Fast forward cyberpunk action game

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by OldSam

I see the point of not liking to artifically limit guns, I don't really like that either, indeed my preference would be something in the way of enhancing the chances of the melee guy to avoid being shot easily ;)

So here's the inescapable reality: guns are the most effective personally portable weapon in the real world for the last 200 years or so. They do a lot of damage and they are relatively easy to use.

So how to give melee guys a chance?

Stay in the real world.

Police get a decent amount of training, but they turn in a poor performance in real world gunfights:

"The average hit rate for NYPD Officers involved in a gunfight between 1998 and 2006 was 18 percent. For every five shots, four bullets missed the intended target and went somewhere else. And that hit rate is consistent with the "normal" hit rate in armed encounters which hasn't changed much for years and years. The average hit rate for Officers who shot at subjects who did not return fire, was 30 percent. Officers hit their targets 37 percent of the time at distances of seven yards or less. And hit rates fell off sharply to 23 percent at longer ranges." SOURCE: http://pointshooting.com/1arand.htm

You can surf around and do your own research, but the above is fairly typical of police. Now, are criminals likely to have more or less training than the police? I would argue less. Especially if public gun ranges in your campaign require positive ID and a clean criminal background to use them. In the US today, private shooting and tactics instructors require proof of a clean criminal record in order to enroll in their classes.

Police typically don't spend more than 10% of their time in the academy on firearms training. Collateral training on weapon retention, building clearing tactics, etc. might be given, but pure range time spent on accurate shooting would be less than 10% even in a very aggressive combat oriented academy. So in a 6 month academy you get 40 hrs per week X 26 weeks X 10% = 104 hours of gun training. Per B292-293 rules on improvement through study, it requires 200 hours to gain a point in a skill. Intensive training (which I would argue the police academy is NOT) gives the best return on time invested at 2:1 hours of learning for hour of time expended. So arguably, the police in the longest, most aggressive academy in the US are getting at best 208 hours of effective learning in guns. So one point to burn on a easy skill gives you Attribute +0.

At least in this regard GURPS is modeling a skill level that comports to real life law enforcement shooting performance.

The military spends even less time training non-combat and non-infantry troops in firearms.

So if a character, NPC or PC, is going to have a high guns skill, make them have a spec ops, or SWAT background. If a private citizen wants high gun skill they would need to buy a sufficient level of wealth that they could afford the training. Just say that regardless of how many character points are available, the character can't expend more than one in guns without an exotic background.

Now PCs can make whatever background they want, but at least this will keep the guns skill level down for the NPCs.

I've seen rough statistics that 10% of cops that get shot are shot with their own guns. Presumably all those attackers weren't highly skilled martial artists with disarming skill. The nature of real life is that if you want to do something other than just kill someone, i.e. rob, rape, kidnap, etc. then you need to get within arms distance of them.

It seems PCs with a decent level of disarming skill combined with some acting, fasttalk, streetwise, charisma or whatever to get them close enough to their target would give a melee guy a decent chance. You can also use the rules on crippling hits. Attacking a limb is only -2 and if you do more than 1/2HP damage then you cripple the limb. You could very reasonably institute a house rule saying if you took more than 1/4 or 1/5 HP to an arm you drop whatever you are holding in that hand. I don't suspect modern gunfighters, even if they are wearing body armor, are wearing heavy armor on their gun arm.

Definitely enforce the rules on readying a weapon. Without Fast Draw a gun armed person should not be able to engage someone closer than 21 feet before they can close and engage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill