[Lormyr]

Well, bear in mind that an Elf with attributes of 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 wan't in my example.  In my example, the Elf and Troll had equal values in all RELEVANT stats/skills.  So that elf in my example might have had 8 Charisma.  Went unspecified because Charisma wasn't relevant to the example of Close Combat.

Ok then, sure, but that doesn't really change my perception. With your relevant example being a troll with S9 B3 A3 R3 vs. an elf with S1 B3 A3 R3 you're basically saying "a strength based combat character has the advantage against a non-combat character". If you want the example to be an appropriate comparison the two characters need to be roughly equal in their field. The troll has 8 additional combat attributes over the elf. Of course he has the advantage, it's like an adult deciding to beat up children.

Give that elf a single maxed attribute and the rest average like the troll and your outcome will look very different. Give that elf all 8 missing points to make it truly even, and that strength troll is certain to lose without highly improbably superior rolls. A troll with S9 B3 A3 R3 vs. elf with S1 B5 A7 R5 for example, or even S4 B4 A5 R5 if you want a more balanced spread without dumping strength to show a strong dude vs. a ludicrously strong dude.

See what I mean?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

I think I slipped you while you posted.  I anticipated you making that point, and preemptively addressed it during my slip.

to repeat myself here on this page:

"Now, if you want to bring in more factors into the example besides the role of Strength, the demonstration becomes less stark.  But, hypothetically speaking, let's say it's two combatants, with 3s in all relevant stats except Combatant A has 6 Body and Combatant B has 6 STR.

Combatant B is gaining the edge advantage due to AR in the same way the Troll was in my earlier example.  But, A has an improved soak pool the Elf did not.

In the early rounds of the fight, A has the advantage.  Equal dice pools mean it's an even split as to who scores a hit, but with Body 6 Combatant A is likely suffering Zero accumulated damage for every random blow that lands, whereas Combatant B is likely accumulating 1 box of damage per each of A's random hits.  Barring edge, Combatant A is going to win.

But that's the rub.  Edge is EVERYTHING. And B is drowning A in it. B will probably accumulate some damage, but before long A will be ground down as the dice will go B's way as rerolls overpower chance.  B will get powerful Edge actions.  It's not as guaranteed as the earlier example, but B's higher Strength SHOULD carry the win over A's higher Body.  In practical terms, the early rounds would probably decide the ultimate outcome: A has to get B to a critical mass on wound penalties before the Edge turns the fight inevitably B's way."

[Lormyr]

Yep, I missed that while posting then editing. No worries.

Unless I have missed something (we are talking unarmed?), neither should gain edge on attack. Character A has AR 6/DR 6, character B has AR 9/DR 3. You need 4 or more to generate edge? If we are talking armed, then both will just generate edge on attack rolls.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Yep, I missed that while posting then editing. No worries.

Unless I have missed something (we are talking unarmed?), neither should gain edge on attack. Character A has AR 6/DR 6, character B has AR 9/DR 3. You need 4 or more to generate edge? If we are talking armed, then both will just generate edge on attack rolls.

Ah, yes. Fair to point out my math fail.  So yes that example does go to prove basically what everyone already knew anyway.. STR is not point for better than BOD.  Strength's advantage manifests in Edge, and you need to break that 4 pip threshold to get your benefit from STR, whereas every die of BOD/AGI gives you a more granular (and reliable) +1 die per point of investment.  Need to invest *heavily* into STR to ensure you get your benefit, or (perhaps more plausibly) simultaneously employ other AR enhancements (investing in Reaction/employing melee weapons, cyberware, etc)

[Lormyr]

It's all good man, we've all been off on math before.

I get your point - strength is potentially useful for edge gain. I don't disagree with that, but I do addendum that statement with saying it's so simple to ensure edge gain on attack with melee than strength is easily made irrelevant. Monofilament whip + reaction, implanted in a fingertip or cyberarm so wrest can go f itself, actually renders strength moot.

In addition to that, it's not just Body that is superior. Each of Agility, Body, and Reaction grossly outperforms Strength point for point. It is my pigheaded stubborn opinion that Strength should be the number one factor in determining how much damage a melee attack inflicts, with the weapon itself being a very close second. A troll with a Strength of 14 should be able to hit you with literally anything and expect to mangle you, where as those with more modest to good (3-7) will want an excellent weapon to ensure their power is delivered in the most advantageous way.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Well, doesn't it sound like "works as intended" when MFWs render investments in STR moot? It's not like you needed 6 STR in 5e when you used a MFW, either.

And yes, Edge Gain is really the main point here and yes there's lots of ways to get Edge, potentially meaning you don't need STR to get it.

But does it actually make sense to forfeit an avenue to gain edge? Particularly one that'd be fairly reliable in the form of high STR?  Because, there's always the possibility that whatever other avenues you rely on could be circumstantially denied.  There's certainly a point where "lots of ways to gain Edge" becomes a struggle to gain Edge once some options go off the table.  You can strategically "hedge a handicap" on your melee monster and eschew Strength, but that's just one more avenue you're willfully blocking yourself from using.  Not getting edge in melee while you have low STR is akin to striking out in baseball after spotting the pitcher a free strike.

...In addition to that, it's not just Body that is superior. Each of Agility, Body, and Reaction grossly outperforms Strength point for point. It is my pigheaded stubborn opinion that Strength should be the number one factor in determining how much damage a melee attack inflicts, with the weapon itself being a very close second. A troll with a Strength of 14 should be able to hit you with literally anything and expect to mangle you, where as those with more modest to good (3-7) will want an excellent weapon to ensure their power is delivered in the most advantageous way.

Well, it depends.  MOST of the time, yes BOD/AGI/REA give a superior benefit in the form of +dice on a point for point basis.  However, there's no substitute for STR in certain tasks.  Like chopping through barriers, lifting something heavy, and etc.  Maybe there should be "more" of such situations... but again the GM can say what attribute is relevant for any given skill test.  There's nothing stopping you from saying "attacks with axes and blunt weapons have to roll Close Combat + STR instead of + AGI".

[Lormyr]

The whip is just one example (the most egregious one). Even without adding more than 1 strength to other melee attacks, they were already balanced with comparatively solid ARs. Just like firearms though that is no guarantee, but on average, you should be looking decent.

I agree with you on the edge gain front and options. There will be times that not taking an option will be felt. That said, for the most part, hyperoptimizing will usually get you through fine.

And the problem with non-combat tasks that require strength is there is so much gear that neutralizes the need. In short, I firmly believe that any strength based melee build anyone designs will be outperformed in and out of combat (all those free attribute points from not having strength) by an agility/reaction build who dumped strength.

[Tecumseh]

What did they call the combined attribute? Body?

Anarchy calls it Strength.

Anarchy only has five attributes - Strength, Agility, Logic, Willpower, Charisma - which has a certain appeal to it from a game-design standpoint because each Attribute is used so frequently and is thus so valuable that dump stats become significant weaknesses that show up regularly rather than minor inconveniences that can be readily avoided.

Where I have had tremendous experience is unarmed combat - nearly 10 years of prize fighting, and more street brawls than I can remember.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, which I thought were interesting.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

...

And the problem with non-combat tasks that require strength is there is so much gear that neutralizes the need. In short, I firmly believe that any strength based melee build anyone designs will be outperformed in and out of combat (all those free attribute points from not having strength) by an agility/reaction build who dumped strength.

Well, despite the elfs and orks and wizards it's a science fiction setting. Anything that requires brute strength is justifiably better done by a tool or a machine than by elbow grease and putting your back into it.  There more modern the technology, the less important strength basically is, across the board.  You don't need to chop a tree down with an axe when you have a chainsaw.  You don't need people to hoist cargo when you have forklifts.  Etc.

So does that mean STR shouldn't factor in very often?  Surely being strong still has real-life, noncombat applications even in a world with chainsaws and forklifts, right?  Maybe the shadowrun requires your character to hike up to a hilltop.  In real life, being strong means you can probably hike up there without getting winded.  So maybe the GM decides that everyone who doesn't have at least X amount of STR gets some level(s) of the Fatigue status.  It takes real physical strength to drive NASCAR or a fighter jet.  If you're driving a high performance vehicle through some extreme stunts (and you're not in VR...) the GM might say you can't gain or spend edge if you have low STR.  Etc.

[Xenon]

The elf has a dumpstat, and the rest all average? This will never happen, and because of that...

It is not uncommon that, attribute wise, elf players prioritize charisma over strength. There, now the example is perfectly fine

You misunderstand. What I mean is that an elf with attributes of 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 has only 14 points, while a troll with 9 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 has 22. If you want the example to be appropriate that elf needs 8 more points spent, otherwise it was "rigged" from the start.

I agree with you about str and cha being common dump starts.

You misunderstand me I think....

It is not uncommon that troll dump charisma (in favor of strength) while elf dump strength (in favor of charisma).

So, rather than comparing an elf with 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 to a troll with 9 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 perhaps you can change the example to an elf with 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 8 vs a troll with 9 3 3 3 3 3 3 2.

Now they spend equal amount of attributes and it is no longer rigged and the example can be used to highlight that charisma don't seem to have an impact on unarmed combat while strength, unlike what some people seem to argue, does have an impact on unarmed combat.

The troll investing in strength (rather than charisma) will probably win against the elf that invested into charisma (rather than strength). Ergo, investing into Strength is not useless if you have a focus on unarmed combat.

It is maybe not a very useful attribute, but at least I think we can agree that it seem to have more impact on the outcome on unarmed combat than for example charisma.

Anarchy only has five attributes - Strength, Agility, Logic, Willpower, Charisma - which has a certain appeal to it from a game-design standpoint because each Attribute is used so frequently and is thus so valuable that dump stats become significant weaknesses that show up regularly rather than minor inconveniences that can be readily avoided.

Interesting. Thanks.

[Lormyr]

Thanks for sharing your experiences, which I thought were interesting.

Mostly shared as an explanation for my I am so deeply bothered by how the attribute's combat role was implemented.

Well, despite the elfs and orks and wizards it's a science fiction setting. Anything that requires brute strength is justifiably better done by a tool or a machine than by elbow grease and putting your back into it.

You're not wrong, and I also don't have a problem with that by itself, just a problem with that in conjunction with how little else the Attribute does being so divorced from a more prominent combat role.

You misunderstand me I think....

Ah, so I did. I understand what you meant now.

I find that example just as rigged, primarily for the reasons I highlighted to SSDR above you're basically saying your combat focused troll can beat up the non-combat focused elf face. Well no duh.

The troll investing in strength (rather than charisma) will probably win against the elf that invested into charisma (rather than strength). Ergo, investing into Strength is not useless if you have a focus on unarmed combat.

If you want a proper comparison here you need to make a strength based unarmed troll vs. an strength dumped but equal attribute unarmed elf. Anything less is not saying "Here is the use of strength", it is saying "The character with superior physical attributes wins vs. the character with less".

[adzling]

Where I have had tremendous experience is unarmed combat - nearly 10 years of prize fighting, and more street brawls than I can remember. During my prize fighting decade in my mid 20's, I wanted to learn Muay Thai badly, so moved to Thailand for a year. After 9 months of daily training I started prize fighting over there for the last 3 months of my journey. Things are very different over there. Their professional promotions do have weight classes that most of us would be familiar with. There are just as many (and the ones I fought in since I was not professional or recognized in the art) that don't have squat - they book whatever sells tickets. Literally every opponent I fought there was more skilled in Muay Thai than I was, but I had the benefit of completely dwarfing the average 140 lb. Thai fighter at 6'2" 230. Those guys were fearless though, and did not give one single f, and I had 22 fights in those 3 months. I was able to have 22 fights in such a short time, despite being outclassed in skill level, because the weight (strength) class was so unsporting that even though I got banged up a lot, one to three good to decent hits was all it took me to KO or TKO. Those fights had to be boring as hell to watch for the audience, other than maybe the sadists.

My point: Anyone who doesn't think strength is a (not the, but a) dominant factor in how deadly (force) your physical attacks are either lacks experience with the matter they are speaking of, or is divorced from reality. Go watch some of Mike Tyson's early fights from the late 80's if you want to see what happens when a much stronger person pummels a much weaker person if you need to see if with your own eyes.

thank you for this, i had exactly this same argument with a tool on reddit the other day, except he swore up and down that strength made little difference. I asked him to explain why do ALL combat sports use weight classes then and he had no good answer other than "it's irrelevant" which clearly it's not otherwise weight classes would have gone away a long time ago.

It's clear on it's face, both from a common sense perspective and a proven world perspective (weight classes) that strength is *very* important in melee combat, both armed and unarmed.

6e pisses on that, and by extension pisses on many other common sense well known physical effects in the world.

in short: it beggars belief.

and that's my core issues with 6e, it's an inane game of dank memes that make a mockery of shadowrun.

[Lormyr]

For me, allowing melee weapons attack tests to be strength + close combat would be a barely acceptable fix. What I would really prefer is a total revamp on damage codes, though sticking with the design decision of less overall damage, which was a good idea.

Firearms should range from 2P to 6P at base, with the ability to play with firing modes and ammo, which at best should add +2 DV.

Melee weapons should be unarmed 1S, light one handed weapons (knife, baton, ect) 1P (basically just changing damage to P from S), heavier one handed weapons (axe, club, sword) 2P, two-handed weapons 3P, then add 1/2 Strength score on top.

Max ranged damage 8P, max melee damage for a troll 10P. Considering the base advantages ranged attacks have over melee, that would be ideal balance wise.

Then have armor, ratings from 1 to 4 (plus add ons) add to soak and the only two things that make the edition completely unpalatable to me are fixed.

[Xenon]

"Weight classes" is about length, bone density, your body's genetic ability to build body and muscle mass (there is a reason why male and female compete in different classes). You can only come so far by training your "strength" alone. You also need to be "big". The guys Lormyr was facing in Thailand was probably as "maxed out" strength-wise as he was - but being bigger, matters.

Much of this is represented by the Body attribute in Shadowrun, but it also goes hand to hand with the Strength attribute (to be honest, I don't think we would have missed out too much by combining the two into one attribute because even in real life it is hard to maximize one without the other).


I think we just agreed that skipping out on strength in favor for Charisma (or Logic) will turn you into a [slightly] worse fighter than if you put the points into Strength. That Strength matters [at least to some extent].

I think we also agree that if you wish to become a great unarmed fighter you would probably want a good mix of Body, Reaction, Agility, Intuition, Willpower..... and Strength (that the only two attributes that don't really contribute during a fist-fight would be Charisma and Logic). No matter if we talk real life or Shadowrun.

The disconnect does not seem to be if Strength (but also Armor) give you an advantage or not (because it seem as they do), the disconnect rather seem to be that the mechanical advantage you gain by investing into strength (but also Armor) is not perceived to be as potent as some of the other attributes.

So - Maybe what we are really arguing here is if gaining a tactical advantage over your opponent maybe is not as "strong" of an advantage as it perhaps should be.

...and that this would in turn boil down to that the perceived "value" of edge might be a bit on the low side.

Does that sound about right?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

They seem like basically good ideas, Lormyr.  But, speaking as a devil's advocate on a couple points:

What I would really prefer is a total revamp on damage codes, though sticking with the design decision of less overall damage, which was a good idea.

If there's a whole new calculus to arrive at the same (or similar) DVs for non-extreme cases, is the process truly worth it to cover the extreme cases?  Is it THAT important to have a leg up in both DV and edge potential?  In your real-life anecdotal example (if I understand it correctly), your superior size and strength manifested as an advantage that resulted in exactly the kind of interplay I attempted to illustrate in my 2nd example, where STR was offset by some other advantage (sounds like in their case, more Close Combat skill vs your higher STR).  Only in your example you actually had sufficient STR to gain edge vs their DR.  You take some early damage, but unless they got to a critical mass of accumulating some wound penalties on you, your higher STR results in advantages that would in game terms be manifested by edge expenditures ultimately overwhelming the opponent.  I honestly look at your anecdote and see it validating the current mechanics, not contradicting them...

Max ranged damage 8P, max melee damage for a troll 10P. Considering the base advantages ranged attacks have over melee, that would be ideal balance wise.

A couple of points. The only guns that hit particularly high on the damage scale are big and not particularly concealable.  Note that the change in concealing weapons rules has a ripple effect here in the balance between melee vs guns... you can take your "concealed" fists anywhere. You can smuggle a knife almost anywhere. Not so an assault rifle, and attempting to conceal items in this edition is less effective than it was in 5e (if you're not familiar with why, it's because there's no Palming roll to hide gear anymore.  Spotting concealed gear is now an unopposed perception check...).  So, the point here is you're apparently not factoring in some inherent advantages that melee has vs guns in the "when can you use them" department while thinking about the inherent range advantage guns have vs melee.  You should be comparing fists to Pistols, or at best SMGs. Not to assault cannons.

And, I'm going to quibble with you about how much of an advantage range really is.  Shadowrun isn't simulating 6th world warfare... most of the time the range to target is moot because he's in the same room with you.  Again, in the case of big guns that do the highest damage, they're not used in close quarters combat that Shadowrun simulates.  And if you try it, you suffer the penalty of a terrible Close range AR.

Another point: The potential for raw DV of 10 is game-breaking.  It also completely contradicts the design decision for less overall damage, which you said was something you supported.  You're not SUPPOSED to be reliably able to obliterate a CM with a single attack, so that combat is a back and forth affair that stretches over multiple rounds.  This is for the PC's benefit as well, remember.  Not that the example of D&D was part of the calculus, but take D&D as an example of an alternate RPG.  If you're fighting an impressively powerful monster (like, say, a dragon!) does the game support the realistic chance of you going from full HP to eliminated in one attack? That is not a reasonable or probable scenario so long as you're fighting a monster that's "level appropriate".  What I'm saying here is games can "work" if you have to work several rounds at eliminating a target.  Even combat-heavy games like D&D.

Of course, you don't HAVE to spend several rounds eliminating an opponent in 6th.  Professional Rating works as a morale mechanic, and most NPCs you face will begin to be happy to give up after suffering a mere 3, 4, or even 5 damage.  Dealing 10DV is quite unnecessary almost all of the time.  Hit the sec guard for 5, and he should be content to hide behind cover and let you escape.

But it's important to KILL the sec guard, not just escape from him? Ok, 1) what kind of a psychopath are you playing, and why do you get your jollies off on that?  2) granted, sometimes just letting the sec guard cower doesn't stop him from radioing for backup, and maybe you're not at that stage in the run where you're making your escape.  You need him offline, and you don't want to bother with prisoners or dealing with taking away his commlink.  That's what edge actions are for.  Being able to fill out a CM in one shot devalues edge actions that allow you to increase your DV, or to flatly fill out a CM entirely (e.g. Knockout Blow).