Prevalence of melee enemies? asking as a GM, want to advice players.

[Torbyne]

I am hoping to run the AP for my group soon and was flipping through trying to get a feel for it all. Not the easiest since i havent seen all the new parts in play yet but the overall feeling i am getting is that the enemies will have the HP to survive an opening round of shooting, especially if they get initiative over some PCs, and there seem to be a lot of Melee focused encounters. Can anyone speak from table experience or armchair this better than me?

My first thought is to strongly suggest to the players to have a dedicated melee character and for everyone to expect to get into a brawl at some point. I suppose you could just guarded step out of melee and take a shot, so a sort of fighting retreat, but if they want to get into cover or use terrain much then they might end up backed into a corner.

[HWalsh]

Torbyne wrote:

I am hoping to run the AP for my group soon and was flipping through trying to get a feel for it all. Not the easiest since i havent seen all the new parts in play yet but the overall feeling i am getting is that the enemies will have the HP to survive an opening round of shooting, especially if they get initiative over some PCs, and there seem to be a lot of Melee focused encounters. Can anyone speak from table experience or armchair this better than me?

My first thought is to strongly suggest to the players to have a dedicated melee character and for everyone to expect to get into a brawl at some point. I suppose you could just guarded step out of melee and take a shot, so a sort of fighting retreat, but if they want to get into cover or use terrain much then they might end up backed into a corner.

Melee combat is very common. Everyone should have some kind of melee backup strategy. Nobody should go into this game expecting to be able to kite every enemy.

Ranged is not the king of combat.

[David knott 242]

I think that the one thing you can count on enemies being is uncooperative. If they can see that your party are really good shots, it would behoove them to melee you. If, on the other hand, they can see that you have some melee beasts in the party, they will probably want to keep their distance if they can.

[Deadmanwalking]

On the bright side, every Dex-based character can pretty readily buy an operative weapon for melee and have something as a backup.

[citricking]

A lot of soldiers, all operatives, most solarians, envoys who dip soldier, and combat drone mechanics all work in melee, so there are a few options at least

[LittleMissNaga]

It's good to have at least a person or two who can handle themselves in melee, even if it's not their specialty.

Drop a vesk in the party and without even trying, you'll have enough melee to contend well enough with non-focused enemies while the rest of the party shoots. Against enemies who're particularly melee-focused, it's a bit tougher. Still not impossible, but if you plan on including a lot of melee-focused enemies, then yeah, your players might want someone dedicated to dealing with that.

A lot is going to depend on what kind of enemies and tactics you (or the AP, if one is being used) are using. Have played with two other GMs so far, and both had a majority of enemies that preferred dashing for cover as an opening move, then firing from cover for as long as possible (I'm inclined to agree with that tactic. With lower ACs, cover is really helpful in a firefight).

Experience so far: Our first party is all ranged, but has a vesk soldier who can throw a punch, even if she's not great at it. It's working fine for us. Our second party has a melee solarian and a vesk technomancer who can do melee, but doesn't prefer to. It's working well enough. A lot of combats have started far enough apart that our solarian has had trouble closing to melee, but she just learned stellar rush, which should help abate that issue.