Meelee combat in RPGs (unarmed combat related)

[J1M]

Why should people use cattle prods, crowbars, sledgehammers, spears, and even power fists in Fallout?

Because the vast majority of people in the Fallout setting can't afford guns or there wouldn't be enough functional guns for them.

Unarmed combat would be pretty important in any sensible setting where you can't just kill people left and right and where you need to deal with people in heavy armour which may require immobilizing before stabbing them into eye with dagger.

Then you have actual meelee combat happening in modern times too.

True, if you would view it in realistic terms.
But not only that.. Unarmed and Melee also get obsolete soon in virtual terms as soon as guns get involved (F1/2).
Its rediculous in NV where a melee build is quite effective against armed groups though.

My first play through of fallout was done entirely with melee combat. My only companion was dogmeat, who also used unarmed combat.

Yeah? Which glitch did you exploit?
Seriously though.. Not saying that it can't be done.. i never tried a full melee build in F1 i believe.
But it sure is not comfortable (not that it matters that much) to play melee, and can be restrictive at some phase in the game, and thus obsolete.. unless you avoid (some) combat.

I don't use strategy guides, so if there was a bug that was exploited I wasn't aware of it. Sure, there were a few times when I reloaded a game after dog meat died in a fight. But overall it wasn't as bad as you would think.

 

[Azrael the cat]

In gameplay terms ki would have to be narrowed down to an exact function.

Here are several ideas I had off the top of my head:

* ki shield - curves paths of incoming bullets
* ki-flect - opponent's own melee attack knocks him down
* ki fart - you travel much faster between towns

ok I'm running low on sugar, need to eat something to replenish my ki

Don't some martial arts like Judo use the oponent's weight against him to knock him down? This would be interesting in a setting with heavy armor that can't be penetrated by punches.

Looks like we've arrived back to the weird melee guy taking on power armor guys scenario... only this time with the power of LEVERAGE!

So you get close to him pretending to be his friend and then BAM he's on the ground... but if he doesn't let you get close, you're perforated by his gun, because good luck trying to do joint locks or anything while wearing a power armor yourself...

ok i need food

Of course we've actually had historical eras where folks have worn heavy armour that makes blades and ranged weapons less effective. It was called plate mail. And it turned out that the answer wasn't to go fisticuffs on the battlefield - sure, they used the opponent's weight against him, but they did so by using blunt weapons. A mace to the face was still much more effective than an attempt at grappling (and yes, they absolutely did know about the various grappling techniques and submisison holds - that shit has been around since the ancient Greeks, and it wasn't confined to Asia).

Grappling is silly vs weapons for the very reason given by the poster above - you can't really take advantage of superior grappling technique when wearing heavy armour yourself. Not to mention that grappling is messy at the best of times - things never work exactly as they should, and outside the regulations of a sport there's always the risk that the opponent will just gouge your eyes out, or rip your throat out with his teeth, or fish-hook you (grabbing your cheek or nostrils and ripping) while you're trying to put a hold on. When weapons are involved, you're just begging for your opponent to shove a knife into your guts, or fire a weapon from point blank range.

No - if you were to go melee, you'd use a long blunt weapon vs heavy armour, not your bare hands. And even then, keep in mind how badly the English longbowmen slaughtered the French knights at the end of the 100 year war: good ranged weapons basically made plate armour obsolete.

Having said that, it's always freakish when the cops do the tests for what range a knife is a threat to an officer with a handgun holstered. From memory, the New York police tested it as being that the guy with the knife has the advantage from 21 feet or closer. Not likely to be an issue in small-squad combat on a battlefield, but it makes you understand how in the 1st world war most of the infantry v infantry killing (i.e. that which didn't consist of guys being mowed down by machine-guns or mortars) was carried out by bayonets rather than bullets.

 

[Destroid]

Clearly, they should issue police with short swords.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

No - if you were to go melee, you'd use a long blunt weapon vs heavy armour, not your bare hands. And even then, keep in mind how badly the English longbowmen slaughtered the French knights at the end of the 100 year war: good ranged weapons basically made plate armour obsolete.

Except that they didn't until the introduction of muskets which made proofed plate armour too heavy to be worn as full armour. Arrows from longbows could penetrate plate armour only from close range, or they would if they'd have hardened armour piercing arrows, which they didn't.
What longbow did was preventing the French from charging on horses because a hail of thousands of arrows would kill the unprotected animals.

Not to mention that the French have lost mainly due to their lack of discipline.

 

[Wolfus]

Melee combat is the only true combat for RPG. Missile weapons are for pussies.

 

[Excidium]

Melee combat is the only true combat for RPG. Missile weapons are for pussies.

 

[Norfleet]

Because your revolver holds 6 bullets, but your fists never run out of ammo.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Of course we've actually had historical eras where folks have worn heavy armour that makes blades and ranged weapons less effective. It was called plate mail. And it turned out that the answer wasn't to go fisticuffs on the battlefield - sure, they used the opponent's weight against him, but they did so by using blunt weapons. A mace to the face was still much more effective than an attempt at grappling (and yes, they absolutely did know about the various grappling techniques and submisison holds - that shit has been around since the ancient Greeks, and it wasn't confined to Asia).

Obviously people weren't running around unarmed and shooting double legs as their primary method of attack, but the available sources make it extremely clear that grappling was an important part of combat between two plate armored opponents.

Since plate armor was really effective against most weapons (for example against certain forms of plate a a simple slash with a sword would be nearly useless) there was a lot of potential for two armed opponents to end up tied up close together with their weapons out of position to easily hurt each other.

Like so:

You really think no grappling would occur in a situation like this? Please.

And it's not just grappling with your bare hands, grappling was an integral part of fighting that would have been seamlessly integrated into armed combat.

Images from Codex Wallerstein ~1470 A.D. (and the focus on grappling in this book is by no means unusual)

 

[Destroid]

Full plate wrestling should be a sport.

 

[shihonage]

Man, either human evolution took a wild twist along the way, or those people couldn't draw for shit

 

[Mastermind]

I don't think they were going for Michelangelo replicas. They're functional enough.

 

[Johannes]

Keep in mind that they had to draw the pictures by hand for each new copy of the book.

 

[DraQ]

HtH alone - specialized, cicumstance-dependent skill.
HtH in combination with other combat skills - really useful auxilary skill.
HtH as a valid substitute for weapon skills - FAIL.

 

[Excidium]

HtH as a valid substitute for weapon skills - FAIL.

It's like talking to the walls.

 

[DraQ]

HtH as a valid substitute for weapon skills - FAIL.

It's like talking to the walls.

Ok, unless you severely outclass any mere mortal.

 

[Excidium]

Like in most RPGs!

 

[shihonage]

HtH as a valid substitute for weapon skills - FAIL.

It's like talking to the walls.

Ok, unless you severely outclass any mere mortal.

Sigh... yes I do have both Fenix and Picard action figures.

 

[Krraloth]

Of course we've actually had historical eras where folks have worn heavy armour that makes blades and ranged weapons less effective. It was called plate mail. And it turned out that the answer wasn't to go fisticuffs on the battlefield - sure, they used the opponent's weight against him, but they did so by using blunt weapons. A mace to the face was still much more effective than an attempt at grappling (and yes, they absolutely did know about the various grappling techniques and submisison holds - that shit has been around since the ancient Greeks, and it wasn't confined to Asia).

Obviously people weren't running around unarmed and shooting double legs as their primary method of attack, but the available sources make it extremely clear that grappling was an important part of combat between two plate armored opponents.

Since plate armor was really effective against most weapons (for example against certain forms of plate a a simple slash with a sword would be nearly useless) there was a lot of potential for two armed opponents to end up tied up close together with their weapons out of position to easily hurt each other.

Like so:

You really think no grappling would occur in a situation like this? Please.

And it's not just grappling with your bare hands, grappling was an integral part of fighting that would have been seamlessly integrated into armed combat.

Images from Codex Wallerstein ~1470 A.D. (and the focus on grappling in this book is by no means unusual)

Notice the dagger? that's called a stiletto and was what they used to fuck people with. Basically a very hard and extremely resistant blade made for stabbing, can bypass mail and it was a joy to go for the eyes or the joints. Not to mention that at close range the hilt or the guard of whatever weapon they were using (not a polearm ofc) could be used effectively.

About English Longbows VS French Heavy Cavalry, let;s not forget that most of the advantage of a cavalry charge is very dependent of the terrain and therefore any hole dug beforehand or better yet what happened at Crécy and Azincourt, where giant fuck off palisades were built to impede charges, add to that clouds of arrows and Flemings pikemans and you have one fine massacre of cavalry.

Not to mention that some commanders where utter morons and they choose to make the Honorable Cavalry charge "the puny peasants with long staves", like what happened at the battle of Golden Spurs, but I digress.

As Azrael said, a blunt weapon was fairly effective, given that most of the times a powerful blow could bend the plate and make it work against the wearer by impeding his movements, the plate was nice and fun but for many reasons it had a lot of disadvantages: Slow, cumbersome, tiring, very narrow field of vision and god forbid you fall from your horse. Then even if you can shoulder all that, say, on foot, all it takes is some creative guy with a dagger from behind you.

 

[Norfleet]

Werevolves, while naturally appealing to my inner furfag, tend to have this pesky vulnerability to silver bullets.

That's a pretty esoteric vulnerablity, considering that normal humans are ALSO vulnerable to silver bullets. Or non-silver bullets.

Also, I played Bloodlines and I found strange the fact that no vampire ever uses his ridiculous strength to tote big guns against other vamps. Think that crazy disease-spreading Vampire Cultist with the zombies - Imagine if that guy was totting a big-ass machinegun, that would've been fucking hardcore.

No, that makes perfect sense. Where the hell would he *GET* a big-ass machine gun? There are maybe about a dozen privately owned miniguns in the entire US. There is, frankly, not a market for such things simply because no normal people can use them, plus they are somewhat illegal. The absence of a market for acquiring such a thing means that you cannot simply visit your local black market and pick one up. Therefore, as much as he would probably benefit from having a big-ass machine gun, they simply don't sell those anywhere unless he's prepared to attract a lot of attention by raiding a military armory for it.

And then after all that, should he manage to find even a mildly big-ass machine gun, it's going to chew through a lot of ammo. Being undead doesn't exactly make you magically wealthy.

 

[villain of the story]

Because normally, bullets just tickle vampires in the VTM setting. They don't bleed (as they can control their blood flow) and don't care if their organs get perfurated.

IIRC, how much you can avoid or prevent bleeding was based on some stats in VTM, so inexperienced vampires could still be incapacitated by wounds mortal to humans.

 

[mondblut]

No, that makes perfect sense. Where the hell would he *GET* a big-ass machine gun? There are maybe about a dozen privately owned miniguns in the entire US. There is, frankly, not a market for such things simply because no normal people can use them, plus they are somewhat illegal.

In VTM setting, vampires pretty much pull the strings of all earthly governments. It would take one call for someone high in Cam or Sabbat hierarchy to have a fucking tactical nuke delivered to his place in an hour, let alone a measly autocannon.

And then after all that, should he manage to find even a mildly big-ass machine gun, it's going to chew through a lot of ammo. Being undead doesn't exactly make you magically wealthy.

Associated benefits, on the other hand...

 

[Destroid]

I'm thinking body armour is pretty resistant to silver bullets.

 

[Raghar]

In VTM setting, vampires pretty much pull the strings of all earthly governments. It would take one call for someone high in Cam or Sabbat hierarchy to have a fucking tactical nuke delivered to his place in an hour, let alone a measly autocannon.

An accidental launch can be believable for a someone high ranking, but for a some low ranking vampire... Missing machineguns are driving attention, I doubt they would 1. want to drive attention. 2. give theirs opponent a possibility to obtain an effici
ent weapon.