How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by malloyd

This sort of restraint only makes sense when you're confident the other guy won't cheat either

Or you outclass your opponent by enough that it doesn't matter if you limit yourself.

[AlexanderHowl]

I would want a Dodge of 14+ before I tried to go sword versus gun.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

When it comes to parrying bullets and beams with melee weapons, you are going to end up with a lot of broken weapons.

It would be perfectly cinematic in this case to say that the weapons don't break in this case.....at least in the hands of martial artist.

Originally Posted by malloyd

My preferred universal gun downgrade is to halve the damage but add a (2) armor divisor to bullets - this doesn't get you too far, but does help some and its reasonable enough it has proponents who assert it's even realistic, which is nice.

Noted.

Originally Posted by malloyd

The easiest gun nerf against some foes is just to have a lot of them with DR vs bullets (or equivalents like versions of Injury Tolerance). For humans to have access to this you'll need a cinematic rule, but there's no particular reason cinematic mastery of (whatever) can't let you buy limited DR as easily as anything else.

"DR vs bullets" in exchange for needing some martial arts seems reasonable. Like I said: not everyone needs to be able to defeat a gun with a sword.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

They do not charge the bunker, trying to parry bullets with a broadsword in broad daylight, trying to cross 100 meters of cleared land with cover as ten guys spray them with automatic fire.

If they don't that seems to defeat the purpose of bothering with the original question: the ninja route isn't "guns vs swords".

[lwcamp]

There are a number of real life movements that believed they could teach spiritual powers that made their practitioners immune to bullets. The ghost shirts of the ghost dance movement among numerous Native American tribes, advanced qigong teachings among the "boxers" of the Boxer rebellion in China, and a variety of charms found in Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe and historical and modern Africa. If such mystical knowledge and associated charms were common among the foes the players face, it could discourage firearms (see, for example, the Ghost Shirt ritual in the Path/Book section of GURPS Thaumatology).

Perhaps lead is magically dead, so bullets can't carry magical blessings. It requires hand-crafted items made of natural materials, steel, silver, or other more magically active materials to hold enchantments. A .30 caliber bullet from a deer rifle can still punch holes in things, but a sword or arrow can be enchanted to dispel dark spirits, drink souls, or bless the weapon with luck to hit its targets.

Luke

[jason taylor]

It is really not all that hard to justify melee weapons. What is hard to justify is a mass Stamford Bridge type of fight. Dueling is a matter of culture. Street mayhem can happen any which way, will likely take place in the dark amid labyrinthine urban wretched hives. Not to mention the cops will be more indulgent of a knotted rope then a gun. Even in military situations there are a number of times it can be justified. People from the two sides can end up next to each other by surprise in broken terrain. Stealth might be at a premium. A peculiarly stupid enemy might make a banzai charge and run someone out of ammunition before being wiped out. There might even be weird instances where taking the risk in casualties to come close would be worth it.

To this day melee weapons are commonly found. You can get a good set of kubatons from Amazon and while they are probably not the best of weapons, an expert could presumably do some damage with them.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by SilvercatMoonpaw

(Note: I put "guns" in quotes because I'm not just talking about gunpowder projectile weapons, I'm talking about any kind of fast slug-thrower and even beam or "blaster" weapons.)

So maybe this is an easy one because I've just overlooked a rule. But I'm assuming GURPS is designed such that, baring historical long-reload weapons, it's always better to bring a gun to a fight than a melee weapon. But what if I want a setting where there are characters routinely go around fighting with melee weapons despite the fact that the setting is otherwise gun-loaded?


First thing I thought of is allowing melee weapons to Parry "gun" attacks. Looking around I find the rule on doing so with Parry Missile Weapon: requires Enhanced Time Sense (45 points) at starts at Skill-5. Seems fair, given that I don't need regular cops being able to parry bullets and beams. But I'm not sure if I need the full Time Sense: I don't think I need my melee warriors to all have the ability to do all mental stuff faster. I'm wondering if "Gun" Parry could be lumped in with the other "chi" martial arts of Trained By A Master.


Any other rules I missed?

You could have "guns" be at least LC3 and the society CR4 or LC2 in a CR3 society. In essence, if you need a license to own a "gun" and violating the terms of the license (eg., using a "gun" bought on a hunting license for a non-hunting purpose or one on a collector's license at all) will lose both the license and the "gun", people won't be bringing guns to fights, as a general thing. If law enforcement is willing to put the manpower necessary on a case, bringing a melee weapon to a fight may be a bad idea too.

If the courts treat fistfights as "time served", knives and baseball bats as "six months in jail" and "guns" as "two years plus a day" (minimum sentence to get sent to prison instead of jail), characters may be circumspect in their choice of weaponry.

You need several things to make this happen. A police force that is more likely than not to catch perpetrators with enough evidence to make a good case. A court system that will convict if the evidence is there and that won't kid around with the sentence. Player knowledge that this is how it works. Making the NPCs mostly abide by the "rules", i.e. they won't bring guns to knife fights or knives to fist fights, and aren't especially motivated to kill the PCs when they can put them out of action with the injuries from a serious use of fist, boot and blackjack.

The only question then is, is this the way you want to play?

[evileeyore]

Just make sure all combats start inside 25 feet. Done.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

Just make sure all combats start inside 25 feet. Done.

Which you can do for the NPCs, though it gets unrealistic. But convincing gun armed PCs not to set up longer range ambushes is harder.

Doing something to ranges is an option though. Arbitrarily setting Max to 25 feet is fairly blatant, but you can do other stuff - drop Acc scores, reduce 1/2D ranges by a lot, multiply the Speed/Range penalties by something - with less strain on suspension of disbelief. Guns work but rarely hit anything distant on purpose isn't actually all that far from real world combat results - firing your gun dry for one (or zero) hits isn't rare. There are some people who do better, but maybe they have Gunslinger, or Trained by a Sniper, or something.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Which you can do for the NPCs, though it gets unrealistic. But convincing gun armed PCs not to set up longer range ambushes is harder.

Urban engagements often don't have long lines of sight; close-quarters combat is a painful reality of modern warfare. Inside and among buildings it can be nearly impossible to set up.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

The only question then is, is this the way you want to play?

It's not necessarily a terrible idea. But that only addresses the problem if you keep the story in an area where that's true. I'd rather think up reasons which can be used in a variety of different regions, including lawless ones, in case I want to have adventures/games hop around the setting.