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

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by hal

Depending on the TL, Magic functionality, etc - using night vision goggles will largely negate the darkness from the smoke screen.

Mind you, I'm not saying yea or nay here - but a lot of the tactics involved, depend on the game world the GM is trying to establish.

By the by, what you just suggested above just got stolen for my next cyberpunk campaign special attack. ;)

I'm fairly sure smokescreens aren't darkness, but I agree with you, everything is going to be setting dependent.

I think in a world where special types of vision able to penetrate smoke is common, then grenades that produce smokescreens would start developing charges of some kind to make it interfere with the vision technology.

By all means, I like when people use my ideas. I know better than to post anything on a public forum that I don't want someone to use. :P

[Jack Sawyer]

I would point out that this doesn't have to be an issue of guns competing with melee weapons, since IRL combined arms warfare doesn't really work that way any 'weapon' has a niche that suits it that is balanced by other weapons because of tradeoffs. Real life warfare has a limited niche for melee weapons because of how warfare works for us, but it doesn't mean that you couldn't conceive of reasons that make melee weapons viable. It just comes down to the assumptions you're willing to work with (tech, supernatural, cultural/human, etc.)

Someone mentioned Dune, and to a lesser degree other settings have used variations of that. The Simon R Green Deathstalker universe had swordfighting because personal arm shields were a thing that could deflect energy fire (and energy guns were deliberately engineered as noble-only space muskets). Projectile weapons existed but had been outlawed because of their rate of fire (shields could still stop bullets, but the volume of fire was such it could overwhelm shields either by outlasting them, or by shooting around them.) In that paradigm none of the weapons were inherently 'superior' but they had situations where they could be beneficial (and using all 3 made you very effective. Not to mention other tricks you might pull like augmentation or psychic powers or whatever.)

Mass Effect did their own thing with melee weapons (especially Andromeda) where melee weapons could ignore shields (most guns don't), but you could blend it with other abilities (including biotics) to make it viable in that same sort of 'rock-paper-scissors' tradeoff paradigm.

Other settings may take a more metaphysical approach. In Star Wars lightsabers were more a cultural and philosophical issue made viable by the person wielding them more than their practicality. In Warhammer 40,000 melee weapons (in universe, not in game or out of universe) were often rationalized for their symbolic value against supernatural entities or because the magic of the setting is influenced by thought and emotion (and influences the in-game reality as well.) Thus, melee weapons served a purpose that was out-of-proportion to their 'practical' value against guns.

[dataweaver]

Let's see: how about a magical charm that makes ranged attacks less likely to hit (the greater the range, the more effective the charm)? Say, something that doubles the penalty from Range. Path/Book Magic's Ghost Shirt Ritual works a bit like this.

A related idea is to have a charm that protects you from harm by enhancing the chances that attacks will miss internal organs and the like, effectively granting the benefits of Injury Tolerance (Unliving): since it drastically downgrades the effectiveness of Impaling and Piercing damage while leaving Cutting and Crushing damage unaffected, and most ranged attacks inflict Impaling or Piercing damage while most melee attacks inflict Cutting or Crushing damage, the effect would generally be to nerf ranged damage. Pair it with the above “you missed me!” effect to get something that seriously downgrades the effectiveness of firearms (you're less likely to be hit in the first place; and if you do get hit, it probably won't hurt you as much) while leaving melee combat largely unaffected (though you should try to avoid attacks that do Impaling damage if fighting someone protected by this).

[Infornific]

We've covered cultural rules as well as things like the shields from Dune that nerf ranged weapons but not melee weapons. I think another approach is to decide exactly what you want from the campaign and tweak rules to adjust. I can think of a couple of examples:

Comic book heroes - Cinematic rules and Advantages are available to melee weapons and unarmed combatants. They can also buy multiple levels of Enhanced Dodge limited to bullets only. Gun users are limited to realistic rules and abilities and can't make Deceptive shots. Also, gun using NPCs are limited to realistic skill levels. So high point characters can dodge bullets with relative ease but break a sweat against other melee masters. This fits a lot of superhero genres where bullets work against normal people but are inexplicably less effective against major heroes and villains.

Planetary Romance/Lost worlds - Guns exist but the technology is limited - people with the skill to maintain high tech weapons are rare, perhaps by design. So guns work fine but if they break down or you run out of bullets you're out of luck. Melee weapons are much more reliable. A corollary is that if ammo is scarce few people will get to practice with guns much, justifying NPCs with low gun skills and poor gun tactics. Guns are like magic wands - scary, but unreliable and scarce. This simulates worlds like the Urth of the New Sun, Burrough's Barsoom and the Witch World.

[AlexanderHowl]

There is a certain question of practicality when you try to limit guns and do not limit bows or (especially) throwing weapons when you have abilities. In Supers, we get Super Throwing, which doubles throwing distance and increases throwing damage by +2 per dice per level (at 10 CP per level). At 10 levels, a character with ST 20 can throw a rock 50,000 yards and deal 2d+40 crushing damage (11d+3 crushing damage). While the rate of fire is one per turn, it is still pretty impressive for amunition that you can get anywhere.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Not that I recall that recently, but you may be thinking of this thread from a year ago or so: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=149327 which may have some relevant ideas.

Hmm.. that looks like the mechanic, but I don't recall reading that thread, and on top of that I think it was a suggestion from Kromm.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

There is a certain question of practicality when you try to limit guns and do not limit bows or (especially) throwing weapons when you have abilities.

It's true that Range Is King. That's part of the reason for the "combat magic needs movement" idea I posted earlier.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Originally Posted by Infornific

Comic book heroes - Cinematic rules and Advantages are available to melee weapons and unarmed combatants. They can also buy multiple levels of Enhanced Dodge limited to bullets only. Gun users are limited to realistic rules and abilities and can't make Deceptive shots. Also, gun using NPCs are limited to realistic skill levels. So high point characters can dodge bullets with relative ease but break a sweat against other melee masters. This fits a lot of superhero genres where bullets work against normal people but are inexplicably less effective against major heroes and villains.

This is good stuff!

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

You can also make a bullet out of bronze or brass (which actually prevents the warping of the barrel during full auto because of the low friction coefficient).

No more than a normal jacketted bullet does.

As for making bullets - casting bullets from lead is dead-easy, and doing so with many other metals is mainly about getting the metal hot enough. It's easy to tell if a bullet is bad, too. However, it does need a mould and patience.

As for making copper or silver bullets that will expand - that's easy, too - just get a hacksaw and cut a couple of slots into the nose. What's hard to making an expanding bullet that's accurate - cutting slots into bullets will almost always ruin long-range accuracy (but at normal pistol-fight ranges they'll be fine).

Note that all of this is easier and safer with larger bores and lower velocities, and the correct load of powder for these bullets would have to be worked up, which is easier for weapons that aren't semi-automatic.

Thus, all this stuff makes for guns that will tend to be single shot or manually reloaded, firing big slow bullets. TL5 guns, rather than TL6+ guns. These tend to penetrate armour poorly compared to the amount of injury they do.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Railstar

I'm fairly sure smokescreens aren't darkness, but I agree with you, everything is going to be setting dependent.

I think in a world where special types of vision able to penetrate smoke is common, then grenades that produce smokescreens would start developing charges of some kind to make it interfere with the vision technology.

By all means, I like when people use my ideas. I know better than to post anything on a public forum that I don't want someone to use. :P

When you get a -3 penalty to vision per hex, a cumulative penalty that reaches -10 or more, for all intents and purposes, is equivalent to darkness. An infrared sensor system can pick up anyone inside a smoke screen as if it didn't exist - would even show the smoke screen generator as a heat source for that matter, negating the penalties involved with vision impairment. Without such a device however, it might as well be impenetrable darkness (even if a smoky grey fog like impenetrable screen).