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From:	David Buehrer dbuehrer@******.carl.org
Subject:	The viciousness of martial arts
Date:	Thu, 15 Apr 1999 10:58:01 -0600 (MDT)

Message no. 1 Brett Borger wrote:
/
/ True. And now, having compared my way and your way, I'm curious what
/ other people have....is melee an all-or-nothing proposition, or is it
/ lightning fast? Anyone?

Most of the time the players toss their combat pool into the first
exchange and drop or severly wound the opposition from word go.
There've been only a couple of times when I've had the PCs outgunned
and it went just as fast the other way.

I don't think I've ever seen a long melee exchange in SR. Either the
PC's combat pool puts them on top in short order or I've got a strong
NPC who takes the first exchange and drops the PC (having run out of
pool) on the second exchange. It never goes past the third exchange.
And with wired characters the third exchange usually happens halfway
through the turn.

-David B.
--
"Earn what you have been given."
--
mailto:dbuehrer@******.carl.org

From:	Blair A. Monroe bmonroe@******.fsu.edu
Subject:	The viciousness of martial arts
Date:	Thu, 15 Apr 1999 14:16:48 -0400

Message no. 2 At 10:58 AM 4/15/99 -0600, David Buehrer wrote:
>Brett Borger wrote:
>/
>/ True. And now, having compared my way and your way, I'm curious what
>/ other people have....is melee an all-or-nothing proposition, or is it
>/ lightning fast? Anyone?
>
>Most of the time the players toss their combat pool into the first
>exchange and drop or severly wound the opposition from word go.
>There've been only a couple of times when I've had the PCs outgunned
>and it went just as fast the other way.
>

Same here...especially considering the karma my current group of PCs has to
throw around.

>I don't think I've ever seen a long melee exchange in SR. Either the
>PC's combat pool puts them on top in short order or I've got a strong
>NPC who takes the first exchange and drops the PC (having run out of
>pool) on the second exchange. It never goes past the third exchange.
>And with wired characters the third exchange usually happens halfway
>through the turn.
>

Outside of the occasional fight I deliberately drag out to showcase an
opponent or achieve a specific goal, when a melee fight occurs, it
generally doesn't last more than about five exchanges. Even with very well
matched characters, the rolls stray from "average" quickly enough that none
of the melee fights have generally lasted longer than that and the majority
never make it past three exchanges. I have always considered this to be
reasonable because the 2-4 exchanges take the characters 1-3 turns which
only amounts to about 3-9 seconds of time the way we play it.

There are circumstances that we have found will skew this around though.
For example, we have a shaman in my campaign who is extremely skilled with
the sword, but has so low a strength he finds it very difficult to hurt
anyone he attacks. On the rare occasion he actually has to defend himself
with the thing, he is able to drag the fight out quite a while simply
because the attacker can't hit the shaman and the shaman can't make damage
stick. Usually results in either the shaman backing off and 'frying' the
guy with a force 7 stun bolt or the attacker getting frustrated and going
for a gun or getting shot in the back by one of the other PCs.

-- Blair
------
Blair A. Monroe Phone: (850) 644-8114
Web Systems Administrator / Sr. Web Developer Fax: (850) 644-6253
School of Information Studies E-mail: bmonroe@******.fsu.edu
Florida State University
101 Louis Shores Bldg.
Tallahassee, FL. 32306 http://www.fsu.edu/~lis

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