[Falconer]

Actually firefights offensive and defensive abilities don't involve physical melee combat at all.  In fact, they stress AVOIDING melee in favor of guns while staying at point blank range!

Lets see... reduced penalty for firing a gun in melee!
Increased ability to *DODGE* (not block or parry which would be using a gun as a club in melee)
Increased ability to avoid getting shot while in melee (errata)

So yes... an unarmed requirement isn't really all that necessary (not that I disagree clubs or dodge isn't a good skill pick for this character).

[_Pax_]

Actually firefights offensive and defensive abilities don't involve physical melee combat at all.  In fact, they stress AVOIDING melee in favor of guns while staying at point blank range!

  No, it stresses firing guns in melee.

  And if you have no hand-to-hand combat skill at all, how exactly are you going to RESIST having that gun kicked, punched, twisted, or otherwise taken out of your hand, by the very guy you are in melee with ...?

[Eye Eternal]

I agree obviously with pax, its gun-fu. And you can keep your lethal rounds, and still subdue with pistol butt attacks and things of the like, without HAVING to make dodge rolls, or needing the dodge skill, so you can optimize on a single skill instead of multiple. It also opens the use of some of the maneuvers in martial arts that don't involve specifically shooting. Like if wielding a revolver thats is, oh no, out of ammo. Complex action to reload a revolver ONLY if using a fast loader, so thainit pass you are out of or low on ammo, slap someone with a gun. You may have another pass, and if you dropped that guy you were in melee with with that gun butt, you can shoot at someone not close to you with that last bullet.

[Falconer]

Pax... I already answered that....

Firefight gives bonuses to MELEE DODGE.

Everyone always goes on about how you roll reaction + unarmed/clubs/blades.   They all forget that you can also roll reaction + Dodge.  (full defense is dodge x2).

Yes it's all about sticking guns into someones gut and pulling the trigger... despite the fluff... all the abilities point at not using melee at all, but avoiding it (dodge) and continuing to pump rounds at point blank with no reduction in efficacy.


Eye:
The martial art gives no mechanical bonuses whatsoever to actually pistol whipping someone using the clubs skill... or with an improvised weapon like a gun.

So feel free to say it's gun-fu... but the stress is on the 'gun' side of that rather than the 'fu'

[Eye Eternal]

Ok ponder this fal.
You have a 5 agi and say 5 dodge, with a spec in melee dodge. You roll 5+5+5+2 on full defensive.
With the pistol as club spec you can eek out 2 more dice 5 agi+5dodge+5club+2dodge spec+2club spec. And even with the +1 to dodge from the MA advantages its more dice to block it than simply dodge. You could save yourself 10bp, or 20 karma and just take the bonus to firing in melee to negate the minus you normally get and screw the extra dodge, since you now have a larger pool my way anyhow. And you can also get in the face of someone else with a pistol and hand out minus modifiers of your own by threatening as melee, throwing a pistol whip and shooting in the combat turn. Using maneuvers like finishing move, riposte, multistrike, and two weapon style. (Which would allow you to BLOCK and still attack on full defense with larger pool as I pointed out) I happen to like heavy pistols, which often have smaller clips, so keeping ammo by melee is dandy. And read the description of firefight, "shooting as much as punching and kicking" in essence also meaning likely beat someone senseless. As I said gun-fu.

Lets also take a look from a gm standpoint, you try to dodge and glitch as opposed to block and glitch. I would prefer a glitched block with a weapon to a glitched dodge. Likely dodge will end up with you falling down and after damage, thats a test to even stand back up with a melee attacker right over you. Glitched block, oops my weapon breaks and I STILL crack your face open with my non-working gun.

[Critias]

Ok ponder this fal.
You have a 5 agi and say 5 dodge, with a spec in melee dodge. You roll 5+5+5+2 on full defensive.
With the pistol as club spec you can eek out 2 more dice 5 agi+5dodge+5club+2dodge spec+2club spec. And even with the +1 to dodge from the MA advantages its more dice to block it than simply dodge. You could save yourself 10bp, or 20 karma and just take the bonus to firing in melee to negate the minus you normally get and screw the extra dodge, since you now have a larger pool my way anyhow.

Right.  Or you can take no Clubs skill at all, because Firefight gives you bonuses to shooting at point blank range, so instead of ever clubbing people with your guns, you use your guns to shoot them.  You use Dodge for defense (both in melee and at range), Pistols for offense (both close and at range), and don't need the extra Clubs skill for anything, or a decent Strength score to go with it (which then frees you up to be that much better at Agility, Reaction, or whatever else).  Both builds are valid.  Neither one is "right" or "wrong," it all comes down to what a given character wants to focus on. 

In a perfect world, sure, anyone who's supposed to be fighting in melee would have the whole Close Combat Group -- because, for instance, no one ever just teaches you knife fighting, you'll get a little grappling in there, some kicks, some elbows, and everything you learn to do with a blade you probably practice with something else -- but that's in a perfect world.  In Shadowrun, with the abstraction of the melee combat rules, that just doesn't happen.  It doesn't matter in the real world that Filipino and Japanese martial artists (just using Kali and Kendo/Kenjutsu as examples, off the top of my head) have been using sticks to practice their sword/knife/machete work for years and years, the two skills are completely different in Shadowrun's reality.

And accepting Shadowrun's reality is an important part of looking at, and designing, a workable character.  In actual character creation, folks are scraping by for points, and sometimes it's just plain not worth it to try and shoehorn in Unarmed, Clubs, and the kitchen sink when your character's main theme is "gunfighter."

[_Pax_]

Ok ponder this fal.
You have a 5 agi and say 5 dodge, with a spec in melee dodge. You roll 5+5+5+2 on full defensive.
With the pistol as club spec you can eek out 2 more dice 5 agi+5dodge+5club+2dodge spec+2club spec. And even with the +1 to dodge from the MA advantages its more dice to block it than simply dodge.

Or take some Unarmed, use a single pistol, and OH HEY, look at that, your other hand is there, useful for punching, grappling, etc.

IOW: there's more than one direction to take the Firefight martial art in.

[Eye Eternal]

Ok ponder this fal.
You have a 5 agi and say 5 dodge, with a spec in melee dodge. You roll 5+5+5+2 on full defensive.
With the pistol as club spec you can eek out 2 more dice 5 agi+5dodge+5club+2dodge spec+2club spec. And even with the +1 to dodge from the MA advantages its more dice to block it than simply dodge. You could save yourself 10bp, or 20 karma and just take the bonus to firing in melee to negate the minus you normally get and screw the extra dodge, since you now have a larger pool my way anyhow.

Right.  Or you can take no Clubs skill at all, because Firefight gives you bonuses to shooting at point blank range, so instead of ever clubbing people with your guns, you use your guns to shoot them.  You use Dodge for defense (both in melee and at range), Pistols for offense (both close and at range), and don't need the extra Clubs skill for anything, or a decent Strength score to go with it (which then frees you up to be that much better at Agility, Reaction, or whatever else).  Both builds are valid.  Neither one is "right" or "wrong," it all comes down to what a given character wants to focus on. 

In a perfect world, sure, anyone who's supposed to be fighting in melee would have the whole Close Combat Group -- because, for instance, no one ever just teaches you knife fighting, you'll get a little grappling in there, some kicks, some elbows, and everything you learn to do with a blade you probably practice with something else -- but that's in a perfect world.  In Shadowrun, with the abstraction of the melee combat rules, that just doesn't happen.

In actual character creation, folks are scraping by for points, and sometimes it's just plain not worth it to try and shoehorn in Unarmed, Clubs, and the kitchen sink when your character's main theme is "gunfighter."

But what maneuvers do you use? A better gunfighter you would become by taking the advantages, very true, but as far as martial art, you benefit so much more from using some of the maneuvers you can get as well. That was more my point. Being a martial artist I just in my mind's eye see it being a tad rounded out. Plus just wanted to show I didn't not think of double dodge, just that I didn't forget the extra dice from more spec. But good point about not needing a big str score the "gun only" way of building. 

[Falconer]

Eye:
You're completely missing the point... yes you can conceivably do better with both... and with the investiture of a LOT MORE BP/karma.  (and yes I've had GM's disallow the use of two weapon fighting with ranged weapons gun-fu   , yes I disagree with only allowing it for attacking with a single melee weapon while holding the second in reserve; but that's well off point).

4 points in clubs is 4 points in something else you might really want instead.

But if you don't want to spend those points there... you can make a perfectly viable melee gun-fighter without dropping a point into any melee skill.

The point of the post was to disprove that it was NECESSARY to have a melee skill to make use of martial arts at all.  As far as maneuvers for a gunfighter... Watchful guard is pretty buff... so is full offense when you're not worried about melee.  (full offense kinda sucks for melee fighters in comparison).

[Lethe]

You also waste gun slots for melee hardening.

You might be subject to the improvised weapon negative dice pool modifier.

As soon as you use one gun for shooting, for that round it might not qualify for wielding two melee weapons as required to gain advantage of the two weapon style.

[Mournclaw]

I do see a problem in taking most martial arts without getting unarmed combat skill. It's not like you couldn't train for one thing specifically but suck at the rest... The problem is: When you practise, you get better at fighting as a side effect. And by rules you can't just "take" the skill "because it's a side effect"... Sadly enough

As a house rule of thumb, I'd say one point of a relevant skill(s) per a point of martial arts quality. For example, if you got two bonuses from firefight and one from kung fu, you'd take two of dodging and pistols and one point of unarmed combat. Of course the GM has to have the final word in this, but that's my suggestion.