[Wildcard]

Oh yes

Melee weapons now deal full STR + the weapon's DV

For example, a katana does (STR+3)P

<3 

[jamesfirecat]

I've had the chance to run combat using this system, and I'll tell you that it's just as Bull said.

Combat runs much smoother now, and now the guy with the highest initiative and most IPs hasn't killed half of the Opposing Force before the street samurai has had the chance to move.

If the street samurai isn't the guy with the highest initiative and the most IPs, fire your street samurai.  Being faster than the opposition and able to decisively engage the opposition while the rest of the party are still humming along to the elevator music and tying their shoelaces is the whole reason you bring him along.

I 4E increased reflexes made it so that mages/adepts tended to actually be noticeably faster than street Samuri, not to mention some technomancers who were controlling drones.


I honestly saw no change in 5e, the street Samuri can not be faster than the adept, but he can be noticeably tougher and have other fun goodies stored in his body to make him a better shot.

[Boomstick]

What WAS changed is that you cannot fire twice in one action phase.

You can, with multiattack.

It was changed to balance thing and to help even out combat. 

Guns were simply too powerful.

Guns are. Life's unfair. Overbalancing things that are not balanced in real life is a MMORPG disease. It has none to do with real RPG. Or at least, should not have.
And Guns were not so powerful, compared to spell, as spells bypassed armor (mostly), could prevent from being hit by said bullets, and so on.
And with differences in pools for close combat, I guess it was quite balanced with guns for damaging ability.

Firing a bow was effectively a complex action

Bows are slow, that's a fact.

Which meant you fired twice, doing a boatload more damage.

Against boatloads of armors. How much could you stack, with gel, form fitting and so on? Helmet even gave bonuses!

  And since frequently the guy using guns was also the guy with 3+ initiative passes, it really bogged combat down, espeically if you weren't a gun guy with multiple passes.

Yeah, while invoking a spirit and letting it wipe the floor for you is not unbalanced, especially because the spirit will be even more unkillable since you will do overall less damages, and will still be really fast and full of metacreature power that have not been nerfed down.
But hey, now it is same lenght actions, I guess it will be better to throw grenade belts around instead of packing this Ares Predator V;)

The idea was to flatten out the overall combat curve a little bit and to help keep everyone in the game more often.

Not sure it is the result.

[Reiper]

Boom, casters were also nerfed, or at least direct spells were nerfed.

Even though I play gun heavy characters usually, I do think that this is good overall for the game. People taking out two guys an IP did get out of hand in 4th ed, and I'm guilty of that too.

[Boomstick]

They were out of hand from the beginning of 1st ed. That's wired reflexes concept. And that would be even worse it while acting* 4 times faster, you did not artificially slow down against your opponent for them to be able to catch up with your move and dodge or defend.

*No, it is not "reacting". Cause then , you would not do 3 more times the same action in the same time space.

I know that mages were badly nerfed (in all meanings of badly). But that's why I proposed spirit invocation as a remedy to nerfed combat spell.
And actually, mental spells are not enough considered. They are really nasty. No need to hurt people directly. Just make them attack their allies. Or freeze while you throw that grenade belt toward them (and now it popped into my mind, just understood why there were so much grenades in the intro novel!;))

[Sichr]

Tends to more pink mohawk/military style. Do like.