Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: Vaarsuvius on <09-02-17/1031:56>
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Hey I've got access to pretty much all the books, but a lot of them aren't well indexed so instead of spending several hours that I don't exactly have seaching for something I don't know exists I'm going to ask the community if they happen to know.
Is there any way to increase a melee weapon's Accuracy? And I don't care how costly it is. I'm the GM and the guy in question is for lack of a better word a Prime runner, but much more powerful than the PC's. The point is the guy has a massive dice pool, but is restricted to the shitty accuracy of his shitty weapon (he's using a combat knife on purpose, for character reasons). I know there is called shot, but...
In any case I'd appreciate any advice you have.
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Custom grip I believe.
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A character using the shoddy accuracy of a shoddy weapon should expect shoddy results to be honest. Primerunner or no.
With that said, I wouldn't call a combat knife's 6 accuracy "shitty." That's above average when compared to even most firearms. Slap a Personalized Grip on (I don't know if cost was ever listed for it, but I use 100 Nuyen) and now it is on par with a wireless enabled monowhip.
5th edition did that on purpose so massive dicepoolss don't allow people to snipe an ant off of a moving eagle with a rusty short barreled six-shooter (without edge and serious luck that is).
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Are there any qualities that he can purchase?
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Not aware of any qualities but if an adept he has a power for that.
While I get the intent of accuracy it's math is fairly screwy. You start losing hits with fairly moderate pools on a lot of weapons. It's like they based the math under the assumption of starting character without cyber or other enhancements. Either that or they thought losing hits all the damn time would be fun. And it's weird to say without luck you can never shoot/stab better than a much less talented dude with the same weapon. I'd have preferred a dice pool modifier. I'd prefer shooting the wings off a flies with a crappy gun due to dice pool inflation to all dice past x point are usually pointless. If they had to go with a limit it should be your physical limit(which is part of being the skilled) and the weapon would modify that. Best knife guy in the world should be better than average enhanced pro in the world no matter what knife they are using. And not just for the odd bad roll.
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Custom grip.
an adept power (Increased accuracy),
and I believe attuning meta-magic can do it as well.
Most characters will be hard pressed to take advantage of an accuracy 7 or greater; As 7 means a pool of 21.
Going passed that is going to mean a lot diminishing returns.
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All limits do the same thing they are squeezing the bell curve, into a more normalized result. With accuracy it very interesting particularly for melee where defense pools can easily exceed offensive pools
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Custom grip.
an adept power (Increased accuracy),
and I believe attuning meta-magic can do it as well.
Most characters will be hard pressed to take advantage of an accuracy 7 or greater; As 7 means a pool of 21.
Going passed that is going to mean a lot diminishing returns.
Yes and no. A point over your average roll will come into play like 40% of the time (roughly). So if you are 21 dice you would be well servered by having 8 or even 9 accuracy.
But to your main point I mostly agree. Diminishing returns are less a thing for NPCs.
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Are there any qualities that he can purchase?
Not that i know of. Most add to dicepool. Magic of course has some solutions. I believe an adept power. (Ninja'd)
Statistically, for Accuracy 6 to become a common issue, both the attacker and defender need to both have dicepools of 18+ consistently. If your group has hit that level of pool consistency with environment, positioning, and such, then yeah...in a knife fight, it's going to come down to edge and luck alone.
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All limits do the same thing they are squeezing the bell curve, into a more normalized result. With accuracy it very interesting particularly for melee where defense pools can easily exceed offensive pools
Yeah and in many cases it's over squeezing imo. I have seen 0 fun gained from limits but I've seen plenty of irritated players because their good roll(or average roll in some cases)is stolen from them. And spending edge just feels like a tax. I don't see a easy fix as the weapons are balanced around it. I initially thought accuracy would work but it's one of the big factors that irritated my players with 5e, not the reason we stopped but one of the beefs. Rules wise every edition has its flaws so it's a find the flaws that irritate you the least thing.
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I think there is a fairly easy solution. Up to your accuracy hits count 1-1, after your accuracy hits count 2-1 round down. So say you have an accuracy 7 weapon and you roll 12 hits (it happens trust me) well 7 of those hits count normally, then we are left with 5 hits, then divide by 2; 2.5, round down 2, plus the earlier 7, nine total hits. This seems like it would satisfy everyone. Even if it doesn't I'm implementing it in my games because accuracy kind of sucks.
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That's a fairly slick house rule. Much easier than trying to rewrite every weapon.
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accuracy kind of sucks.
Did you play 4th?
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Wireless on Cyberarm and machine sprites running diagnostics on it is another way to boost melee limits.
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Increasing accuracy can be done through magic:
An Increase Gear Limit spell (quickened) will work for an NPC with no problems.
If the NPC is an adept or mage they can also use imbued items - those gain a limit increase based on the number of initiations
Dual Wielding with the Two-Weapon Attack Martial Arts technique increase base DV and Limit by 1
Called Shots (vitals) reduce your dice pool and add +2DV so it's less likely you are wasting hits.
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Wireless on Cyberarm and machine sprites running diagnostics on it is another way to boost melee limits.
That depends on the GM. Most I know, myself included, wouldn't allow that to transfer to weapon accuracy. Filled to the brink with extra cheese.
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Wireless on Cyberarm and machine sprites running diagnostics on it is another way to boost melee limits.
That depends on the GM. Most I know, myself included, wouldn't allow that to transfer to weapon accuracy. Filled to the brink with extra cheese.
You try to be a melee technomancer with an always wireless on cyberarm that has mysterious icons floating about it and see how cheesy it feels ;)
But seriously... would it be less cheesy for implanted weapons?
To OP:
A combat knife with a personalized grip has a solid accuracy of 7. Also... if this is for an NPC, just set the accuracy higher and call it a monowire knife or something.
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Does a implanted gun use the arm's physical limit or accuracy? Cheese as in munchkin territory. There are countless threads on this forum that go on for pages arguing about what diagnostics power applies to so i won't delve firther on the topic. Was just wanting OP to be aware that GAs don't always let that fly for some good reasons amd if he does or for his NPC, his players will be able to do the same. Also, I would shy away from handwaiving in unobtainable weapon that is better than every weapon just to make an NPC tougher...
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Got to crack down on those munchkin melee technomancers. Can't have players playing anything remotely outside of the standard archetype.
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Does a implanted gun use the arm's physical limit or accuracy?
many implanted melee weapons physical limits (particularly their arm limits). For an implanted gun, it has its own accuracy. I am totally fine running diagnostics on a smartlinked gun. If it's built into an arm, why would running diagnostics on the arm work different?
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Wireless on Cyberarm and machine sprites running diagnostics on it is another way to boost melee limits.
If magic can increase accuracy why can't tech magic?
I don't see any issue with this so long as the weapon in question can be wirelessly active
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Thus why I won't delve into an off topic discussion in this thread. Search function will show that this comes up often with plenty of discussions on both sides. Some GMs allow it, some GMs don't, and others have houserulings. I'm not arguing that one way is right nor that one way is wrong.
I personally wouldn't allow it because I follow the idea that if it's not what limits the roll, it doesn't affect it. I had a player try claiming his cybereye affected by Diagnostics added to essentially every roll because he is almost always using his eyes when fighting/crafting/driving etc. That's the cheese i avoid by playing it that way.
HOWEVER, that is just ONE way of playing it. Literally the only reason I even said anything was to point out to the OP that they should look into discussions on the matter before implementing it.
I personally have never had an accuracy 6 or 7 melee weapon become an issue anyways. So, with that...
End of Line.
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You are right that it is easy to abuse. The lack of clear rulings make it the line difficult though.
My goto minimum is:
Is it a device?
Is the wireless on?
Does the device offer a wireless dicepool bonus?
Then diagnostics would work when using that device on tasks that provide the wireless dicepool bonus.
The diagnostics on the arm would not meet this criteria, so a more expansive ruling would be necessary.
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And of course, Push the Limits with Edge before the roll lets you ignore all limits.
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Cougar Fine blades, which are combat Knifes have a base accuracy of 7 with custom grip thats Acc 8 which supports a dice pool of 24 before you should statistically start having problems with clipping hits.
As for the general merits of Accuracy in the game it gives them a way to differentiate weapons and make it not just boil down to best DV and -AP combo and no one ever bothers to look at another weapon until a new book drops and a new piece of gear takes the crown as the best DV and -AP combo. In general the paradigm they have is you have the massive hard hitting weapons IE highest base DVs and -APs have lower accuracy stats to reflect their slow and cumbersome nature. While they can make lighter precision weapons that have lower DV and AP stats still attractive because they can have good accuracy scores. Take the Katana (Acc 7 Str+3 -3AP Reach 1) vs Combat Axe (Acc 4 Str+5 -4AP Reach2) as kinda the flag ship examples. If you remove accuracy then the Combat axe wins hands down every time as its hits harder by 2 DV and -1AP and also gives a reach dice or two against anyone not wielding a reach 2 weapon. It gives them different ways to make weapons attractive as well as some general sanity checks, I have been frustrated when a good roll gets accuracy capped just like any other player has in 5th but It also gives people outs cause I have been on the wrong end of a Trog Sec officer with a combat Axe and 20+ dice to use it knowing that I am staring down the shaft of a 20DV -4 AP base damage attack and been insanely happy that I am thinking OMG I only have to get to 5 hits on my defense test to dodge that cause I am paste if it connects. Their are exceptions to the bid DV and -AP weapons have crap accuracy but they are typically saddled with other draw backs. Sniper Rifles being one of the glaring exceptions to this, But they are typically saddled with SA only fire modes, poor ammo capacity and hard to reload types as well as other problems like loosing Acc rating if your in melee and such. If your accuracy capping your hits on a regular basis its a sign that your dice pool is high enough and you should look to other avenues of character advancement or as Jack suggested start getting fancy and buy some martial arts maneuvers that let you sack dice to get cool and nifty affects on your attacks while your at it.
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That's some of why accuracy exists and why it's hard to just remove it. I do dig the house rule suggestion above to make it 2 hits to increase DV once accuracy is hit. But you could have done that with dice pool penalties and bonuses. It also does create a smaller bell curve which is I think it's primary purpose. But you know what would do that far better, the GM. Have basic guidelines like street level campaigns 6-10 dice pools, starting runner 9-12 etc. give them campaign guidelines and let the GM and players use it.
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Limit is cost of doing business in 5th, and honestly I find it comforting. I know when put an accuracy 5 weapon on my wizard, i only need to hit 15 dice before that pool is set. Beyond that I don't think it's actually hard to bypass it, or to find away to work within it. If it becomes a major issue for a player then have them go down a path where limit isn't going to strong factor, Social, Unarmed, magic packing lots reagents, or just run super edge human, with lucky and dare devil, and 8 edge odds are you can edge ever single roll you care about in any given game.
I would advice against any house rule that reduced limit impact, there are plenty of options already on how to do it. Ether have fore sight to start with or begin working towards a new path that solves it.
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Limit is cost of doing business in 5th, and honestly I find it comforting.
Honestly, I like it too. Less chance of me John-Wayne-ing it against a tank with a pistol and WINNING. As badass as that would be as a Sammie, it's... admittedly OP.
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Does it do that. I can still take out the heaviest armored ground vehicles with a pistol. Without a cap I might take it out a pass earlier. Ruger apds ammo smart link can get 15dv and 6ap. At best it penalizes specialization so people broaden their characters.
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I agree with Shinobi on this. Except in a few cases, such as with improvised weapon accuracy, or trying to heal low essence characters, limits do little except punish specialization and rolling well, since unless you intentionally do dump stats, it is pretty easy to have a respectable limit for Physical, Mental, and Social, at the least. And few people will be getting dice pools of 3x their limit outside of their specialization. It really only serves to make things flat, like coke that's been open for a day, or force people to rely on Edge more. In 4E, I think I used Edge all of two or three times, across all my characters, and two of those were to reduce crit glitches to glitches. In 5th, the limits are mainly there to make you spend resources to not bother dealing with them, it seems.
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Yes you have to spend resources, yes you have to have plan, and yes you can't just build the same way we have for 4 previous editions. It's worth looking into called shots, its worth checking out martial arts, it's worth putting points in something other the just being the best at shooting/hitting someone. It's comforting to know you have hit respectable limit, and you can achieve a level effective without there some sort of topless mountain that just keeps going up.
It helps make unarmed build viable, it helps stop combat axe packing troll from rolling every table. Creativity is not a bad thing, find ways to encourage it is good for everyone.
Squeezing the bell curve doesn't make it flat, it just means the very unlikely isn't going to happen without edge getting involved, and that is working as intended.
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Yes you have to spend resources, yes you have to have plan, and yes you can't just build the same way we have for 4 previous editions. It's worth looking into called shots, its worth checking out martial arts, it's worth putting points in something other the just being the best at shooting/hitting someone. It's comforting to know you have hit respectable limit, and you can achieve a level effective without there some sort of topless mountain that just keeps going up.
It helps make unarmed build viable, it helps stop combat axe packing troll from rolling every table. Creativity is not a bad thing, find ways to encourage it is good for everyone.
Squeezing the bell curve doesn't make it flat, it just means the very unlikely isn't going to happen without edge getting involved, and that is working as intended.
Here here. While I never played other editions, I really like the concept of limits!
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Yes you have to spend resources, yes you have to have plan, and yes you can't just build the same way we have for 4 previous editions. It's worth looking into called shots, its worth checking out martial arts, it's worth putting points in something other the just being the best at shooting/hitting someone. It's comforting to know you have hit respectable limit, and you can achieve a level effective without there some sort of topless mountain that just keeps going up.
It helps make unarmed build viable, it helps stop combat axe packing troll from rolling every table. Creativity is not a bad thing, find ways to encourage it is good for everyone.
Squeezing the bell curve doesn't make it flat, it just means the very unlikely isn't going to happen without edge getting involved, and that is working as intended.
Well, you just put it a hell of a lot more eloquently than I was going to. I was going to say something to the tune of "It's nice to have an encouragement to diversify my skills, rather than have a Sammie who's got one skillset: Gun."
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Yes you have to spend resources, yes you have to have plan, and yes you can't just build the same way we have for 4 previous editions. It's worth looking into called shots, its worth checking out martial arts, it's worth putting points in something other the just being the best at shooting/hitting someone. It's comforting to know you have hit respectable limit, and you can achieve a level effective without there some sort of topless mountain that just keeps going up.
It helps make unarmed build viable, it helps stop combat axe packing troll from rolling every table. Creativity is not a bad thing, find ways to encourage it is good for everyone.
Squeezing the bell curve doesn't make it flat, it just means the very unlikely isn't going to happen without edge getting involved, and that is working as intended.
Well, you just put it a hell of a lot more eloquently than I was going to. I was going to say something to the tune of "It's nice to have an encouragement to diversify my skills, rather than have a Sammie who's got one skillset: Gun."
That's called adding challenges that a pistol can't solve in my games.
Most of the things Marcus put up for why it's good is my why it's bad list. Its system mastery to get past a bad system. There are enough rewards in character design as is. Knowing the rules well enough to effectively bypass limits isn't a plus. If limits had a actual point then well rules knowledge bypassing it defeats the purpose of the rule. If it's not actually intended to limit it's just a hoop to jump through with rules knowledge.
Motivation to spread out your skills is a campaign decision not a rule to slap you down with.
And whether or not I can get to 100 dice doesn't effect if 12 dice is respectable or not. My challenges determine that. With or without limits my players spread out skills in play. They get sick of not being able to bluff or whatever, they already are a good ebough shot and it costs a lot of karma to raise skills to high levels. Increasing costs did more than enough mechanically on that front another rule slap down was unnecessary.
End of the day if spreading out your skil set was important you already do that. And limits don't do much to limit but they do take away lucky rolls without a edge tax. Just like when someone rolls a nat 20 in d&d why as a GM would I want to take that moment from them.
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I could go 20 rounds/posts with you point by point on this Shinobi, but I don't see any value in doing so. We disagree, I like limits and you don't. I think 5th works well, and I think limits are real part of that.
From what you have said you see it as forcing an edge tax. I don't think I'm gonna change your mind, I'm perfectly happy to agree to disagree on this.
If you try out that house rules please let me know what your results are.
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He will not have anything but good to say about it, hes unhappy with limits so anything that gets rid of them will make him happy. Its a Pink Mohawk vs Trechcoat and mirror shades issue. Lots of stuff can be done in a Mohawk game that is not gonna work in a trechcoat game.
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I'm going to have to side with Shinobi on this one. 5th doesn't work well. It works OK, at best. 4th might not have been the best system out there for a classless, leveless system (any of the last three editions of HERO System gets that nod, in my book), but it wasn't bad. Most of the problems with 4th were caused by 'legacy' issues, like the scaling Karma costs that made advancement pretty much impossible unless you did the D&D equivalent of an entire dungeon (which would normally get you 4-5 levels), to get a single level. This was exacerbated by the difference between point buy and karma, encouraging people to 'front load' their main skills as much as possible, and then diversify later, which is why you'd see a lot of people with 5 and 6 rating skills in their main thing, and then a smattering of rating 1 skills after a while in play. Otherwise, the main issues in 4th were what normally happens when a system gets several splatbooks written, and players have enough time on their hands to look for gamebreaking combos, and is nothing that can't be handled with the Phonebook Method.
5th... 5th got hit by the nostalgia train hard. The crapsack that is the Matrix, and the utter abuse TMs have suffered, are merely the most visible parts of this. Returning to Priorities, which basically enforces de facto classes (especially when combined with the exponential jump in gear costs), and the introduction of limits were a hamfisted approach to try and counter the meme of people bringing a box of d6s to their Shadowrun games, or people figuring out that they could make a decent mage/hacker, or face/Samurai, or... well, any hybrid character, really. There are a few cases where Limits make sense. Gear imposing limits on accuracy or on certain skills makes sense. Hell, it is basically D&D 3.5's Armor Check Penalty, transcribed to SR. But for the most part, Limits are basically a resource sink. Their only purpose is to make you spend resources to raise them, or force you into spending resources in other areas. And given that they kept the godawful Karma white elephant that just won't fucking die, making advancement equivalent to nil unless you're one of the classes that can measurably improve with nuyen...
Yeah, 5th works well is like saying politicians are trustworthy.
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He will not have anything but good to say about it, hes unhappy with limits so anything that gets rid of them will make him happy. Its a Pink Mohawk vs Trechcoat and mirror shades issue. Lots of stuff can be done in a Mohawk game that is not gonna work in a trechcoat game.
I run a pretty trenchcoat game so I'm not sure it's that. But yes, I probably will like the house rule that mitigates limits.
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I'm going to have to side with Shinobi on this one. 5th doesn't work well. It works OK, at best. 4th might not have been the best system out there for a classless, leveless system (any of the last three editions of HERO System gets that nod, in my book), but it wasn't bad. Most of the problems with 4th were caused by 'legacy' issues, like the scaling Karma costs that made advancement pretty much impossible unless you did the D&D equivalent of an entire dungeon (which would normally get you 4-5 levels), to get a single level. This was exacerbated by the difference between point buy and karma, encouraging people to 'front load' their main skills as much as possible, and then diversify later, which is why you'd see a lot of people with 5 and 6 rating skills in their main thing, and then a smattering of rating 1 skills after a while in play. Otherwise, the main issues in 4th were what normally happens when a system gets several splatbooks written, and players have enough time on their hands to look for gamebreaking combos, and is nothing that can't be handled with the Phonebook Method.
5th... 5th got hit by the nostalgia train hard. The crapsack that is the Matrix, and the utter abuse TMs have suffered, are merely the most visible parts of this. Returning to Priorities, which basically enforces de facto classes (especially when combined with the exponential jump in gear costs), and the introduction of limits were a hamfisted approach to try and counter the meme of people bringing a box of d6s to their Shadowrun games, or people figuring out that they could make a decent mage/hacker, or face/Samurai, or... well, any hybrid character, really. There are a few cases where Limits make sense. Gear imposing limits on accuracy or on certain skills makes sense. Hell, it is basically D&D 3.5's Armor Check Penalty, transcribed to SR. But for the most part, Limits are basically a resource sink. Their only purpose is to make you spend resources to raise them, or force you into spending resources in other areas. And given that they kept the godawful Karma white elephant that just won't fucking die, making advancement equivalent to nil unless you're one of the classes that can measurably improve with nuyen...
Yeah, 5th works well is like saying politicians are trustworthy.
I think your looking at fourth through rose colored glasses. Fourth had plenty of glaring issues, drones, bioware/cyberare split, simple simple double tap being ridiculously overwhelming effective, drones, the wireless matrix, simply being some of the most visible issues. The Decker completely ceased to exist in 4th (My home game literally developed and ran the shadow6 custom OS with supped up com-links running agents to handle anything we needed a decker for). And in the official Missions mods I never even saw one that wasn't npc. Die pools were huge to no great effect. 5th closed all the major broken loop holes, making essence really essence again, and made hacking viable through wireless active bonuses. Is the 5th perfect? Of course not. I also like the Hero System myself, it's very clean and it's well developed and further I have had a great time playing an urban fantasy game in Heroes. But that's not SR. When it's time to play then for now I like 5th. Plenty of things need to be addressed, and they being addressed, Alchemy was terrible at release, the first magic in general was pretty lacking. But magic expansion books later and alchemy is both interesting and potentially very effective. 5th is still a work in progress. Data trails was ok, it has some good ideas, but it needs further expansion. The next hacker book is in 2018. I'm no fan boy for the dev's ether. I perfectly willing to say if something sucks, for example I don't like Anarchy. Why have a weird rules light system suddenly dropped into a system that's working? Why do this to your development team and customer base?
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I honestly never had trouble with drones or the wireless matrix. I was able to do some really cool stuff with Drones, like when I made my AI Street Samurai, since they were easy to mod into what you wanted. But then, I came to Shadowrun from D&D 3.5 and HERO 4th/5th, so maybe I was used to more complexity? I guess I can see how they would be difficult for someone coming from M&M or one of the rules-lite systems like the Window. But once you learned them, I never had trouble doing what I needed to do as a hacker or rigger.
I will admit that 'single-class' hackers went away for the most part in 4e. But other than... well, pretty much other than Sammmies who did nothing but shoot and bash stuff everyone was more hybridized. That's not a bad thing. In a group of 5, where you need to cover Matrix, Magic, Guns, Talking, Covert Ops, and Transport, having people who had a primary and a secondary role was a good thing. This gave you redundancy, so if the party got split, or the specialist got tagged, then you weren't completely hosed for the rest of the run. With 5e forcing riggers and hackers to not only be 'single-class', but not being able to hang back in safety, your whole group can get fucked in a hurry if someone scores a lucky hit on the decker, for instance.
Hacking was viable before, especially if you sidelined in rigging. Even the trope of hacking the corpsec's eyes was possible, though only in the case of those who linked their eyes to their PAN for tactical reasons, or for some stupid reason left the wireless on. But a hacker not being good in the meat world wasn't a problem, because they were usually on Overwatch, editing camera and sensor feeds, opening doors, silencing alarms, and so on, from the safety of the van or other secure area. That's like complaining that the Bard in D&D doesn't hit like a Barbarian or sling fireballs like the Wizard. But 5E kicked that in the balls, and then decided to fuck with everyone else with wireless bonuses so that hackers didn't feel like they got shat on specifically (that 'honor' was reserved for TMs). It was a case of fixing things that weren't broken, and fucking it up worse than before. Which explains most of what you need to know about the 5e matrix. Like the old programmer's joke about having 36 bugs to fix, so you patch one, and now have 87 bugs to fix.
5th is a work in progress, yes. But they should have held off on 5th until they defucked things, instead of going whole hog on the wonderful 'Year of Shadowrun' that fizzled into utter crap. Things like limits add additional complexity where things were already fucked up enough (I give you alchemy, folks), there are parts that are demonstrably worse than their 4e versions (weapon and vehicle mods, to say nothing about the lack of spell creation rules), there are sacred cows that should have been sent to the butcher a long time ago (Priority generation and scaling Karma costs to advance), and there are areas of the game that need a ground up rewrite instead of a Data Trails patch job (TMs).
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To be clear Shinobi I was not saying your were a Mohawk player, I was saying that your dislike of limits is a personal style / opinion issue and was basically not up for being changed. Just like some people enjoy the Mohawk games and some people dont enjoy them. If your a supper hardcore Trenchcoat guy your not gonna be happy in a super Pink Mohawk game and vice versa.
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Limits are an interesting idea, and I agree that weapon accuracy should matter. I remember reading a story in the Gunsmith Cats manga, where Rally manages to take a mugger's pistol, ready to use it against a more serious threat, only to notice that the gun she just nabbed is a cheap piece of junk that will be uselessly inaccurate outside of close range - and this is coming from a character who habitually disarms people by shooting off their thumbs.
The rules can be wonky in implementation. When you are using a low-accuracy weapon and are going to probably lose hits anyways, you might as well make a called shot, or even split your dice pool with a multiple attack, since the lower dice pool won't matter. So you have the guy with the combat axe or wielding a shotgun swinging at two opponents or taking headshots, while the guy with the katana or the light pistol makes standard attacks.
If you are making a combat hyperspecialist, though, don't forget the very best way to keep all of your hits. The Revels In Murder quality. Pay that Edge tax... and get a refund. ;)