I think that I have been watching too many movies.(and all the forum discussions about rebalancing/balancing/nerfing/USW. Weapon skills (typically guns))
But it started me thinking…
What are the communities thoughts on adding any of the following:
- A “gun- fu” Skill. I don’t have the book in front of me that has the description of the skill I like, but if memory serves me correctly it was a “secondary skill” that requires ranks in hand to hand combat and possibly some in pistols. It allows your character to mix in gun moves with their normal strikes. Some of the moves that I recall were draw, shoot, weapon strike, and disarm. Those would be able to be chained into combos with your normal melee moves.
I don’t know how feasible this one is but it sets me up for number 2
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A “Gun- fu” skill book (style book?) Like the ones used to learn hand to hand moves. It would add combat options like above but requires being equipped with a loaded gun.
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Not really in the same vein but a bit of a trope for the genre being able to que up multiple shots to fire on the same turn at multiple targets, Or while doing stunts, or anything else really.
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Acrobatics, Your character gains beaucoup dodge bonus (and style boon?) For pulling “John woo / matrix” stunts while fighting. Take (seriously high / variable by skill?) penalty to accuracy and recoil while doing so…
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Dual wield, while I know Kevin Grand has made his stance known about it I feel I should include it for posterity.
These suggestions are all pretty much just straight cinematic ripoff but I thought they would be fun to play.
Disclaimer: I wrote this at 0030 local time (12:30 am) on a mobile phone, after watching equilibrium and John wick. So… please don’t be too harsh. 
Caveat up front, if someone wants extra features they maintain as a mod, I’m totally fine with that, including helping with adding support to the game engine to enable it, so anything I say about it not fitting in the game only applies to the game with default settings.
- The current primary drawback of guns is that monsters hitting you in melee increases your recoil a great deal and makes it hard to use guns in melee. Gun-fu generally subverts this and you end up with a fairly bad outcome of guns being the only weapon you ever need. I don’t like this effect for the main game because fighting off zombies with improvised melee weapons is pretty central to the zombie survival horror theme, but a mod could just run with it and turn it into a strength. I’m not sure how you imagine your gun-fu moves would be triggered, need some clarity about how that works.
- Having a skill book for learning about it is how we generally handle this kind of stuff, no issue there.
- Mechanically this kind of multishot thing would probably trade off a bit of extra speed for the reduced flexibility if setting up your shots in advance. I don’t see it being worthwhile in the main game since the feel is a lot more tactical, but in a gun-fu mod it sounds like it’d be fun.
- This would be supported by “stances”, which is something I’m interested in adding at some point.
I want it, but then there will be someone bringing up “realism”.
Not sure if I’d be a fan of Equilibrium style gun katas, but I would absolutely love to see a martial art that improves your ability to kick ass with rifle butts and bayonets. As far as “gun fu” goes it would probably be more appropriate to have “shooting stances” that effect dispersion and recoil. It’s a bit silly to alternate between punching someone and shooting them, especially when just shooting them is much safer.
Ok I found the game book that described gun- fu that I was thinking of. It is in the Aegis handbook for conspiracy x first edition (I think)
it is described as: “a modern close combat technique that uses a pistol as an extension of the combatants body students of gun- fu Train using pistols in much the same way that students of other martial arts is more traditional weapons/…/ character skilled in the martial art may add the moves draw pistol, shoot, and pistol whip to martial arts and brawling combos along with the other usual moves. when these moves are performed the character uses his gun- fu skill level to determine the success rather than his martial arts or brawling skill. /…/ gun- fu may only be used in close combat at point blank range.”
As far as my imagination goes the best implementation that I can think of would be a skill book. Something like a “CIA Close combat manual” (this is in America after all so, sorry gign/gsg9) that would give some hand to hand moves that were focused on power (high damage) but were lacking in defense. every movie I have seen that uses gun-fu the hero just seems to keep soaking the damage until he wins or is killed.
The way I could see this working would be to treat the “Gun- fu” as a high damage, zero/negative defense stance requiring you to be wielding a loaded gun. The “special” moves would use at least one round but would add the weapons damage to your strike. To try to counter balance this I feel we could have it be that “smaller lighter” guns have a higher chance of activating the specials.
This was all just a loose idea I honestly don’t know if I have enough skill to even make this work. The biggest project I have coded was a profession that I have not even finished yet.
Edit.
I was thinking more of the “press the gun to a meaty portion of my enemy and pull the trigger” (ala John wick) version of gun fu than the equilibrium “stand in the middle of a room and don’t get shot while shooting everyone else” (like equilibrium).
If I could get some more information about skill and stance books I could give the bayonet and but thing a go but as my knowledge and skills stand I would have to shop out the advanced work. 
I already know Gun-Fu. It’s as simple as having high melee and bludgeoning the crap out of monsters with your gun, and comboing in some point blank headshots.
I remember someone suggesting something like this. A specific martial art style centered around weapons handling. Especially bayoneted weapons. Something similar to Jukendo I think? Think it was a in regards to a US, or Israeli variant. Might have been Apathetic Excuse…
I never knew about that… If someone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction for the books (which json file) and softball a few hints my way for how they do the combat moves I could get started on trying to make this work. I can learn a lot from reading the code but sometimes hints can save me a bit of a headache when I am trying to make something.
Don’t be misled, senrain is talking about simply using your gun in melee and occasionally shooting the enemy, there is no specific support for it.
Liepunk is referencing a similar suggestion that has been made previously.
Liepunk is referencing ...
*sniff*
Thats harsh Kev. I realize I am wrong A LOT, and have a tendency to hurt more than help. But attacking my honesty and integrity???
I pride myself on not telling a full lie in YEARS! I hate lies. The closest I have come to telling a lie, that comes to mind, is noncommittal nodding to insistence that things will work differently from how they are obviously going to. And am very uncomfortable with even going along with something like that.
…? Sorry I forgot the 
face.
But I am going to regard that question as at face value anyways.
Probably not. But I enjoy my own brand of insanity. Which I clearly must be since it would appear the world disagrees with me on how much honesty is enough honesty, yet I have the audacity to decide it must be the world thats wrong not myself.
Ok. No promises if gun-fu becomes a thing though.
Ok so highlights as I interpret them.
[ul][li] If I code it and it works. (And I maintain, ect) then this would be acceptable as a mod.[/li]
[li] There is no current support for anything like this in code.[/li]
[li] I need to dig through the code to find the right files to reference. (Study to see how it is applied) For combat style books. [/li][/ul]
Probably time for me to dig out some coding books at home.
Guess I should go ahead and ask… Where in the pile of files (c:/user/ect…) would be a good place to look for what I need to do?
Edit: Anything I missed?
be aware: pending changes (full deletion?) from LUA, to not Lua, and anything that may effect.
can’t think of anything else I can comprehensibly warn/ know to warn you about, though lack of code diving to warrant that being meaningful should be cited.
I will bring up realism! HAVE AT THEE NAVE!
Dual wield works to a degree, but realistically you cannot: Reload with a gun in each hand and your accuracy drops dramatically because both hands even for some ambidextrous such as I, is still off. No…seriously. No skill can compensate for this. It falls to perception and literally making your brain “GUESS” with the off hand gun. If you say"NO THAT AINT TRUE!"…tough! It is. You either aim reasonably with one gun and the other is “Perceived guessing” or you Perceive guess both. In either event you take your chances.
Can you do it? Of course! Would you like to test it a real fight? I’d enjoy you as my enemy, please do this lol XD
(This was not a boast or taunt to actual fight irl. Seriously. The context was Player character to mob/NPC ONLY!)
The flip side: I’d also enjoy the skill or trait ability to do this to a degree. If I have a spike/blade on a pistol for example. I use my trait and it gives be a bonus to hit/damage if I slash first and my reactionary “aim” is better or something like that.
ex: arms length slash/stab (trait takes over) I get a aim buff(because I’m 1 tile over right? Ya know, to slash/stab) and I shoot.
…in fact that would be a great trait more than a skill. Gun-Fu trait. When 1 tile away and using a pistol; with or without a sharp mod. You either bluntly/slash/stab attack and gain an aim buff to a shoot attack the next attack turn.
How about it?
Hmm duel weild being efective would require world tier training in hip firing, pistols, and general practice, and being ‘in the zone’ to the level of subconscious mastery. And near battlefield omniscience instinctive intuition on par with world champ matial artists or better.
Hmm… That sounds actually plausible between all the boons of the cataclysm. between mutations, bionics and vanilla leveling beyond ‘human’ ranges thanks to blob particles. Throw in some customized clip holders to allow hollywood ‘drop and reload’ for non-revolvers, or ‘cylinder switching’ for revolvers. OH… the glorious badassary.
[quote=“ZoneWizard, post:17, topic:14145”]The flip side: I’d also enjoy the skill or trait ability to do this to a degree. If I have a spike/blade on a pistol for example. I use my trait and it gives be a bonus to hit/damage if I slash first and my reactionary “aim” is better or something like that.
ex: arms length slash/stab (trait takes over) I get a aim buff(because I’m 1 tile over right? Ya know, to slash/stab) and I shoot.
…in fact that would be a great trait more than a skill. Gun-Fu trait. When 1 tile away and using a pistol; with or without a sharp mod. You either bluntly/slash/stab attack and gain an aim buff to a shoot attack the next attack turn.
How about it?[/quote]
Love it. And I never said I wanted this to be realistic. I wanted to have this be just a touch campy. If you have ever seen a John woo (think that is him) film or have played double action boogaloo I was just thinking that that sort of thing would be fun.
Another option could be to have the gun fu trait add your pistol (or other gun?) damage to your melee strike. Or even a gun fu book. (Think that was covered in an earlier post)
john wick?
aim bonus should come from >successful< stab. could have an overall aim bonus as well, maybe isolated to close range, but the main bonus should come on successful stab. Because once you’ve stabbed the enemy, you can’t possibly tell me your not going to fire with the barrel (almost) touching.
Successful melee in general should ad bonus to firing next turn, and successful firing adding bonus chance to hit the next turn. but succesful stab should be near guaranteed hit, with crit bonus based on damage of stab, or rather stab damage gives bonus to shoot damage, hit chance, crit damage, and crit chance next turn. Unsucessful shot_after_stab should hold the possibility of loosing the weapon, in the same manner as a normal piercing weapon.