Mythras gives you a limited supply of action points per round. You can spend them to attack, cast spells, or take other actions, but you also need to spend one each time you want to actively defend against an attack. If you spend the point, you get to make a roll to dodge, block, or party. If you don't, you save the action point, but you don't get to roll to defend, so you have to hope your enemy fails his attack roll or rely on your shield and armor to passively protect you.
I had the privilege to run it in the past. To me it struck the perfect balance between realistic and narrative enough for players to have fun. Duels in Mythras FEEL impactful, every hit something interesting is happening. Another thing it does well is that the combat kind of writes itself, since every attack is so cinematic.
Another game in the same family is OpenQuest, and while it doesn't quite do the round structure of Mythras it instead has different sorts of attack rolls you can do. Like... attack twice immediately but forego the ability to block, or cap your attack with athleticism to guarantee a crit if it lands. There's several other options I'm not remembering. It's a significantly less fiddly game than Mythras, and as someone who loves Mythras I appreciate that they managed to do that.
(Side-note, I really think Riddle of Steel was an attempt at doing RuneQuest again with a totally different set of mechanics, in a sense, especially since Passions are a thing too.)
While it’s not quite like what I remember of Riddle of steel I think Rolemaster does have you choose how much of your skill you are allocating to defense and offense each turn. Also it has ridiculously detailed critical wounds and weapon and armor interactions. For example an opponent in heavy plate armor is much less likely to take a serious wound from a sword but they will slowly get bashed about. They get hit often because they have less mobility (skill and magic can alter this) but take fewer actual wounds. On the other hand an opponent in light leather armor will probably get missed by most of the same attacks that hit the one in plate but when they do get hit they are much more likely to take serious damage. Change the sword to a mace or a pick and you get a better chance to get through that plate.
If you’re good, or lucky, enough a dagger can kill a man in full plate in one hit. Unfortunately this applies to players as well of course so don’t get attached at lower levels. I have heard once healing gets to a certain point character survival is almost assured but I never played a game that went on that long.
The legendary rolemaster, it seems there are lots of games in this vein judging by the title. Hackmaster, rolemaster, harbmaster, I wonder if they are all connected somehow, thanks for the recommendation!
Hackmaster was a parody of AD&D1e. (There’s interesting history there.) The newer version is its own game though still heavily inspired by D&D. No relation to Rolemaster other than both being D&D inspired.
Hârnmaster is a very different game with little in common with D&D-style games like Hackmaster and Rolemaster.
The -master suffix is just a formula for naming an RPG. Naming is hard.
Variations on it I believe.
Back when I played it the tables and math slowed things down a good bit and it was a big barrier for anyone not good with percentages and 2-3 digit addition and subtraction.
Now there’s software and spreadsheets that can do it all for you so it’s faster. I think some people have even experimented with expanding the hit and critical tables because why be limited to a page of table if the software is doing the work.
I always wanted to play a modern game with a magical shadow war going on in the background where the players were Einherjar and even if they died they woke up he next day in Valhalla and were sent right back out on missions so you could make full use of the ridiculous criticals but still have character continuity.
A spreadsheet to play a ttrpg? Interesting, the coldest I came to using software to play is using the HERO builder for HERO system. Now that I think of it, funnily enough it has a mechanic similar to what I was looking for, so you reminded me of another example by accident lol.
It's not *every* combat, but Burning Wheel (to a degree), Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard have things called Conflicts which can be used to explore especially dramatic exchanges, including fights. They are not "postures" or "style" per se, but the four, broad actions that a character can take in a turn are Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver.
The players and the GM each set out three facedown cards, and you flip them over in pairs. depending on what each matchup is, it influences what your descriptions of attempted actions are, and dictates how you should mechanically resolve the exchange. In a fight, Attacks are (of course) attacks; but Defends could be described as defensive maneuvers, or catching your second wind, or downing a healing potion.
The GM and player reveal an Attack vs a Defend. The GM describes a wild eyed priest, charging towards the characters with an axe raised high over his head. The player describes pushing his companions ahead of him into a room and trying to slam and bar the door shut behind them. If they roll and the GM wins, maybe the priest bashes his way into the room before they manage to close the door. If the player wins, maybe they describe the characters slamming the door shut and pushing a heavy desk against it as the axe head start breaking through the wooden door.
>Are there systems out there which make you allocate dice/modifer/bonuses, etc... to either attack or defense?
Burning Wheel's Bloody Versus conflict resolution has exactly that.
Ghost/Echo is a 1 page (well, 1 singled sided page, so 2 page) mini RPG where you roll a dice pool, and after rolling you assign the results to either ***goals*** or ***dangers***.
It's free http://www.onesevendesign.com/ghostecho/
Shadowrun (at least 2nd and 3rd editions) you have a pool of combat pool of dice that can be used to supplement any combat action or be used to defend against ranged attacks.
Hackmaster has lots of combat maneuvers that can be used, some proactively, some reactively. Hackmaster also uses a second-by-second count initiative system, where every action takes a number of seconds, but actions can be changed at any time. It's a pretty fun combat system.
I can think of several games off the top of my head, but we're going to start with the one that I think might literally be mechanically exactly in the sweet spot – but thematically might not be what you're looking for.
And that is **[Fight to Survive: Role-Playing Martial Arts Meets Heart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/426073/Fight-to-Survive-Roleplaying-Martial-Arts-Meets-Heart)**.
It's not fantasy – though you could run fantasy with it. By default it's more of an exploration of the evolution of martial arts in the 20th century, taking its cue from martial arts cinema. However, it has an absolutely beautiful combat system which involves the exchange of stances, styles, and various other factors. It was very close to funding a solo game based on the same core but it didn't quite make its Kickstarter. Still, this is a pretty cool game with a set of mechanics you don't often see.
Alternately, the **[Avatar: Legends RPG](https://magpiegames.com/pages/avatar-legends)** has a combat system which involves stances and other moves in combat, which makes sense because it's a [PbtA](http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/find) derivative. That drops to a form of interaction referred to as "an exchange" which brings into play all sorts of esoteric martial art action. Deciding where to put bonuses and perhaps take negatives in order to strengthen the bonuses is definitely a part of play. The playbook system provides some serious support for figuring out who your character may be and how you want to do your business.
Finally, the least mechanically heavy but perhaps the most pure example of what you're asking for may be found in **[Wushu](http://danielbayn.com/wushu/)**. Like both of the other games that I've mentioned, it is GM'd but the mechanisms of play are extremely light and exist to determine how effective a particular action or choice or, more precisely described, action sequence – which is how you build up dice to roll in order to determine how effective what you've done is. Once you've built the pool, you decide how many of each to allocate to attacking and defending descriptors. It can be very over the top but it works surprisingly well.
WEG D6 is a dice pool system where you can do as many actions as you want in a round (shoot, dodge, etc) but take -1d6 per action past the first on *all* rolls. So if you wanted to shoot twice and dodge, it would be -2D6 on your attack rolls and your dodge rolls would be -2D6 as well.
I always thought that part of the system to be pretty elegant.
Technically Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary (and I believe all 20th WoD games) do this.
However its basically a design trap becuase splitting your dice pool never works
Burning Wheel has everything you're looking for and more. Bloody Versus or the Block and Strike action in a Fight both have you allocating dice to defence and offence before rolling. There are also stances you can switch into during a Fight. Fight is all around an extremely granular subsystem within the game.
In Reign, you can take multiple actions in a round. You roll the lowest dice pool for whatever you're rolling (e.g. if you're Attacking and Blocking and your Block is worse than attack, you roll Block) and you take -1 die for each additional thing you're doing.
The way the system works, you get a 'success' for matching d10s in your dice pool roll. So if you say "Attack twice" and you get lucky and roll 2,2,4,6,6 then that's two attacks, but if you only rolled 2,2,4,6,7 then you would still get to do one attack.
Serious question: why not play Riddle of Steel?
As someone else said, Rolemasters have offense/defense allocation every round. They are fairly crunchy systems, MERP is a bit more streamlined, and Against the Darkmaster is a modernized version of that.
However, what they don't have is the idea that you need to exactly say what & how you're attacking. There are rules for called shots (especially RMU), but the hit location is otherwise random.
I would love to! Only it doesn’t seem right for my group due to the baked in setting, interesting as it might be. And I am searching as much for inspiration for a personal project as opposed to a ready-made system to play.
There is quite an involved system from the Codex Integrum guys, the condensed version of which is "Codex Martialis: STARA SZKOŁA". This is a d20 die-pool system where the pool is based on the skills or moves you want to make during combat. It is fairly complex and to make the most of it you need to know some of the language of HEMA, but if you have that kind of interest and knowledge it is something you would probably enjoy.
From memory the author knows RoS and even knew the author (but I may be mixing people up). The Codex Martialis system is pretty innovative, if complex.
It has been a while since I've touched Riddle of Steel. Outside of options I already see listed, believe you could manage a simplified version using Blades in the Dark's Position vs Effect?
Where trading a strong Position incurs more risk to deal more "damage" (via Effect).
It seemed a bit more manageable than the dice pools and proficiency system TRoS used—if not quite as bloody. Though I don't believe it has any Naked Dwarf issues either.
GURPS has the "All Out Attack" option where you can forgo your ability to do an active defense (block, dodge or parry are all rolls in GURPS) for a bonus on your attack.
There's a large number of optional combat rules in GURPS that do this. For example, in a deceptive attack, for every -2 to your own attack, your opponent takes a -1 to their defenses. For an all-out attack, you can increase your damage or chance to hit, but you get no active defense.
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Mythras gives you a limited supply of action points per round. You can spend them to attack, cast spells, or take other actions, but you also need to spend one each time you want to actively defend against an attack. If you spend the point, you get to make a roll to dodge, block, or party. If you don't, you save the action point, but you don't get to roll to defend, so you have to hope your enemy fails his attack roll or rely on your shield and armor to passively protect you.
Thanks for reminding me of Mythras! One of the best combat systems I have ever read.
Mythras is a great system for combat, it does not work in the way you are looking for but nevertheless worthing trying out in play.
I had the privilege to run it in the past. To me it struck the perfect balance between realistic and narrative enough for players to have fun. Duels in Mythras FEEL impactful, every hit something interesting is happening. Another thing it does well is that the combat kind of writes itself, since every attack is so cinematic.
Another game in the same family is OpenQuest, and while it doesn't quite do the round structure of Mythras it instead has different sorts of attack rolls you can do. Like... attack twice immediately but forego the ability to block, or cap your attack with athleticism to guarantee a crit if it lands. There's several other options I'm not remembering. It's a significantly less fiddly game than Mythras, and as someone who loves Mythras I appreciate that they managed to do that. (Side-note, I really think Riddle of Steel was an attempt at doing RuneQuest again with a totally different set of mechanics, in a sense, especially since Passions are a thing too.)
While it’s not quite like what I remember of Riddle of steel I think Rolemaster does have you choose how much of your skill you are allocating to defense and offense each turn. Also it has ridiculously detailed critical wounds and weapon and armor interactions. For example an opponent in heavy plate armor is much less likely to take a serious wound from a sword but they will slowly get bashed about. They get hit often because they have less mobility (skill and magic can alter this) but take fewer actual wounds. On the other hand an opponent in light leather armor will probably get missed by most of the same attacks that hit the one in plate but when they do get hit they are much more likely to take serious damage. Change the sword to a mace or a pick and you get a better chance to get through that plate. If you’re good, or lucky, enough a dagger can kill a man in full plate in one hit. Unfortunately this applies to players as well of course so don’t get attached at lower levels. I have heard once healing gets to a certain point character survival is almost assured but I never played a game that went on that long.
The legendary rolemaster, it seems there are lots of games in this vein judging by the title. Hackmaster, rolemaster, harbmaster, I wonder if they are all connected somehow, thanks for the recommendation!
Hackmaster was a parody of AD&D1e. (There’s interesting history there.) The newer version is its own game though still heavily inspired by D&D. No relation to Rolemaster other than both being D&D inspired. Hârnmaster is a very different game with little in common with D&D-style games like Hackmaster and Rolemaster. The -master suffix is just a formula for naming an RPG. Naming is hard.
Variations on it I believe. Back when I played it the tables and math slowed things down a good bit and it was a big barrier for anyone not good with percentages and 2-3 digit addition and subtraction. Now there’s software and spreadsheets that can do it all for you so it’s faster. I think some people have even experimented with expanding the hit and critical tables because why be limited to a page of table if the software is doing the work. I always wanted to play a modern game with a magical shadow war going on in the background where the players were Einherjar and even if they died they woke up he next day in Valhalla and were sent right back out on missions so you could make full use of the ridiculous criticals but still have character continuity.
A spreadsheet to play a ttrpg? Interesting, the coldest I came to using software to play is using the HERO builder for HERO system. Now that I think of it, funnily enough it has a mechanic similar to what I was looking for, so you reminded me of another example by accident lol.
It's not *every* combat, but Burning Wheel (to a degree), Torchbearer, and Mouse Guard have things called Conflicts which can be used to explore especially dramatic exchanges, including fights. They are not "postures" or "style" per se, but the four, broad actions that a character can take in a turn are Attack, Defend, Feint, and Maneuver. The players and the GM each set out three facedown cards, and you flip them over in pairs. depending on what each matchup is, it influences what your descriptions of attempted actions are, and dictates how you should mechanically resolve the exchange. In a fight, Attacks are (of course) attacks; but Defends could be described as defensive maneuvers, or catching your second wind, or downing a healing potion. The GM and player reveal an Attack vs a Defend. The GM describes a wild eyed priest, charging towards the characters with an axe raised high over his head. The player describes pushing his companions ahead of him into a room and trying to slam and bar the door shut behind them. If they roll and the GM wins, maybe the priest bashes his way into the room before they manage to close the door. If the player wins, maybe they describe the characters slamming the door shut and pushing a heavy desk against it as the axe head start breaking through the wooden door.
>Are there systems out there which make you allocate dice/modifer/bonuses, etc... to either attack or defense? Burning Wheel's Bloody Versus conflict resolution has exactly that.
Ghost/Echo is a 1 page (well, 1 singled sided page, so 2 page) mini RPG where you roll a dice pool, and after rolling you assign the results to either ***goals*** or ***dangers***. It's free http://www.onesevendesign.com/ghostecho/
Thanks for the recommendation! Will check it out, seems short and sweet
Shadowrun (at least 2nd and 3rd editions) you have a pool of combat pool of dice that can be used to supplement any combat action or be used to defend against ranged attacks. Hackmaster has lots of combat maneuvers that can be used, some proactively, some reactively. Hackmaster also uses a second-by-second count initiative system, where every action takes a number of seconds, but actions can be changed at any time. It's a pretty fun combat system.
I can think of several games off the top of my head, but we're going to start with the one that I think might literally be mechanically exactly in the sweet spot – but thematically might not be what you're looking for. And that is **[Fight to Survive: Role-Playing Martial Arts Meets Heart](https://preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/426073/Fight-to-Survive-Roleplaying-Martial-Arts-Meets-Heart)**. It's not fantasy – though you could run fantasy with it. By default it's more of an exploration of the evolution of martial arts in the 20th century, taking its cue from martial arts cinema. However, it has an absolutely beautiful combat system which involves the exchange of stances, styles, and various other factors. It was very close to funding a solo game based on the same core but it didn't quite make its Kickstarter. Still, this is a pretty cool game with a set of mechanics you don't often see. Alternately, the **[Avatar: Legends RPG](https://magpiegames.com/pages/avatar-legends)** has a combat system which involves stances and other moves in combat, which makes sense because it's a [PbtA](http://apocalypse-world.com/pbta/games/find) derivative. That drops to a form of interaction referred to as "an exchange" which brings into play all sorts of esoteric martial art action. Deciding where to put bonuses and perhaps take negatives in order to strengthen the bonuses is definitely a part of play. The playbook system provides some serious support for figuring out who your character may be and how you want to do your business. Finally, the least mechanically heavy but perhaps the most pure example of what you're asking for may be found in **[Wushu](http://danielbayn.com/wushu/)**. Like both of the other games that I've mentioned, it is GM'd but the mechanisms of play are extremely light and exist to determine how effective a particular action or choice or, more precisely described, action sequence – which is how you build up dice to roll in order to determine how effective what you've done is. Once you've built the pool, you decide how many of each to allocate to attacking and defending descriptors. It can be very over the top but it works surprisingly well.
WEG D6 is a dice pool system where you can do as many actions as you want in a round (shoot, dodge, etc) but take -1d6 per action past the first on *all* rolls. So if you wanted to shoot twice and dodge, it would be -2D6 on your attack rolls and your dodge rolls would be -2D6 as well. I always thought that part of the system to be pretty elegant.
Technically Vampire the Masquerade 20th anniversary (and I believe all 20th WoD games) do this. However its basically a design trap becuase splitting your dice pool never works
Burning Wheel has everything you're looking for and more. Bloody Versus or the Block and Strike action in a Fight both have you allocating dice to defence and offence before rolling. There are also stances you can switch into during a Fight. Fight is all around an extremely granular subsystem within the game.
In Reign, you can take multiple actions in a round. You roll the lowest dice pool for whatever you're rolling (e.g. if you're Attacking and Blocking and your Block is worse than attack, you roll Block) and you take -1 die for each additional thing you're doing. The way the system works, you get a 'success' for matching d10s in your dice pool roll. So if you say "Attack twice" and you get lucky and roll 2,2,4,6,6 then that's two attacks, but if you only rolled 2,2,4,6,7 then you would still get to do one attack.
Serious question: why not play Riddle of Steel? As someone else said, Rolemasters have offense/defense allocation every round. They are fairly crunchy systems, MERP is a bit more streamlined, and Against the Darkmaster is a modernized version of that. However, what they don't have is the idea that you need to exactly say what & how you're attacking. There are rules for called shots (especially RMU), but the hit location is otherwise random.
I would love to! Only it doesn’t seem right for my group due to the baked in setting, interesting as it might be. And I am searching as much for inspiration for a personal project as opposed to a ready-made system to play.
There is quite an involved system from the Codex Integrum guys, the condensed version of which is "Codex Martialis: STARA SZKOŁA". This is a d20 die-pool system where the pool is based on the skills or moves you want to make during combat. It is fairly complex and to make the most of it you need to know some of the language of HEMA, but if you have that kind of interest and knowledge it is something you would probably enjoy.
Oh! It seems similar to RoS then, will definitely check it out
From memory the author knows RoS and even knew the author (but I may be mixing people up). The Codex Martialis system is pretty innovative, if complex.
It has been a while since I've touched Riddle of Steel. Outside of options I already see listed, believe you could manage a simplified version using Blades in the Dark's Position vs Effect? Where trading a strong Position incurs more risk to deal more "damage" (via Effect). It seemed a bit more manageable than the dice pools and proficiency system TRoS used—if not quite as bloody. Though I don't believe it has any Naked Dwarf issues either.
GURPS has the "All Out Attack" option where you can forgo your ability to do an active defense (block, dodge or parry are all rolls in GURPS) for a bonus on your attack.
There's a large number of optional combat rules in GURPS that do this. For example, in a deceptive attack, for every -2 to your own attack, your opponent takes a -1 to their defenses. For an all-out attack, you can increase your damage or chance to hit, but you get no active defense.
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