07-17-2018, 09:01 PM | #21 |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
Or you outclass your opponent by enough that it doesn't matter if you limit yourself.
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07-17-2018, 09:04 PM | #22 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
I would want a Dodge of 14+ before I tried to go sword versus gun.
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07-17-2018, 09:35 PM | #23 | |||
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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If they don't that seems to defeat the purpose of bothering with the original question: the ninja route isn't "guns vs swords". |
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07-17-2018, 10:05 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: The plutonium rich regions of Washington State
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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 |
07-17-2018, 11:12 PM | #25 |
Join Date: Aug 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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.
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"The navy could probably win a war without coffee but would prefer not to try"-Samuel Eliot Morrison Last edited by jason taylor; 07-18-2018 at 11:06 AM. |
07-17-2018, 11:38 PM | #26 | |
Join Date: Sep 2011
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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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? |
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07-18-2018, 02:23 AM | #27 |
Banned
Join Date: Jul 2006
Location: 100 hurricane swamp
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
Just make sure all combats start inside 25 feet. Done.
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07-18-2018, 08:07 AM | #28 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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.
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-- MA Lloyd |
07-18-2018, 08:12 AM | #29 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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.
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All about Size Modifier; Unified Hit Location Table A Wiki for my F2F Group A neglected GURPS blog |
07-18-2018, 08:16 AM | #30 |
Join Date: Jun 2017
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Re: How to keep melee weapons relevant in a setting with "guns"?
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.
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