I have yet to play Eclipse Phase myself, but I've run several other games for a couple of years. My suggestion would be to throw everything at him that he doesn't have a skill for. What he wants from that skill is to stomp baddies. You can have him take out a couple so he feels that he's not being totally discriminated against, but then have something interfere with his ability to min/max combat like that. Have a ranged enemy that immobilizes him. Have something hacking his mesh inserts. Make up an enemy that gets close to melee range but stays just out of it and attacks with ranged skill. Sic a nanohive on him. These are just suggestions, half the fun is making up your own devious plans. If the character isn't going to retire for a while, I would suggest talking to him about balance in the game and how his approach to gaming reduces fun for everyone in the group. If he's into RP you could even do something where he's crippled in some way (probably mind-affecting) and he can bemoan his lost position as the best hand-to-hand combatant in the solar system. It's a good story hook. Hope this helps, Myn

Melee *is* terrible if you're comparing Melee to other forms of violence in the game. Melee is awesome when you consider that there are very few habitats where you can get away with carrying a firearm or beam weapon. Ultimately the setting as written makes all forms of violence next to useless in nearly all locales. But when all else has failed you're much more likely to have the ability to employ melee skills than ranged attacks. There are a couple ways to deal with high Fray Skills. The first is to just shoot him. It's likely that the team will have or make some enemies who don't have to deal with restrictions on ranged weapons, (Security, Police, Military). 97 ranks in Fray are only worth 48 against a ranged attack. Even an average security drone will have a 50% chance to hit all other modifiers asside. I'm betting that having Fray 97, after only 4 game sessions, means that there's a huge reaction bonus due to morph enhancements. Send the team on a mission to another locale and ego casting/resleeving will take care of that issue. Its also likely that a newer character having a skill ranked that highly will mean that he is a bit of a 'One Trick Pony' (tm). The character will have other weaknesses and I'm betting that weakness is the freefall skill. So put him in micro-G and you'll eliminate the character's mobility and ability to maneuver. Finally, make sure the opponents are smart enough to control the battle space. And have the manpower to swarm the character. Unless the team's goal is mugging pedestrians they'll pretty much always be up against an organization with more resources and access to intelligence. Let the opponents pick their battles and tactics. Don't throw melee monsters at the character often. It's never fun for a player when the GM is trying to beat them at thier own game. That totally denies the ego-trip-wish-fulfillment that makes playing a combat character fun. "Flank" the character from their "weak side" and players will stop throwing Rez into Min/Maxing.

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so wait, am I missing something? you don't use fray in microgravity environs? they haven't been in one of those combats yet and I wasn't sure. Is there a rule mentioning this?

Page 199 the paragraph at the bottom of the first column under Microgravity Think about the situation and you'll see what I'm talking about. What kind of activities are involved when using the Fray skill in melee or ranged combat? How do you duck, bob, weave, slip or roll with the punch when you don't have gravity and friction working for you? If you're near a surface where you can apply force or gain friction against mass you might be able to do some of these maneuvers, (you can't duck), but any wild movement is going to impart a great deal of momentum much of which is likely to be 'spin' realative to your center of gravity. Without excellent freefall skills and the ability to plan your move before you make it you're very likely to hurt yourself and put yourself in a bad position relative to your opponent. If you're floating free how can you use Fray at all? Here's how I play it; The acting character in a micro-g melee combat must roll freefall before or after they roll to attack, block, parry, or fray. If they fail the freefall roll before the action roll then the action fails and the character looses initiative. If they fail the freefall roll after the action roll then they have a negative modifier for the rest of the turn (-10 for a normal failure -30 for a critical fail), they loose initiative, and they can't use Moxie for any physical activity besides a freefall test until they make another freefall test to recover. A success simply means you suffer no negatives and remain in control of your movement and position. A critical success gives you the "superior position" modifier for either your or your opponents next action. (also because I'm a sloppy GM with ADHD if I catch a player forgetting to make a freefall roll it costs them a moxy for the session. Distracting me has become the game within the game. ;) If that seems like a lot of extra dice play (it's not really), you can check freefall for all characters (or just the NPC's) at the beginning of the combat or during the Initiative phase of each turn. I prefer rolling for each action because I'm a narrative simulationist.

Yeh. I see how that could get old fast. I make it 21.56% chance for each attack to hit. So one hit landing out of 6 is about average. As Smokeskin said this is quite realistic. When competent fighters fight with fists it takes a long time for either of them to fall down. And that is fighting in flats with no armour, good for the boxing enthusiast who wants time to get into the fight, not so good for an RPG when it takes forever to determine a winner. Of cause armour also becomes a significant break point as you discovered. Even the best weapons will only do 2d10+3 with AP -3. Add in +4 for the highest possible strength in the game and the most competent melee fighter possible is only doing and average of 9 damage to an armour 11 target, but that means walking around with an axe, unsubtle. The flex cutter best of the concealable weapons will only get 2 points threw on average. A pistol however can be fired in burst fire doing 16 average of wich 5 get threw and you can do 2 bursts. Or you could fire full auto for average of 22 damage which is 11 after armour, that will wound anything imposing penalties to counter attack, and that is the weakest firearm in the game with regular ammunition. Of cause 11 points of armour is not easy to get. The best I can do subtly is Second skin 1/3 light bioweave 2/3 and armour clothing 3/4 for 6/10. Which is plenty for stuffing up somebody trying to hurt you with a knife. I would recommend that arena fights should not allow significant armour (like most modern martial arts) or be scored purely on points (like modern fencing) 9 lives would be no armour at all and you can have a knife. They want to see some blood. I am seeing puling your opponents cortical stack and holding it up for everybody to see as a typical finishing move.

Baalbamoth wrote:

the whole UFC thing became main stream, I do consider myself a very real fighter, and the thai boxers from the palooka gym I trained at considered it BS because nobody went for eyes or nuts when the other guy grabbed em. my Sifu basically told me if anybody ever grabs you on the street, stab em with something... anything.

Well, those thai boxers would get torn up by an MMA or BJJ fighter that was willing to take it to the ground (which is a bad idea outside of competition, but that's a different story). Both parties can go for the eyes and groin, and with one side having superior ground fighting skill, the outcome is practically certain.

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and no, street fights never last 25 minutes, the opponents are almost never evenly matched, and generally nobody stops the fight to stop one guy from breaking the neck of the other.

The reason street fights don't last long is that typically either or both parties are inexperienced fighters, or that one fighter gets the jump on the other. But what you described sounded like two experienced fighters in armor - unless one of them does something rash that's going to take forever and most likely end when one of them goes tired.

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Also, the skills you pick up learning how to block or weave are nothing like the skills you might pick up to dodge bullets (which is another issue for high fray skill... I've never heard of anybody who could dodge dead on target bullets without cover 50% of the time no matter how much combat or fighting expirence they had, thats just a bit of matrix looney, and that aspect of the rules is anything but "simulationist")

I agree - though I thought of the Fray skill in ranged combat as being more of a case of simply moving, presenting a small profile, using cover effectively etc. to make you harder to hit, more than anything to do with actively dodging. I used to play airsoft and there is A LOT of difference in how much people expose themselves - experienced players only clears one eye and the muzzle around a corner to take a shot, while new players expose their entire head and parts of their torso for example. When running from cover to cover you'll go back a bit to give room to get up to full sprint speed once you clear the corner instead of starting from the corner. When shooting around a corner I can easily transition from standing to kneeling to shooting from shin height, so an opponent sees me popping out at different heights so he can't predict where to shoot me. That's how I see Fray skill in ranged combat.

Also even the guy with fray 100 with a 50% chance to succeed doesn’t have a 50% chance to dodge a bullet that would otherwise have hit. Lets say the shooter has skill 50 and hits with a roll of X. the defender has to roll between 50 and X. giving about a 25% chance to dodge an attack that would otherwise have hit. If the attacker had a skill of 85 and rolled a 53, that is an excellent success (+5 damage) and only a critical success on the fray roll will be effective. I second Smokeskin’s description of using fray against ranged attacks, yes it a different skill not really linked to ability to defend in melee, which itself is significantly different if your facing a sword, club or unarmed opponent and wether you yourself are armed but I like having less than 500 skills.

Baalbamoth wrote:

who tried to hide behind plywood or drywall thinking that would stop a 7.76 round. I've seen some amazing paintball and airsoft players do things like a baseball slide to pop up ready to shoot over a peice of cover, yet I've never seen that crap in actual combat vids (it would be a great way to break a leg and get shot with all the armor and gear those guys carry) and the truth is you get a lot more cover from withering fire support with an open sight picture and a long corador than you ever would from a car door.

A lot of airsoft cover is only rifle concealment, absolutely :)

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as for MMA vs Muay Thai... thai fighters who grew up in it, really arent human, I mean that in the best way. They do amazing crap to their bodies, bones, muscle density, nerve damage that litterally blocks pain, flexibility etc. (I met a 14 yr old kid with over 300 fights! sure by the time he's 25 he wont be able to walk without limping or ever use a pencil but what the heck, he woulda died in 10 years working in a factory) the problem being that almost none of em (except Ton Poe) get anywhere near 6ft tall, I'd be willing to bet though in a street fight between two asian guys one trained in ground fighting, one who was basically sold into a Muay Thai stable, the ground fighting expirence wouldent mean much.

A muai thai champion that has trained in takedown defense, that's a dangerous opponent. But if you haven't trained takedown defense, a ground fighter will easily wrestle you down and then it is game over. It just doesn't matter how good your standup if if you don't have the wrestling skills needed to stay standing, unless you're lucky enough to KO him with the one or two strikes you'll get off before he grapples you of course.

Baalbamoth wrote:

cool under fire, or something along those lines that give you a slight bonus not to be hit,(twilight 2000 was an awesome game) and to hit what your aiming at, or "use of cover" that would give an additional bonus when using cover to hide behind, but beyond that... there really is no such thing as a "dodge bullets" skill.

But fray is not a dodging bullets skill. It is a skill that incorporates use of cover and consealment, cool under fire, unpredictable movement changes (it takes time to bring a weapon to bare, if you can move in that time your less likely to be hit) it’s not much but it helps. It is a being hard to hit skill. The mechanic has it rolled after the shot is fired but it isn’t an action you take after the shot is fired.

double post

Baalbamoth wrote:

As a new DM I'm kind of floundering on moxie, I dont like it as a mechanic (never liked luck points) and I dont really buy that its drive and determination. Drive and determination wouldent change pulling the trigger on a sniper rifle and change a shot from a leg wound to a head shot, and I dont see how drive and determination stops a thrown kick that would have ended in a fall and maybe a broken leg into a highly succesfull kick or a dodged bullet.

Your mileage may vary of course. But I always saw moxie as more determination than luck. For one thing, it doesn't allow rerolls :) For me, moxie isn't something that changes the results that happen after the fact even though it is used after a roll. Let me give an example: suppose a character is being attacked by a guy with a gun who really wants to kill him. The guy spends a point of moxie to go first and fires two shots, the first hits and he upgrades, the second misses but he flips to get a hit. What the character being shot at sees isn't really a guy with low skills being lucky, but an opponent who really wants to kill him and therefore doing much better job than his skills otherwise allow because he really [b]wants[/b] it. So to me moxie is sort of like being in the zone and sort of like having high morale. You can make things happen because you really want them to and are giving it your all. Of course you can't give your all constantly which is why moxie runs out. Regarding NPCs having moxie: Whether you like to use NPCs with moxie is really on how gritty and tactical you like your games. If you don't use moxie with most NPCs: the games will be very cinematic and superhero like (which may be what you want). Also the players won't need to rely on tactics as much, so this is good if you don't have very tactical minded players. Using this play style, opponents that do have moxie are like supervillains in a superhero movie, a real threat, while those without are the thugs that the superhero effortlessly plow through even if they should be vulnerable to bullets. If you like to use moxie with most NPCs: the games will be much more gritty and realistic, where every guy with a gun is a threat. This will require characters to use tactics much more if they want to win without getting seriously injured. Also you can use moxie to further characterize the NPCs actions: are they aggressive spending moxie very liberally on attacks, hoping to overwhelm their opponents with sheer ferocity? Are they defensive taking cover and using moxie to upgrade defenses only (perhaps while waiting for backup to arrive when they will swap to offense using their remaining moxie aggressively in an effort to achieve fire superiority and win the fight). For realistic games where 'violence of action' is a good way to win fights, giving most NPCs moxie is a good thing. I very much prefer the second type, but both are equally good. You should however, always make sure that your players know what type of game you are playing. Regarding gladiatorial type fights: Most MMA and boxing style fights do tend to take a while, so I don't really see this as a flaw in the system. The best thing to do to speed up fights is to actually avoid even matches. Barring that, you might want to introduce a factor that lets them end quicker. Moxie is one possible factor, MRDR is another, but there are many others. For example instead of a straight up slugging match, maybe have 9 lives put a wasp knife filled with liquid thermite in the middle of the arena. They then dose both contestants with MRDR, and have them start at opposite ends. This will add a lot more variety and tactics to the fight, as getting the wasp knife and stabbing your opponent with it will pretty much guarantee a win (and it will look spectacular to the audience :) ). Combine with moxie and you will have a very tactical fight, with the player having to make a couple of important decision each round (is he going to use moxie to attack me? Should I attempt to disarm to get the wasp knife away from him? Should I use moxie to create a critical so I can hit him with the wasp knife and win? etc.) rather than just I attack, he attacks, I attack, ad infinitum.

double post

That would work well. It avoids the mooks using moxy because they will never be on camera again while giving the GM options to surprise the PCs.

@ Baalbamoth Big story you told there, I got a bit lost reading it. I think what you are saying is that K1 fighter can beat you reliably. You can beat dirty fighter reliably if he is forced to fight to a set of rules. But you think dirty fighter could beat K1 fighter if nobody was indorsing any of the rules K1 is used to fighting with. Based on the record you clamed I would say you have professional experience (12 pro fights sounds like a significant number to me) and therefore a skill of 50. While K1 fighter has won an international event so I will call him a system-renowned authority on the subject, skill 80. Also I am assuming you both have similar skill levels in the offensive and defensive skills used (unarmed combat and fray) and being similar fighting styles your both used to fighting people with that style. And from the way you described it he was going to beat you reliably until you got more skill. This reflects the EP skill system well, I refer regrettably to Wikipedia to determine that K1 rounds are 3 min, being 30 combat rounds. You where still active (if not effective) after 3 rounds, 90 combat rounds. Lalande21185 is listing maximum fight durations in the 60-70 combat round range (without using moxy). Both of you however learned to fight to a set of rules. And while those rules are necessary in a sport you deliberately weaken yourselves to obey them, and all your practice has ingrained these limits into your reactions even when the rules are not in force. The dirty fighter you mentioned did not learn these limits. He fights to the rules (sort of) when in a ring and completely ignores them outside giving him an advantage over those that have ingrained reactions limited by the rules. Unfortunately the rules do not model this. The game assumes that everybody has trained to fight in real no holds barred fights where no move will get you pulled of the other guy and your life is truly on the line. It’s just a matter of trying to have rules that are reasonably simple. If you wanted to tack something on to model this this consider allowing a profession (martial art) skill to provide a related skill bonus to unarmed combat and fray if both parties are obeying the rules of (martial art) people could also take a specialisation in unarmed combat (martial art). (and be aware as you read this that I have no formal and negligible informal combat experience, I am putting this together based on a pinch of theoretical knowledge and trying to model the situation you described using game rules) If you did this then I would change your skills to unarmed and fray 30 both specialised in kickboxing with 40 points in profession (kickboxing) (so you roll under 50 in the ring) while K1 fighter has unarmed and fray 40 both specialised in kickboxing as well as profession (kickboxing) 80 so he is rolling under 80 when he was fighting you. dirty fighter on the other hand just has unarmed and fray at 40 with no specialisations. When you put dirty fighter in the ring and he obeys your rules you can beat him because you specifically know how to defend against legal attacks and how to make attacks that are hard to defend against with legal defences. When you fight him on the street he stops obeying the rules so you can no longer use your specialisation or profession bonuses. With the numbers I assigned he can beat you and is an even mach against K1 fighter. I don’t know how realistic this is but is dose model the situation you described (unless I got that wrong) In any case it doesn’t solve your problem because your player has skill 97 in frey, without relying on specialisations or complementary skill bonuses that disappear if your opponent fails to play by your rules. Effectively your PC is a dirty fighter who has trained so hard at defending against other dirty fighters (and any other fighters) that he has fray 97 against all of them.

You're not supposed to have unarmed fights with armor, at least not if you're expecting it to end anytime soon. Even so, getting 60+ on the attack roll gives a +10 damage so people can go down. Having some basic weapons changes this a bit of course. In the campaign I am playing in now, the GM wanted me to have the Expert trait and start with a skill of 90 (for some story reasons) but I could choose which one I wanted and so I decided to start with 90 in Fray. With morph bonuses that usually means anything but 99 is a success, so all I have to do is roll higher than my opponent. So far I've been in two unarmed fights, one where I was literally fighting naked (to have a fair fight) and I got hit once before the fury that was my opponent was down. In the other I was already very damaged, so I "cheated" and wore armor but still my opponent got a hit that actually did damage in before going down. And that's not counting the times people have stabbed me with knives. Your player having a high Fray skill just means he can take on more opponents and thus be more cool in-game. I wouldn't worry about it. I've managed to have some good fights despite starting with 90 Fray skill (I really should raise it a bit more but there's so much to spend those juicy RP on).

When I was running some Quick-Sleeve Cage Fighting (whereas you are sleeved into a morph you don't know about, and with no time to get accustomed to it have to fight against someone you don't know who it is until after) the fights never lasted longer than 10 rounds. I think one of them was over in two (although that was 6 actions) much to the annoyance of the host who told the player to make sure the audience had more fight to watch. After some time we didn't really want to play the fights in detail (even though good narratiion helps make the scene cool) so I made a rule that on average there was a 50% chance to win. Then, depending on the difference in base unarmed skill the player got a +-10 modifier (+-20 if the difference was 30 or greater) and same with Fray. Then I would make an arbitrary judgement of the difference in morph strength and give a +-10/20 modifier based on that. Lastly, there would be a +-10 depending on how well the Integration test of the two combatants went. So take your guy for example. 50 base chance, +20 if his base Fray is 97 and the opponent has like 60-65, and with all other things being equal that would give him 70& chance to win. Roll the die and see what happens!

Baalbamoth wrote:

in further fights maxed moxie man is going to be sucking a lot but who cares... he can kick the crap outa just about anything if he's willing to rest for a day afterward.

As a GM I would take [i]full[/i] advantage of this situation. In a war drama with a lot of extended combat, featuring these two as allies, one would have her moments of excellence but afterward look as inexperienced as she is; while the other would have less super-moments but overall look like a veteran.

Baalbamoth wrote:

two PC's, one builds a combat monster with skills in most fighting skills, the other buys one combat skill high (say beam weapons) rest medium, and gets 10 moxi. who's the most bad assed character? the one with all the expirence and combat training? or the guy that is lucky and determined? assuming the latter character chooses to burn all his moxie in a 1 v 1 combat with the former, I dont see a way in hell the first character could 1) win 2) not be considered pathetic compaired to maxed moxie man. that seems like a pretty serious ballence issue. sure the moxie has to be regained, and in further fights maxed moxie man is going to be sucking a lot but who cares... he can kick the crap outa just about anything if he's willing to rest for a day afterward.

Remember, moxie is just one factor. It is not a god stat, all the moxie in the world won't help a character if their skills are too low. In the scenario above, the moxie man will probably win in a beam weapon fight (spend moxie to go first, hit, upgrade, concentrate and hope the opponent isn't willing to spend moxie to do the same), but won't necessarily be able to beat the skilled opponent in melee. Let me give you some examples using modified Gang Member NPCs. We will increase the first gang members blades skill to 80 (90 claws, note that I am not allowing the specialization to apply to defense so the melee defense is only 80) and their moxie to 3. If raised using points this is a 85 CP increase. In contrast the second gang member will have a moxie 10. If raised using points this is a 135 CP increase. The Skill Gang Member will not use his moxie to flip attack dice. The Moxie Gang Member will use Moxie as fast as possible except they won't spend moxie to go first. Neither will use called shots because their armor is only 4. Under those circumstances, in a 1-on-1 claw vs claw fight. The Skilled Gang Member will win a healthy 90% of the time. Let me give you some example fights from the simulation: Fight 1: Fight 2:

Baalbamoth wrote:

Bernardo knocks out ground fighters with one punch... one punch... course he's not really human either, some kind of homosapiens/sapiens gigantus or something like that...

Lots of ground fighters get knocked out. Ground fighting isn't some ninja auto-win skill, that's not what I'm saying. All I'm saying is that a standup striker needs good takedown defense so he can stay on his feet, something that very few standup martial arts teach. A pure standup striker will lose almost every time against a ground fighter. I don't know who this Bernardo is and I'm on vacation on a crappy hotel wifi so not inclined to look it up, but I don't doubt he has one punch knockout power - but I doubt he has 100% accuracy. For a knockout you need to hit precisely at one of the sweet spots, and no one can do that against a moving target every time - even he will need to stay on his feet long enough to throw many punches unless he is very lucky.

I'm new to the game and coming from systems like Dark Heresy, I was a bit worried how high combat stats could get. I'm curious though, and i might remember wrong, sorry in advance if i do, but won't fights between equally skilled melee fighters be a little more random due to the fact that crits ignore armor and that if both succeed, the one with higher MoS(or was it higher number shown in the example?) Succeeds in attacking/defending. There also the bonus damage from SOM and +2dv for being a synth? For dealing with chars like these, can one Fray an agonizer which can't be seen without enhancements for a -20 to his actions? Think swarms do damage without rolls, just staying in contact. Shock vs biomorph and emp vs synth before enemy closes into melee? Implanted blades with toxins. Thought these aren't unarmed vs unarmed.