A while ago I made a post talking about my decision to leave everything alone when it comes to firearm rules in a scifi setting and realized I had a few extra things to say. Realistically in a world with high tech guns it makes sense that the game becomes a gunfest, and by extension a game of 'Go Dex or go home.', but where's the romance and the flavor in that? I wanted to make sure that Strength had something that at least looked viable which means melee options had to exist. Luckily after doing the math, I still don't have to change much.
Currently Treasury of the Machine from Legendary Games has the best ballistic firearms which have a really convenient option of having a strength rating, much like composite longbows in the form of recoil. So if you want a big gun that deals more damage you need more strength and it keeps ballistic firearms unique and still on the table, and like the energy damage futuristic firearms there are plenty of defenses for it even if you aren't focusing on dexterity for touch AC.
But what about being hard hitting with melee damage? Damage kinds of catches up. The addition of third party material there are a lot more options to increase damage with powered weapons but it's the Technology guide that gives the real doozy. The Gravity Chip have weapons deal damage as if it were one size category larger and is surprisingly cheap. Imagine that with the vital strike chain. A normal earthbreaker ends up 8d6, but with a Gravity Clip it ends up 12d6. Add to that third party feats that allow you to wield oversized weapons anyways so if you try to replicate Cloud Strife from Final fantasy with a Gravity Clip your vital strikes can end at 16d6. Past that there's the existence of a few technological weapons that do an absurd amount of damage and sometimes hit on touch attacks. If a large earthbreaker with a gravity clip is scary a chainsaw using the same strategy ends at 24d6. A monowhip has reach and hits touch AC while being possible to go with Two Weapon Fighting. Late game easily becomes a nightmare of numbers when it comes to melee combat so I'm less concerned about melee combat surviving, but whether or not HP can keep up.
There is a bit of rock-paper-scissors going on. If you focus on touch AC and resist energy weapons you'll get hit harder with ballistic firearms and hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting ballistic firearms, energy weapons will get you and bulletproofing doesn't defend well from hard melee weapons. If you focus on resisting melee weapons then you'll get hit by touch attacks. About the only way to deal with everything at once without dying too fast is force fields or taking advantage of the environment. Anticipating force fields as a hot commodity I'm giving away a few for free in the first dungeon of Infinity Matrix to see how things go.
All that said some aspects of dealing with technological weapons is somewhat of an experiment. I can theorycraft and test play all I want but really having players means tat the ability to deal with the power creep can lean towards one way or the other so I'll have to see what gets built. I am warning them a bit. I let them know that standing in the middle of a room with a lot of enemies with guns is generally bad. So is going through corridors in their usual konga line is pretty bad too. Also that they should use cover against firearms and where to find defenses for everything.
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