[Marcus]

The solution to most of these is, simply, to have the player search for a person with an Armorer skill of 9+ who is willing to design and build for them a bow that is not only made to shoot arrows into people, but also balanced to whack trolls over the head.  Done right, this becomes an interesting personal downtime project / pseudo-adventure.  If you want to make it more interesting, involve the other players, you make it so that the character's Hattori Hanzo is somewhere that will require the entire team to enable the player to get face time with the fellow - in prison, in a remote location, deep in a corporation, in another country, in a wasteland, or whatever.  One of my GMs had my Hattori Hanzo recently shipped off to Yomi Island, because he pissed off the wrong people by refusing to make a weapon for them, and boy wasn't that an interesting series of adventures.

TL;DR: 4, or talk to the guys at Victorinox into making a staff-bow out of memory materials.

I like this just b/c it's fun, it's dramatic and it includes Hattori Hanzo.  For the time being I'm satisfied with 4, making bow Excalibur can come later should this actually go anywhere.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

That really wasn't my argument so I guess I should have bee clearer. I think I expressly stated it shouldnt be as good as a weapon designed for melee. My point is the intent is that it could be used in melee and people who buy this see it as option they want to use. So choosing a accuracy that is too low goes against that entire intent.

This is exactly what I and, to a lesser extent, Mirikon are talking about - and for all practical purposes what you said.  Certainly a bow can be used as a staff/club in melee; so can the stock of a gun, or the barrel of a pistol, or a chair, a bar stool, a pool cue, a pool ball, a beer bottle, a table, the bar itself (well, sort of), etc. etc. etc.  And you can use your bow, gun-stock, pistol-barrel, chair, bar stool, pool cue/ball, beer bottle, table, etc. etc. etc. as a melee weapon however often you want.  Do so with a non-melee-hardened weapon and you risk damaging your weapon, said risk being something that should increase with the frequency of your use.  If, however, you have melee hardening as an option, you should have access to the description, and what it does for you; if not, then your GM certainly should, and if someone is buying melee hardening because of the misguided belief that it changes the item from an improvised weapon into a standard weapon, then the player is mistaken and the GM should explain things to them.

If your argument is not that buying melee hardening turns the weapon into a designed-for-melee weapon, but exactly what you said above - that the player thinks that it does - then this is an issue with the GM not explaining to them that it only prevents the weapon from getting damaged when used as an improvised weapon, not that it improves its use, balance, etc. the way increasing its Accuracy would mean.  Choosing an accuracy appropriate for the improvised melee weapon, i.e. melee-hardened bow, is immaterial in regards as to how the player thinks it should be, just because their 'entire intent' is to use their non-melee-designed bow, gun-butt, pistol-barrel, cue stick, cue ball, etc. as a melee weapon.

Like I said - 'how would I rule this for an NPC?' is not generally a bad yardstick to start out with.

There is a middle ground between as good as a weapon designed for it and the absolutely useless range that is improvised weapons.

Note that the 4 you're now agreeing to is the 'absolutely useless range that is improvised weapons,' as I quoted above.

I like this just b/c it's fun, it's dramatic and it includes Hattori Hanzo.  For the time being I'm satisfied with 4, making bow Excalibur can come later should this actually go anywhere.

Thanks. 

[Shinobi Killfist]

I was arguing against accuracy 3 improvised as that's useless, that was the initial number thrown out on the first page of this thread and that is what I was arguing against.  Accuracy 4 is one category of improvised but it's also telescoping staff and a couple other less accurate melee weapons.  And again I never said it would be a standard weapon or the player thinks it's a standard weapon. How many times do I have to say it wouldn't be treated as a weapon specifically designed for combat. But yes if a player sees a option I suspect they think it's supposed to be useable. And the GM shouldn't go out of his way to ham string it. And there is a gap between the player thinks it should be useable and as good as a weapon designed for combat.

[Officerzan]

Lol. Then melee hardening just shouldn't be in the game. But, they did put it in it should actually be somewhat useful. Not amazing, or as good as a full weapon but not useless either.

Melee Hardening is NOT about turning something into a melee weapon. It IS for helping a usually delicate and intricate firearm survive when forced into melee.

As for accuracy, the only way accuracy 3 is worthless against mooks is if you are in a empty void with no action, modifiers, etc. And for prime runners you should pick up a sword or spend edge.


End of Line. Edit To Add: forgot I'm new to posting here. That's not meant as insulting, just my way of dropping out of a post haha.

[Spooky]

@Wyrm
I actually think that a skill rank accuracy bonus (I'm liking +1 per 6 ranks, personally) is appropriate. Why, you ask? Simple. People IRL get better and more accurate with weapons they practice with. I have been both an NRA and NAA trainer; I have seen accuracy improve on my training grounds. While I realize that higher skill ranks mean a larger dice pool, therefore an increased chance of hitting, I can also see the difference between my shooting skill and that of, say, an active duty Marine scout/sniper. Give us both a rifle that can hit targets at .75 mile, and I'm probably going to need a target about two feet across to mark my 5 round group. The Marine will probably need only half that, and for comparison's sake I would estimate that my skill is about 4, and the Marine is probably about 8 or 9. This fact of life is why I think that an accuracy bonus for skill is appropriate. Now, it can be argued that SR is a game and doesn't have to correlate to life, but because it does correlate quite well, I stand by my argument. You, of course, are free to disagree with me. Not a problem. And thank you for your opinion.

[Mirikon]

Spooky, you're confusing skill rating with accuracy. Give the same gun with the same hardware/software accuracy mods (including things like implanted smartlinks) to a novice and a trained marksman, and they'll have the same accuracy. That is a representation of the physical weapon.

The reason an active duty Marine scout sniper will hit the target more often and closer together than you isn't because of the gun suddenly getting more accurate, but because their skill level is higher than yours.

[Kiirnodel]

Right, the gun doesn't become more accurate in the hands of a well-trained individual, they are simply able to fire it better and with more consistent results.

With the same gun in hand, if one person gets better groupings on target practice than another it is because they are more skilled. In Shadowrun game terms this equates to them having more dice and are able to more regularly hit the threshold of the target. It isn't because the gun has better accuracy in their hands.

My only caveat is that I do agree somewhat that much more training should potentially allow a person to mitigate the effects of low accuracy. An example springs to mind (I can't remember the source) of a highly trained operative taking a trainee's gun and firing another perfect grouping, handing it back to the guy and saying something like "your sight isn't calibrated right, it pulls to the left."

[k_night]

Isnt that the take aim action wich is limited by skill/2?

[Mirikon]

Yeah, that'd be things like Take Aim, which are dependent on skill, not the weapon.