I don't mean to hijack, but has anyone else wondered about how melee might be used in a gunfight? I remember it was a viable direct-damage option in Shadowrun 4e, but that was more of a genre affectation. In Eclipse Phase, I've been thinking the best bet is to disarm and then subdue (or grapple as I think it's called) - but am I missing something?

That's weird, Sirion. I was sure I'd had this discussion before, and that the book specifically said raising skills by raising Apts cost you RP (for the 'free' points). Hm, maybe that's only for raising Apts with RP. Sorry. :)

Aha, but you do spend CP to buy your morph. ;) Just kidding, but there you go.

If there's one major flaw I have found in eclipse phase, it's that it actively punishes players for building a character aptitude focus. For example, if I were to take Sirion's example, if you sleeved a champion wrestler with a 30 base Ego SOM, he does not get the Fury's innate morph bonus (As it caps at 30.), but does get the extra +10 from 'her' implants. It's easier and cheaper to dump attributes or take the lowest possible CP expenditure in them globally, focusing in the ones more difficult to augment (Wil, Cog) and buy skills. Even without augmentations, you come out 'equivalent', and with them you are considerably stronger. Apts are pointless to raise unless you have 10 active skills that link to that aptitude, and even then it is dangerous to do so, as you may cap your morph's capabilities or augmentation limit (which applies after skill training plateaus.)

Iriah wrote:

I don't mean to hijack, but has anyone else wondered about how melee might be used in a gunfight?

I didn't get to this earlier, but in short, it's not. [I]For damage.[/I] Melee is fairly weird in eclipse phase, but given how implanted weapons use unarmed combat, and are typically the best melee options available (You can hide them, don't need to draw them, they can't be disarmed, can grappled unarmed), UA is most likely the best skill to take for this. As for effectiveness, you will only be able to realistically fight biomorphs, because you must take a shock weapon to score 'instant kills', as with cyberclaws or monofilament blades, you have no damage potential agaisnt even civilian grade armor. Yet if the enemy fails even one shock DUR test, they are disabled for a minimum of three action phases, which assuming speed two gives you six whole actions to wail on them with a real weapon, called shot for armor ignore while they can't fray (Fray is considerably stronger in melee than agaisnt guns, best not to try until you disable them), or simply keep pounding them with your shock-claws so they never, ever get up. Of course, this fails agaisnt synthmorphs that stack armor, but so does every weapon.

That's actually not the case. Any time you're going above 60 (via anything other than gear/morph bonuses) you're paying the extra points for the skill as well. This can make it pretty expensive to raise an aptitude you have a bunch of high skills linked to. See 'Raising Aptitudes' on p. 152 of the core. Character creation and character advancement being identical cost-wise is one of the things I particularly like about EP. Min-maxing with the plan of raising things later doesn't give you a point advantage over someone who didn't.