[ZeConster]

The thing about bows is this. First, they used to scale in scary ways. Before SR5 capped their rating, you could have a rating 15 bow for your troll and basically fire arrows equal to an assault cannon.

SR4A already stealth-errata'd them so they'd only go up to 8, actually.

[raleel]

I guess I don't really see a problem with a troll or a strong ork or dwarf pulling out a bow that has the range of an assault rifle, takes a complex action to load and fire, does the damage of a sniper rifle and is naturally silenced. That seems actually pretty balanced - no burst fire, a lot of action to load and fire, range is comparable to a weapon that is only slightly less in damage, and suppressors are available to equalize noise. Sure, it's legal, and the ARs and SRs are at least restricted, and often forbidden. Mr Bow guy also invested a lot more to get that damage. Rifle guy... probably not so much.

As an example, a remington has a 4R rating (better than an equivalent damage bow), hits for 12P (equivalent to a very powerful bow, best a starting character can get), has better AP, way better range, and costs about 2.5 times as much (counting a cheap fake). It also gets a magazine that holds 5, better than a crossbow.

I'm not sure I understand how on one hand the sword guy is an underdog for a long time because guns are just better and on the other hand, he's somehow so potent as to be way to powerful too quickly. That seems like a direct contradiction.

It is important to note that the system doesn't use Ballistic and Impact armor anymore, and AP ratings of melee and projectile weapons are well within range of the firearms. Trollbows have been a thing for a long time, but I suspect they are a novelty, rather than a big scary thing. Certainly no more than a troll with an assault cannon.

[ProfessorCirno]

Note how I build a character that has these stats at chargen. Once you are willing to wait a while for your strength to get capped, it becomes way more essence and magic friendly. I do agree that I did invest quite a lot into capping strength and unarmed damage, but making sacrifices such as a narrow skillset or low starting magic (Which I can pump back up to 3 with Karma even at chargen btw.) is not unreasonable when you want to start at the high end of anything. Frankly, capping anything shouldn't be done casually.

Unfortunately, it IS done very casually for most other things.  To continue to example: to be good at a gun?  I need agility and a gun.  That's not a lot of sacrificing to be made!

The thing about bows is this. First, they used to scale in scary ways. Before SR5 capped their rating, you could have a rating 15 bow for your troll and basically fire arrows equal to an assault cannon. Second, we are talking about a legal weapon that you can carry anywhere, is naturally silenced and has assault rifle range, damage and armor penetration. This is before you consider the injection arrows. This is very, very different from just picking up an assault rifle and requires less resources than melee.

Well, the discussion is SR5, so I'll stay there  .  Honestly, the problem remains that you're spending an incredible amount of resources into this.  And injection arrows?  With the points spent on strength, you could easily pack up Dart Rifles.

No offense, you but wanna have your cake and eat it too here.
This is Shadowrun, not some sword and board fantasy game. Guns are the norm because they simply are better than melee weapons. That's why they replaced them in warfare. If you want to go retro and focus on melee (armed or unarmed) that is fine, but you have to be aware of the fact that you are handicapping yourself. Yet, you want to handicap yourself further by not taking advantage of the technological improvements that your enemies will be using, because it violates your understand of a "true" adept/ warrior.
I do see your point and I understand your desire. There is something inherently cool to the guy who brings his sword to a gunfight, but that something is in no small part the fact that he is the underdog because he brings his sword to a gunfight. All that being said, once an adept has enough Karma he actually can be that guy. But to get there, you have to be the underdog for a long time.

I see this argument from time to time, and I wonder what Shadowrun people are reading, because Shadowrun is the game where "physical adept" and "cyber samurai" are explicitly stated archtypes.  If the game at no point even pretended that melee should be equal, that'd be fine - Eclipse Phase at no point pretends that you should ever use anything but a gun.  But Shadowrun doesn't do that - it very explicitly does the opposite!  Using a sword is very, very openly stated to be a thing you are meant to do for certain archtypes.  Then punishing those archtypes for BEING those archtypes doesn't add up.  At best it's poor game design: the fluff says one thing, the mechanics say another.  At worst the game is intentionally lying to you, setting up these archtypes and then laughing at you for taking them.  I'm going to be optimistic and feel it's the former: that cyber samurai following the neo-code of neo-bushido, or mystic warriors empowered by magic coursing into their body, or slightly crazed, thrill-loving razorbois, are intended to be archtypes just as equally up there as the gunbunny or hardened mercenary.  I'm ok with swords being terrible for the uninitiated while guns can be used by any ol' schmo.  The problem is when experts in the sword are still falling behind the schmo.

This is, I think, the heart of a lot of melee arguments.  Should melee always be worse then guns?  If so, the game shouldn't pretend otherwise!  And right now they do!  But if melee is not intended to be literally "Guns, but far worse, don't do it ever," then the mechanics are not doing that great of a job of supporting it.  The game sorta needs to choose which, and fix that problem.  Bows are sort of the side connection to this.

Personally?  I think strength based attacks are vaguely fine for cybered characters, but terrible for non-cybered, which seems backwards.  Personally, I'd love to see adepts get some sort of power that gives them a boost when using non-"advanced" weapons (so throwing knives, swords, non-stun clubs, and bows).  I feel that'd be both fitting to the fluff, optional for those that don't want it, and good at giving that boost to the characters that need it, while fitting in rather seemlessly and not needing to to revamp the rules.

On top of that, melee damage needs to be measured on the people that build for it, because if it's not, it becomes way too powerful quickly. An average troll or an exceptional dwarf/ ork rivals Sniper Rifles in damage when wielding a combat axe. That is scary... .

It sounds like sniper rifles are the scary thing, not the axe.  I can SEE the guy with the axe!

[Beaumis]

Unfortunately, it IS done very casually for most other things.  To continue to example: to be good at a gun?  I need agility and a gun.  That's not a lot of sacrificing to be made!

That's not capping. Capping means to max out. You need quite a bit more than just agility and a gun to cap out. Including either magic or 'ware. I'd also like to point out that a crossbow achieves everything a bow does without the strength requirements.

As for SR5 vs SR4, I merely mentioned that to make clear that this fact likely influenced design decisions being made. That's for pointing it out ZeCoster, I must have missed that change.

The major difference between dart weapons and injection arrows is that injection arrows deliver their toxin in addition to their normal arrow damage, not instead of it. Bows/ Crossbows are unique in that.

I see this argument from time to time [...]

PhysAds means magically enhanced. Street Samurai means a person with a code. There is no implication of melee here and there never was. The greates incarnation of the Street Samurai, Ghost Who Walks Inside is never once described to use a melee weapon except when threatening someone with his hand razors. In fact, the only commonly known samurai (that comes to mind right now) with a penchant for melee is hatchetman. And he rarely used melee, he's just known for carrying the weapon. The "melee character" in the SR5 intro story is a heavily cybered ork samurai who utilizes an assault rifle, grenades and a sword, each when the situation calls for it. All the others do their best to stay out of melee because they aren't fit for it.

That being said, you are right that there are certain stereotypes of melee focused archetypes. The thing is, those archetypes are always either heavily augmented to support their melee, very powerful adepts (usually with weapon foci), Mary Sue uber NPCs or metas that lends itself to melee builds (and sometimes a combination). The game isn't lying to you nor are the designers designing badly. You are taking a highly focused archetype, trying to apply to your template of cool without paying the price for it and then complaining it doesn't work. (No offense intended)

This is, I think, the heart of a lot of melee arguments.  Should melee always be worse then guns?

Always? No. At the baseline? Hell yes.
Once again, firearms were invented to replace melee. If they are equal at the baseline, there is no reason for them to exist except for personal preference.
The difference between melee and guns (beyond the obvious range) is legality, availability and scaling. There isn't a single legal gun, but a combat knife is legal to own an carry. That one ranges from 3P/-3 in the hands of a couch potato human to 16P/-3 in the hands of an augmented troll. The combat knife you can get pretty much everywhere. To get an equal damage in a gun you have to go through steps anywhere from walking into a store with a fake sin on the low end (hold-out) to finding a proper mility connection (assault cannons and the like).

Personally, I'd love to see adepts get some sort of power that gives them a boost when using non-"advanced" weapons (so throwing knives, swords, non-stun clubs, and bows).  I feel that'd be both fitting to the fluff, optional for those that don't want it, and good at giving that boost to the characters that need it, while fitting in rather seemlessly and not needing to to revamp the rules.

That actually used to be the case. In SR1 to 3 adept powers that enhanced archaic weapons were cheaper. This lead to one thing: every character focussed on these weapons was an adept.
Adepts had and still have powers that improve their use of weaponry in ways no other character can (Critical Strike for example).

I'll say it again. You are attempting to impress your template of cool on the Shadowrun setting. Shadowrun is about a world in which magic and technology merge. The fact that the combination of the two is more powerful than either one on it's own is the basic premise of the game. Look at it from inside the game world. A runner has the option to gain an edge but refuses. When he goes on his next run and realizes he is now worse off, does he hold the world responsible for turning or himself for not taking the edge when he could have?
As always, Its fine to change this at your home table, but that is your home table.

It sounds like sniper rifles are the scary thing, not the axe.  I can SEE the guy with the axe!

True and they are supposed to be. But when a guy with an axe has a decent chance to go toe to toe with a tank it's kinda hard to claim that meele is weak isn't it?

[Namikaze]

There is absolutely nothing that states that a Physical Adept has to be any of the following stereotypes that were presented:

a) Deadly
b) Melee-ranged
c) Combat-oriented

There are Physical Adepts that focus on social skills and manipulation - the so-called "Social Adepts."  There are Physical Adepts that focus on driving and performing athletic feats of amazing skill - the so-called "Athlete Adepts."  Then there's my personal favorites - the gunslinger adepts.  These focus on using high-tech weapons like...  *gasp* guns!

As Beaumis pointed out, Physical Adepts are simply magic users who have some nifty powers.

[ProfessorCirno]

I'm sorry, the dude telling me "NO, you aren't allowed to make your character, only Mary Sue NPCs can be melee characters, you MUST use a gun" in a setting where one augment is literally "Wolverine Claws" is telling me I'm trying to force my rule of cool on the game?

All your arguments - ALL of them - boil down to "I don't want melee to be good."  You yourself openly state that adepts in SR3 were pointed towards bows and swords, and yet you're also trying to simultaniously claim that the game never tried to pretend those were viable options?

And sorry, but if scores of NPCs are dudes who primarily use bows or swords, the game is telling you to go for it.  If it were the case that swords should never be used, you wouldn't see them.  At all.  Hell, you absolutely wouldn't have a big ol' list of them.  There wouldn't be.  But there are a bunch of NPCs that exist for you to go "Oh that's cool" and emulate.  And there are lists of melee weapons.  And there is fluff about cyber samurai totally using swords.  And there is fluff about adepts using weapon foci blades.  For crying out loud, the game has katanas and trenchcoats, and you're saying melee was totally never intended to be supported?

If a game has rules and fluff supporting an archtype, then that archtype should be supported.  If the archtype is insufficiently supported then there is a problem.  Either the fluff and rules should be changed to no longer pretend the archtype is meant to be applicable, or the archtype should be brought up to par.  Again, this is an easy fix, as the guys who have the most problem with melee and bows are adepts, and a new power in the MAGIC, YO book can fix that.  I mean, you claim the book doesn't support melee, and yet one character is devoted entirely, to and only to, melee attacks.  And it's the adept!  Come on, now!

If you have an argument outside of "I want strength characters to always be worse because reasons" then by all means, but all I'm hearing from you, over and over again, really just boils down to "I want strength characters to always be worse because reasons."

And yes, "realism" in this case boils down to "reasons."  If you can accept dragons and decking and magic and metahumans and technomancers and riggers and kinda iffy Native American stereotypes and, yes, super future guns including "literally the Robocop pistol," then "melee is good" is realistic.  Objectively so.  Yep.  Don't even!  Objectively realistic given the rest of the setting which, again, I should note, includes "Literally wolverine claws."  I'm using "literally" a lot here because I'm using it correctly!  Shadowrun has always been a bizarre blender of pop culture, starting from it's first book.  Wolverine claws, mohawks, the robocop gun- and speaking of which, let's be honest, even the Shadowrun cyborg may as well be renamed Alex Murphy - trenchcoats and katanas, even the "classic Runner gun" is an uzi.

Also, I'm fairly sure Social Adepts are a very new thing - like, SR4 new.  They were Physical Adepts previously - note the "physical."  Pre-SR4, they were pretty much all kung fu warriors.  SR4 expanded that into other categories, but was never meant to get rid of the option of being the cool mystic kung fu warrior.  Once again, one of the two adepts in the given examples is explicitly a mystic kung fu warrior.

[Michael Chandra]

Don't most gun fights take place at a distance of 7m or less? Often, when they can fire at you, you can charge them.

[Namikaze]

*rant snip*

I'm not sure that anyone is trying to say "melee is bad."  The point that I got from this whole twisted argument discussion was that melee is an option, but it doesn't have to be the same as firearms.  Firearms are cheap and effective, that's the reality of the situation.  That's the primary reason that firearms replaced melee combat in warfare - an army could hand a rifle to a farmer and make him as lethal as a swordsman with years of expertise.

The actual physics of firearms aren't necessarily always better than melee weapons.  It's obvious to anyone that's worked in an ER that melee wounds are usually way nastier than bullets.  In fact, most bullet wounds kill not via the bullet, but by the shock and sepsis that the bullet cause.  Melee wounds, particularly those that break things, are just awful.  There's less risk of sepsis in some cases, but the general destruction of organs and tissue is just awful.

But to the topic of why melee has to work so hard to be good: it's because firearms are simple.  The gun handles the physics, and the gun is operated via an easy-to-use mechanism.  Someone can cause a lot of destruction with a gun with very few requirements on the person's skill, strength, etc.  Swords and clubs require more skill to use effectively (unless you're just beating someone on the ground), and use your body to leverage the physics which puts a requirement of having good physical attributes into the equation.  If you want to use swords, monofilament whips, etc. it's reasonable to expect that you will need higher stats than some gangbanger with a pistol.

[ProfessorCirno]

The problem is that melee (and bows, to keep it relevant!) require an incredibly higher amount of resources, some of which are only available through 'ware, in order to equate to guns.  Melee (and bows!) will simply always suck in comparison.

And I don't think that is intentional.  And if it IS intentional, then it should be labeled as such.

Again - I'm ok with guns being better then other options for the guys with a handful of skill points and not much else; your decker with a cyberarm, if you want, will always gravitate towards a pistol.  But for an actual full on combat guy, if you put more resources into melee/bows, it should be better - you've paid more for it, after all!  The secondary problem is that I feel adepts should absolutely have some form of encouragement to go for "non-gun" weapons.  Not encouragement to do it over guns, because there's already enough encouragement to go guns, but it should be a viable option alongside the gunslinger.

Edit: To put it another way, a viable option is not one that states "Use extraordinarily more resources in order to be almost as good."

[Namikaze]

Edit: To put it another way, a viable option is not one that states "Use extraordinarily more resources in order to be almost as good."

I think from a game design perspective, I would agree with you.  However, I'm not convinced that this is the situation in Shadowrun.  Sure, you can get guns to do more damage and even have more armor penetration - but for your normal content having 20 dice, -7 AP, and 13P damage is hardly necessary.  That's what I would call an extraordinary amount of power for a player to have.

Here's what I'm hoping for: a way to make non-tech weapons have a higher accuracy and more AP.  I think the fact that armor moved from Ballistic and Impact to all one pool kind of screwed melee weapons in particular.  To compensate, I hope that non firearms get some nifty upgrades in Run & Gun that can allow them to have more AP.  Also it'd be nice to be able to increase the accuracy of melee weapons to 7s or higher with upgrades.  These two changes would allow for melee and bow combatants to get rewarded for having very high dice pools.  Also, a chainsaw sword (ala Gear of War) would be pretty pimpin.

Another thing I'm hoping for with Run & Gun: non-ballistic projectile weapons.  AKA: lasers!

[Beaumis]

I'm sorry, the dude telling me "NO, [...}

There we go with the hostility again.
I never ONCE said you should not go melee. I never once said melee should be bad. I freakin like melee. I said melee has a cost, it is right for melee to have that cost and you are exaggerating the cost in my eyes because you are using a loaded example.

Basically what Namikaze said. Melee is there, it's a fine option, it even has a few major advantages. (There is no cover vs. melee, the majority of NPCs is not trained for it, it scales with strength to a point beyond any other concealable weapon, its cheap etc.) But there is a reason why it is not the SOP anymore and that reason does boil down to "because future setting" in a way. Ranged combat has the inherent advantage of being ranged. Bullets have the inherent advantage of being independent of their firer's physical attributes because chemistry and physics. Its what guns do and how they work. It is not bad game design to build a realistic setting that reflects the strength and weaknesses of the concepts contain therein.

The problem is that melee (and bows, to keep it relevant!) require an incredibly higher amount of resources, some of which are only available through 'ware, in order to equate to guns.  Melee (and bows!) will simply always suck in comparison.

That is plain and simply not true. Strength based weaponry requires *one* additional attribute over non-strength based weaponry. Everything you could possibly do with any weapon focused character requires agility, a weapon and an appropriate skill. Since all those are given for a comparison, only strength remains and you already need some of that for recoil purposes and to stand up.
Bows stop scaling before guns do, that is true. But melee scales beyond any gun in game right now when taken to the extreme. (Str 14 troll with combat axe = 19P) A troll with a combat knife is equal to a friggin assault cannon when build for it. That is a few galaxies removed from your claim.

The cost becomes *much* higher when you decide to be an adept on top of focusing on strength based weaponry, true. But that is because you decide to mix two high maintenance concepts. If you try to insert strength based weaponry into a standart run of the mil street sam, all you need is a little more strength that you would normally buy and the appropriate skill and you're good to go.
The cost are highest when you want to play a human (or elven) adept that focuses on strength based weapon. That's not because melee is bad or the cost unbalanced. Its because that is a concept that combines two high maintenance archetypes with the least suitable race for what it tries to do.

As an alternative example: Building a troll mage is perfectly possible, but he will never be equal to an elf or a dwarf or even a human in astral space given equal resource investments. And that is, plain and simply, because trolls are less suited to be powerful astral mages than other races are.

Back on topic: At the end of the day, there are probably lots of reasons to explain it away, but the real question is: "is it fun to get a strength boost via drugs/ magic/ etc. and then having to say: Darn, I wish I had a second bow so I could take advantage of it".
Bow rating and strength rules really exist to provide a maximum,reflect that prices/availability rise with pull and to ensure that a strength 2 char doesn't use a rating 8 bow.

[ProfessorCirno]

"It's just one stat" is meaningless when there's only eight stats.  That's a very large chunk of resources to raise in chargen, and then another large chunk to hit max outside of chargen - it's literally double the resources required for a gun.  Double.  And yet melee or bows are not twice as powerful, they are in fact less powerful.

Look at your own example.  A troll (Troll A or B) with maxed strength (Attributes A or B) with maxed out bonus strength (unavailable in chargen, but requires at the least C to soft cap).  You've already spent your top three priorities.  And what do you get?  The same damage anyone at all could reach with a single gun.  Only that dude would have better accuracy and better attack rating, because guns can have smartlinks.

There is no reason at all that "I am super good with a gun" and "I am super good with a sword/bow" should have such a disparity.  Why is the former low maintenance and the latter high maintenance?  Sure - "I'm decent with a gun" and "I'm decent with a sword/bow."  The gun should have the edge.  As I've said in, like, every post I've made.  But if you're mastering the weapon, why is melee just inherently crappier?  Especially since older editions not only allowed, but indeed rewarded you for making an adept swordguy.  Why is that now suddenly an impossibility?

And no, realism is not an answer.  Once more: If you want that sort of realism, grab Eclipse Phase.  Grab Cyberpunk 2020.  Grab any number of other games.  Shadowrun had a dragon become US president only to blow up to stop evil monsters from another dimension.  We left realism a long time ago.  Chicago was nuked magically to stop evil giant ghost-alien bugs from attacking.  That is a thing.  That has occurred.  If you frankly have no problem with dragons, magic (two flavors!), techno-magic, weird 80's hacking and VR, constant pop culture references that don't even connect anymore, non-human magical races, bizarre and impossible politics, and weirdly iffy racial stereotypes...but swords are good breaks your realism?  That's not a problem with the game!  In the current SR5 game I'm in, my decker used his brain computer to literally plug into a wall and enter THE VIRTUAL WORLD.  And yet nobody seems to find that problematic or unrealistic.

[Beaumis]

And no, realism is not an answer.  Once more: If you want that sort of realism, grab Eclipse Phase.  Grab Cyberpunk 2020.  Grab any number of other games.  Shadowrun had a dragon become US president only to blow up to stop evil monsters from another dimension.  We left realism a long time ago. [...]

There is a vast difference between adopting scifi/fantasy elements into your world and abandoning realism on everything just because. Sorry, but that point doesn't fly.

Especially since older editions not only allowed, but indeed rewarded you for making an adept swordguy.  Why is that now suddenly an impossibility?

Did you play older editions? Up to 3rd Melee combat was so friggin unbalanced it wasn't even funny anymore. Think an opposed test where the winner causes damage, regardless of who attacked, with your net hits scaling your damage. Oh, and for bows and unarmed, 2 net hits were +3 DV, 4 Net hits were +6 DV. Also, Hits weren't just fives and sixes, but 4 +/- [your reach - enemy reach]. If I had an axe and you had your fist, my TN was 2 and yours was 6. It became slightly better in 3rd when the formula changed to 4 - your reach.
Adepts were melee machines not really because they supported melee well (and god they did), but because melee was so broken and adept powers + weapon foci equaled more melee dice than everyone else. Just to drive this point home: if you were good enough in melee, all you had to do was engage your enemy, because doing so either gave him so many negative modifiers that he was basically ineffectual or turned his initiative pass into your attack.
Bows were virtually unchanged until 20th anniversary edition. This means they were always legal assault cannons if you had the right strength. In short, you were rewarded with an IWIN button. That was bad game design.

"It's just one stat" is meaningless when there's only eight stats.  That's a very large chunk of resources to raise in chargen, and then another large chunk to hit max outside of chargen - it's literally double the resources required for a gun.  Double.

First, It used to be one of six in previous editions. And its not double, you are neglecting part of the cost. To work a gun you need:
1. Agility
2. Skill

To work a  bow you need:
1. Agility
2. Skill
3. Strength

That's 50% more, not 100%. And that's only true if you are generous enough to assume that the gun build would have zero Strength. All other things apply equally to both, except the famed injection arrows.

You also treat priorities as if they only gave you *just* what you needed. That is not true. Attributes E provides enough points to have max strength and agility on any character. It certainly won't be a well rounded character, and a less rounded one than if you only maxed agility, but it is possible. Every priority higher than E is bonus points for branching out while keeping your main focus capped in terms of natural attributes.

I'd like to point out that so far we have talked about capping strength, but it really isn't necessary. All you need is strength 8 to max the bow damage and have very decent melee damage (10P and 11P for bow and sword, both equal to assault rifles). For dwarves and orks that means you need 6 attribute points in strength and you're done forever. For trolls you only need 4 attribute points. Compared to being "average" that is 3 or 1 point more and not a single nuyen has to be spend. For humans and elves it requires magic or augmentations.

Long story short, the disparity simply isn't as big as you make it out to be. If a character decides that light pistols are cooler than assault rifles, he has to face the fact that light pistols are inherently less powerful than assault rifles. The difference is at the most extreme 6P/0 vs 12P/-2. A character that decides heavy pistols are his thing, which is rather common, he is capped to 9P at best. Still a full three points less than the assault rifle. However, unlike the character that focuses on strength based weapon, his choice is permanent, as there will never be a pistol equal to an assault rifle.

[raleel]

Point of Fact - the original question was asked in the context of 5e. I don't know if I stated that or not. Other editions are less of a concern of mine personally. They don't appear to be strength limited in 5e.

I fear we are going quite far afield of the original question at this point. The point was rather to address the issue of Attribute Boost which I erroneously believed affected damage.

[ProfessorCirno]

If you frankly have no problem with dragons, magic (two flavors!), techno-magic, weird 80's hacking and VR, constant pop culture references that don't even connect anymore, non-human magical races, bizarre and impossible politics, and weirdly iffy racial stereotypes...but swords are good breaks your realism?  That's not a problem with the game!  In the current SR5 game I'm in, my decker used his brain computer to literally plug into a wall and enter THE VIRTUAL WORLD.  And yet nobody seems to find that problematic or unrealistic.

Looks like it's time to start quoting myself!

The original claim that started all this was that strength was so easy to raise that bows needed to be weaker then guns.  When this was proven false, it was moved to bows needing to be weaker because of "realism."  Now that this is debunked, I await the new argument.  If the new argument is "It's ok, just have literally a 1 in all your other stats," can we just agree that is far beyond "not well rounded" and lies right in the middle of "functionally unplayable" and move on?

I mean hey - maybe the devs messed up.  They're human.  Come on, SR5 has had far more mistakes then just this.  My point stands: if non-gun weapon options are intended to be inherently weaker at all points, they should be labeled as such, be it outright in the mechanics section or in the fluff, rather then presented as viable when they aren't.  If they are not intended to be inherently weaker at all points, they need to be boosted in some way.