Combining Melee and Brawling

[CRMcNeill]

Someone over on the Facebook Group made a suggestion recently to the effect that Melee and Brawling were sufficiently similar that they could easily be combined. Since I've already done that with Melee Parry and Brawling Parry (the Defense skill), it would only be a minor step to do the same with the attack skills. For one thing, it would greatly simplify the various close combat scenes where meleeists mix in kicks or punches with their weapon strikes. That way, rather than having to roll both skills, you just roll one close combat skill (I'm leaning toward calling it Melee at the moment) that covers it all. The Defense skill already has modifiers for armed vs unarmed, so this would sync nicely with that.

I'm not quite ready to post a skill write-up yet, but I figured I'd post the basic concept for feedback.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Mamatried]

Combining the two makes a lot of sense.

And even though armed and unarmed melee is different the rules here for this are easy enough, add the weapon's modifiers to the roll as if using the raw melee combat skill.

I can of course see other skills being both mechanically similar enough and logically similar enough, like some gunnery and piloting skills and others

[KageRyu]

While I would agree that it is reasonable to combine Melee and Melee Parry, or Brawling and Brawling Parry, I would disagree that Melee and Brawling are at all alike and should be combined. While one generally learns how to attack and defend with a blade simultaneously or how to block and grapple or throw a punch, fighting unarmed and fighting with a sword are vastly different skill sets. I have already been a bit weary that Melee is so comprehensive of all close combat arms already as fighting with Pole arm and fighting with a dirk are worlds apart in terms of technique, but this is true of many other D6 skills and what specializations are for. There is no similarity of form or technique that brings brawling in line with any sort of armed close quarters fighting however. A good boxer might not know a thing about swordsmanship. I would strongly urge very careful research and consideration as this would make a single do all combat skill for offense and defense.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Whill]

[Mamatried]

I can see something where melee and brawling are combined under maybe a melee skill that includes parry and imo lightsaber as a spciality free for "jedi" characters and maybe restricted to anyone else.

I can see that unarmed attacks do less than STR damage unless trained, maybe -1D

I am far stronger than what my punching power would indicate and this goes for most untrianed punchers.

Traning Basic BRAWLING will simply cost 1 cp and then is like any other skill from there and you deal full str damage +item/ability bonus.

With martial Arts, you can deal addtitonal damage even above your strength to +1D.
this is in addtion to any danage bonus from martial Atrts techniques.


Uskilled Armed melee is the same as with utrained Brawling, -1D strength, but you do get the full item bonus.
smae here 1 cp and the skill will be considered traied for the full strenght bonus.

An armed Martial Arts can allow and addtional +1D to damage.

Ech 3D in the Brawling/Melee Skill adds +1 pip to Dogde for a +2 with 6D, and +1D at 9D

the Dodge synergy could be changed of course, but when fighting both unarmed and armed you do duck and dodge blows and as such you should get some synergy from tranied melee/brawling/martila Arts

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

[CRMcNeill]

[Whill]

[Ninja-Bear]

[Mamatried]

I can see a Melee Skill that inculdes Unarmed Brawling, basic armed melee as well as martial arts.

Unarmed Brawling can have damage increases and such through martial Arts thechniques, and I think the normal Martial Arts rules here can apply.

the armed martial arts do not really differ here as they still fooolw the techniquis if any and adds the weapon damage.

untrained you actually do NOT do full STR in damage but maybe a -2
once you have placed a pip in melee you are of course trained like any other skill.

but the -2 to damage would make sense where a trained puncher punches more effectively and thus deals more "damagage" than someone untrained.

Keeping in this case Martial Arts as Advanced skills, I still Need 5D in my melee Skill to take the Martial Art and use this.

Melee/Brawling Parry is of course incuded in this, some martial arts techniques will have defensive techniques aswell as offesive ones.

combing the 4 skills Brawling, BParry, and both melee combat and parry are imo not a big deal to do as they in many ways are the same skill.

this of course makes me think of other skills that can be combined, and I am sure if that strange gray matter works as intended then perhaps there are several skills that can be combined, lessening all out book keeping

[Grimace]

I'm in the same mind as garhkal and KageRyu. Blending Melee and Unarmed Combat into one is like mixing two things that really aren't similar other than the fact that it's close combat. A person skilled in unarmed combat is not automatically skilled in the use of melee weapons. The method of fighting is very different.

That would be like having Starfighter Piloting being grouped in with Capital Ship Piloting, all because they happen in space. Very different in how each is done.

There's a point where you can trim D6 down to so simple that you lose much of the detail that made character development interesting. All characters will start to look the same by reducing the skills and combining the skills.

So, yes, you are welcome to do whatever you want in YOUR game. But I offer this note of caution at reducing things down too much.


I would suggest, as KageRyu mentioned, that you blend Melee and Melee Parry together into one skill and Brawling and Brawling Parry together into another skill. Learning offense and defense in each method makes a lot more sense than it does crossing methods of attack and defense entirely.

[Darklighter79]

I've seen this type of simplification in the newest Alien RPG - only 12 skills (like close combat, ranged combat, pilot).
But Alien is a very different setting: survival horror with often claustrophobic environment. Basically there's the same set of characters (pilot, marine, corp exec, medic, etc.) and the goal is just, well, survival, not a hero's journey.

Still, if it works - good.
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