How would you balance guns and melee weapons so that one isn't way better than the other?

How would you balance guns and melee weapons so that one isn't way better than the other?

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Cheap anti-kinetic personal shields.

blades are silent, dont need reloading,easier to hide, easier to acquire, and may be drawn more quickly and easily

obviously you will lose a straight fight, but you have many options not available to a pure gun user

for whats its worth, mythbusters showed that at a distance of less than 20ft, with both weapons holstered at the start, a knife user can close the distance before the gun is drawn and aimed

problems do arise if you insist that a blade be equally good at a gun at the job a gun is good at, like open combat, though this may not apply if the sword user is immune to bullets and is super fast

on an unrelated note, mythbusters also come to the conclusion an axe is better than a shotgun when swarmed at close range by multiple attackers

Which mythbusters was THAT?

iirc it was the zombie apocalypse one. The shotgun had the issue in testing (Paintball rounds and volunteers) that a swarm of zombies won't really give you time to reload and most civilian shotguns don't have drum magazines. They were generally able to take out more with the axe than they were before the shotgun needed to be reloaded.

It's one of their more popular episodes. Google it.

There was another one where it was just charging with a knife.

An anti-kinetic personal shield will work even better against a melee weapon.

The slow blade penetrates the shield.

>t. faggot who never read Dune

Dune, the book you want is Dune.

I usually make ammo rare. The rounds a counted individually and kept track of.

So sure, when you fire your gun, it does nigh-lethal damage in one shot, but you have to use your rounds sparingly and you'll be lucky if a vendor has like 4 rounds to sell you at a time.

This was a post apoc setting though.

For a guns are commonplace setting it's harder. I've tested jamming mechanics but if the player puts his XP towards learning how to maintain his weapons he can circumvent the jamming mechanics. But then again, he's not spending that XP on other stuff, so I guess it ended up being balanced.

After reading it I can safely say he hasn't missed much.

Have melee and guns do the same damage, then give melee character a reliable method of closing the distance.

I don't really care to. But in one game I ran, melee weapons essentially did a set amount of damage vs armor with the remainder going straight against the enemy, no roll to hit.

Guns had to still hit, you needed to aim and be lucky to hit your target, especially behind cover. Armor improves your chance to avoid damage, but does not reduce damage from firearms.

Examples
>1d6 lead pipe hits a guy while he's wearing a bulletproof vest (1 armor). You will deal 1d6-1 damage.
>1d6 regular pistol shoots at a guy wearing a bulletproof vest (1 armor). He has base defense + stat bonus + 1 armor to avoid your attack. You roll d20 vs defense to hit. If you hit, 1d6 damage.

I just don't bother making them exclusive from each other.

That segment was kind of goofy since it was Adam with a giant foam axe running around and bopping people in the head. A more effective use of a firearm would have been an AR-15 with multiple magazines.

I guess I forget that they're in California, although that shouldn't have mattered with paintball gun. The crew has managed to get their hands on full-autos, suppressed firearms, and anti-material rifles for myths. I guess there's just some persistent belief that shotguns are the most effective firearms for zombies.

I never understood the reason why people want that. Firearms are better than melee weapons. If they weren't, we'd still be fielding our armies with fucking halberds.

I remember that, the axe tapping was stupid with not enough force to kill a zombie nor demonstrating how an axe could get stuck in a fresher zombie skull

Melee weapons are cool.
Futuristic weapons are cooler.
Futuristic melee weapons are coolest.
Guns are boring unless they shoot cool stuff or can be used in cool ways.

Seeking balance is a mistake

Realism doesn't always equal the most fun for the people involved?

Ranged weapons are cool.
Futuristic weapons are cooler.
Futuristic ranged weapons are coolest.
Melee weapons are boring unless they have cool effects or can be used in cool ways.

This.

People use swords in the future because ranged weapons are too hard to control and are easier to accidentally puncture the hull of a space ship while you're in it. As such, everyone aboard uses tactical steel melee weapons, shields, and heavy personal armors.

I personally don't agree but I suppose you're entitled to your opinion.

More or less the advantages small melee weapons have nowadays. That 21 foot rule thing is more or less a meme, there's so many accounts going either way that it's not that safe to bet on it.

I disagree, but I won't judge you for wanting to play games with an emphasis on ranged combat if you don't judge me on wanting to play games with an emphasis on melee combat.

The fuck is this, the UN?

If you can build an intergalactic spaceship, why can't you build a gun that won't shoot through the hull?

My setting has lots of cybernetics and rule-of-cool (it's retro 80s Miami Vice in space cyberpunk), so with upgraded nervous systems a sword can cut and deflect bullets out of the air, allowing the distance to be closed. And high frequency blades cuts right through most armor, so it's actually good for killing people quickly, especially those who don't spread out.
I know it's stupid, but is rather have swords be viable for the aethsetic and need to make a reason than just give up and not even try to make it reasonable.

>I guess there's just some persistent belief that shotguns are the most effective firearms for zombies.
And it was dumb when it started

>I guess there's just some persistent belief that shotguns are the most effective firearms for zombies.

Well, they ARE the Mythbusters. Going to the iconic anti-zombie weapon makes sense for testing zombie survival myths.

>nor demonstrating how an axe could get stuck in a fresher zombie skull

iirc they mentioned that at the end. That it was a flawed test in a few ways as it's difficult to work with all the proper factors without killing their testers.

>That it was a flawed test in a few ways
In every way. It was basically a waste of everyone's time. Which would be fine, it's entertainment, except that you get idiots who take the show seriously and cite it as proof.

Dune shields. Or alternatively, any field that reflects energy back against the mass of the attack so that attacks that have high energy due to high velocity (bullets) are worse compared to attacks that rely on high mass (clubs) or cutting (blades).

You could also have creatures with high regeneration and distributed neural networks with redundancy so that attacks that pierce small holes are quickly regenerated compared to blades which can slice pieces off that take much more to regenerate.

>anti-material rifles
Now THAT episode I want to see.

Make firearms weak as fuck, maybe even remove automatic weapons completely.
Make martial artists highly cinematic, e.g. allow them to parry bullets.

I disagree and think you're a faggot.

None. When they tested pistol vs knife the guy with a knife just hold it behind his back before attacking, while the guy with a gun had to unholster it first.

dailymotion.com/video/x2n9edw

The whole thing is worth watching, but you can skip to the 20:30 mark to get right to the .338 Lapua, .416 Barrett, and .50 BMG.

You shouldn't because guns are not meant to be a balanced weapon. The whole reason they were adopted was because they surpassed prior ranged weapons and made classical mele combat essentially impossible. Either make guns exceedingly rare, place the characters in an environment where guns would offer significant disadvantages, or make a setting in which gunfire will draw in more potential enemies (cops in cities, enemy soldiers in war settings, rival gangs if you're playing criminals, etc etc).

make really good armor easily available

>so that attacks that pierce small holes
Bullets inflict far traumatic injuries than blades, you memelord.

If it can't pierce a space ship platting it won't be a effective weapon against armored enemies.

Which is weird, as I don't think the Mythbusters ever denied being entertainers first and foremost.

Though I suppose the counterpoint to entertainment being their goal is the existence of the build team.

That's different, that's because the energy the forcefields are made of in dune would cause a nuclear explosion if they make contact with laser weaponry

Two properties always stood out to me that balanced the two well.

KOTOR games made it clear that personal shields were so commonplace that most energy based firearms weren't so effective that you would leave a vibroblade at home.

Dune kind of did the opposite. Lasguns were the most popular firearm for a long time but it was too great of a risk to use them against shields because they would cause a nuclear explosion. This allowed swords and knives to come back into popularity.

So normal humans walk around with armour as strong as those that protect a space ship from all the hazards of space travel? That is retarded, mate. But even if so, why not just beef up the hull armour then so you can still shoot an armoured enemy?

What stops melee weapons having the same problem?

its more of a rule of thumb than a set in stone rule, since the test was performed with cylinders in a vacuum in mind, but the closer the knife wielder the more he will come out on top

Pistol bullets and buckshot won't penetrate hard drives. Take that as you will.

Holy shit, did you flunk physics? F=ma2. An object with less mass travelling at higher speeds can equal an object with more mass travelling at lower speeds. Your shitty shield wouldn't work.

The same way you balance bows against melee weapons.

I don't think you're asking the right question here.

not to mention the difficulty in obtaining an assault rifle in comparison to an assault rifle

> an assault rifle in comparison to an assault rifle

Ah yes, the difficulty of finding a thing rather than itself.

meant shotgun instead of assault rifle

i goofed with that

but yeah, unless you are a special kind of survival nut, you are not likely to have an assault rifle on you in case of zombies

You guys all have to realise that the most realistic zombie game in existence says that silenced pistols and rifles are the best weapons against zombies. Your shotguns and sniper rifles and shit are for use against people

Price is really the only limiting factor. It's not more difficult. You can get an AR-15 super easily. It's not technically an assault rifle because it doesn't have an automatic fire setting but you wouldn't want that in a zombie situation anyway.

>the most realistic zombie game in existence
And that would be?

Dayz mod

Ew, gross.

>DayZ
>most realistic

Damn, son. You just went full retard.

You fucking mongoloid.

Melee has higher damage, guns have to reload. Bam

Doubly so in non-america countries. In Aus, for example, a shotgun? Yeah, most farms have one of those.

A pistol or rifle? That's a stretch unless you are a member of a shooting club.

They did a recap in the final season. Figured out how much force it would take to get through the skull and stuck a sensor on the foam axe so Adam had to swing much harder. Still made plenty of mistakes, but they at least tried to fix it.

Not even Americans have assault rifles. They've been essentially banned since 1986. The only ones in existence are rare, expensive collectors' items.

I dunno how would you balance global anti-personel psychic powers against guns?
God can you imagine how prissy the faggots will be if they manage to find a more efficient way to kill people. "Its not muh honour, amurrikha wasn't founded on magyc muh liberytee!"

>God can you imagine how prissy the faggots will be if they manage to find a more efficient way to kill people
I imagine they'd just start using the new thing tbqh. Do you think gun owners have the mindset of Hollywood samurai?

>Still made plenty of mistakes, but they at least tried to fix it.

That's generally how I'd describe the show in general. They are trying, it's far from perfect but they make good shots at it.

Which I think is why I stuck with it for years. I'm more willing to put up with something that's clearly trying than something just going through the motions, even if the former messes up.

>Do you think gun owners have the mindset of Hollywood samurai?

Considering the Western is a decedent of the samurai movie, you could make the link among the most reverent people.

The NRA would fight it tooth and nail, at least. Since it's their business and psychic powers isn't.

Ok here's the actual most realistic zombie game in existence

I don't think you know much about the NRA.

I mean, I could be wrong about a lack of psychic powers front for them but guns IS what they do as a group.

You don't.

There's a reason firearms replaced swords and spears in history.

>Did you flunk physics?
>F=ma2
It's either F=ma or K = 1/2mv2
>Did you flunk physics?

have guns and swords all be 15th and early 16th century - the time in history when guns, swords, pikes, shields, and plate armor all coexisted.

You can dodge/parry bullets.

Done.

Melee weapons have higher damage output. Risk is being upclose to enemies.

Guns have safety and benefit of range.

What's your intended outcome? That gun-bloke and sword-bloke are both viable, balanced options? That everyone ought to carry both a gun and a sword? What's your ideal end-state?

But, generally, balancing melee and firearms will get easier the closer the quarters of a typical encounter. A spaceship, a dungeon or even just your typical modern day urban setting where a fight will tend to start inside a reasonably small room; these settings will make it easier to edge melee weapons into relevancy. If the setting is full of sweeping plains, deserts and similar, it'll be harder to make swords competitive.

>Do you think gun owners have the mindset of Hollywood samurai?
Yes, I mean we are talking about people who guns are what the horse show is to the bronies.

Dune Shields, Lightsabers, or Werewolves.

To expand on this in Old WoD a Wearwolf in human form was much easer to hurt but when they fell to zero wounds they got to make a Rage check to shape shift and heal (they could spend a rage point to autosave), so ambushing a Wearwolf in an ally with a Mac-10 gave you a chance to wound him up and force him to consume resources before you got into the inevitable rage fueled melee with claws and or silver knives.