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SME Melee Weapons (Utna's)

SME: Melee Weapons is a data only mod featuring 30 new or remade melee weapons, and 14 unique abilities for Shadowrun Returns. It also includes the concealability/legality mechanic from Tracker's SSC, and a weapon slot management, which should give the players, some (optional) reasons to not overweight their character. It now has 3 unarmed weapons : Shock gloves, Hardliner gloves, and Forearm Snap Blades.

Notes about SME Melee Weapons :
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CONCEABILITY / THREAT:

just like in Tracker's Street Samurai Catalog (thanks for sharing the idea !), weapons in this mod shall give their wielder a passive bonus in the Resist Drain skill (which is not used in the game). To easily track your character's conceability capability, the Resist Drain skill will be called (in the item's description) "Threat" instead. I'm sure Tracker would explain this much better than me, but roughly, here's the thing : having a threat value of 0 means you look like an harmless civilian. Instead having 11 (the maximum), means you will be seen as a dangerous psychotic, and probably chased down by the Lone Star, at first sight.


AP DAMAGES:

in this mod, whether or not a melee weapon might deal AP damage is not up to the weapon itself, but to its available abilities. Eg: Pommel Strike will always have a chance to deal its AP damages, even if it comes from a Axe or a Dragon Sword. But beside with Pommel Strike and a few others blunt attacks, melee weapons won't deal that much AP damage anyway. I'll keep this feature for the unarmed combat, which will have a large "control" flavour to compensate for its lower HP damages. My next SME mod will be about unarmed combat, and it shall come very soon.


WEAPON CATEGORIES:

In this mod, melee weapons can be divided into 4 categories :

1. Casual Weapons: (Eg. Kitchen Knife) weapons from this category are not meant for combat, nor they are wanted by shadowrunners. Still they exist and some GM might want to use them in their story for "extreme" situations. There is nothing special about them, save for the fact that they do not have access to "Cleave" nor "Disarm". (Side note: they only appear in the most basic equipment sheet).

2. Concealable blades: (Eg. Survival Knife) their Threat value is low when compared to their damage potential. These are the weapons of choice for runners wich want a light and discreet backup melee option.

3. Kinetic Weapons: (Eg. Katana) these weapons unlock a special ability when equipped.

4. Powered Weapons: (Eg. Stun baton) In the Shadowrun's era, the technological evolution of melee weapons is related to sales and profits. Of course, in a world with battles ruled by ranged weapons, the research funds assigned to the melee weapons are low and do not take into account the wishes of a dozen of melee masters in the world. For the average modern fighter, a good melee weapon is more a backup option than a premier equipment. It is used solely in most extreme fights when the melee comes upfront. Thus most modern melee weapons are light and not made to support long exhausting fights (unlike medieval weapons). Their lack of weight should decreases their potential damages dramatically, but this loss of cinetic energy is compensated with an electrical source of power (Laser, Monofilament, Shock, ..., etc.) These weapons also unlocks their own special abilities, but those shall require ammunitions (energy cells). No ammo will be needed for the vanilla game's abilities, but the extra ones will disappear when the batteries are low. Due to the large length or time needed to replenish a weapon's battery, they can't be 'reloaded' manually in the middle of a fight (unlike ranged weapons).



WEIGHT (weapon's slot management):

in SRR vanilla, the weapon slot mechanic leaves us the choice to pack any number of large weapons without any restrictions. Indeed, sometimes our Characters ends up with an extra Axe or Riffle ... "just in case". This is where (in my opinion) the ammunition mechanic, and the lighter weapons become obselete. In this mod, there are three reasons to not pack as much large weapons as possible.

1. Conceability: larger weapons are harder to conceal, thus they, increase the character's threat value, more than any other. But, this mechanic is mostly a tool for story modders, since nothing shall happen, unless they create special triggers and dialogue options for it.

2. Heavy Weapons: some items have the keyword "Heavy weapon". When such an item is equipped, the character will suffer an ongoing -5% accuracy penalty. Important note : these penalties are not limited to the use of heavy weapons only. They also stack together: a character wielding one heavy weapon will have a flat -5% to hit, and another -5% for each other heavy item he has. Of course, heavy weapons compensate this restrictions with greater damages and abilities.

3. Special abilities: most of those mod's weapons have their special ability, but some of them, are called "Swift ability". Those abilities are lost if the character reaches the Threat's maximum value (11). So now, when choosing his weapons, a player should be aware that he won't have 3 bonus abilities just because he has 3 weapons slot. In fact, if he does not carefully plan his package, he might end up with no extra ability at all.


SPECIAL NOTES (Monofilament Whip):

Honestly, this one was hard to make and it went in and out of this mod many times. Even now the results are far from good, but Shadowrun won't be Shadowrun without the Monofilament Whips isn't it ? Here's a little explanation about the choices I made for this weapon, but if anyone has another idea, this shall be interesting to know for this mod's next update.

1. The monofilament whip uses the character's Quickness instead of force for its chances to hit (extra damages are always bound to Strength anyway). This illustrates, the agility required to not cut yourself with the whip. Indeed it still uses Close Combat as a Skill and Edged as a Specialization.

2. It has only one combat ability wich have a terrible damage bucket (critical strikes) but it may strike more than one enemy up to 3 times in a row.

3. It has an ammunition countdown, but unlike others powered weapons, it can be reloaded. this little trick represents the whip "accidents" where it should be reseted before anything dramatic happens.

4. The whip is one of the most forbidden weapons in the Shadowrun's lore, but since it is light and concealable, it has a low Threat value.