So, I read the post, and rather then bust balls for literally attention whoring, I'll attempt to be respectful and retort as best I can. Here goes!
I'm sorry, do you have a problem with me trying to get a better level of argumentation on this issue?
1: Each and every character type (defined as a complete character, who may not be optimal, and thus a character with multiple skillsets) should have a way to make a meaningful contribution to combat.
You make assumptions here that you don't back elsewhere. Not all characters who aren't optimal will have multiple skill sets. Nor does your definition fit in line with past accepted definitions as outlined in Runners Companion. You don't spell out why characters should be meaningful in combat. I understand you touch on it later, but as it stands, it's an incomplete thought.
Literally all characters will have multiple skillsets - even the improbable absolutely pure combat character has multiple combat skillsets (though, even the typical combat monster is liable to have Athletics ranks and such that can be useful in other ways).
Premise 1a: It is true that not every character type should contribute to every situation.
Agreed, though I feel that some character types can contribute in every situation, namely mages.
And the ease of that may well be a design issue in its own right - would need to take a more extensive look at it to be able to say.
Premise 1b: It is also true that combat is more or less unique in that a very possible result on almost every occasion is the loss of a character.
Untrue, and possibly deceptive. More or less unique? What does that even mean? Your language here is vague and makes broad strokes, so that any argument against it can't nail your statement down to an actual finite point.
Allow me to rephrase: Combat is the only situation I can think of that can easily result in the death of any given character. Even other things that would wind up doing so do so by triggering combat.
Premise 1c: A player has, without reservation, the right to contribute in meaningful ways to the avoidance of the loss of their character.
You're confusing social contract and game mechanics here. Given that other roleplaying games exist where your character can die during character creation, I'm going to say it's an unfounded and untrue statement on the mechanics side, and that a social contract's validity isn't what anyone is talking about here.
It's a point about game
design, and thus higher order than game mechanics. Mechanics derive from design, which may be either bad or good. The idea here is that players have that right, and that therefore the mechanics
should reflect that.
Conclusion: All players at the table, and by extension all characters that might be played, must be able to meaningfully contribute to combat. This is more or less a unique aspect of combat.
As your conclusion is based upon faulty premises, I don't feel the need to debate it individually, however I feel that your main concern is with your characters participating in the most flashy aspect of the game which might contribute to their characters death, as opposed to other, more valid aspects. After all, you're not suggesting that every character take etiquette, yet accidentally insulting a Mitsuhama Boss can be more deadly then the most lethal weapon.
I don't agree that you've proven the fault of these premises. And while most characters should at least take Etiquette, the risk of failing that roll and, say, pissing off the Mitsuhama boss is that it will cause combat (short of a Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies scenario, but that's more poor GMing).
The concern isn't one of flash. The concern, as highlighted above, is the right to contribute to preventing the death of your character - a right current mechanics fail to properly .
2: Things like interfering with enemy communications or blinding a single target under the current rules is not a meaningful contribution.
Given how crazy players can go over eking out every single die for perception rolls, I'm going to disagree here. Furthermore, blinding a character is incapacitating that character for the most part, which can be more valuable then killing them outright.
"More valuable than killing them outright"? Not bloody likely. First, the way players go after perception dice isn't even relevant here - purely a distraction. Second, given the blind-fire and indirect fire rules, blinding one person momentarily isn't actually going to have all that much impact. And "area" style effect that hit multiple enemies? That could work, if it could be accomplished quickly enough.
Premise 2a: A meaningful contribution is one that can turn the course of an appropriately difficult fight from defeat to victory due to its presence and be noticed to do so - otherwise, it is more or less bereft of positive relevance to people's table experience
Your definition again doesn't jive with accepted thoughts on the subject. A contribution is a factor towards a goal, not this savior that you're making it out to be. The fact that once again use language like "be noticed to do so" makes it evident that you're more interested that your characters be active during flashy portions of the game as opposed to otherwise important yet not as flashy and story-worthy activities.
So, the concept of a fight where the loss of any one contribution would mean losing escapes you? There's a reason there's a qualifier for the difficulty of the fight there. The idea here is that other members of the team are helping the combat character to win a fight that would otherwise be beyond them.
And again, this is about a design point, not my personal desires. Things like notability and forseeability are extremely important from a game design perspective.
Premise 2a-I: A combat character makes a more meaningful contribution than others as the fight is their spotlight moment, but they also set the terms of what meaningful means.
Premise 2a-II: Meaningful, therefore, can be defined as the combination of being able to turn defeat to victory in an appropriately difficult fight and doing so in the time scale established by the amount of time it takes for combat to have ended. (Let's call this the substantiveness test)
So a combat oriented character should be able to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in combat situations, but so should everyone else? No thanks. I get that you're saying here that CMs can do so when the jaws are bigger and more menacing then another character type, but no. Further, why do you need to make up words for the purpose of your created test? Substantial works just fine.
Do you have a word to describe the quality of being substantive? "Substantial test" doesn't grammatically work to convey the meaning.
The combat character needs to be able to do the most to swing a fight, but at the same time everyone needs to be able to have an impact due to the specific nature of combat. If the hacker can set the sam up to land some easy kills (force multipliers) or notably diminish the ability of the other side to do the runners harm (defense multipliers, in effect), that can be enough depending on the strength of the effect.
Premise 2b: While communication can be useful, on the tactical scale of Shadowrun combat messing with it will not be a determining element of the fight in an noticeable way in enough cases to pass the substantiveness test.
Tac nets confer bonuses to hit rolls. They could mean the difference between life and death.
If and only if the enemy is using a high rating rating tacnet and making full use of it. Not common enough - and if they are, they'll have strong enough security that you're not gonna be able to hack or decrypt it in a combat time frame, thus failing the test.
Premise 2c: Blinding a single target does not take away their damage overall - they may still attack using the blind-fire rules. Again, this fails the substantiveness test.
Spells exist that reduce visibility for targets. The designers of the game felt it was viable enough to include in the game, and that's good enough for me.
There's a big difference between including it and making it the sole or primary method of influencing combat. A very big difference. Once there's a viable primary method (plenty of combat spells for that), then all the more seldomly used tactical options are plugged into a very different analysis of viability.
Conclusion: Hacker characters need to be able to do more than that, and they need to be able to do it in a small enough time scale that it matters that they can do it.
Another faulty conclusion based on faulty premise.
As I've now made evident the faulty logic employed for over half the argument and contributing premises, (and exhausted the entirety of my lunch break arguing meaningless bullshit like an asshole) I'll call the job done.
Except that you've failed to truly prove any of these premises to be faulty.
