How can guns be countered by melee combat without raw-ability or exceptional explanations?

Question

I'm writing a science fantasy setting for a tabletop game. Its major influences are Dune, Final Fantasy 7, and Borderlands. My goal is to give a universal account why swords, spears, etc., equal or even best guns between fighters of equal skill. Let me define my terms:

1. By guns I primarily mean modern ballistic firearms, like what you'd see in a Call of Duty game. I'm not as interested in making lasers, rail guns, grenades, etc, comparable to hand-to-hand weapons. If you can relate them in your answer, though, that would be extra appreciated. The setting is not premodern, so flintlocks and other obsolete guns are out.

2. By raw-ability I mean explanations like Star Wars where superhuman powers, strength, or magic make exceptions for hand-to-hand combat. My major concern here is, "If the sword wielder has x level skill, why can't the gun wielder with X level skill be even better?" I'm not trying to explain why super heroes can overcome guns with swords. I'm looking to explain why swords themselves are comparable to guns as part of the world's "natural law."

3. By exceptional explanations I mean something like Dune where special technology, geography, monsters, or other special scenarios make melee weapons desirable. Although brilliant, explanations like Herbert's create more "an exception to the rule" than they account for a universal law of the universe why axes can keep up with machine guns. This rules out making specific environment a primary reason for melee combat. If the world only featured close-quarters environments, for example, that might work, but it features a relatively varied amount of environments and I'm looking for a reason why melee will be desirable in most environments by default.

So, in terms of goal, I'm looking for a vaguely Advent Children-esque world where plebs walk around with firearms for self-defense while mercs dabble in swords, spears, maybe gun-fu, but where the setting neither turns into wuxia supermen battles nor hard sci-fi tech.

Answer 1

This is not possible within your constraints

As others have mentioned, the main benefit modern firearms have over melee weapons is accuracy, fire rate and range. Thus, under your constraints, a charging swordsman will be hit multiple times by a gunman before he closes the gap. We must either have a shorter gap (to reduce the number of shots that can be fired), inaccurate or slow gunfire (to reduce the number of shots that can be fired/hit) or we must be able to shrug off bullets (due to armour technology outpacing firearms).

Due to your constraints, we cannot limit firearms via technology (such as by restricting the quality of raw materials or the quality of manufacturing) as doing so will mean your firearms are no longer "Modern".

By limiting the ability of both combatants to realistic levels, the swordsman will not be able to parry or dodge the bullets, and thus will get hit multiple times whilst approaching.

Your blanket term for Exceptional Circumstances appears to block all other options. Geographically restricting range is not allowed. Allowing the Swordsman to shrug off the bullets thanks to advanced armour/shielding is not allowed. Restricting the velocity of firearms due to sufficiently-advanced alien tech is definitely not allowed. Simply put, as your question stands, your constraints are too tight to permit a change that will bring melee weapons on par with firearms.

Every IRL National Military will want to use the best tools for the job after all. With your constraints basically being "Real-World", if the armies of the world can't find a reason to use melee weapons, it'll be because the reason does not exist.

Answer 2

I'll try my hand at your comment on L.Dutch's Answer:

Very insightful. Giving a "wavehandium" reason for slow fire rate is feasible. However, is there a way to make modern firearms less accurate - maybe something about the world's physics?

Since you're writing a science fantasy setting, you could either play with the actual world (as in planet)'s conditions if the game is set on only one planet - or with the rules of physics themselves if you want it applicable on different planets too.

Planetary conditions

Let's try the more restricted one first: if we leave the laws of physics alone and only adjust conditions on one planet, what could be done to take guns' advantage away?

Bad visibility

You don't need slums' cramped conditions taking away sight line to the target if you can't see very far in the first place. A planet where fog, sandstorms, pollen, spores or swarms of insects are common enough that a gunman can't reliably expect to see the target in time to shoot them before they're in his face with a sword will be a planet where a gun isn't much better than said sword.

Bad conditions for technology

Several of the options above also work here.

A well-maintained gun shoots accurately and reliably. A gun with grains of sand (or crawling insects...) in the barrel might not shoot quite straight, especially after the first couple dozen shots when the barrel gets more and more worn from the effect of a bullet travelling through it and dragging sand along its length. The firing mechanism might be jammed by sand or rusted from the constant mist, the gunpowder might be damp... depending on the technology used, environmental conditions might make "will it shoot or not, and if it does, will the bullet fly straight?" a gamble.

Note that this becomes more and more manageable the higher your tech level and the more you're willing to pay - modern firearms can be built to fire reliably after taking them for a swim, but you're paying more for that than you would for a gun that only needs to work on the shooting range. Kalashnikovs have also anecdotically been known to work fine after being buried in dirt, so you'll have to restrict your world's engineering capabilities a bit if you want this to be a factor at more than the low-price range. If you're fine with plebs' guns being unreliable enough to counter a shooter with a kitchen knife but elite mercenaries firing reliable guns at elite swordsmen dodging matrix-style, this might be the way to go.

aggressive animals

Guns are loud. The Sky-Snakes will zero in on anyone firing a gun repeatedly, and those things are nasty and poisonous. The boombeetle will look for a mate where it hears the mating call, which sounds kinda like a gun being fired. Think of something fun ;)

missing is dangerous

See those rocks over there? Hit them too hard, like with a bullet or such, and they'll explode - shards everywhere, including your face.

See that plant over there? Those thick leaves are filled with a flammable, sticky liquid. Basically napalm. You do not want that splashing around. And that one has swamp gas in its fruit, explodey. The seeds are also poisonous.

Obviously this would lead to a world with no (or only the dumbest or most reckless) plebs walking around with guns, so it might not work for you.

Different laws of physics

If you're willing to meddle with the laws of physics, the sky is the limit... or rather, not even that. You could just handwave that it's impossible to manufacture explosives that are reliable enough for our kind of modern firearms because chemistry works differently, or maybe inertia follows a different law where things in motion don't stay in motion - they want to return to a state of rest, so bullets lose power quickly the further they travel. Maybe there's a material that acts non-newtonian in a way that makes it comfortable to wear but lets it stiffen quickly when hit with a rapid-moving bullet - but somehow this material is still vulnerable to cutting edges on spears, axes and the like...

Different Biology

Bonus: If your people don't have to be human, you could just give them quickly-sealing blood vessels and more redundant bodyparts. If a bullet hits you and just gets stuck in your dense muscle mass, or maybe pierces an artery but that artery seals up and the blood for the arm you've been hit in gets routed through the secondary set of arteries instead, or the bullet pierces just one of your three hearts - maybe you can keep fighting and recover from it. And maybe that's easier than recovering from having a piece cut off with a sword.

Answer 3

Scale everyone down

Take advantage of the Square Cube Law. Scale your people down. Smaller people can wield much larger melee weapons relative to their body size, and those weapons can be made thinner (and thus lighter) than comparable weapons at real human scale. Picture a foot-long razor blade with a handle at one end.

At the same time, ranged weapons become less effective. Projectiles have much less mass, and worse mass-to-surface area ratios, so air resistance and turbulence reduce their effective range.

If your chosen scale puts effective gun range about equal to video game shotguns - that is, about two to three times the range required for melee - then suddenly swords and firearms are about equally effective for a skilled fighter. Some situations will favor guns, others will favor melee, but overall neither will have a clear advantage.

At the same time, the plebs will favor guns simply because they require less skill to be effective, and will carry them as a defense against beasts much larger than they are.

---

Some fun side effects of scaling your people down:

• Goo/sticky weapons become more effective.
• Fire becomes a more effective weapon. A brief encounter with flame at real human scale will leave you with a first-degree burn and some missing hair. A brief encounter with flame at Borrower scale could destroy your fingers, nose, and ears.
• People can easily lift several times their body weight.
• Flying by attaching something wide and flat to your arms and flapping may be viable. Or at least not seem totally ridiculous.
• Jumping your own height or higher becomes a feat anyone is capable of, rather than just olympic athletes. Olympic high-jumpers would regularly jump four or five times their own height.
• Falls become less dangerous. Jumping down from a second-story balcony is not dangerous at all. Jumping from a tower of any height with a bedsheet as a makeshift parachute becomes effective.
• Mega structures like skyscrapers over a hundred stories tall become easier engineering feats. But wind and rain become bigger potential problems.

Answer 4

Guns are by definition ranged weapons. To make melee preferable or comparable to ranged combat you need to remove the advantage that it has, the simplest way to do that is to remove range. Set combat in an environment so complex and obstructed that range is minimal.

Consider a rotating space station as an example, unless you have a central open space, the curve of the floors and low ceilings mean you can't actually see very far ahead of you. Add corridors, spiral stairs, suites of rooms and you're all but in someone's face before you have line of sight to them.

The same can be true of a slum situation, buildings so tight and spaces so narrow that unless you're following a bulldozer you don't have line of sight more than a few metres ahead of you.

Bullets rebound. This adds a level of risk to using firearms, that you don't get in the open field situations for which they're designed. Moving through a standard dungeon crawl cavern which just happens to be through a type of rock with a greater coefficient of restitution for whatever handwavium reason you choose. It's now dangerous to all parties to miss your primary target with a firearm as the rebounding bullet could hit anyone.

Answer 5

Superior ballistic armor

I'm not sure whether this counts against your exceptional circumstances (as assumed by Kyyshak), but it seems the least exceptional way to eliminate the overwhelming advantages of modern firearms over melee weapons among well-equipped combatants.

On your world master armorers have discovered a (very expensive) way to make armor that stops most bullets outright, except at point blank range or from certain angles. It doesn't fare quite as well against slower weapons, especially slashing types like swords. A skilled combatant can pierce the armor with a gun after a bunch of tries, putting the gun on a somewhat equal footing with a sword.

Defending against a gun while using a sword doesn't mean dodging bullets, but rather preventing the opponent from aiming at and getting a shot on weak points in the armor. This doesn't involve Jedi foresight or acrobatics, but an aggressive style that puts the sword wherever the gunwielder's arm is or would need to be for a shot. As soon as the gunwielder backs away, the sword user can angle their body to minimize exposure, making the gun mostly useless until the distance is closed again.

Against anyone that doesn't have the resources (and permit?) to own a set of armor, firearms are the weapon of choice. So the plebs would be shooting eachother up like normal, as you want to.

Answer 6

Fire rate and precision are the key factor for guns to be dominant over melee weapons.

Think of the bow: archers were used for quite a while after guns introduction simply because the fire rate they could grant was higher than the first guns and rifles, with a significant better precision.

Same here, if you fire a shot that goes within a large area around your pointing target and then have to wait a long time to reload the weapon you are basically giving an advantage to your enemy approaching you with a sword in his hands.

So, keep your guns primitive (heavy, slow firing, poor precision), and that would explain why melee weapons have an advantage.

Answer 7

Expense, make one of the prime bullet ingredients expensive or something like that and a sword is better since your gun turns into just a clumsy club without bullets. Some places still use swords for this reason. They just don't have much access to guns and bullets. They're not something you can easily make.

Even a pipe gun which can be made with some technical know how and tools cannot do much without bullets.

Answer 8

Seems like all the obvious ideas have already been explored, so I'll try something a little out there....

Ghosts

No, seriously. In this universe the "vengeful dead" are very real and very troublesome. When a sentient being is killed as the direct result of another sentient's actions, their spirit thirsts for vengeance. The only known way to prevent this is to cleanly sever the spirit from the body by killing in close quarters with an edged weapon. NOTE: The spirit considers the body "dead" when the damage has progressed to an unrecoverable point - it may leave the body before it is technically dead (this covers bleeding out and other "delayed" deaths).

If you do kill someone and their ghost begins haunting you, you may not notice anything. These spirits are cunning and will wait for the most disastrous moment to manifest and distract you. While they cannot affect the real world, they do possess the ability to create human-sized hallucinations. For most people, this may be as simple as seeing a person suddenly in front of the car while driving (causing them to swerve and hit something). For a mercenary or soldier in combat, this can be more disastrous - an enemy behind you, a grenade appearing next to you, misidentification of an ally, etc.

To counter act this, individuals who regularly kill will exclusively use bladed weapons. "Normal" people who are only concerned about self-defense don't mind carrying a gun, since it is a last resort weapon. Perhaps there is some dangerous and convoluted way to exorcise a haunting spirit that is impractical for a mercenary or soldier (due to the number of times they'd need to perform it), but is "better than nothing" for a normal person.

This does have the strange impact that if you see someone carrying a gun, they're indicating their main focus is self-defense - but someone carrying a sword or large knife is signaling their willingness to commit mass murder.

Answer 9

Honor

Your society might have a very particular view of ranged vs melee. Over many generations people have been indoctrinated to believe that there is more honor is fighting melee versus using a ranged weapon.

Most plebs who's honor is not worth mentioning would resort to ranged weapons while the accomplished mercenary would wield a sword showing the rest of the world that they don't even need a gun.

A mercenary who only uses melee weapons to complete his contracts would be more famous and sought after then a mercenary who just uses a 10 mile ranged sniper rifle. Even if the sniper rifle is technically a better weapon it would only be used by those of disrepute.

TLDR - The culture puts a great value on being able to take an enemy out at close range. People strive to get good at melee and see ranged as a handicap.

Answer 10

Better advances in protection.

Currently ballistic firearms have progressed faster than ballistic protection, which allows guns to be so dangerous. But gun ballistics progression is nearing it's end unless we transcend towards railguns and other exotic weapons, while metamaterials are becoming more and more attainable.

Imagine spidersilk armors with Graphene layers and other lightweight, extreme performance materials. If these become cheaply available the guns required to kill your opponent will have to go big, and even a. 50cal could start having trouble killing the opponent and would rather break bones than kill.

This in turn allows melee weapons to become viable again. In Iraq and Afghanistan it's estimated that the trained army outnumbering their opponents still needed 250.000 bullets per insurgent. If you need bigger weapons and more hits to down a person it becomes less interesting to use that gun. Big weapons like a. 50cal have lower rates of fire (when handheld), are unwieldly and very hard to aim unless mounted or resting on a surface. Your opponent has to grab a smaller caliber and hit you multiple times to bruise and break you enough to knock you out of the fight. Time you can spend rushing your opponent and smacking him with a mace or similar. Even the good old knights of old in slash-resistant armor were very vulnerable to getting bashed.

Add in potential upgrades in your melee weapons unavailable to bullets like high voltage, potential superheated edges, monomolecular edges etc and you can make melee weapons more useful.

Answer 11

Here's a simple idea:

Much higher atmospheric density leads to several disadvantages to guns: 1) higher required charge to reach decent muzzle velocity & faster velocity drop-off in air - hence steep trajectory curves; 2) soundwave propagation in denser atmosphere means concussion from said shot would be loud enough to damage shooter and be highly detectable no matter what; leading to 3) the edged weapons are just inherently stealthier - you get close, katana, gim or tonto undrawn, once inside striking range you execute an aido-style quick draw, and resheathe removing the blood, as your silently halved opponent drops into separate pieces.

---

Most properly we can say that drag forces scale with the square of velocity and with the density of the fluid - see equation below, where p is media density.

Answer 12

Make the gravity of the planet higher.

Quite simply, this has the effects of increasing the atmospheric pressure, leading to higher turbulence and reduced bullet travel distance, plus the increase in gravity means the average person has to be stronger, thereby making a sword able to penetrate more armors. In addition, the higher gravity means the bullet drops further faster. This doesn't affect accuracy though, only the require skill to use a gun and the maximum range of a gun.

The other fun effects of this could range, from having more dense people (Bullets do less damage) to reducing atmospheric visibility to such an extent that you can't target people with a gun at substantial range anymore. People might also develop stronger armors, due to the need for stronger materials in a world where everything is heavier, and be able to wear heavier armors, due to the inherent strength increase of a person who grows on a larger world. (Which can be assumed due to the increased gravity)

However, the most obvious way to demonstrate this would be using a brick falling from height. Now, instead of falling 5m in two seconds, it might fall 50m in the same time, leading to a bullet that's in the air for potentially .1 seconds to be hitting the dirt within roughly 30m. (assumed from the speed of some shotguns of 1000ft/second)

If with these advantages swords are still unusable, remember that the effective range of a gun by your average soldier would be ~5 meters, due to the extreme bullet drop and the increased turbulence from a denser atmosphere making hitting a shot hard. A thrown weapon would be unaffected at short ranges, which works well for this because even now spears aren't effective at much longer ranges.

Answer 13

Ravenholm from Half-Life 2 is the microcosm of the best justifications for melee weapons. Why?

• Limited supplies: Supplying your army with ammunition, weapons, mangas, and everything they need to fight is a pain in the a, and WAY too common to be ignored in almost any setting. Throughout Ravenholm, you barely get ammo, and so are forced to use telekinesis (the Gravity Gun), physics and the trusty crowbar, there's a shotgun though, but you'll blow all your ammo on...

• Fast, annoying, numerous but relatively weak enemies: Ammo is precious, 7 ft tall animatronics and gunships only succumb to the .50 cal and ATGMs. You CANNOT waste your munition on their minions. If you spend your ammo in Ravenholm, shredding through zembies and headcraps, you'll soon get sexually harassed by the combine snipers and troops in the next area, who will gleefully use the open, cover-filled space for their squad-based tactics. You won't just die, you'll end up fighting a battle you cannot win, and that's with the SAVE and LOAD, meta-game abilities.

  With a Murasama katana, however, you can chop the headys apart with a bit of effort and not waste your precious ammunition. Headscraps are too adaptable, you can find them anywhere, and they make for an excellent DISTRACTION CARNIFEX, I'd also expect them to be used as meatshields, that's what they were designed for. Heck, you can have your own hare... I mean, army of them.

---

And now for something, completely different

• The White Walker Obstruction: Seriously, those bastards have an infinite, localized smoke-screen, they can create pretty much instantly. Sure, after I donned my echolocation gear, it was pretty much useless, but that was from afar. If they've AMBUSHED us, I would also have had to worry about friendly fire. At least with swords, you can halt your offensive just before cutting off your roomie's head from a Wrath Guard (stance).

• Why not?: Exoskeletons are plausible, sword, spears, bo staffs and bike locks weigh practically nothing if made out of modern materials. So bring in the gun-fu, and This fine lad.

Answer 14

You can't without dropping at least one of your conditions. Considering that it's for a game, it's not as bad as it may sound.

I suggest you drop "exceptional" condition and introduce plethora of exceptional circumstances. Cramped slums, packed space stations (like Separatrix's answer), strangely bullet absorbing melee space monsters (for those you definitely want so called boar-spear with cross bar, to stab monster and keep it away from yourself at the same time), realistic sewers (instead of absurdly spacious ones) and so on. Since weapon usefulness is function of circumstances: guns are all around better, but action of the game happens in those exceptional locations and situations, focusing on people specialising in dealing with those exceptional situations. As a bonus, you can always have curveball wide open location/scenario with gun totting human enemies requiring either change of gear or complete change of tactics.

Reason why guns are superior is their range and accuracy. Times of volley fire making up for inaccuracy and slow reload are gone since mid 19th century and you can not reintroduce those in modern setting without breaking "exceptional" requirement. Dune uses shields, but there are other options, for example: short range teleport (usually called "blink" in fiction) removes range advantage, stealth (plain old hiding or sci-fi active camouflage) removes all advantages and let's call it "distortion shield" which doesn't stop bullets but turns anything short of exact hit to centre of mass into miss would remove accuracy advantage. Some of those break into "raw-ability" like territory, shooter with stealth (basically a a sniper) is better than swordsman with stealth, blink goes both ways, with shooter being able to escape (potentially counter-able by another teleport by melee fighter) while distortion wouldn't be very effective against melee weapons giving shooter advantage only against other shooters.

Answer 15

There was a movie release in 2002 called Equilibrium which tackled a similar question.

The producers of the movie developed a new form of martial arts called "Gun Kata". The explanation of Gun Kata is given as:

Through analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, the Cleric has determined that the geometric distribution of antagonists in any gun battle is a statistically-predictable element. The gun kata treats the gun as a total weapon, each fluid position representing a maximum kill zone, inflicting maximum damage on the maximum number of opponents, while keeping the defender clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire. By the rote mastery of this art, your firing efficiency will rise by no less than 120%. The difference of a 63% increased lethal proficiency makes the master of the gun katas an adversary not to be taken lightly.

You could twist this explanation slightly to make it relevant to defence against fire-arms using the same statistical analysis reasoning.

For example, you could explain that through statistical analysis of thousands of recorded gunfights, a melee fighter could close the gap to the fire-arm wielder by keeping clear of the statistically-traditional trajectories of return fire.

Answer 16

Simple: Standard (Space-Travel) Economics

You are writing for a science-fiction setting. You do not need to assume very exotic things to make melee-weapons as feasable as fire-arms. Just the following:

• Transport-costs for offworld-things are (literaly) astronomical. A gun that is being produced off-world, will require off-world bullets. The costs of each bullet will be so high that "single-shot" will become standard, even if "spraying a hundred bullets in a single burst" is technically possible. A sword, even when produced off-world, can kill an unlimited amount of people while having no additional costs.
• High-tech items that work on every planet and in space are not as good as simpler technology. If your fire-weapons are made to work in every environment, they might be rather sub-par when compared to simpler weapons. Just think of those few present-day weapons that can shoot underwater as well as in air. Your guns might be produced to work in Vacuum, in extreme temperatures (so high/low that gasses freeze or metals melt), in sandstorms, liquids, high gravity, ect. They might shoot, but they will not be as effectiv as present-day "works only on earth"-guns. It is not surprising that those guns can be countered by "mere" melee-weapons. Especially if those melee weapons were forged specifically for the environmend they are being used in.

Answer 17

I've experience with both guns (sport shooting), and swords (HEMA).

As others have noted, you're going to have to bend one or more of your restrictions slightly.

Lots of the answers suggest reasons that guns would be less preferable to carry (e.g. cost, or dangerous to use), but these wouldn't make a fight between a gun and a sword user more balanced, which I believe is what you're trying to achieve.

To do this, you'll have to balance the lethality of guns and swords.

Remember that swords work in two ways: in the thrust (stabbing with the tip), or cut (drawing through in a cutting motion with a sharp edge). They do not work but hitting people with the sharp edge, despite what films would have you believe. Try it with a carving knife on a pork joint, you'll not get through the skin.

---

Range

Reducing the range advantage would help, as at larger ranges, guns have >0 lethality, whereas swords have 0 lethality.

Two options are to reduce the range of encounters, or to slow the draw of a gun.

Don't underestimate how fast or far a swordsman can reach. The "21 foot rule" is a real thing from law enforcement – within 21ft, a suspect with a knife can draw their knife and kill an officer faster than an office can react to draw their weapon and shoot. And that's a 4" knife. You wouldn't believe how far and fast a lunge with a montante is. (A montante is a very large sword typically used by bodyguards, which was typically carried resting on the shoulder; it's usually used two-handed, but you can 'draw' from the shoulder and lunge single-handed like a rapier, though it's a bit of a gamble as recovery is very difficult.)

So if you've got a scenario where ranges are short (probably any residential space), lethality will tip towards a sword user. If you're wanting a balanced 50:50 sword/gun kill rate, a larger range will be fine even for a knife.

You can further decrease the speed of a gun vs a sword with the use of laws – e.g. a law that prevents open carry of a gun, but permits open carry of swords. If guns have to be secured with a combination lock on the trigger (and only legal to release the lock if you're in danger), a sword-user is probably more lethal in any indoor setting. That might not feel like a realistic law, but you can imagine it being proposed by the anti-gun lobby in the US.

---

Lethality

The other option is to make guns less lethal, so that it requires several shots to stop an attacker. One option would be to move to 'non-lethal' ammo (it'll have to be due to law, as it's not hard to form a bullet if metal is available). A black market in lead bullets might exist, which might work in your story?

Perhaps the law prevents general civilians from using metal ammo, but permits it for those who are better trained like mercs?

---

Game Mechanics

However, you're talking about a game. In real life, the first bullet hit wins a fight. But people don't realise that usually the first knife stab or even punch wins the fight. This doesn't usually make for a fun game mechanic if the first hit you take in the game kills you. Sword or gun fights where they slowly both carve bits off each other until one reaches 0-HP are much more fun, but not realistic.

So if you want a hard-science answer for a fun game, it's going to involve armour. It takes relatively little armour to stop a sword (sword fights in plate armour are largely about pinning the other guy down or knocking him over with a big blunt 'sword' (club), and then stabbing through the joints with a knife until he bleeds to death). However, most modern guns would penetrate this armour (unless you're lucky and get a deflection).

Note though that heavy armour is really heavy and would never be worn 'normally'. Leather with some light metal over the key areas is probably as heavy as anyone would want to wear as regular wear.

So your options are:

• invent a light non-newtonian armour which provides much better protection against guns (high velocity impact) than swords (low velocity cutting). Stuff like this is in development; in our world it won't cause a move back to swords (because bigger calibre weapons and longer ranges are the norm, and we rely on law-enforcement rather than wearing armour to keep civilians safe), but in your world it could well provide what you need.

• reduce the weight and velocity of bullets so they don't penetrate as much. A sub-sonic .22 has considerably less penetration than a 7.62 round.

If you're happy to bend the hard science a bit, some kind of 'healing factor' would work – perhaps a nano-tech you inject which will save you from a couple of shots? It would probably be less effective against swords as a slash wound would be larger and would overwhelm the nano-tech.

Answer 18

All you need are reasons rendering things more even.

A few ideas:

Movement Sufficient mobility makes smaller weapons superior. If you can clear the distance to a guy with a gun before he can draw a bead, melee is superior. (Slowing guns down could work similarly, but that raises other questions. Still, if all ballistics slowed but retained momentum, if not all the impulse, you'd still have dangerous weapons, albeit less useful.)

Invisibility or major resistance to damage while moving is roughly equivalent to rapid movement for gun vs. blade purposes.

As to how to to get this high speed or safe movement, well, that could be a common device or spell or even a martial technique if it's not a normal fact of the world. (Heavy mists could render things invisible out to a few hundred feet and blurry. Basically, a PS1 game world... You could have a reliable combat teleport pack or spell available. This is a sci fi/ fantasy question: choices are broad.)

Which leads us to...

Chi It's not realistic, but of your inspirations, only one even vaguely hints at such. Special martial training can unlock abilities that rival the range of guns but without some of the drawbacks. Guns could have the advantage of being powerful without the chi requirements. The disadvantage being that chi isn't a big benefit to firearms, limiting the upper end of lethality.

This gets you the common schlub using guns with warriors using other weapons thing. (This could be a universal trait of the world rather than a special thingy. Depending on how you interpret things, that could avoid your special power thing.)

Shielding The shields in Dune could be tweaked to something that could explain this. A narrow impulse is easily deflected while a cut can drop the whole shield, say. This needn't be a technological marvel, either, but could be a magical or field thing that affects people for some reason.

Weird physics Slow bullets plus the ability to deflect them with a weapon could lead to safer swordsman, a la Force blaster deflecting tricks but nigh universally acheivable.

Sixth sense If a target knows intuitively when they are being aimed at, it would aid them greatly in avoiding getting shot. If everyone can just tell where firearms are aiming about as well as the shooter it would make ambushes far more difficult. Should this sense reveal the source, as well, it would change quite a few details about combat. Obviously some explanation for this phenomenon would be in order.

Bonus point: Master Ken providing some insight into the problem: https://youtu.be/V_cUvjZCLL0

Answer 19

Gun control. Almost all current governments do this to some extent, so it's reasonable for your government to have laws about this. This could go as far as no guns available period, but you could have a setup where, say, only bolt-action rifles are available to civilians, which don't do so well in close-quarters. (Consider having areas with different gun control laws to add complexity.)

Also, look into air rifles. While they're mostly used for target shooting these days, they are suitable for self-defense-related tasks if given enough power. If there's a restriction on reservoir size, you can end up with guns that can fire X times, then can't be reloaded until after the battle, while restrictions on PSI can result in underpowered shots, so people won't die in a single hit.

If you want citizens to be walking around with guns, while mercs use melee, you could use the laws for that as well. For example, say mercs tend to do things that aren't quite legal, and if caught with a gun, they go away for life, (with enforcement to match) while getting caught with Dual Laser Katanas just gets you a stern talking-to for dueling in public without filing the proper form.

EDIT: actually, let's expand on dueling. Let's imagine a world where dueling is still a thing, but it's only allowed with melee, because bystanders kept getting killed. Walking down the street with your Dual Laser Katanas is implicitly an invitation to duel in this world. Normal people want nothing to do with this nonsense, so they keep a pistol for self-defense. If someone with a pistol kills someone with a melee weapon or vice versa, that's a death the police care about, but if two people with melee weapons fight and one dies, that's just a dumbass getting killed while dueling.

Answer 20

Coriolis effect

Set the story on a planet that spins so fast and/or is so small that the Coriolis effect is much greater than it is here on earth. You can counter gravitational effects of a fast-spinning or small planet by making it very dense.

Here on earth the Coriolis effect is taken into account when calculating very long range shots (shots taken mainly by cannons rather than by rifles) and they're taken into account with calculations.

In an environment where the Coriolis effect is exacerbated, it's very hard to have an intuitive feel for how each bullet will react, making it hard to aim. This video shows what I mean. Eventually in the video they are able to aim, but this is because they are rotating at a constant rate and throwing in the same direction each time, someone on a sphere would have great difficulty adjusting to shooting from different latitudes in different directions, making handheld ranged ballistic weapons (guns) ineffective at long range.

Depending on how much of the effect you decide to incorporate into your world will impact how far guns can effectively be aimed from, and can give an advantage to melee attackers (especially if they attack from the north or the south).

Answer 21

In a structured 1-to-1 battle, head-on, melee weapons will always lose. This was literally why firearms were invented-- you can now hit the other guy from a longer range than he can return the favor.

Any benefit of melee weapons would be entirely tactical and would have to be leveraged in unconventional ways.

• Melee weapons are quieter than guns. If you have the element of surprise on your side, you can do a lot of damage before the opponent has time to react. Think ninja.
• Knives are easier to smuggle into secure areas and have fewer moving parts requiring maintenance. You also don't need to worry about ammunition.
• Large rifles are unwieldy in close quarters. If you have the opportunity to close in, simply swatting at the gun knocks its aim all over the place. If you can lead a rifle-wielding opponent into such an area, you do have an advantage until they pull out a handgun-- and even then, if they do silly things like the Weaver stance then you still have the same advantages. Submachine guns are your worst nightmare, since their shape forces a more effective stance by the wielder that can tolerate disruption.
• In close quarters, you can also use hand-to-hand/melee combat to disarm the opponent and/or use their gun against them. Get within two arms' length and the advantages of any gun is nullified. Their range is what makes them deadly. Take that away and it's just a powder-activated knife.
• There are primitive (we're talking prehistoric) tools like slings that allow humans to throw things like spears with superhuman ability.
• We went into Vietnam with rifles and air support. We were defeated by pits filled with feces-covered spears.
• We went into Afghanistan with the full might of the modern military industrial complex. Just like Vietnam, we were defeated by primitive weapons like roadside bombs and the weaponization of fear itself-- never knowing when and where you're going to get hit has significant effect on morale and battle-readiness.
• There have been many a home invader, armed and not, that were thwarted by homeowners screaming incoherently and charging at them with a katana or bat from out of nowhere. Again, primitive weapon combined with surprise and fear.
• The feudal Japanese and native Americans used masks or war paint to play off of this too-- an army of sword-wielding monster-faced warriors closing in on you causes panic and fear among your ranks. Gas masks, balaclavas and full-face helmets fulfill similar intimidation purposes today.
• External circumstances may also preclude the utility of guns. Firearms on an airplane could be suicidal. In the original Metal Gear Solid, your path takes you through a warehouse of nuclear warheads. You are barred from using firearms in it because of the risk of leakage or explosion (though through some oversight, the enemies were not similarly restricted). I think there was a similar plot point in one of the Aliens movies and leaking methane gas (though again, sparks from metal-on-metal swordfighting...).

Answer 22

How about adding a rather available super-camouflage tech?

If it's not so difficult to obtain a piece of tech that really-really hides you, ranged weapons don't have any advantage. Also for a gun, you need ammo, you need to make sure it doesn't get wet (ok, too wet for some models), cleaning is rather difficult process leaving you unarmed for a while. Sword, on the other hand, doesn't need ammo, it's ok if it gets wet, easy to clean (and cleaning doesn't leave you unarmed).

Problem is that you probably won't be able to have rougues as a separate class(es). And you'll need to do something with sneak in general. Maybe make this camouflage-tech only work if you are moving slowly, or not moving...

Answer 23

Instead of relying on physical constraints (since there aren't any), go with social constraints. Instead of trying to balance the "equal skill" equation you can ensure guns aren't a dominant component of every fight by limiting access to them. The easiest way would be to build into your narrative laws or social norms that limit access to guns to a minority. Maybe

• Only the rich and powerful are allowed guns
• Only security forces are allowed guns

If you go with the first option you could also limit the lethality of the weapons by making them mostly ceremonial (ornate, antique, gem-encrusted or whatever) rather than precision tools of death.

I realise this won't allow "plebs" to have guns, but maybe that's not the most important thing.

Answer 24

Introduce better bullet-proof armor.

Todays ballistic vests only protect against small-caliber weapons, unless you make them so heavy that they become unwieldy in combat (and even moreso if you want to see people engage in hand-to-hand combat). But if your universe would have a lighter and stronger material for ballistic vest, then it might be feasible to wear enough ballistic protection to survive fire from most firearms.

Now why wouldn't this also improve the survival chance against melee attacks? It does, but when it comes to hand-to-hand combat, then a common tactic is to not focus on injuring the opponent, but rather to make them fall down. When your opponent is on the ground while you are still standing, you have practically won. You now have an easy time to subdue your opponent or perform a well-aimed killing blow through even the smallest weakpoint in their armor. But making your opponent fall down requires momentum and leverage, and armor can't protect you from that.

Answer 25

I'm going to agree with the consensus here and say that your conditions are quite prohibitive. I will, however, make some suggestions that go a little bit the opposite of everyone else and say that maybe some things about the world should be crappier than our own instead of better. Here are my two primary thoughts:

1. The beings in your world live in lower gravity spaces and have less dense skeletal structures. That way the force of the recoil of a firearm actually hurts the user unless they're well-trained enough to withstand the pain/not break their bones or just plain launches them across the room. Swords and stuff are then easier to use because they impact the user less. This also would limit the firearms to a relatively small bore, decreasing the overall damage of those weapons.
2. Maybe materials in your world are such that firearms are prohibitively expensive to manufacture or operate. Like if barrels couldn't be perfectly cylindrical on the inside or there isn't enough iron in the world to literally just throw specs of it at each other at high velocity and it's more economical to make a single weapon that can be used repeatedly. Or maybe only the finest, most rare metals have to be used for bullets to withstand the barrel forces (another one that makes guns less economical).

Answer 26

As long as Dune's a major influence, why not copy its shielding? Personal shields will stop anything with high kinetic energy (e.g. bullets) but not slower things because then you'd never be able to interact with the world. The art of swordfighting is to come in just slower than the shields threshold, then keep the pressure on so that you stab deep. If you're killing ordinary people, a gun is useful, but if you're killing rich people or people expecting trouble, you need a sword.

Optionally, you can also introduce sandworms, which instinctively attack shields, and make guns viable again. But simpler is to just not introduce them.

You said you don't want to include "special technology, geography, monsters, or other special scenarios". Energy shields aren't that special. They're ubiquitous in scifi and fantasy.

Answer 27

Shields.

You could use a large ballistic shield to get close to the person shooting at you. Once in close quarters the one wielding a sword has more control over the flow of combat than the one with a gun, and they still have the shield to protect themself. This only gives the swordsman an advantage in stand up fights though and if the gunner can ambush the swordsman he will still win if he can hit. Unless some strong body armour is involved, like in Cyrus' answer, but the gunner can wear that too.

Now, unless the swords are some kind of sci-fi lightsabers or vibro-swords or whatever then swords have no advantage over guns in penetrating armour. However, a bullet starts off with a set amount of momentum and then it stops when that momentum is expended. With a melee weapon, on the other hand, momentum is continuously added as long as you push/swing. This gives you some control over your opponent's movements as you can push or trip them to a greater extent.

Answer 28

TL;DR : Make every being stronger

---

This answer is inspired by a chinese light novel whose name is -insert here when i remember-.

Firearms are very strong noteably because they replace your strength by a mechanical external strength.

This means you do not need extensive strength training to deal massive damage (I am not accounting for accuracy or weapon traing ofc). The same applies for speed (speed of a bullet versus speed of a slash i.e).

A case where melee weapons would be stronger than firearms would be if your personal strength and/or speed was greater than the mechanical strength of a firearm. If you do not want superheroes, you could obtain that by augmenting the general level of every being on your planet. That means none of them could be considered as "super" in their context.

In the particular novel I'm thinking of, nuclear radiations and accelerated evolutions killed almost every humans, while survivors left alive became stronger and more prone to evolve physically. The same happened to animals. At first, firearms were able to contain the animals, but slowly, they started to become more resistant, while weaponization couldn't follow.
So Humans had to evolve too, and they ended up prioritizing melee weapons.

Answer 29

Shields

Personal shields have been engineered. Anything with a momentum greater than x would hit a barrier with equal force. (Tchno babble why energy is not transferred to the user). Bullets, speeding trains, flying debris in a hurricane all of this would come to an instant halt once it connects with a users shields.

Because people still need to breath, or have the earth make contact with their feet so that they can walk anything with a momentum of x or less would not trigger this barrier.

Now everyone is protected by something that makes ranged ballistic weapons almost mute.

An example that can be seen in current movies would be the shields in the movie Dune.

Because people still want to harm others they have now reverted to melee weapons whose momentum can be controlled and reduced so to harmfully pass through the shields.

It's just another idea and this one does come with a bunch of questions that need to be answered too.

As example: What happens when I launch two shield wielders at each other.

Answer 30

An energy field that "burns" anything moving fast (such as a bullet) that gets close to the person.

The mercenaries have special swords and armor that allow the energy to flow through the sword and into a glove and the rest of the armor so that the energy can harmlessly "ground out" without damaging the sword and without injuring the person in the armor. Swords would only work if the wielder is in contact with some other surface to ground the energy, otherwise their sword and maybe even themselves can be burned by the shield.

To keep things balanced, the mercenaries cannot use the energy shields while wearing armor because the armor grounds out their own shield. That makes the mercenaries dependent on the armor itself to have any protection from gunfire.