So fantasy uses Ranged, Melee (Light), & Melee (Heavy), while modern games use Melee, Ranged (Light), & Ranged (Heavy). So what would you do for an urban fantasy game, where archaic weapons like swords and spears are as common as rifles and pistols? Do you use just Melee and Ranged? Do you use all four? What are your thoughts on the subject?

I use all 4. The idea is that in missions where the PCs are in public, light melee and ranged are best. But for the missions where they're out in the wilderness, they're free to bust out the big guns and swords. For my campaign, the magic elements of the world are not well known, but I can see in a different blend of modern and fantasy where magic is open, condensing the skills makes more sense.

Urban Fantasy is analogous to Star Wars, really. If you don't have something really special in the up-close department (like a holy sword or werewolf claws), you're probably going to want a ranged weapon as your go-to. Look at the Dresden files for guidance: if the good guys aren't spellcasters, they're using guns, or they're carrying seriously magical melee weapons. Since melee is de-emphasized, I wouldn't differentiate Melee Light and Heavy. Since most weapons will be ranged, differentiating pistols from heavier weapons makes sense to offer some variety and niche protection.

What I just described is exactly how I'm mapping Starfinder to Genesys. I'm going to offer weapon finesse to allow agility on the smaller of the light weapons, and just subsume all the others under a blanket of generic Melee powered by Brawn. I'm really pondering rolling gunnery into heavy ranged though. Still haven't decided. I'm already at 34 skills.

I would keep Melee as one skill and break Ranged up into light and heavy. Ask yourself one question: "when my PCs go shopping, what weapons do they find in the average weapon shop?"

The answer is the combat skill you break into light/heavy. Just because melee weapons are a thing doesn't mean it's important enough to warrant multiple skills. In modern settings, you go into a weapon shop and you see guns. Lots of guns. So Ranged gets the split.

17 hours ago, c__beck said:

I would keep Melee as one skill and break Ranged up into light and heavy. Ask yourself one question: "when my PCs go shopping, what weapons do they find in the average weapon shop?"

OP explicitly said that melee is as common as firearms. Presumably, it's the sort of setting where melee weapons are still useful: Perhaps vampires laugh off bullets but fear a wooden spear, or faeries can make your shots go awry but are rendered powerless by a blade of cold iron.

2 hours ago, rsdockery said:

OP explicitly said that melee is as common as firearms. Presumably, it's the sort of setting where melee weapons are still useful: Perhaps vampires laugh off bullets but fear a wooden spear, or faeries can make your shots go awry but are rendered powerless by a blade of cold iron.

My point was not what is used often, but what is commonly available. Modern setting do better with Melee as one skill and Ranged as two. Every modern fantasy I've ever played or listened to have the main characters using melee weapons, but that's not a good reason, in my opinion, to split Melee into two skills.

2 hours ago, c__beck said:

My point was not what is used often, but what is commonly available. Modern setting do better with Melee as one skill and Ranged as two.

"Commonly available" has nothing to do with it. Firearms aren't "commonly available" in Japan, but a Yakuza setting would still have rules for them. The real reason that modern settings normally have one Melee skill is that Melee (Heavy) is simply too obscure to merit its own skill. If your setting is in the Atomic Age or later, people have hardly any reason to use two-handed melee weapons. Melee (Light) is better suited to subtle or close-quarters violence, and Ranged is better at everything else; the only time a PC would need to use Melee (Heavy) would be when they're forced to improvise with a sledgehammer or something.

It really depends on the type of story you want to invoke. Does it benefit your story to break them both melee and ranged up into different groups? If you think it does, i say try it. If you find that it doesnt really matter, you can always change it later. I think you can invoke a very different feel into an urban fantasy by having both of them broken up.

I hate to say it, but availability and prevalence aren't the real issue here, balance is. In a fantasy setting with archaic firearms at the most, if at all, ranged weapons are relatively weak; modern fully automatic weapons on the other hand...

Why bother to learn toting a sword, in the first place, if you can auto-fire someone to shreds. The broadness of the skill is supposed to be an incentive.

If you wanted to make a combat character in your own game, would it be worth it to you to invest in two melee skills, or would you decide you were better off sticking to ranged?

In a medieval fantasy game, ranged weapons aren't that good: they do about as much damage as a light melee weapon, they take two hands to use, they have bulky ammunition, and they don't have very many good weapon qualities. In melee combat, on the other hand, there's a tradeoff between taking lighter weapons that can be used with a shield/dual wielded/hidden more easily and heavy weapons that do more damage/have cooler qualities. So melee gets two skills, and ranged gets one.

In a modern game, melee weapons aren't that good: they do less damage than guns (or, sometimes, comparable), you have to get close to use them, and they don't get really good qualities like autofire. Ranged weapons, on the other hand, offer a tradeoff between concealable but powerful handguns and even more powerful longarms that can't be hidden. So ranged gets two skills and melee gets one.

So: if melee weapons are as good as ranged weapons in your game, I'd give them as many skills. Four skills total if combat is a big part of the game; two if it's not.

Bows just sucking? I don't have the book but they can't be that horribly weak can they?

I am using all four skills (melee light,hvy; range light,hvy). They are on equal footing however. A "Cyber-Knight" can use conjuration to summon his PSI-Sword and dish out as much damage with an engaged foe as a heavy rifle can at medium range, for instance. It is worth noting that in this setting that I'm totally trying not to infringe on trademarks, bringing a club you pick up off the ground to a lasergun fight would have dire consequences.

26 minutes ago, thecowley said:

Bows just sucking? I don't have the book but they can't be that horribly weak can they?

"Aren't that good" is maybe a poor choice of words. I don't mean that bows are weak (and definitely not horribly weak), just that in medieval settings ranged weapons as a whole are not quite as good as melee weapons as a whole. Most combat in those settings happens at melee range, after all.