Grappling and melee

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by B.T.

How do you handle this, Leg? (Now, off course, if anyone else want's to give his 2 cents, you're welcome!)

I shoot the enemy. Eliminate the problem entirely!

My theory is the army issues you with a rifle so you can shoot the enemy way over there.
They issue you a bayonet so you can stab the enemy way over there.
Why let them get close enough for a punch?

[B.T.]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

My theory is the army issues you with a rifle so you can shoot the enemy way over there.
They issue you a bayonet so you can stab the enemy way over there.
Why let them get close enough for a punch?

So it is written, so it shall be done ...

[Legbreaker]

One other option my be to treat unarmed damage as mostly Stun. Perhaps 1/4 is permanent (bruising, cracked ribs, etc) and the rest "disappears" after a suitable period?

[weswood]

The rules system I prefer (Top Secret/SI) has 3 types of damage: constitutition damage, for things like poison, bruise damage for things like punchinng, kicking and blunt weapons and wound damage for penetrating and slicing damage.

For example, a typical character has 5 hit points per area- head, left or right chest, abdomen, left/right arm, left/right hand and left/right leg. A baseball bat does 1-6 points wound damage, a 9mmP does 1-6 wound damage.

Hand to hand is determined by the character's skill check roll. The system uses percentile die to determine success/fail. It also gives a hit location and damage for weaponless hand to hand. If a character rolls a 40% in boxing, the "tens" die gives the amount of bruise damage (4 points) in the head (area 0= head). 4 points is lower than the character's total for that area, so he keeps on fighting. If it was 5 or more bruise points to the head, it would be a KO. At twice the amount of hit points, he'd have a cracked skull.

Wound damage supercedes bruise damage. If the character above got out of the fight with 4 bruise points to the head (call it a black eye for fun) and gets into a firefight later and takes 3 points from a firearm (wound damage) the character would have 3 points wound damage and 1 point bruise damage.

Maybe that would help, keep seperate track of wound and bruise damage for the T2K character. Maybe come up with a weaponless combat system with better damage potential.

[WallShadow]

<Delicately avoiding the entire "butt crack problems" and "violating plumbers' things(?!?)" discussion>

Lots of people who were members of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) were also in the military _and_ stationed in Europe in the mid to late 1990's. I'm sure their melee skills would give them an advantage with baton/bat/axe/sword/club/spear, and they could teach shield-wall tactics to local ORMO troops for riot control-- mighty handy in the Great Free City of Krackow when the KGB-incited mob rises up in revolt.

I can also see some of them flying their heraldic devices to catch the attention of other SCAdians they might encounter. ("Holy crap! That's Sir Manfred's device painted on that BMP! Hold your fire!") Of course what the locals might think of this, who could tell?