OK I got to play for the first time yesterday and I have a question.

why is it that there is a base -9 for ranged combat?? It makes no sense. I go shooting regularly enough to know shooting is not that hard. I also have done many different kinds of melee combat and melee combat is certainly not that much easier than ranged combat(you learn a lot in the SCA.). In fact in melee combat you have more of a chance of parrying and dodging. You really can’t see bullets much less dodge them.

Besides why do we need to make the rules more complicated than they need to be. This is a needless complication that does not make the game more fun. And this is about fun. It also makes ranged weapons way less attractive and that makes no sense. Especially when you add iterative attacks.

bump.

This is a running complaint in all the games I have run, both demo’s and campaigns.
I can’t make sense of it and the players loath this rule.

To add a little real world historical perspective. The Samurai, The European Knight both went the way of the dodo because guns made it possible for a ruler to use cheap unskilled people to fight their battles because you can teach anyone to use a gun pretty effectively in a very short time relatively. A melee combatant on the other hand can take years to train and have them be effective… and you flush those years of training down the toilet when your investment gets himself killed in some way. Today we can train a soldier in 3 months and only a small fraction of that is how to use a gun. Add to this that a person with a little training and a gun can send several skilled melee combatants to the great beyond. As they say God made man Sam Colt made them equal.  check out some Armed Citizen stories some time. They are full of cases where children as young as 5 and adults well into their 80s and 90s successfully fend off attackers with a gun…..does that sound like there should be a minus 9 to you? I know of at least one case where a 5 or 6 year old saved his mother from 2 adult male attackers. that sounds like ranged combat should be really really easy.

This rule really should be consigned to the scrap heap.

Well the good news is, that it is only a +8DR when firing at Nominal Range, not +9.  So you already have a 1 better chance to hit.

Also, if you’ve only played once, then play a few more times, in a variety of scenarios before you start throwing out rules.  Our party’s gun bunny, hits plenty of times and does way more damage than my melee guy does.

And if you are saying that this +8DR is really unbalancing then again, wait.  Wait until you have a fairly hit CDP level character that focuses with the weapon.  Want a better chance to hit, then take items like scopes and laser dots.  Those are items that melee guys don’t get a chance to take.

As far as comparing game mechanics to real life, well that’s when things get silly.  It is a game.  The rules are there for a sense of balance.  For every example of how shooting is “easy”, examples can easily be found how shooting is hard.  How many stories have you heard of police getting into a fire fight at very close range and NOTHING got hit?

Anyway, enjoy the extra +1, keep enjoying the game.

yeah…some police are an example of what happens when someone really does not take there job seriously enough to make sure they are proficient enough to do their jobs. Police qualification is pretty pathetic. That’s from talking to people who were cops and have been in firefights. I still stand by that rule makes absolutely no sense. If someone can explain the +8 DR I might buy it but so far I can’t find an explanation that makes sense.

The one complaint I hear the most is not with the number itself, but with CONSISTENCY.
When you throw an abitrary number into the mix to try and balance against the damage of melee vs. ranged, it just adds a random number that players just go HUH over.
I am not arguing either way, but I AM pointing out that most players I have run through the game find it odd and inconsistent.

If you check the errata, the +8 applies to all ranged weapon attacks.  The developers are pretty up front about it in the errata as well.  It’s an arbitrary number because +5 wasn’t enough and +10 was too much.  From what I’m seeing with my group the gun bunny is scaling much faster than the 2H specialist.  There’s a practical limit to how many times you can hit with a giant sword (in this case a +14 exertion and a limit of twice per segment).  Even though said melee weapon does huge damage, you also have to get up in the face of what you are fighting.  If you flip through the Encountered you’ll see that stuff in the wilds, especially Freaks of Nature, do huge melee damage.  Plus with proper tactics it’s trivial to minimize the penalty, kneeling with a laser dot sight gets rid of half.

In addition the +8 to ranged attacks could be a simulation of the effects of stress and adrenaline.  You need a certain level of training to cope with those effects.  As an example for those of us that shoot regularly: if you are in excellent health and not risk averse, try loading up on caffeine to the point where you are shaking from the effects.  Now see how well you shoot.  That caffeine overload will simulate a moderate amount of adrenaline.  The best simulation is too dangerous to recommend, but I’ve seen it done by professionals.  Highly trained (SWAT and former Rangers in this case) professionals were given a shot with an epi pen.  Their shooting in CQB degraded slightly, at battlefield contact ranges they degraded slightly.  At scope ranges they couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn due to slightly elevated heart rate.  Skilled amateurs (recreational shooters with no military/police training, minimum of bi-monthly trips to the range) in the same testing were unable to shoot with any degree of accuracy.  IIRC it was a telling 50% reduction in estimated lethality tapering off to nearly 80% beyond 50 yards.  It’s anecdotal, I can’t find the source on the Internets and I don’t think it was peer reviewed, but the epi pen test I saw a while back showed some interesting numbers.

From the standpoint of game mechanics, I threw my three players (around 900 CDP) against a sasquatch with a bum knee (to slow its movement rate a bit).  The meat shield 2H specialist nearly died and the gun bunny was the hero of the day.  Essentially the sasquatch lost half it’s health pool while still closing from a pair of 20 mm shotgun slugs.  The meat shield did a little damage but mostly got smacked around.  The wielder finished it with an elemental effect after the gun bunny hit it with another slug.  If the sasquatch needed to cover more than 1 cycle’s worth of distance it would probably have been dead before it got in range to do any damage.

Geeze, “Wall of Text crits forum reader for over 9000, forum reader dies.”

Sorry if I am Frankensteining.

Here’s my 2 cents, not that it matters though.
From a game perspective it balances out the melee vs. ranged conundrum that people seem to have.

As far as a real world example, you say you have been shooting but have you ever shot at something that was shooting back at you?
Maybe fear or nerves is a part of that, although I think MSL were just doing it for the mechanics balancing not so much to be equal in terms of actually shooting.

What makes you think you don’t have nerves when you are in melee combat? having been in SCA combat… missing a block hurts and you tend to be cautions. So no I am not buying that explanation. And Melee combat gets way over balanced in Melees favor.  Think about it. when you add iterative strikes. that +8 in melees favor is 2 more attacks. i saw a graphic example of this when I was playing the character Fang in the demo. He was a 2 weapon guy who ended up with about 8 strikes by the time you added 2 weapon fighting and iterative attacks. while the ranged guys got 2 maybe 3 if they rolled well. that worked out to my one guy dropping an opponent in one attack while the ranged guys had to take 2 segments to drop a guy.

And it adds needless complication to the game that does not add to the fun. If a rule does not add to the fun and makes the game more difficult. It is a bad rule. It definitely does not make the game more accessible to new players.

Generally speaking the adrenaline dump of fighting, even with blunted weapons (SCA) makes you jittery.

The +8 is purely a balance issue.  Anecdote follows from the most recent session of my home game.  The anecdote shows how in my experience surviving to close to melee is what balances ranged vs. melee.  Generally the damage per hit from melee is high, but against a well disciplined fire team with overlapping fields of fire it is a touch difficult to close.

I ambushed the party (gun-bunny medic, elemental/energy focused wielder, 2H melee meat shield) and 2 low end security grunts with a disciplined fire team modeled on current Marine/Army combat doctrine.  During this fight the party made the wise decision to stay in cover.  Wall of text and math suppositions follow.

/begin anecdote
All of the attackers were wearing light armor for mobility with low-light and infrared U-frames for visibility.  All had 27 health pool and physical acumen of 15 (1d6, 5d4).  All were assumed to have 5 small arms and 5 rifles/shotguns.  Specialists have 5 in their specialist weapon.  All have 2 ranks in pistols and carry a CDEM 32 for backup with 2 spare magazines.  NCO provides direction and area suppression.  SAW specialist provides cover fire and suppressive fire.  PFC 1 carries spare ammo for the SAW and covers the SAW gunner’s location while also providing aimed fire at the targets.  PFC 2 is a rifleman, he provides aimed directed fire at the targets.  All have a reaction high enough to act on 3 and 6.

NCO: armed with FN3000 with 40 mm grenade launcher, 7 magazines of 7mm, 3 40 mm tear gas, 3 40 mm smoke and 3 40 mm frag grenades.  Rifle has a relex sight (+2 past 15 meters) and a laser dot (+2 within 20 meters).
SAW Specialist: armed with a Minimi, 3 belts of 7 mm.  SAW is equipped with a reflex sight and bipod (+2 additional when prone).
PFC 1: armed with FN3000 with reflex sight, no grenade launcher, 7 magazines of 7mm, 2 frags and 3 belts of 7mm for the SAW gunner.
PFC 2: armed with FN3000 with reflex sight, no grenade launcher, 7 magazines of 7mm, 2 frags.

The attackers got the drop on the party so were pre-positioned around 35 SIM away.  SAW gunner was prone to for a +8 to his attacks (+2 bipod, +4 stance, +2 sight) and had a DR of 13 (DR 7 + 6 for being prone).  The NCO was kneeling behind a knee high tree stump for a DR of 11 (DR 7 + 4 for kneeling), he gained +4 to his attack (+2 stance +2 sight).  PFC 1 was +6 to attacks (+4 prone +2 sight) and DR 13 (+6 prone + 7 DR).  PFC 2 was +4 to attacks (+2 kneeling +2 sight) and DR 11 (DR 7 + 4 kneeling).

The party took cover and managed to survive thanks to the cover and the +8 DR for a ranged attack.  Based on the setup above most of the time when the attackers fired into cover they were missing by 1 or 2.  Without that +8 they would have cut the party down as that represents an extra bullet per active segment hitting a PC.  Since the PCs are wearing light armor still this would make the SAW (1d12+1 +1 for 15 physical acumen) do an average of 3 damage per bullet and the FN3000s (3d4 +1 for physical acumen) doing an average of 4 damage per bullet.  With focus fire on one PC that would equate to an extra 30 damage in the first cycle, AKA a kill on PCs that have health pools roughly equivalent to the mooks.

Now let’s extrapolate the meat shield’s likely death while closing.  She sprints at 8 SIM and has a DR of 10.  My mooks are tactically savvy enough to focus fire, their default behavior is to use 3 dice per active segment to keep their targets down.  Attrition is your friend in a firefight after all.  When someone with a BFS is charging they would blow their dice wad on cutting her down.  At her sprint rate it would take 4 cycles to close with a sprinting attack in segment 3 of cycle 5.  In cycle 1 segment 3 the mooks dump their dice into her averaging 16 + 10 for SPL + 8/6/4 for modifiers.  Their DR to hit is 26 (DR 10 + 8 for ranged + 8 for sprinting).  The NCO and PFC 2 get a 30 so they hit once (26) and barely missed their second shot (32 to hit).  PFC 1 hits twice with a 32 result and the SAW gunner hits twice with a 34 result.  Cumulative average damage is 22 in the first cycle on a PC with a health pool of 34, that there is a pretty serious wound.  Now ramp that up and remove the +8 DR for a ranged attack.  All of them now hit three times (18, 24 and 30) for an average of 45 damage.  Ranged combat is pretty lethal in AO, without the added +8 it’s more deadly than Shadowrun and Rolemaster.
/end anecdote

TLDR: I’m not claiming that PCs are going to exhibit poor tactics, but it’s a fallacy to compare melee to ranged.  Sure melee does obscene damage per hit, but that’s tempered with the difficulty of closing the range in the first place.  Against mooks without a ranged attack it’s a perfect comparison, but elite mooks will kill the melee specialist before they can close.  By elite mooks I mean folks that didn’t bring a pistol to a rifle fight.  Of course if in your game world all mooks carry only pistols it’s a different story.  I can do the math later if needed on that.

So we should make it ok to bring a knife to a gun fight….there is a reason melee combat is not used currently.

That’s the point I was trying to make in my long-winded fashion with examples.  You cited 8 attacks and one segment kills from a sample character.  That’s great, if he can get into melee range without being perforated.

Then again AO is supposed to be a gritty future where life is cheap and ammunition is expensive.  At least that’s how one of the Warden/writer types at GenCon explained it to me last year.  The prevalence of melee attachments indicates that within the game world folks fall back on hitting things fairly often.  Otherwise it’s logically inconsistent that melee attachments would be at all common.  IRL the US Army has pretty much dumped bayonet fighting from their training.  Off the top of my head the M4 lacks a bayonet lug in a couple of its SOPMOD configurations and it’s a carbine.  Carbines are much more likely to be used in close quarters where a bayonet is useful after all.

Which I believe a well trained ranged person should be able to keep the melee person at pay. Ammo being expensive would make Melee viable. we should not add an additional minus just because you are at range.

I guess we can agree to disagree.  My take at this point is that ranged combat is a touch less lethal with the +8 and that it’s necessary for game balance.  Essentially melee is a bad idea in a world with firearms, in order to make the core conceit of the game universe work (namely that melee combat is relevant and common) ranged needed to be taken down a notch.

In your example from above when demoing, how did you get into melee intact in order to get the iterative 8 attacks?  What CDP or relative power level was that character?  8 attacks with two weapons with an exertion of 4 against a DR of 10 would be something like a DR of 52.  That’s a mighty good roll or a pretty darn powerful character.  I guess it could be done at character gen with an annunaki or AI that focused everything into athleticism, two weapon qualities and melee/one handed.  That would be a bit of one-trick pony IMO.

Just thought of something else.  Law of unintended consequences: making ranged even better by eliminating the +8 would make Ascension less useful.  Ascension ultimately creates shiny winged characters that go all stabbity archangel wrathful on their foes.  It would also change up some of the tactics that make the game fun.  Hitting a sprinting target would then be as easy as it is to hit a still target now.  That could get lethal fast.

All you have to do to make melee relevant is to have a GM actually enforce Ammo is expensive and rare. cause if you don’t have ammo melee becomes relevant.  No need for artificial rules to make melee relevant.

In answer to your question. simple we had stunners and batons and were in a relatively small space.

I disagree. The reason Ascended characters go melee is cause they become spiritual wielders so they don’t need guns.

How does spiritual wielding obviate the need for firearms exactly?  Apart from creating zombies or summoning spirits I don’t see how the Alpha or Omega source can be used offensively.  Maybe I missed that part or I’m missing a use for spiritual wielding.

Edit: Of course this could be a good time for MSL to add in his 2T.  I’m honestly curious as to why the developers went this route.