SotC Defense

[Uruush]

Forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere.

Each combat skill is balanced against another.

Guns: offense, range, explicitly no defense, need to have a gun on you.
Weapons: offense, limited range, defense, need to have a weapon on you.
Fists: offense, no range, defense, nothing else required, may have defensive penalties against Weapons in some cases.

Do you use Athletics as defense against Guns, or can you use Weapons or Fists as defense against Guns?  My reading implies that you can use these in defense against Guns, but that seems conceptually odd:

Down at the harbor, "Tommy Gun" Flynn is laying down a Great carpet of lead from three zones away for Joe "One Punch" Johnson, a slow, but hard-hitting bruiser.  Is Johnson, an Average Athlete, in big trouble, or does his Superb Fists Skill somehow carry the day?

[iago]

Forgive me if this has been answered elsewhere.

Forgive me for taking forever to notice it!  For some reason, I didn't receive a notification of this new topic.

Each combat skill is balanced against another.

Guns: offense, range, explicitly no defense, need to have a gun on you.
Weapons: offense, limited range, defense, need to have a weapon on you.
Fists: offense, no range, defense, nothing else required, may have defensive penalties against Weapons in some cases.

Correct -- though in play I almost never apply those defensive penalties unless someone makes a point of it through the application of maneuvers.

Do you use Athletics as defense against Guns, or can you use Weapons or Fists as defense against Guns?  My reading implies that you can use these in defense against Guns, but that seems conceptually odd:

Down at the harbor, "Tommy Gun" Flynn is laying down a Great carpet of lead from three zones away for Joe "One Punch" Johnson, a slow, but hard-hitting bruiser.  Is Johnson, an Average Athlete, in big trouble, or does his Superb Fists Skill somehow carry the day?

All "defense" means "defense against all forms of physical attack", period.  If you're having a "conceptually odd" reaction to this, then, your concept of what the Fists skill represents is too narrow.  Fists isn't "how well do you punch things".  Fists is "how well do you handle yourself in a fight when you're armed with only your fists".  So it incorporates the ideas of attacker-awareness, of fancy footwork, of *dodging and ducking*.

Think of it this way: There's a 'Defense' skill which you can't ever take, but which defaults to your highest rating in the following: Athletics, Fists, Weapons.  This is a "give the victims the greatest possible benefit" approach, and it's intentional.