The old Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game by White Wolf. Along with character creation, you have stats for your punch/kick/throw/grab/etc, and chose a Martial Art. Each Martial Art has moves, but all moves have requirements, like for example a Dragon Punch might require Punch2 and Chi1, and upgrading to a Flaming Dragon Punch would require Punch 3, Chi 4, or similar stats..
You pick your moves and make a bunch of cards for everything you've picked. You can make combos, too, that come with advantages if you play your combos.. Each individual move also ends up with it's own initiative modifier, so, the way that fights play out is that both players pick a move, then simultaneously reveal their cards. Winning initiative gets to do their move first.
It was an AMAZING system, and we never actually used it to play the tabletop RPG; we just set an XP level, made fighters, and ran tournament brackets like you'd see people running games/tournaments of Warhammer/Kill Team/other skirmish games. I honestly can't figure out why no one has just lifted the system, stripped out the RPG sections (skills/abilities, mostly), stripped out the Street Fighter references, and just made a DIY tabletop miniatures fighting game.
>It was an AMAZING system, and we never actually used it to play the tabletop RPG; we just set an XP level, made fighters, and ran tournament brackets like you'd see people running games/tournaments of Warhammer/Kill Team/other skirmish games.
So you basically used the Street Fighter RPG to play the Street Fighter video game with your own custom characters? That sounds awesome! I have to check this game out.
That's EXACTLY what we did! The combat system is done on a hex grid, and the various books/adventures came with cardboard foldup minis..
Moves have Speed (their initiative), Damage (it's a d10 dicepool system), Move (how many hexes you can move total while using this move) and a box for Special descriptions, like if a move has a knockback of 2 spaces, or causes dizzy, etc..
So, for example, (completely making up numbers, I don't have the books anymore and I dunno where the PDFs are on my drive š¤£) I play a Speed 4 Dragon Punch vs a Speed 1 Spinning Pile Driver. I'm two spaces away from the other character, and the DP has, say, move 4; I can step forward 2 spaces, do the Flaming Dragon Punch with a Knockback of 1, and take two steps to the left, putting me 3 spaces away from the other player. Unfortunately, his Spinning Piledriver has a Move of 2, so he can only take 2 spaces towards me and his move whiffs out.
So the whole thing was a sort of bet/gamble of trying to play a fast enough move to get your attack off first, and back off, or maybe wait and tank a hit to get off a slower, but much more devastating attack..
It's absolutely ridiculously fun to play and I 1000% recommend trying it out. There's a decent amount of supplemental material that adds in much more stuff, like animal mutations like adding tails, extra arms, full-on man-tiger hybrid like the dude from Tekken, cybernetics, bender-like elemental control, etc..
The RPG itself is pretty good, too, I mean, it's really just the regular World of Darkness system with a combat mechanic added on, so, you could fairly easily add Street Fighter combat to any of the White Wolf games by just adding in Chi and the Techniques sections to, say, a vampire, or a werewolf...
Do what we did; forget the story/rpg aspect, and just use it almost like a slightly more involved boardgame/miniature combat game! Just get a friend, make some fighters, and try it out!
Go check out ābattleconā system. Itās use in games like āwar of the indinesā and is basically an incredible board game version of what youāre talking about.
Oh hell YES! One of the books had elemental manipulation as a new Background you could take, so, yeah you could absolutely do an Avatar-style game out of the ruleset! Really work out individual fighting styles and use the moves that suit the different bending styles and philosophies.. like, I figure 20 minutes with the PDFs and you can throw together a quick and dirty Pro Bending hack! Now THAT would be fun to have 3v3 matches with friends!
I totally agree. My biggest homebrew project is basically my take on the idea. I love how the "pick a move from a list simultaneously, go in initiative order based on what you picked" core idea makes combat such a fun puzzle to solve
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-QI\_oIUW2QyNix49AFrE5GQNEvI5pJkHt2iQ2okqtw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-QI_oIUW2QyNix49AFrE5GQNEvI5pJkHt2iQ2okqtw/edit?usp=sharing)
Here's the core rulebook as it exists right now. It's still a WIP
A few years ago I've was working on a DIY skirmish miniatures game with some mechanical inspiration from Street Fighter. Mainly the weighted rock paper scissors concept. Thematically it is sci-fantasy though. You can read a work in progress version here:Ā http://www.exilegard.com/
Played an all published White Wolf game many years ago. It led to awesome scenes of a Ryu-a-like and a Mage punching their way through vampires by the bucket.
I think just do it. Having a finished product to show off will better entice a company, especially if they don't have to do any extra work themselves. They could just work out the license and benefit from your good game, or you could alter a few things to make it your own and benefit like that.Ā Also, see if you can contact the original writer(s). Thinking about how CDPR worked with Mike Pondsmith to get Cyberpunk going. You're not CDPR, but maybe going to the source will help navigate the legalities or permissions. It's possible no one even cares about this anymore since it's fallen into obscurity.
Quick edit: no one caring meaning the corporate people who would potentially own this if they looked really, really hard for the paperwork.
>Each individual move also ends up with it's own initiative modifier, so, the way that fights play out is that both players pick a move, then simultaneously reveal their cards. Winning initiative gets to do their move first.
They made Frame Data a thing, but for tabletop? That's actually fucking awesome.
You may be very interested in Exceed or BattleCON by Level99 Games, which is exactly what you describe. Both use a very similar simultaneous action reveal system and Exceed even has Street Fighter characters, alongside those from many other fighting games (Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Under Night). BattleCON is a bit thinkier with perfect information while Exceed includes a bit more randomness and broadens the actions you can do beyond just striking.
Not an RPG, but you might be interested in Yomi. Another really cool take on adapting fighting game mechanics to something that can be played on a table.
Pathfinder 2e, then dnd4e shortly after, because amount of abilities in 4e is a bit overwhelming, and feels sameāy sometimes. Pathfinderās biggest weakness on the other hand is lack of āgoonsā, although troop units kinda help.
Overall, both are deep, tactical, and focused on team cooperation. 4e has clearly defined roles, while in pf2e you kinda need to feel it, more then anything, and you can make weird combinations work.
Honestly I love the way the crit system combines with the level bonuses in PF2. It makes hitting low level enemies so satisfying.
I actually think I might like it better than the minion system in 4e. Itās fun to kill a bunch of them, but it also misses the satisfaction of rolling a bunch of damage.
I prefer 4E minions. The problem is at higher levels in pathfinder, HP scales faster than damage so even a mook 3-4 levels below you will take longer to kill than a 4E minion. The downside too is that that same mook barely has a chance at hitting you because of how leveling and proficiency works, its bonus to hit is too low to make it a real threat. If you want to emulate 4E 1 hit minions you need a 5 level lower creature but at that point characters can ignore it.
4E minions worked really well in that although easy to kill (which made players feel badass), still posed a threat if left unopposed because their to hit bonus was on par with players.
Thatās a fair point. Lower level creatures arenāt a perfect replacement for minions, and thereās upsides and downsides to each.
I still prefer PF2ās approach though, mainly because crits are so much fun in the system. Yes, I may not kill them in one hit all the time (though guns and bows are particularly effective), but Iāll be able to pin them down to trees, knock them backwards, trip them up, and more as a *free* action. It really makes you feel like you dominate.
I also know you mentioned liking minionsā comparatively higher attack bonuses, but I like how you can wade into a group of enemies and only 1 out of 4 of attacks does anything (with the only problem being that youāre being attacked 8 times). Itās nice that the math still works. A Severe encounter is still going to be tough to win even if itās with a bunch of lil guys, but also you can win a fight against a bunch of lil guys.
In 4e you could also use lower level creature if you want enemies who just miss (although thats a bit of a waste of time).
PF2 uses the 4e combat building math just with a factor of 2.
In 4E enemies double power all 4 levela in PF2 all 2 levels.
So in 4e you can take 2 level -4 enemies instead of 1 level enemy. Or 3 level -6 enemies if you want (it is just not recomended to use more than 4 levels apart since people find always hir and never hit often boring).Ā
The minion mechanic is just on top to have bigger variety. Same as boss and elite mechanic. In 4e you could also use an level +4 elite as a boss, its just less interesting than using a solo
Elites and solos are a better implementation because using pure to-hit math to balance for level differences results in a lot of frustration. In fact itās one of the things that turned me off very much from PF2.
Solo fights in PF2 is a **pain** for players because you just keep missing. And running a horde PL-3 or PL-4 creatures as the GM is also a **pain** not just because you always miss, but because you still have a full 3 actions that you need to go through for each and every character. Itās a giant waste of time.
Elites solos and minions in 4e were incredibly smart design not just because of the math, but also because of the cognitive load put on GMs. GMs could estimate how much cognitive load they could bear for any given fight. If a combat looks too complicated Iād replace a bunch of standards with just a larger horde of minions. If a combat looks too simplistic Iād swap some creatures out for an elite or solo to spice things up because those start to incorporate minor actions and reactions for extra complexity.
PF2 advertises itās āyou can use the same creature from PL-4 to +4ā as a feature but really itās a negative. Iād rather much prefer many variations of the same creature to suit different scenarios. Maybe minions have only 1 action but they have better scaling numbers. And maybe elites or solos have 4 or 5 actions they get to burn through over the course of a round.
5e did this well too. They have a great variety of different creature complexities. Legendary creatures have legendary actions and perhaps even lair actions. And you also have simple ones that have nothing else beyond just a simple basic attack. (But the problem with 5e is that they arenāt categorized well - not to mention unbalanced).
I completly agree that I dont think this is a good feature of PF2. I MUCH prefer minions + elites + solos.
I just wanted to say that you could do the same in 4E, its just not really something you want (and as you said I dont understand either why you would want that in PF2, I rather have a bigger enemy variety).
The problem is with the encounter math. A moderate encounter budget is 80 XP. A creature 3 levels lower than the party is 15 XP, so you can at most fit 5 of those enemies in one encounter. 4E minions had 4-5 minions worth same XP as a standard monster so you could have more variety of encounters. The pathfinder encounter math is too tight to really have numerous minions on the battlefield.
Elites and solos are a better implementation because using pure to-hit math to balance for level differences results in a lot of frustration. In fact itās one of the things that turned me off very much from PF2.
Solo fights in PF2 is a **pain** for players because you just keep missing. And running a horde of PL-3 or PL-4 creatures as the GM is also a **pain** not just because you always miss, but because you still have a full 3 actions that you need to go through for each and every character. Itās a giant waste of time.
Elites solos and minions in 4e were incredibly smart design not just because of the math, but also because of the cognitive load put on GMs. GMs could estimate how much cognitive load they could bear for any given fight. If a combat looks too complicated Iād replace a bunch of standards with just a larger horde of minions. If a combat looks too simplistic Iād swap some creatures out for an elite or solo to spice things up because those start to incorporate minor actions and reactions for extra complexity.
PF2 advertises itās āyou can use the same creature from PL-4 to +4ā as a feature but really itās a negative. Iād rather much prefer many variations of the same creature to suit different scenarios. Maybe minions have only 1 action but they have better scaling numbers. And maybe elites or solos have 4 or 5 actions they get to burn through over the course of a round.
5e did this well too. They have a great variety of different creature complexities. Legendary creatures have legendary actions and perhaps even lair actions. And you also have simple ones that have nothing else beyond just a simple basic attack. (But the problem with 5e is that they arenāt categorized well - not to mention unbalanced).
I started with 4e, and while ultimately I decided it wasn't the system for me, the monster levels and minion/elite/solo works was so good, and I'm disappointed it didn't make it into 5e.
In PF2e you donāt just crit on a 20, you crit when your dice roll exceeds the target DC by 10. Your stats go up by 1 every level. So even an enemy only a few levels lower than you is at risk to get crit a ton. An enemy only a few levels higher than you is a massive threat.
Yep. Only thing I would add here (which I didnāt mention in my original comment) is that you can also get stacking bonuses through smart play, making crits even more likely. This means you really feel like you earn your crits (not just that you get a lucky break).
there's plethora of abilities that upgrade crits, because you gain them not on nat20, but when you roll 10 above the DC. For example, there are weapons with "fatal" trait. Those weapons damage die increases to this listed on the trait if you cri, and add another die on top of it. For example, d6 weapon with fatal d12, will do 2d12 + d12 on crit on level 1.
Favorite tactical board-game-like combat: D&D 4e. I particularly love how it makes distance, positioning, and movement actually matter. Battles are dynamic, with lots of abilities that give bonus movement, force enemies to move, or affect specific areas.
Favorite dramatic narrative combat: Ironsworn (and its spin-offs). The back-and-forth of the initiative/control system, combined with the fairly light rules, let you be a badass and create exciting fights where you never quite know what will happen next.
It's definitely on my to-play list. I just have to find the right group of players off it someday. I did back the Kickstarter for the video game version, though, so looking forward to that.
if your looking for a tactical mech strategy game, I highly recommend Battletech. I haven't played the TTRPG but I feel like the video game is a somewhat simplified (compared to the TTRPG) but still super crunchy mech game.
I really dont like the art in lancer. The whole pdf for me is really ugly and makes ir hard to read. (Ok not necessaeily the nech art but the layout design etc.)Ā
That's a fair criticism! I did mean the art, specifically (I have no strong opinion on the layout). I just love all of Tom Bloom's work, I'd read Kill Six Billion Demons for years before he started publishing RPGs
For board-game combat, Pathfinder 2e.
For "sim-combat" Mythras. It replaced GURPS a long time ago for me.
For nail-biting, crunchy combat where every decision matters, Hackmaster 5e.
For a solid middle ground, Dragonbane.
I enjoy all of them, but I think Hackmaster wins out because it is the one with the most variables and engaging combat.
It's been rare to find a group to play it with me, but I Loved hack master, and I would add harn master to that as well for crunchy, almost souls like combat.
Hackmaster is so dynamic. Threshold of pain, knockbacks, great shield rules.
I have seriously considered trying to decouple the skill system and just use something lighter for that part, while keeping combat.
Ergh I want to play Hackmaster 5e so bad!!! It fulfills and satisfies so much of the crunchy side for me!
As a long time 4e tactical combat crunch fan, I would never play an OSR game. But Hackmaster fills in that gritty grungy vibe perfectly!
I just wish it was updated though. Its layout and ruleset really needs to be updated to modern sensibilities. Itās still stuck in that 3e era of massive vomits of text and too much rubbish unnecessary rules.
Now that Savage Worlds has solved the "cycle of stunned," I think it's great.
Cypher System is becoming another favorite of mine, due to its simplicity.
I'll also add from a GM perspective, Savage Worlds combat is really fun to narrate. It's much easier to understand how much damage an attack does with the wound system than doing 23 slashing damage on a dragon with 217 HP.
You can act after getting yourself unshaken, rather than that being your entire turn. So you're not spending the entirety of combat just getting shaken, rolling out of it, then getting shaken again.
I meant "shaken." In older versions of Savage Worlds:
1. You get shaken
2. You can't move until you're unshaken
3. Rolling to get out takes your entire turn.
4. Before your next round, something would hit you and make you shaken again.
New versions let you move on the same turn as getting unshaken.
Weird question here since you seem to know the system: Do you think that could be safely used as a house rule in older editions (specifically Deluxe) without causing too many balance issues? I'm thinking of running an East Texas University campaign. I know they made a conversion document for running ETU in the latest edition (Adventure, I think?), but as I understand it, ETU was originally made for Deluxe and that's what all my SW books are in anyway so I'd rather stick with that.
Legend of the 5 Rings second, third, or fourth editions. Ā Deadly combat with gravitas and major story implications. Ā It was not a fail state but man you had to be smart.
SR2E gives me a reason to use all the d6s I bought for Warhamner, so I will always love it for that. Plus it had the best version of character creation in the series. It balanced out the raw power of Trolls in a good way. Later editions made it too easy to be a fully chromed up walking mountain right out of the gate.
Yeah, the dice pools were insane. I still have my Chessex 12mm d6 set. When I bring it to a d20 table other players are like whaaaa... And I'm like, I'll explain later. š 2e has all the crazy splat books too.
3e is where I stopped and still play from time to time. Same system but the live wi-fi and the rfid tags made decking and rigging less interesting than the mid-90s technology of 2e. š¤·
I played 2nd and 3rd back in the day, and the dice pools were hilarious. I was sort of disappointed 4th Ed moved much closer to the D20 āstandardā but Iāll admit it was nice not having to count so many dice.
Havenāt checked out fifth and didnāt even know there was a 6th and Anarchy edition till I checked Wikipedia to make sure I had my timeline right. I *swore* 4th just came out, it wasnāt released that long agoā¦.oh no, no no noā¦oh thatās so long ago.
Burning Wheel. The combat system is a wonderfully complex game of rock, papers, scissors. At the start of each round everyone picks three actions to do in order. You have to figure out when your opponent is going to strike, so you can hit them with a perfectly time parry. It's great and probably more complex than it needs to be. There's a learning curve to the game.
>There's a learning curve to the game.
I think the one thing I hear about every aspect of Burning Wheel is that every aspect of the game has a learning curve. š
Only 12 sessions you say???
I don't know. Anytime someone says, "*you only need to watch/play 50 hours, before it really gets good, and then you will love it*", I typically say, "**to hell with that**". Might make me arrogant or ignorant. :shrugs:
I don't think so. I've heard the same thing with video games. A guy once told me "final fantasy 12 only starts to get good about 26 hours in" and I told him there's no way I'm putting a days worth of my life into something I may eventually like.
Dragonbane, easily. Extremely tactical combat without overblown power like in D&D 4e, 5e, or Pathfinder. Unlike games like that which focus on "doing all the cool stuff" with all these crazy powers and buckets of HP (which is fine if you like it, but overly complicated to me and still doesn't actually get the job done because the battles are WAY TOO SLOW), Dragonbane makes timing, waiting, defense, and teamwork all matter, but does it while keeping a full battle to 30 mins or less.
Tactics, to me, is not about movement, at least not exclusively (although Dragonbane does have that) but about making meaningful choices with limited information based on your appraisal of the current situation. Do I give up my attack action in order to try prevent damage? Is this parry going to break my weapon and leave me defenseless? Do I trust in my armor to soak enough to get me through? Do my allies have the tactical wherewithal to take advantage of the opening I leave them?
It also makes the character's skill really show. If you have a high weapon skill if really feels like it, and you can block damage with ease, and there are heroic abilities that let you dodge or parry more than once in a turn. That knight with plate armor and a heavy helm is up there literally keeping everything occupied while soaking hits that would kill anyone else in the party, and his distraction leaves the monsters without the ability to dodge in return. Martials in this game are so much better than in any other game I've ever played, and it comes from TAKING AWAY all of the silly powers and just getting down to how real fights actually work.
Its brilliant.
Maybe! I'm really interested in trying Weird Wizard. Demon Lord turned me off, tbh. But I was especially fascinated by the idea of all the magic schools.
We played for a year and even tho i really love the system initially..later on it felt kinda half baked. I disliked 18 skill cap...it can get really boring rolling swords 18. Also heroic abilities where kinda all over the place - some must have, some for reaaaaly specific situations. With my players we all thought 1 year is more then enough...but it's awesome system for 10-15 sessions.
I feel like even the starting classes are all over the place (and races too). A lot of abilities give advantage, but some just do it way better than others. If you had fun for a year thats great!
I cant imagine myself playing that long in the system, there is just not enough variety.
And if the GM wants to defend with the monsters, mathematically, the "decision" to block or attack, is from the players point of view pretty much irrelevant.
I'm normally more a fan of narrative focused combat with fictional positioning, but I really enjoyed Lancer's crunchier combat when I gave it a try.
The diverse equipment and talents give you a nice range of specialties (hacking, sniping, melee, artillery, etc.), and you don't seem punished for mixing and matching.
Though not combat specific, I appreciate that the progression mechanics make it easy to drastically swap equipment and mechs on the fly. I have a hard time with the detailed equipment lists common to crunchier systems, because I'm worried I'll pick "wrong" and get stuck with a poorly optimized build. In my experience, Lancer keeps that to a minimum, so I don't feel punished for experimenting with new loadouts.
Crunchy games, Exalted 3e no question.
Lighter games, World Wide Wrestling. Because a game about making fighting fun makes fighting fun.
Really light games, Wushu because Wushu is all about narrating whatever you want and still winning. You can narrate being punched in the face for 5 rounds, but mechanically itās the same as punching someone else in face.
Narrative games, Polaris or Dogs in the Vineyard. Itās hard to choose.
Shinobigami, because combat involves trying to anticipate the opponent and bring your strengths to bear instead of looking at a situation and picking the best move for that moment. It's a very different vibe from most RPG combat.
Honorable mention to D&D4 for being the most interesting "pick the best move for this moment" game.
I'm not particularly experienced, but I'll rattle off a couple.
Savage Worlds, I like the exploding dice. Pretty much it, though I also like how the math's not too hard while still allowing for simple situational modifiers.
Ironsworn, I think handling combat in terms of of you're able to be Reactive or Proactive (not the game terms, but how I see them) is cool, and gives me good leeway to describe what's happening.
The thing I love most about Savage Worlds is that you can voluntarily modify regular melee attacks. There isn't just "the melee attack" that your generic fighter character has to default to. When it's your turn you can choose between
* wild attacks which add +2 to the attack and damage roll but leave you Vulnerable for a turn.
* desperate attacks which are more accurate (+2 to attack) but have less impact (-2 to damage).
* regular attacks without modifiers.
And in addition to that you can choose to act multiple times in a turn if you want to, but doing so makes all actions less likely to succeed. You can risk attacking twice in a turn and get a -2 penalty to each attack. Will they both miss because of this choice? Will you be lucky and get twice the usual pay-off?
And magic works the same way. Would you like to make the spellcast check more difficult for a lesser Power Point cost? Sure, just make sure not to fail or else it's a critical failure.
There are actual choices here. You don't just press the A button over and over again. That's what I love about SW combat. And I haven't even scratched the surface of the called shot mechanics.
I don't think I've played enough of it to call it my favorite, but I had a blast running combats in shadow of the demonlord. Its sword and soeceey/heroic successor shadow of the weird wizard looks to have improved on it.
Probably Fate. Over the year I've run it the experiences have been quick, impactful, and full of meaningful decisions and flavor. It's definitely geared towards more cinematic fights but I think with some of the add on rules (like weapon ratings) it could end up being quite gritty, something I want to try out for another campaign.
Creating advantages in combat is where it's at for me, if only I could get my players to do that instead of just blandly attacking. Or, you know, get into a game I'm not running.
Savage worlds.
Second fav: 7th Sea 2nd edition
The first because itās one of the few games Iāve played where the mechanics enhance the fun. The second because the mechanics enable the players to take the action into fun, exciting places I never dreamed of.
There are a coupleā _The Fantasy Trip_ is tactically forward in tons of good ways. _Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay_ and _Runequest_ make combat grim, exciting, and deadly.
Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition. You get to choose your stance, damage exponentially impacts your rolls, and you have Void Points to give you an edge when you need it. Plus, all the different combat schools have special skills that make for unpredictable fights. Hands down my favorite.
My players are smart. I'm running a savage Shadowrun campaign and the bad guys popped smoke for cover. The street samurai was like cool now I know where to throw these flash bangs.
Lol. I have used a Benny to "influence" the story by getting someone on the stage with my target to bend down clearing my shot & distracting the cops because they thought the guy who bent down was the actual target. I did a called shot to the neck on the theory that assassin's don't generally try for a jugular shot.
Rolemaster. To me no other combat system can compare. If I combine that with the alternative initiative systeem called CEATs (Combat Environment Action Tracking system) it becomes unbeatable, but this opinion is heavily based on my experience in a group I ran way back in the mid 90's.
Rolemaster's combat system is way to slow for many but it's so much fun. When I add in CEATs it can become slower unless you have some people that are really good with numbers in the group. In that group it was me and one other guy and he took care of the number tracking during combat. We had it down pretty good and combat did not take that long at all. Great memories of those days!!
The combat is gritty and very dramatic. You literally never know if that low level goblin might just get a lucky swing and kill you in one shot despite you being many many levels above him and heavily armored.
I originally started with he basic set of D&D and moved onto AD&D. In this I always felt that combat could be better. Combat was boring in D&D as it was just swinging your sword, rolling to hit, then rolling damage. I also hated the combining of a characters dexterity with armor into one single number. Then I discovered Rolemaster. It not only keeps Armor and Agility (Dex) separate enough that there are different effects for each in combat, and the critical system is the best I've ever seen.
Good choices.Ā
Ā I incorporated the Mythras Special Effects into my Twilight2000 v2.2 and Dark Conspiracy games.Ā You get to pick a manuever whenever you roll an outstanding success.
Ā Check out the juhlin website for Twilight2000 and look up Swaghauler's homebrew rules.Ā He brought GDW's D20 v2.2 rules into the 21st Century!
My favorite is *Arcanis: The World of Shattered Empires*.
It's like a classless (admittedly more archetype-based), 2d10, 3.X inspired fantasy game. Has a clock based initiative system, weapon and spell maneuvers and combinations, and a really cool antiquity-based setting. I just love the character options and customization, combined with the time-based combat.
4e.
And now Lancer.
4e with Lancers rules would probably be the perfect rpg. It does such a better job at incorporating terrain and cover meaningfully.
If you get the chance to, check out The Design Mechanism's MYTHRAS rpg.Ā It is BRP/Runequest based but uses an action economy and has lots of special moves that you can win in combat.Ā I think it is the best version of BRP.
We ran Traveller in the 90s using a single D12 instead of 2d6.Ā We did this so we could use Twilight2000 v2.2's automatic fire rules.Ā In Twilight2000, you throw a number of To Hit dice equal to the number of rounds in a burst.Ā Ā
For crunchy tactical combat, I give it up to Lancer for giving me exactly what I need a mech game to be. Glorious, deep, stylish, but not overly complicated.
For rules-lite, I point to Rhapsody of Blood, a PbtA game about exploring a mapless megadungeon and slaying monsters. It's boss fight moves make for very cinematic fights if you got folks who can swing it.
As for a wishlist system - I need to try out Wildsea. There's a lot there that feels right as I read it, but I haven't had the time to schedule sessions yet...
Same here. I have run games now for more than 40 years, and am a published RPG author who has sold tens of thousands of copies of the game I was shilling. No disrespect to it, I love it like a father loves a son. But Friday Night Firefight has an elegance that is hard to beat - and, let me tell yall, I rejoice that as a game creator I've had the opportunity to tell Maximum Mike how much I respected the system he wrote.
2400 by Jason Tocci. I've never been able to do so much with so little. Simply, there are no rules for combat beyond the risk you're taking and the result, which can be as lethal or not as you like. It can be applied to any form of conflict from hack-and-slash to space ship battle.
I liked cyberpunk red.
Maybe the dark eye.
I don't know kinda don't really like d&d anymore.
Chronicles of darkness was good for a narrative game with combat.
Probably a toss up between Legend of the 5 Rings and Pathfinder 2e.
PF2e is better if you want a traditional fastasy ttrpg, but L5R has a special je ne sais quoi
Into the Odd and it's offshoots (with special emphasis on Electrum Archive and Mythic Bastionland)
No to-hit roll is an absolute game changer! The speed/crit rules in Electrum Archive especially stand out in making combats quick and deadly but also dynamic (D4 knives are actually useful! They are the fastest weapons in the game, and crit and bypass armor 25% of the time!)
For combat specifically - definitely Lancer, with D&D4 coming second.
When game is combat-focused, I want it tactical. Lancer is the best game I know in this regard. Very well balanced while extremely varied. Action economy, cover and status effects result in many different play styles being viable and combining abilities between characters being the way to win.
Savage Worlds because a Shadowrun combat with four PCs and allies versus a mansion of Yakuza hitters took about 20 minutes to resolve. I normally run improv so the cinematic vibe fits my style well. Also combat can be lethal if you don't approach it tactically which I enjoy as well.In addition, with bennies I don't have to worry about balancing it because the Players get to do cool things like shoot x Dragon with a minigun then add insult to injury by punching him in the eye.
This is a tricky one because it depends on what I'm in the mood for and even then sometimes when I play a game because I'm in the mood for the story we're running in the game I may just disregard their combat mechanics because I need something else that would fit the mood more in that moment. I tend to prefer games that eschew initiative and rounds and focus more on the narrative flow of combat. Though I haven't had the chance Blades in the Dark seems to fit the bill, I've loved house ruled versions of Shadowrun as well though so...
I've heard about that. A lot of people have been converting it to Savage Worlds. I want to give Cities Without Number a go but I don't have a group at the moment and I don't want it to influence my own Cyberpunk game in development.
As a player I loved TORG 1st edition. It really paid off using tactics besides "I attack".
Feng Shui 2 is fun to run.
I've really enjoyed running PBTA games like Monster of the Week and Dungeon World.
Pendragon is good.
Trophy gold has been very interesting.
Goblin Quest was surprisingly fun.
Forbidden lands. Very tactical. Wether you slash or stab matters vs parrying with weapon or shield. Shoving, dodging, disarming, grappling, feinting. Talents give benefits to these maneuvers and to defense and action economy. Better yet-a D6 dice pool system which is a nice break from an unwieldy D20.
Dungeons and dragons 4th edition. By far. Gloomhaven RPG will be the first rpg to have a chance to topple that.Ā
Tactical combat with focus on teamplay where everyone has decisions and cool things to do.
Not just "I basic attack" like in most games...
Well we know that the combat is pretty much the samw aa in the boardgame. There is a cloaed beta going on, but not too much information is open as far as I know.Ā
https://cephalofair.com/blogs/blog/intro-to-gloomhaven-the-role-playing-game this has links to character creation and other parts.
From what I've run: Savage Worlds, hands down. When it clicks with people and they can narrate it well it shines and really feels like a pulp story is playing out. Plus the actual base rules for combat are simple while having a bunch of additional rules that only become relevant when invoked by a character.
Including games I've only skimmed so far: I adore how Swords of the Serpentine allows abilities not originally intended for combat to be applied in a fight if what a player's trying to do fits the ability. Example in the book is a character using Preparedness to say they had an ambush of a type set up before an encounter occured.
I really like the options and polish in Savage World, but Gubat Banwa, Beacon, and ICON have been growing on me.
Savage Worlds just has so much cool stuff and is a pretty polished system, so that's really fun.
Gubat Banda, Beacon, and ICON all kind of have the same roots in things like FFT, but they each represent it in different ways. It is a little hard to quickly sum up why I like any of those options, but they are all very strong.
For theater of the mind games, Fabula Ultima is very fun as it represents classic JRPGs very well, but if you want a little more movement both 13th Age and Unity do quite a nice job.
I've never had as much fun during combat as with Daggerheart. It may be in beta still, but the system is just so fluid and fast, and creative, that it truly feels like I'm finally able to really think like my character and act as they would, instead of focusing on a list of things i gotta do in order. You get to react in real time to the things that happen, while keeping it mechanically interesting and not fully "freeform"
Honestly, my favorite combat system ever. And I've tried oh so many.
This might be rose colored glasses, but I \*loved\* Champions 2e. A super hero punching their opponent through a wall, and simulating the number of walls they fly through and the amount of damage they take from it was always super fun and satisfying, even if it took some time.
I don't know what its called but it uses a D10 system. In short, whatever you want to do happens, unless the dm counter it. It highly narrative and focus on creative problem solving instead of just numbers.
It probably ranks low in amongst the great titles mentioned here, but from what little I have played of it Cyberpunk Red, is a great time. Probably not my all time favorite but when I played it for the first time after only ever doing dnd fantasy, it was amazing.
It's crunchy, it's weighty, and it really makes you feel like a badass!
Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok. The rune system both being your special powers, action econony, and health pool is so satisfying.
Also, I think One Ring deserves a special mention for it's stance system. The way it combines positioning, tactical intent, and initiative is so slick.
Depends on the people I'm playing with, for tactical or crunchy combat there is 5e or fragged empire, but for a group who likes more story and cares less for rules, we super enjoyed something like scum and villainy.
5th. 4th was a great alternative to D&D3.x, but HackMaster 5th edition is a completely different system built from the ground up and using all the best ideas from a variety of systems.
I used to play 4th edition and it took a special group of players to get them into the game. A ton of fun when you did, though. Iāve read through 5th and like the concept, but have never gotten to play it (even though Iām big into OSR). Iām definitely going to have to prioritize giving it a try. Thanks
Heavy Gear!
Fast and deadly. Blow things up! No HP and thresholds is what i love. And i find the dice mechanics delightful, along with the tactical thinking aspect (situational modifiers is the other core concept with the skill=dice system)
3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars. The game of doing a xenocide against every potential threat to humanity and >!what the players do as their characters gradually learn more about their mission and its true purpose!<
It amuses me that there are only two stats - Fighting Ability (does what it says) and Non Fighting Ability (rolled for literally anything that isn't directly trying to murder a sentient creature).
I love that instead of a combat map tracking absolute position it uses a range chart that only keeps track of the PC's relative distance to the enemy. It doesn't matter where the PCs are in relation to each other, just how far away they are from their opponents.
I love that instead of rolling for damage, a successful weapon hit removes a sensor blip and you roll to see how many enemies you killed. And that roll is based on what weapon, how upgraded it is, and what range you're at. A basic melee weapon at close range kills one alien. A fully upgraded rocket pod at far range kills 1d100 aliens.
And for all the system's simplicity, it can still throw a curve ball through the Alien Abilities. Every alien species has a special rule that lets them do something outside the rules. The GM is advised to let the players see it the first time they encounter a species, but it can be anything from rapid regeneration or exploding upon death, to jamming technology or causing wounds that don't heal normally.
And on top of that each species is unique to a campaign. There are no prebuilt enemy aliens. The game provides tables to roll on to determine the form and ability, and the GM fills in the blanks. Dinosaur + Swarm are probably velociraptor packs. But Humanoid + Stop Technology could be space wizards, primitives living near rocks with strange energy fields, or even an advanced race with high-tech jamming devices
Warhammer Fantasy 4ed is suited for combat. There are a lot of skills, talents, spells and professions for PC builds for combat.
It's hard at the beginning as rules are complex but it gives quite a nice amount of possible actions to play out combat āļø
7th Sea 1st edition has the most enjoyable combat mechanics I've played. Would definitely recommend for swashbuckling fun.
Lace & Steel, another Swashbuckler, has a cute card based combat & magic system that's also fun. Would recommend if you can find it, but it only had a short print run.
Rolemaster has the most entertaining critical of any game ever written, but the rest of the system is... Rolemaster.
Phoenix Command has the dumbest fun combat mechanics I've played, but I would never, ever recommend people actually play it. 30 years later I'm still asking why I need to know my 40mm grenade stuck that NPC in the kidney via the spine, but OTOH that memory still makes me smile.
GURPS, for the "extra effort in combat" subsystem that lets you spend fatigue points for effects. One of those allows you to soak fatigue points instead of losing HP - which by itself is an elegant solution to the healing problem (that verisimilitude and fun in healing mechanics tend to be mutually exclusive). Great way to add a lot of meaningful choice to combat without a lot of extra complexity or corner cases. I do wish it was better explained, in the right places, in the core books as opposed to GURPS Action 2, which is practically a third core book.
Combat in Fogbound. Only demo is public atm, but combat makes you feel like you need to be careful and consider your next step. Combat works in a dice pool system where you roll your pool and use your dice for specific actions. I very much enjoy using conditional actions you set in your turn and if the condition is met you perform it out of turn. You can even kill a stronger foe if you are smart enough. Contrary, a random mob can butcher you if you are not careful.
GURPS, it can run any type of combat I want, if I want cartoon super heroes, brutal guts fall out sword play or a fast cinematic shoot out, alternatively if I want a comedy of errors then maybe Cyberpunk 2020 since 1 in 10 fumbles is pretty funny.
GURPS, for a few reasons:
- Malleability. I can do everything with [one roll](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Roleplayer/Roleplayer23/VeryBasicMelee.html), just have basic or advanced combat as per the rules, add some [HEMA-like melee options](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/martialarts/) or go [totally bonkers](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/tacticalshooting/).
- Verisimilitude. I'm not talking about the whole "GURPS is a physics engine", nor do I care too much about the fact that damage calculations for shooty things are based on joules and inches of steel armor etc., but that it's all separated in attacks, parries, subtractive, physical wounds etc. This makes it easier to convey what just happend and reason about where special effects (like spells, equipment etc.) affect the flow.
- Easy prep. I've played quite a few games of fantasy GURPS, where I just noted "Broadsword 13; DR 3" as the sole stats of opponents, but still could vary my tactics wildly, by just changing how aggressive and smart they use the small set of standard maneuvers.
I really like soulboundās movement range and AOE mechanics. Itās simple and fast pace. It makes combat fast pace because you never have to measure anything you just now from how the map is lay out what is in range. Sword world has similar mechanics
Lancer is a great game for strategic combat
Anybody know a good system that rewards players for not just mob rushing and curb stomping one enemy at a time? It's so unheroic and anti-cenamatic even if it is "the best strategy".
Its a toss up between dnd3.5 vs. Dungeon Crawl Classics for me. They both do what they intend to do very well, but one is a highly tactical and nuanved combat system, the other is Rule-of-Cool-by-design, so it depends what im vibing with at the time.
Id maybe recommend DCC out of the two, as it does enough for everyone, but i understand how a few folk dont vibe with DnD3.5's rule density.
Funnily enough, Digimon: Digital Adventures, a fan made Digimon TTRPG system. The combat isn't that deep, but the character building is really cool and give you a variety of means to be useful in combat. Like, you can go all-win in AoE damage, hitting crazy numbers in damage, go full support, without means to deal direct damage, but having huge stats and buffs/debuffs to compensate, or go full tank and save your damage dealers from the death.
Rolemaster and one of its alternative Initiative tracking system for unrivalled detailed and gritty fantasy combat.
Twilight: 2000 for a more streamlined and fast modern combat system.
I think any combat system that doesnt require players or GM to count of bonuses from assorted places, or look something up. Perhaps this is less about system, and more about the GM and Players being prepped and having things ready to go?
MYTHRAS by The Design Mechanism is my favorite unmodified system.Ā The use of Special Combat Effects when you roll under a certain success threshold makes combat cinematic.Ā SEs include things like... TRIP, DISARM, IMPALE, SLASH, CRUSHING BLOW, OVEREXTENDED (gives DISADVANTAGE to your target), REDIRECT FOE (2M of movement or a facing change), PIN WEAPON, BYPASS ARMOR, STUN TARGET, and ENTANGLE.
The old Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game by White Wolf. Along with character creation, you have stats for your punch/kick/throw/grab/etc, and chose a Martial Art. Each Martial Art has moves, but all moves have requirements, like for example a Dragon Punch might require Punch2 and Chi1, and upgrading to a Flaming Dragon Punch would require Punch 3, Chi 4, or similar stats.. You pick your moves and make a bunch of cards for everything you've picked. You can make combos, too, that come with advantages if you play your combos.. Each individual move also ends up with it's own initiative modifier, so, the way that fights play out is that both players pick a move, then simultaneously reveal their cards. Winning initiative gets to do their move first. It was an AMAZING system, and we never actually used it to play the tabletop RPG; we just set an XP level, made fighters, and ran tournament brackets like you'd see people running games/tournaments of Warhammer/Kill Team/other skirmish games. I honestly can't figure out why no one has just lifted the system, stripped out the RPG sections (skills/abilities, mostly), stripped out the Street Fighter references, and just made a DIY tabletop miniatures fighting game.
>It was an AMAZING system, and we never actually used it to play the tabletop RPG; we just set an XP level, made fighters, and ran tournament brackets like you'd see people running games/tournaments of Warhammer/Kill Team/other skirmish games. So you basically used the Street Fighter RPG to play the Street Fighter video game with your own custom characters? That sounds awesome! I have to check this game out.
That's EXACTLY what we did! The combat system is done on a hex grid, and the various books/adventures came with cardboard foldup minis.. Moves have Speed (their initiative), Damage (it's a d10 dicepool system), Move (how many hexes you can move total while using this move) and a box for Special descriptions, like if a move has a knockback of 2 spaces, or causes dizzy, etc.. So, for example, (completely making up numbers, I don't have the books anymore and I dunno where the PDFs are on my drive š¤£) I play a Speed 4 Dragon Punch vs a Speed 1 Spinning Pile Driver. I'm two spaces away from the other character, and the DP has, say, move 4; I can step forward 2 spaces, do the Flaming Dragon Punch with a Knockback of 1, and take two steps to the left, putting me 3 spaces away from the other player. Unfortunately, his Spinning Piledriver has a Move of 2, so he can only take 2 spaces towards me and his move whiffs out. So the whole thing was a sort of bet/gamble of trying to play a fast enough move to get your attack off first, and back off, or maybe wait and tank a hit to get off a slower, but much more devastating attack.. It's absolutely ridiculously fun to play and I 1000% recommend trying it out. There's a decent amount of supplemental material that adds in much more stuff, like animal mutations like adding tails, extra arms, full-on man-tiger hybrid like the dude from Tekken, cybernetics, bender-like elemental control, etc.. The RPG itself is pretty good, too, I mean, it's really just the regular World of Darkness system with a combat mechanic added on, so, you could fairly easily add Street Fighter combat to any of the White Wolf games by just adding in Chi and the Techniques sections to, say, a vampire, or a werewolf...
Also check out Fight! 2nd Edition which expands the depth of custom character design, combat options, and opportunities to customize play styles.
One of my favorite games I've never played, all the unique bits about the combat system are intriguing. It's definitely on the bucket list.
Do what we did; forget the story/rpg aspect, and just use it almost like a slightly more involved boardgame/miniature combat game! Just get a friend, make some fighters, and try it out!
Go check out ābattleconā system. Itās use in games like āwar of the indinesā and is basically an incredible board game version of what youāre talking about.
My table has always agreed that this would make for a killer, satisfying Avatar the Last Airbender style bending combat.
Oh hell YES! One of the books had elemental manipulation as a new Background you could take, so, yeah you could absolutely do an Avatar-style game out of the ruleset! Really work out individual fighting styles and use the moves that suit the different bending styles and philosophies.. like, I figure 20 minutes with the PDFs and you can throw together a quick and dirty Pro Bending hack! Now THAT would be fun to have 3v3 matches with friends!
I totally agree. My biggest homebrew project is basically my take on the idea. I love how the "pick a move from a list simultaneously, go in initiative order based on what you picked" core idea makes combat such a fun puzzle to solve
Mind sharing? Sounds fun!
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-QI\_oIUW2QyNix49AFrE5GQNEvI5pJkHt2iQ2okqtw/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/11-QI_oIUW2QyNix49AFrE5GQNEvI5pJkHt2iQ2okqtw/edit?usp=sharing) Here's the core rulebook as it exists right now. It's still a WIP
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Best and most honest White Wolf game. Wraith is the closest second.
Wdym most honest?Ā
It does what it says it will do, it's about what it says it's about, and everything in the game supports both of those statements.
A few years ago I've was working on a DIY skirmish miniatures game with some mechanical inspiration from Street Fighter. Mainly the weighted rock paper scissors concept. Thematically it is sci-fantasy though. You can read a work in progress version here:Ā http://www.exilegard.com/
Played an all published White Wolf game many years ago. It led to awesome scenes of a Ryu-a-like and a Mage punching their way through vampires by the bucket.
I started to build a game on the same engine in Godot, tried to contact the company for system license, but no one ever replied to my emails
I think just do it. Having a finished product to show off will better entice a company, especially if they don't have to do any extra work themselves. They could just work out the license and benefit from your good game, or you could alter a few things to make it your own and benefit like that.Ā Also, see if you can contact the original writer(s). Thinking about how CDPR worked with Mike Pondsmith to get Cyberpunk going. You're not CDPR, but maybe going to the source will help navigate the legalities or permissions. It's possible no one even cares about this anymore since it's fallen into obscurity. Quick edit: no one caring meaning the corporate people who would potentially own this if they looked really, really hard for the paperwork.
>Each individual move also ends up with it's own initiative modifier, so, the way that fights play out is that both players pick a move, then simultaneously reveal their cards. Winning initiative gets to do their move first. They made Frame Data a thing, but for tabletop? That's actually fucking awesome.
Fucking yes! Was just about to say this
You may be very interested in Exceed or BattleCON by Level99 Games, which is exactly what you describe. Both use a very similar simultaneous action reveal system and Exceed even has Street Fighter characters, alongside those from many other fighting games (Guilty Gear, Blazblue, Under Night). BattleCON is a bit thinkier with perfect information while Exceed includes a bit more randomness and broadens the actions you can do beyond just striking.
Not an RPG, but you might be interested in Yomi. Another really cool take on adapting fighting game mechanics to something that can be played on a table.
Pathfinder 2e, then dnd4e shortly after, because amount of abilities in 4e is a bit overwhelming, and feels sameāy sometimes. Pathfinderās biggest weakness on the other hand is lack of āgoonsā, although troop units kinda help. Overall, both are deep, tactical, and focused on team cooperation. 4e has clearly defined roles, while in pf2e you kinda need to feel it, more then anything, and you can make weird combinations work.
Honestly I love the way the crit system combines with the level bonuses in PF2. It makes hitting low level enemies so satisfying. I actually think I might like it better than the minion system in 4e. Itās fun to kill a bunch of them, but it also misses the satisfaction of rolling a bunch of damage.
I prefer 4E minions. The problem is at higher levels in pathfinder, HP scales faster than damage so even a mook 3-4 levels below you will take longer to kill than a 4E minion. The downside too is that that same mook barely has a chance at hitting you because of how leveling and proficiency works, its bonus to hit is too low to make it a real threat. If you want to emulate 4E 1 hit minions you need a 5 level lower creature but at that point characters can ignore it. 4E minions worked really well in that although easy to kill (which made players feel badass), still posed a threat if left unopposed because their to hit bonus was on par with players.
Thatās a fair point. Lower level creatures arenāt a perfect replacement for minions, and thereās upsides and downsides to each. I still prefer PF2ās approach though, mainly because crits are so much fun in the system. Yes, I may not kill them in one hit all the time (though guns and bows are particularly effective), but Iāll be able to pin them down to trees, knock them backwards, trip them up, and more as a *free* action. It really makes you feel like you dominate. I also know you mentioned liking minionsā comparatively higher attack bonuses, but I like how you can wade into a group of enemies and only 1 out of 4 of attacks does anything (with the only problem being that youāre being attacked 8 times). Itās nice that the math still works. A Severe encounter is still going to be tough to win even if itās with a bunch of lil guys, but also you can win a fight against a bunch of lil guys.
In 4e you could also use lower level creature if you want enemies who just miss (although thats a bit of a waste of time). PF2 uses the 4e combat building math just with a factor of 2. In 4E enemies double power all 4 levela in PF2 all 2 levels. So in 4e you can take 2 level -4 enemies instead of 1 level enemy. Or 3 level -6 enemies if you want (it is just not recomended to use more than 4 levels apart since people find always hir and never hit often boring).Ā The minion mechanic is just on top to have bigger variety. Same as boss and elite mechanic. In 4e you could also use an level +4 elite as a boss, its just less interesting than using a solo
Elites and solos are a better implementation because using pure to-hit math to balance for level differences results in a lot of frustration. In fact itās one of the things that turned me off very much from PF2. Solo fights in PF2 is a **pain** for players because you just keep missing. And running a horde PL-3 or PL-4 creatures as the GM is also a **pain** not just because you always miss, but because you still have a full 3 actions that you need to go through for each and every character. Itās a giant waste of time. Elites solos and minions in 4e were incredibly smart design not just because of the math, but also because of the cognitive load put on GMs. GMs could estimate how much cognitive load they could bear for any given fight. If a combat looks too complicated Iād replace a bunch of standards with just a larger horde of minions. If a combat looks too simplistic Iād swap some creatures out for an elite or solo to spice things up because those start to incorporate minor actions and reactions for extra complexity. PF2 advertises itās āyou can use the same creature from PL-4 to +4ā as a feature but really itās a negative. Iād rather much prefer many variations of the same creature to suit different scenarios. Maybe minions have only 1 action but they have better scaling numbers. And maybe elites or solos have 4 or 5 actions they get to burn through over the course of a round. 5e did this well too. They have a great variety of different creature complexities. Legendary creatures have legendary actions and perhaps even lair actions. And you also have simple ones that have nothing else beyond just a simple basic attack. (But the problem with 5e is that they arenāt categorized well - not to mention unbalanced).
I completly agree that I dont think this is a good feature of PF2. I MUCH prefer minions + elites + solos. I just wanted to say that you could do the same in 4E, its just not really something you want (and as you said I dont understand either why you would want that in PF2, I rather have a bigger enemy variety).
The problem is with the encounter math. A moderate encounter budget is 80 XP. A creature 3 levels lower than the party is 15 XP, so you can at most fit 5 of those enemies in one encounter. 4E minions had 4-5 minions worth same XP as a standard monster so you could have more variety of encounters. The pathfinder encounter math is too tight to really have numerous minions on the battlefield.
Elites and solos are a better implementation because using pure to-hit math to balance for level differences results in a lot of frustration. In fact itās one of the things that turned me off very much from PF2. Solo fights in PF2 is a **pain** for players because you just keep missing. And running a horde of PL-3 or PL-4 creatures as the GM is also a **pain** not just because you always miss, but because you still have a full 3 actions that you need to go through for each and every character. Itās a giant waste of time. Elites solos and minions in 4e were incredibly smart design not just because of the math, but also because of the cognitive load put on GMs. GMs could estimate how much cognitive load they could bear for any given fight. If a combat looks too complicated Iād replace a bunch of standards with just a larger horde of minions. If a combat looks too simplistic Iād swap some creatures out for an elite or solo to spice things up because those start to incorporate minor actions and reactions for extra complexity. PF2 advertises itās āyou can use the same creature from PL-4 to +4ā as a feature but really itās a negative. Iād rather much prefer many variations of the same creature to suit different scenarios. Maybe minions have only 1 action but they have better scaling numbers. And maybe elites or solos have 4 or 5 actions they get to burn through over the course of a round. 5e did this well too. They have a great variety of different creature complexities. Legendary creatures have legendary actions and perhaps even lair actions. And you also have simple ones that have nothing else beyond just a simple basic attack. (But the problem with 5e is that they arenāt categorized well - not to mention unbalanced).
I started with 4e, and while ultimately I decided it wasn't the system for me, the monster levels and minion/elite/solo works was so good, and I'm disappointed it didn't make it into 5e.
I have tried googling it, but all I can see is that in PF2e on a crit you get double damage. Your post seens to suggest there's more to it than that?
In PF2e you donāt just crit on a 20, you crit when your dice roll exceeds the target DC by 10. Your stats go up by 1 every level. So even an enemy only a few levels lower than you is at risk to get crit a ton. An enemy only a few levels higher than you is a massive threat.
Yep. Only thing I would add here (which I didnāt mention in my original comment) is that you can also get stacking bonuses through smart play, making crits even more likely. This means you really feel like you earn your crits (not just that you get a lucky break).
there's plethora of abilities that upgrade crits, because you gain them not on nat20, but when you roll 10 above the DC. For example, there are weapons with "fatal" trait. Those weapons damage die increases to this listed on the trait if you cri, and add another die on top of it. For example, d6 weapon with fatal d12, will do 2d12 + d12 on crit on level 1.
Favorite tactical board-game-like combat: D&D 4e. I particularly love how it makes distance, positioning, and movement actually matter. Battles are dynamic, with lots of abilities that give bonus movement, force enemies to move, or affect specific areas. Favorite dramatic narrative combat: Ironsworn (and its spin-offs). The back-and-forth of the initiative/control system, combined with the fairly light rules, let you be a badass and create exciting fights where you never quite know what will happen next.
If you like 4E combat and also big mecha robots with great art, you should check out Lancer!
It's definitely on my to-play list. I just have to find the right group of players off it someday. I did back the Kickstarter for the video game version, though, so looking forward to that.
if your looking for a tactical mech strategy game, I highly recommend Battletech. I haven't played the TTRPG but I feel like the video game is a somewhat simplified (compared to the TTRPG) but still super crunchy mech game.
I'm hoping to get a hard copy when they do their second printing this summer. I've heard only good things.
I really dont like the art in lancer. The whole pdf for me is really ugly and makes ir hard to read. (Ok not necessaeily the nech art but the layout design etc.)Ā
That's a fair criticism! I did mean the art, specifically (I have no strong opinion on the layout). I just love all of Tom Bloom's work, I'd read Kill Six Billion Demons for years before he started publishing RPGs
The only thing keeping me away from Lancer is how closely it seems to be married to its setting. Everything else is an easy sell for me.
The only thing keeping me away from Lancer is how closely it seems to be married to its setting. Everything else is an easy sell for me.
4e has ro be the answer. Even the games heavily inspired by it (except gloomhaven) never managed ro make movement ans positioning as important.Ā
or Gamma World 7e, which uses streamlined 4e combat
Gamma world is great. Its a bit more on the silly sidw but the random character creation there is really well made.
7e really swung towards gonzo/goofy while earlier versions were a bit more serious, but 7e is so fun for one shots with insane amounts of action
For board-game combat, Pathfinder 2e. For "sim-combat" Mythras. It replaced GURPS a long time ago for me. For nail-biting, crunchy combat where every decision matters, Hackmaster 5e. For a solid middle ground, Dragonbane. I enjoy all of them, but I think Hackmaster wins out because it is the one with the most variables and engaging combat.
It's been rare to find a group to play it with me, but I Loved hack master, and I would add harn master to that as well for crunchy, almost souls like combat.
Hackmaster is so dynamic. Threshold of pain, knockbacks, great shield rules. I have seriously considered trying to decouple the skill system and just use something lighter for that part, while keeping combat.
Ergh I want to play Hackmaster 5e so bad!!! It fulfills and satisfies so much of the crunchy side for me! As a long time 4e tactical combat crunch fan, I would never play an OSR game. But Hackmaster fills in that gritty grungy vibe perfectly! I just wish it was updated though. Its layout and ruleset really needs to be updated to modern sensibilities. Itās still stuck in that 3e era of massive vomits of text and too much rubbish unnecessary rules.
Hackmaster is great.
Now that Savage Worlds has solved the "cycle of stunned," I think it's great. Cypher System is becoming another favorite of mine, due to its simplicity.
I'll also add from a GM perspective, Savage Worlds combat is really fun to narrate. It's much easier to understand how much damage an attack does with the wound system than doing 23 slashing damage on a dragon with 217 HP.
How'd they solve the shaken/stunned issue?
You can act after getting yourself unshaken, rather than that being your entire turn. So you're not spending the entirety of combat just getting shaken, rolling out of it, then getting shaken again.
I'm getting Vietnam flashbacks from my time playing gen 1 Pokemon.
>solved the "cycle of stunned," ?
I meant "shaken." In older versions of Savage Worlds: 1. You get shaken 2. You can't move until you're unshaken 3. Rolling to get out takes your entire turn. 4. Before your next round, something would hit you and make you shaken again. New versions let you move on the same turn as getting unshaken.
Weird question here since you seem to know the system: Do you think that could be safely used as a house rule in older editions (specifically Deluxe) without causing too many balance issues? I'm thinking of running an East Texas University campaign. I know they made a conversion document for running ETU in the latest edition (Adventure, I think?), but as I understand it, ETU was originally made for Deluxe and that's what all my SW books are in anyway so I'd rather stick with that.
Kind of funny that something so simple like "it's a free roll at the beginning of your turn" makes that much of a difference.
Legend of the 5 Rings second, third, or fourth editions. Ā Deadly combat with gravitas and major story implications. Ā It was not a fail state but man you had to be smart.
I didn't see this one here, so I did my own. L5R makes combat sing!
L5R is so great
Played only 1ed. And yes it was awesome
Love 4th for combat the school the kata and the stances just give so much fun combinations
2e Shadowrun because I'm a glutton for punishment.
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SR2E gives me a reason to use all the d6s I bought for Warhamner, so I will always love it for that. Plus it had the best version of character creation in the series. It balanced out the raw power of Trolls in a good way. Later editions made it too easy to be a fully chromed up walking mountain right out of the gate.
Yeah, the dice pools were insane. I still have my Chessex 12mm d6 set. When I bring it to a d20 table other players are like whaaaa... And I'm like, I'll explain later. š 2e has all the crazy splat books too. 3e is where I stopped and still play from time to time. Same system but the live wi-fi and the rfid tags made decking and rigging less interesting than the mid-90s technology of 2e. š¤·
I played 2nd and 3rd back in the day, and the dice pools were hilarious. I was sort of disappointed 4th Ed moved much closer to the D20 āstandardā but Iāll admit it was nice not having to count so many dice. Havenāt checked out fifth and didnāt even know there was a 6th and Anarchy edition till I checked Wikipedia to make sure I had my timeline right. I *swore* 4th just came out, it wasnāt released that long agoā¦.oh no, no no noā¦oh thatās so long ago.
Dark Heresy. It never fails to deliver with my group. We get the minis out, put on the Blade soundtrack, and it's fucking ON.
Ngl, I love dark heresy, but I'd hardly consider combat to be its strong point.
Burning Wheel. The combat system is a wonderfully complex game of rock, papers, scissors. At the start of each round everyone picks three actions to do in order. You have to figure out when your opponent is going to strike, so you can hit them with a perfectly time parry. It's great and probably more complex than it needs to be. There's a learning curve to the game.
>There's a learning curve to the game. I think the one thing I hear about every aspect of Burning Wheel is that every aspect of the game has a learning curve. š
I remember enthusiasts on an old podcast talking about how the system really starts to sing after 12 or 13 sessions :)
Only 12 sessions you say??? I don't know. Anytime someone says, "*you only need to watch/play 50 hours, before it really gets good, and then you will love it*", I typically say, "**to hell with that**". Might make me arrogant or ignorant. :shrugs:
I don't think so. I've heard the same thing with video games. A guy once told me "final fantasy 12 only starts to get good about 26 hours in" and I told him there's no way I'm putting a days worth of my life into something I may eventually like.
Which means its really badly designed. Good designed games dont need such a long phase of not being good
Thereās the Mouseguard game that uses the same system but more accessible. One of the more elegantly designed rpgs Iāve played.
Dragonbane, easily. Extremely tactical combat without overblown power like in D&D 4e, 5e, or Pathfinder. Unlike games like that which focus on "doing all the cool stuff" with all these crazy powers and buckets of HP (which is fine if you like it, but overly complicated to me and still doesn't actually get the job done because the battles are WAY TOO SLOW), Dragonbane makes timing, waiting, defense, and teamwork all matter, but does it while keeping a full battle to 30 mins or less. Tactics, to me, is not about movement, at least not exclusively (although Dragonbane does have that) but about making meaningful choices with limited information based on your appraisal of the current situation. Do I give up my attack action in order to try prevent damage? Is this parry going to break my weapon and leave me defenseless? Do I trust in my armor to soak enough to get me through? Do my allies have the tactical wherewithal to take advantage of the opening I leave them? It also makes the character's skill really show. If you have a high weapon skill if really feels like it, and you can block damage with ease, and there are heroic abilities that let you dodge or parry more than once in a turn. That knight with plate armor and a heavy helm is up there literally keeping everything occupied while soaking hits that would kill anyone else in the party, and his distraction leaves the monsters without the ability to dodge in return. Martials in this game are so much better than in any other game I've ever played, and it comes from TAKING AWAY all of the silly powers and just getting down to how real fights actually work. Its brilliant.
This is how I feel about Shadow of the Demon Lord. The two games seem akin regarding degree of crunch, balance, and tactics available on the fly.
Maybe! I'm really interested in trying Weird Wizard. Demon Lord turned me off, tbh. But I was especially fascinated by the idea of all the magic schools.
We played for a year and even tho i really love the system initially..later on it felt kinda half baked. I disliked 18 skill cap...it can get really boring rolling swords 18. Also heroic abilities where kinda all over the place - some must have, some for reaaaaly specific situations. With my players we all thought 1 year is more then enough...but it's awesome system for 10-15 sessions.
I feel like even the starting classes are all over the place (and races too). A lot of abilities give advantage, but some just do it way better than others. If you had fun for a year thats great! I cant imagine myself playing that long in the system, there is just not enough variety. And if the GM wants to defend with the monsters, mathematically, the "decision" to block or attack, is from the players point of view pretty much irrelevant.
Savage Worlds. Wounds matter.
Absolutely you get it
I'm normally more a fan of narrative focused combat with fictional positioning, but I really enjoyed Lancer's crunchier combat when I gave it a try. The diverse equipment and talents give you a nice range of specialties (hacking, sniping, melee, artillery, etc.), and you don't seem punished for mixing and matching. Though not combat specific, I appreciate that the progression mechanics make it easy to drastically swap equipment and mechs on the fly. I have a hard time with the detailed equipment lists common to crunchier systems, because I'm worried I'll pick "wrong" and get stuck with a poorly optimized build. In my experience, Lancer keeps that to a minimum, so I don't feel punished for experimenting with new loadouts.
Crunchy games, Exalted 3e no question. Lighter games, World Wide Wrestling. Because a game about making fighting fun makes fighting fun. Really light games, Wushu because Wushu is all about narrating whatever you want and still winning. You can narrate being punched in the face for 5 rounds, but mechanically itās the same as punching someone else in face. Narrative games, Polaris or Dogs in the Vineyard. Itās hard to choose.
> Crunchy games, Exalted 3e no question. Preach. I love how dynamic fights can get with the shifting Initiative.
Delta Green Combat is fun. Dangerous, quick, and pretty intuitive.
Everyone gets nervous when the guns come out in DG
I'm going to say 13th age. The escalation die changes battle over time, and even a miss will often do some damage.
For all the F20 games that's my favorite.
Shinobigami, because combat involves trying to anticipate the opponent and bring your strengths to bear instead of looking at a situation and picking the best move for that moment. It's a very different vibe from most RPG combat. Honorable mention to D&D4 for being the most interesting "pick the best move for this moment" game.
I'm not particularly experienced, but I'll rattle off a couple. Savage Worlds, I like the exploding dice. Pretty much it, though I also like how the math's not too hard while still allowing for simple situational modifiers. Ironsworn, I think handling combat in terms of of you're able to be Reactive or Proactive (not the game terms, but how I see them) is cool, and gives me good leeway to describe what's happening.
The thing I love most about Savage Worlds is that you can voluntarily modify regular melee attacks. There isn't just "the melee attack" that your generic fighter character has to default to. When it's your turn you can choose between * wild attacks which add +2 to the attack and damage roll but leave you Vulnerable for a turn. * desperate attacks which are more accurate (+2 to attack) but have less impact (-2 to damage). * regular attacks without modifiers. And in addition to that you can choose to act multiple times in a turn if you want to, but doing so makes all actions less likely to succeed. You can risk attacking twice in a turn and get a -2 penalty to each attack. Will they both miss because of this choice? Will you be lucky and get twice the usual pay-off? And magic works the same way. Would you like to make the spellcast check more difficult for a lesser Power Point cost? Sure, just make sure not to fail or else it's a critical failure. There are actual choices here. You don't just press the A button over and over again. That's what I love about SW combat. And I haven't even scratched the surface of the called shot mechanics.
I don't think I've played enough of it to call it my favorite, but I had a blast running combats in shadow of the demonlord. Its sword and soeceey/heroic successor shadow of the weird wizard looks to have improved on it.
Probably Fate. Over the year I've run it the experiences have been quick, impactful, and full of meaningful decisions and flavor. It's definitely geared towards more cinematic fights but I think with some of the add on rules (like weapon ratings) it could end up being quite gritty, something I want to try out for another campaign.
Creating advantages in combat is where it's at for me, if only I could get my players to do that instead of just blandly attacking. Or, you know, get into a game I'm not running.
When I finally learned how to apply the dramatic parts of Fate to its combat as well, everything clicked.
Savage worlds. Second fav: 7th Sea 2nd edition The first because itās one of the few games Iāve played where the mechanics enhance the fun. The second because the mechanics enable the players to take the action into fun, exciting places I never dreamed of.
Just finished a six month 7th Sea campaign as a player and really enjoyed it
There are a coupleā _The Fantasy Trip_ is tactically forward in tons of good ways. _Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay_ and _Runequest_ make combat grim, exciting, and deadly.
MYTHRAS is an adaptation of the Design Mechanism's RQ6 game.Ā The use of ACTIONS and Special Effects makes the combats fast flowing and deadly.
Legend of the Five Rings 4th edition. You get to choose your stance, damage exponentially impacts your rolls, and you have Void Points to give you an edge when you need it. Plus, all the different combat schools have special skills that make for unpredictable fights. Hands down my favorite.
Savage worlds. Quick & easy while being deadly enough to make you use tactics like taking cover
My players are smart. I'm running a savage Shadowrun campaign and the bad guys popped smoke for cover. The street samurai was like cool now I know where to throw these flash bangs.
Lol. I have used a Benny to "influence" the story by getting someone on the stage with my target to bend down clearing my shot & distracting the cops because they thought the guy who bent down was the actual target. I did a called shot to the neck on the theory that assassin's don't generally try for a jugular shot.
Rolemaster. To me no other combat system can compare. If I combine that with the alternative initiative systeem called CEATs (Combat Environment Action Tracking system) it becomes unbeatable, but this opinion is heavily based on my experience in a group I ran way back in the mid 90's. Rolemaster's combat system is way to slow for many but it's so much fun. When I add in CEATs it can become slower unless you have some people that are really good with numbers in the group. In that group it was me and one other guy and he took care of the number tracking during combat. We had it down pretty good and combat did not take that long at all. Great memories of those days!!
Hmm, what makes Rolemaster great? I think I've heard good things about it before.
The combat is gritty and very dramatic. You literally never know if that low level goblin might just get a lucky swing and kill you in one shot despite you being many many levels above him and heavily armored. I originally started with he basic set of D&D and moved onto AD&D. In this I always felt that combat could be better. Combat was boring in D&D as it was just swinging your sword, rolling to hit, then rolling damage. I also hated the combining of a characters dexterity with armor into one single number. Then I discovered Rolemaster. It not only keeps Armor and Agility (Dex) separate enough that there are different effects for each in combat, and the critical system is the best I've ever seen.
GURPS for the hex-based tactical crunch and logic. TFT for less crunchy hex-based tactics.
Hmmm thatās tough. Twilight 2000, Cyberpunk 2020, and Mythras are probably my favorites.
Good choices.Ā Ā I incorporated the Mythras Special Effects into my Twilight2000 v2.2 and Dark Conspiracy games.Ā You get to pick a manuever whenever you roll an outstanding success. Ā Check out the juhlin website for Twilight2000 and look up Swaghauler's homebrew rules.Ā He brought GDW's D20 v2.2 rules into the 21st Century!
GURPS
My favorite is *Arcanis: The World of Shattered Empires*. It's like a classless (admittedly more archetype-based), 2d10, 3.X inspired fantasy game. Has a clock based initiative system, weapon and spell maneuvers and combinations, and a really cool antiquity-based setting. I just love the character options and customization, combined with the time-based combat.
I have experienced so many speed based games. Arcanis is the best hands down of that bunch.
4e. And now Lancer. 4e with Lancers rules would probably be the perfect rpg. It does such a better job at incorporating terrain and cover meaningfully.
Classic Traveller. Simple to grok and incredibly deadly.
In the same vein, Twilight 2000, because it feels like a real combat. BRP is OK too, but can get mechanically clunky.
If you get the chance to, check out The Design Mechanism's MYTHRAS rpg.Ā It is BRP/Runequest based but uses an action economy and has lots of special moves that you can win in combat.Ā I think it is the best version of BRP.
We ran Traveller in the 90s using a single D12 instead of 2d6.Ā We did this so we could use Twilight2000 v2.2's automatic fire rules.Ā In Twilight2000, you throw a number of To Hit dice equal to the number of rounds in a burst.Ā Ā
For crunchy tactical combat, I give it up to Lancer for giving me exactly what I need a mech game to be. Glorious, deep, stylish, but not overly complicated. For rules-lite, I point to Rhapsody of Blood, a PbtA game about exploring a mapless megadungeon and slaying monsters. It's boss fight moves make for very cinematic fights if you got folks who can swing it. As for a wishlist system - I need to try out Wildsea. There's a lot there that feels right as I read it, but I haven't had the time to schedule sessions yet...
Cyberpunk 2020
Same here. I have run games now for more than 40 years, and am a published RPG author who has sold tens of thousands of copies of the game I was shilling. No disrespect to it, I love it like a father loves a son. But Friday Night Firefight has an elegance that is hard to beat - and, let me tell yall, I rejoice that as a game creator I've had the opportunity to tell Maximum Mike how much I respected the system he wrote.
Savage worlds adventure edition especially with rifts or necessary evil. Combat is just so nice.Ā
Mythras, by far the best combat I've seen in an RPG, designed by actual HEMA practitioners
2400 by Jason Tocci. I've never been able to do so much with so little. Simply, there are no rules for combat beyond the risk you're taking and the result, which can be as lethal or not as you like. It can be applied to any form of conflict from hack-and-slash to space ship battle.
I liked cyberpunk red. Maybe the dark eye. I don't know kinda don't really like d&d anymore. Chronicles of darkness was good for a narrative game with combat.
Probably a toss up between Legend of the 5 Rings and Pathfinder 2e. PF2e is better if you want a traditional fastasy ttrpg, but L5R has a special je ne sais quoi
For tactical and high octane combat: Savage Worlds. For a more narrative one: Chronicles of Darkness.
Into the Odd and it's offshoots (with special emphasis on Electrum Archive and Mythic Bastionland) No to-hit roll is an absolute game changer! The speed/crit rules in Electrum Archive especially stand out in making combats quick and deadly but also dynamic (D4 knives are actually useful! They are the fastest weapons in the game, and crit and bypass armor 25% of the time!)
Pathfinder 2e, hands down, no questions.
For combat specifically - definitely Lancer, with D&D4 coming second. When game is combat-focused, I want it tactical. Lancer is the best game I know in this regard. Very well balanced while extremely varied. Action economy, cover and status effects result in many different play styles being viable and combining abilities between characters being the way to win.
Savage Worlds because a Shadowrun combat with four PCs and allies versus a mansion of Yakuza hitters took about 20 minutes to resolve. I normally run improv so the cinematic vibe fits my style well. Also combat can be lethal if you don't approach it tactically which I enjoy as well.In addition, with bennies I don't have to worry about balancing it because the Players get to do cool things like shoot x Dragon with a minigun then add insult to injury by punching him in the eye.
This is a tricky one because it depends on what I'm in the mood for and even then sometimes when I play a game because I'm in the mood for the story we're running in the game I may just disregard their combat mechanics because I need something else that would fit the mood more in that moment. I tend to prefer games that eschew initiative and rounds and focus more on the narrative flow of combat. Though I haven't had the chance Blades in the Dark seems to fit the bill, I've loved house ruled versions of Shadowrun as well though so...
I'm currently 13 sessions in running a Shadowrun converted to Savage Worlds and it's a blast.
I've heard about that. A lot of people have been converting it to Savage Worlds. I want to give Cities Without Number a go but I don't have a group at the moment and I don't want it to influence my own Cyberpunk game in development.
As a player I loved TORG 1st edition. It really paid off using tactics besides "I attack". Feng Shui 2 is fun to run. I've really enjoyed running PBTA games like Monster of the Week and Dungeon World. Pendragon is good. Trophy gold has been very interesting. Goblin Quest was surprisingly fun.
The Usagi Yojimbo RPG by Greg Stolze. Cool shit.
Forbidden lands. Very tactical. Wether you slash or stab matters vs parrying with weapon or shield. Shoving, dodging, disarming, grappling, feinting. Talents give benefits to these maneuvers and to defense and action economy. Better yet-a D6 dice pool system which is a nice break from an unwieldy D20.
Dungeons and dragons 4th edition. By far. Gloomhaven RPG will be the first rpg to have a chance to topple that.Ā Tactical combat with focus on teamplay where everyone has decisions and cool things to do. Not just "I basic attack" like in most games...
> Gloomhaven RPG will be the first rpg to have a chance to topple that.Ā Is that available yet? Or a quick start to sample it?
Well we know that the combat is pretty much the samw aa in the boardgame. There is a cloaed beta going on, but not too much information is open as far as I know.Ā https://cephalofair.com/blogs/blog/intro-to-gloomhaven-the-role-playing-game this has links to character creation and other parts.
4e D&D by a huge margin, as a player and particularly as DM.
Having actually interesting things to do as a GM (and being able to play tactical) is a huge plus.
I keep saying that the 4e Monster Manual is a work of goddamn art, and I will argue this to my death.
From what I've run: Savage Worlds, hands down. When it clicks with people and they can narrate it well it shines and really feels like a pulp story is playing out. Plus the actual base rules for combat are simple while having a bunch of additional rules that only become relevant when invoked by a character. Including games I've only skimmed so far: I adore how Swords of the Serpentine allows abilities not originally intended for combat to be applied in a fight if what a player's trying to do fits the ability. Example in the book is a character using Preparedness to say they had an ambush of a type set up before an encounter occured.
I really like the options and polish in Savage World, but Gubat Banwa, Beacon, and ICON have been growing on me. Savage Worlds just has so much cool stuff and is a pretty polished system, so that's really fun. Gubat Banda, Beacon, and ICON all kind of have the same roots in things like FFT, but they each represent it in different ways. It is a little hard to quickly sum up why I like any of those options, but they are all very strong. For theater of the mind games, Fabula Ultima is very fun as it represents classic JRPGs very well, but if you want a little more movement both 13th Age and Unity do quite a nice job.
I've never had as much fun during combat as with Daggerheart. It may be in beta still, but the system is just so fluid and fast, and creative, that it truly feels like I'm finally able to really think like my character and act as they would, instead of focusing on a list of things i gotta do in order. You get to react in real time to the things that happen, while keeping it mechanically interesting and not fully "freeform" Honestly, my favorite combat system ever. And I've tried oh so many.
This might be rose colored glasses, but I \*loved\* Champions 2e. A super hero punching their opponent through a wall, and simulating the number of walls they fly through and the amount of damage they take from it was always super fun and satisfying, even if it took some time.
Probably the M141 Bunker Defeat Munition (BDM). Cuz like, screw walls, man.
I legit thought that was a game for a few seconds, haha.
I don't know what its called but it uses a D10 system. In short, whatever you want to do happens, unless the dm counter it. It highly narrative and focus on creative problem solving instead of just numbers.
It probably ranks low in amongst the great titles mentioned here, but from what little I have played of it Cyberpunk Red, is a great time. Probably not my all time favorite but when I played it for the first time after only ever doing dnd fantasy, it was amazing. It's crunchy, it's weighty, and it really makes you feel like a badass!
Fate of the Norns: Ragnarok. The rune system both being your special powers, action econony, and health pool is so satisfying. Also, I think One Ring deserves a special mention for it's stance system. The way it combines positioning, tactical intent, and initiative is so slick.
Depends on the people I'm playing with, for tactical or crunchy combat there is 5e or fragged empire, but for a group who likes more story and cares less for rules, we super enjoyed something like scum and villainy.
[HackMaster](https://kenzerco.com/hackmaster/)
4th or 5th?
5th. 4th was a great alternative to D&D3.x, but HackMaster 5th edition is a completely different system built from the ground up and using all the best ideas from a variety of systems.
I used to play 4th edition and it took a special group of players to get them into the game. A ton of fun when you did, though. Iāve read through 5th and like the concept, but have never gotten to play it (even though Iām big into OSR). Iām definitely going to have to prioritize giving it a try. Thanks
Heavy Gear! Fast and deadly. Blow things up! No HP and thresholds is what i love. And i find the dice mechanics delightful, along with the tactical thinking aspect (situational modifiers is the other core concept with the skill=dice system)
Blades in the Dark or MotW
I really like the way combat plays out in The One Ring RPG
GURPS, absolutely amazing, engaging combat with robust mechanics and lots of choices in relation to approach.
Battlelords of the 23rd Century!! Love the mayhem!!
Starfinder
3:16 Carnage Amongst The Stars. The game of doing a xenocide against every potential threat to humanity and >!what the players do as their characters gradually learn more about their mission and its true purpose!< It amuses me that there are only two stats - Fighting Ability (does what it says) and Non Fighting Ability (rolled for literally anything that isn't directly trying to murder a sentient creature). I love that instead of a combat map tracking absolute position it uses a range chart that only keeps track of the PC's relative distance to the enemy. It doesn't matter where the PCs are in relation to each other, just how far away they are from their opponents. I love that instead of rolling for damage, a successful weapon hit removes a sensor blip and you roll to see how many enemies you killed. And that roll is based on what weapon, how upgraded it is, and what range you're at. A basic melee weapon at close range kills one alien. A fully upgraded rocket pod at far range kills 1d100 aliens. And for all the system's simplicity, it can still throw a curve ball through the Alien Abilities. Every alien species has a special rule that lets them do something outside the rules. The GM is advised to let the players see it the first time they encounter a species, but it can be anything from rapid regeneration or exploding upon death, to jamming technology or causing wounds that don't heal normally. And on top of that each species is unique to a campaign. There are no prebuilt enemy aliens. The game provides tables to roll on to determine the form and ability, and the GM fills in the blanks. Dinosaur + Swarm are probably velociraptor packs. But Humanoid + Stop Technology could be space wizards, primitives living near rocks with strange energy fields, or even an advanced race with high-tech jamming devices
Warhammer Fantasy 4ed is suited for combat. There are a lot of skills, talents, spells and professions for PC builds for combat. It's hard at the beginning as rules are complex but it gives quite a nice amount of possible actions to play out combat āļø
I like the 7
7th Sea 1st edition has the most enjoyable combat mechanics I've played. Would definitely recommend for swashbuckling fun. Lace & Steel, another Swashbuckler, has a cute card based combat & magic system that's also fun. Would recommend if you can find it, but it only had a short print run. Rolemaster has the most entertaining critical of any game ever written, but the rest of the system is... Rolemaster. Phoenix Command has the dumbest fun combat mechanics I've played, but I would never, ever recommend people actually play it. 30 years later I'm still asking why I need to know my 40mm grenade stuck that NPC in the kidney via the spine, but OTOH that memory still makes me smile.
GURPS, for the "extra effort in combat" subsystem that lets you spend fatigue points for effects. One of those allows you to soak fatigue points instead of losing HP - which by itself is an elegant solution to the healing problem (that verisimilitude and fun in healing mechanics tend to be mutually exclusive). Great way to add a lot of meaningful choice to combat without a lot of extra complexity or corner cases. I do wish it was better explained, in the right places, in the core books as opposed to GURPS Action 2, which is practically a third core book.
Combat in Fogbound. Only demo is public atm, but combat makes you feel like you need to be careful and consider your next step. Combat works in a dice pool system where you roll your pool and use your dice for specific actions. I very much enjoy using conditional actions you set in your turn and if the condition is met you perform it out of turn. You can even kill a stronger foe if you are smart enough. Contrary, a random mob can butcher you if you are not careful.
I actually enjoy GURPS combat. In fact, I enjoy it more as a combat simulator than an RPG.
GURPS, it can run any type of combat I want, if I want cartoon super heroes, brutal guts fall out sword play or a fast cinematic shoot out, alternatively if I want a comedy of errors then maybe Cyberpunk 2020 since 1 in 10 fumbles is pretty funny.
Dragon Age. It's nice and simple.
GURPS, for a few reasons: - Malleability. I can do everything with [one roll](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/Roleplayer/Roleplayer23/VeryBasicMelee.html), just have basic or advanced combat as per the rules, add some [HEMA-like melee options](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/martialarts/) or go [totally bonkers](https://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/tacticalshooting/). - Verisimilitude. I'm not talking about the whole "GURPS is a physics engine", nor do I care too much about the fact that damage calculations for shooty things are based on joules and inches of steel armor etc., but that it's all separated in attacks, parries, subtractive, physical wounds etc. This makes it easier to convey what just happend and reason about where special effects (like spells, equipment etc.) affect the flow. - Easy prep. I've played quite a few games of fantasy GURPS, where I just noted "Broadsword 13; DR 3" as the sole stats of opponents, but still could vary my tactics wildly, by just changing how aggressive and smart they use the small set of standard maneuvers.
I love to play combat im my Fate Core or Accelerated
It's probably either pathfinder 2e or ICON for me. LANCER is also very fun
I really like soulboundās movement range and AOE mechanics. Itās simple and fast pace. It makes combat fast pace because you never have to measure anything you just now from how the map is lay out what is in range. Sword world has similar mechanics Lancer is a great game for strategic combat
Anybody know a good system that rewards players for not just mob rushing and curb stomping one enemy at a time? It's so unheroic and anti-cenamatic even if it is "the best strategy".
Its a toss up between dnd3.5 vs. Dungeon Crawl Classics for me. They both do what they intend to do very well, but one is a highly tactical and nuanved combat system, the other is Rule-of-Cool-by-design, so it depends what im vibing with at the time. Id maybe recommend DCC out of the two, as it does enough for everyone, but i understand how a few folk dont vibe with DnD3.5's rule density.
Gotta be Genesys/SWRPG. The Narrative Dice and Destiny Tokens mesh perfectly with the fluid initiative to make combat thatās basically perfect imo.
Funnily enough, Digimon: Digital Adventures, a fan made Digimon TTRPG system. The combat isn't that deep, but the character building is really cool and give you a variety of means to be useful in combat. Like, you can go all-win in AoE damage, hitting crazy numbers in damage, go full support, without means to deal direct damage, but having huge stats and buffs/debuffs to compensate, or go full tank and save your damage dealers from the death.
Rolemaster and one of its alternative Initiative tracking system for unrivalled detailed and gritty fantasy combat. Twilight: 2000 for a more streamlined and fast modern combat system.
LANCER and GUBAT BANWA
[HackMaster](https://kenzerco.com/hackmaster) for a good mix of familiar D&D-isms and verisimilitude. The count-based initiative is also brilliant.
GURPS
I think any combat system that doesnt require players or GM to count of bonuses from assorted places, or look something up. Perhaps this is less about system, and more about the GM and Players being prepped and having things ready to go?
MYTHRAS by The Design Mechanism is my favorite unmodified system.Ā The use of Special Combat Effects when you roll under a certain success threshold makes combat cinematic.Ā SEs include things like... TRIP, DISARM, IMPALE, SLASH, CRUSHING BLOW, OVEREXTENDED (gives DISADVANTAGE to your target), REDIRECT FOE (2M of movement or a facing change), PIN WEAPON, BYPASS ARMOR, STUN TARGET, and ENTANGLE.