into a melee attack.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by N.H.Alicia

Title. I want to create an ability that allows a melee attack with RoF. Any suggestions?

I'm with Nereidalbel on this one - it should require at least Cosmic +50% on a melee attack to allow it to have a RoF. Remember that ranged attacks, which RoF is by default allowed on, almost always have a range penalty to cope with, and when they don't, they're in reach of melee attacks, which they usually can't parry. These factors make high RoF more balanced on ranged attacks, since a melee fighter can probably dodge more of them, since the margin of success isn't as high, and they can act to take out the ranged attacker if they're close enough.

If you're going to allow RoF on a melee attack, I'd suggest that parries should work against it, and the same way that dodges work against ranged attacks with Rof: the margin of success on the parry is the number of shots you stop/deflect. Blocks should do the same. In fact, I'd be inclined to make Blocks even more effective than parries for this - it just makes sense to me that putting a shield between you and whatever is making a melee attack with RoF is going to stop more shots. Offhand, I'd suggest allowing a block to stop a number of shots equal to (DB+1)Xmargin of success, so a small shield with DB +1 would stop 2 shots per margin of success, while a really huge one with DB+3 would stop 4 shots for each point of margin.

Question - is this question, by any chance, connected to your GURPS Naruto project you've mentioned elsewhere? Possibly trying to model the Eight Trigrams attack of the Byakugan users? 'Cause if you are, I can share my experience with that, since I once ran a GURPS Naruto game that had a Byakugan user as a PC. I did use RoF on a melee attack (specifically, a Fatigue Attack). In my experience, it worked, but I rather overestimated the actual RoF that was appropriate - I used RoF of the actual 64 that the show implied is the number of strikes, and that was way too high. The character was hitting pretty much all the time, from the bonus high RoF gives, and with multiple shots. And since those were draining the FP/Energy Reserve that powered all the abilities in the game, him landing one of those hits tended to be a fight-ending thing, at least for that opponent. If I was building it today, I'd put on a notably lower RoF (like, 8 for the 64-Palm version, maybe), and require considerably more setup and resources to use it.

[N.H.Alicia]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

If you're going to allow RoF on a melee attack, I'd suggest that parries should work against it, and the same way that dodges work against ranged attacks with Rof: the margin of success on the parry is the number of shots you stop/deflect. Blocks should do the same. In fact, I'd be inclined to make Blocks even more effective than parries for this - it just makes sense to me that putting a shield between you and whatever is making a melee attack with RoF is going to stop more shots. Offhand, I'd suggest allowing a block to stop a number of shots equal to (DB+1)Xmargin of success, so a small shield with DB +1 would stop 2 shots per margin of success, while a really huge one with DB+3 would stop 4 shots for each point of margin.

I thought allowing blocks for melee rapid fire attacks was obvious...

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

Question - is this question, by any chance, connected to your GURPS Naruto project you've mentioned elsewhere? Possibly trying to model the Eight Trigrams attack of the Byakugan users? 'Cause if you are, I can share my experience with that, since I once ran a GURPS Naruto game that had a Byakugan user as a PC. I did use RoF on a melee attack (specifically, a Fatigue Attack). In my experience, it worked, but I rather overestimated the actual RoF that was appropriate - I used RoF of the actual 64 that the show implied is the number of strikes, and that was way too high. The character was hitting pretty much all the time, from the bonus high RoF gives, and with multiple shots. And since those were draining the FP/Energy Reserve that powered all the abilities in the game, him landing one of those hits tended to be a fight-ending thing, at least for that opponent. If I was building it today, I'd put on a notably lower RoF (like, 8 for the 64-Palm version, maybe), and require considerably more setup and resources to use it.

Not connected - just curiosity, although I'll take your account into... account when working on that project.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by N.H.Alicia

I thought allowing blocks for melee rapid fire attacks was obvious...

Perhaps, but I figured it was worth emphasising. And the rules for blocks stopping more hits are probably not immediately obvious, of course.

Actually, that reminds me - parries against this sort of thing should get more opportunities to damage the attacker, if their attack is essentially an unarmed one.

[sir_pudding]

It sort of makes sense is a shotgun shell as a spearhead. However since that would always use the close-range broomstick rule I think it would be better to just give it the damage and fractional armor divisor of those rules outright and no rate of fire at all. Which suggests that most such attacks probably should just have higher base damage and possibly a fractional armor divisor, since in most cases you have very short range projectiles with almost no spread.

[Anthony]

The problem mostly comes if you allow melee maneuvers along with RoF -- i.e. all-out attack, rapid attack, etc.

Note that your other option is to just buy it as a ranged attack that is blockable and has very short range.

[N.H.Alicia]

Originally Posted by Anthony

The problem mostly comes if you allow melee maneuvers along with RoF -- i.e. all-out attack, rapid attack, etc.

I had a specific special attack that required a melee weapon in mind. A flurry of attacks, represented by Rapid Fire. No maneuvers - this advantage is itself a special technique, so you can't add all-out attack on top of it.

I was considering adding All-Out as a disadvantage, because this combo attack seemed to be mutually exclusive with defense - the user must devote their entire round to it.