Combo Suggestions for point starved Witch wanting to be effective in melee?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

The generous Move and Attack treatment of ranged weapons makes pistols extremely tactically effective compared to melee weapons for close combat.

This isn't entirely unrealistic - effectively using a muscle-powered hand weapon is highly reliant on the legs, so doing it while running is really tough, while using a firearm while running (provided it has light enough recoil you don't need to brace) just means you can't properly aim and don't have as stable of a firing platform. Part of me is tempted to have Move and Attack only be at -2 (maybe higher for large swinging weapons) without a cap but suffer a damage penalty (comparable to Defensive Attack). That's probably a tangent suited to another thread, however.

Originally Posted by Tymathee

Certainly, why waste time swinging a staff when you can just put a bullet in their head?

There are other advantages to the staff, of course. First and foremost is that +2 Parry, which is indispensable if you find yourself stuck in melee (particularly against armed foes). Next up, I think there are more monsters who are resilient against piercing damage than against crushing damage* - in some cases, you may well have a monster who is resilient against piercing and particularly vulnerable to crushing (skeletons come to mind, as they're likely to have both Injury Tolerance: Unliving and Fragile: Brittle, if not outright Vulnerability to Crushing). Granted, many of those bullet-resistant monsters are still vulnerable to headshots (zombies certainly come to mind), but you need to be a pretty serious shootist to pull that off reliably.

All that said, however, a pistol is probably a better option in most cases.

*Humorously, unless they have a good deal of natural DR, I think the GURPS stats result in rubber bullets being more effective against the undead than metal ones. I'd have to check the stats again, however.
EDIT: Having checked, I was incorrect. I thought baton/rubber rounds did normal (or perhaps slightly reduced) damage that was crushing and had a poor armor divisor. Turns out they do 1/5th normal damage, as crushing and with a poor (0.5) armor divisor, so normal bullets are still better than rubber ones against zombies. There may be some edge cases where they perform better against skeletons, however, depending on caliber and what traits the skeleton has.