What is the best D&D-like system that has decent combat and isn't obfuscating...

What's wrong with 13th Age's classes?

What's the roster? I had a lot of interest in 13th age too.

Mainly it's Martials sucking. Again.
Same old, same old.

yuki.la/tg/47191606#p47197908

Have the thread. If you scroll around a bit, you'll find a couple explanations.

>But only if you go with the Touhoufag-endorsed class roster.
>listening to touhoufag
>ever

That fucking faggot wouldn't know the first fucking thing about how to actually play a game because he's too much of an autist to see any application of anything that isn't just "throw numbers at it until it dies."

That's a shame, why are martial classes the ones to always get the shaft? I can't recall a single system where they're better than magic-based classes.
I'm not particularly familiar with him but game balance from a numerical standpoint is pretty important, no?

>getting triggered this hard

I think I'd rather listen to someone who backs up his arguments with laid-out reasoning and facts than someone who can't do anything more than name-calling.

Seems like a decent and good game. Its almost a love letter to OSR in a modern system, what with the zero level characters and all the rollable tables.

Anima has better Martials.

The problem with Martials in D&D-like systems is that they are not magical.
Anything ostensibly magical gets a free pass to be as out there as it wants, but something like a Fighter must stick to what real life humans are capable of.

It's just odd since you see it done all the time with homebrews - fantasy heroes have almost always been capable of greater feats than any real human could achieve, and even something as simple as 'guy with a sword' could have cool combat tricks to him. It just seems like game designers don't even playtest their own game. Take 3.5 for example - did they ever intend for you to do anything fun or effective with a fighter beyond level 10? How did they expect any martial class to perform well - let alone play well - without giving them a relic sword or the like as a crutch?

Balance is okay. Fetishizing it, not so much. I'm sort of fascinated by people who care so much about it. It's really interesting to hear what guys like THF think and what are their suggestions but I can take it or leave it. Feels good.

Because it gets guaranteed responses, one assumes.

From what I hear, L5R favors martials.

3.5 had Ivory Tower design. No need for playtesting. Fighters were a trap option and not intended to be fun.
5e had playtesting, but it only served to remove anything good or interesting about the system.

>5e had playtesting, but it only served to remove anything good or interesting about the system.
I was going to protest, but then I remembered the string of 'we're nerfing the monk AGAIN' releases, including that time they gutted out whatever they called it, martial dice? They removed the entire mechanic, gave the Fighter something to compensate, but left the monk unplayable for a few iterations. They couldn't even be arsed to say 'use the previous version of the monk until we actually make a new one.'

I don't know if the final product makes it right. The playtest just slowly ground down my will to bother.

I try not to fetishize it, except when charaters at any level of play become completely useless and it hurts the game.

>except when charaters at any level of play become completely useless and it hurts the game.
That's just rightfully hating bad design.

I'd be a little more inclined to believe it was 'designed to be timeless by rewarding noticing the imbalances of the system' rather than poorly designed if ALL the good classes weren't magic-users.

This... might be a different problem, user.
If you are bored with your possible actions, you might be:
- playing the wrong class (nothing you are able to do seems interesting)
- playing by rote (meaning you are bored with the system itself)
- playing the wrong kind of campaign ("Oh yes. Please. By all means let's go save a farm it will be soon fun...")
- playing with the wrong people (boring people tend to rub off on you after awhile)

My only advise would be try to flavor what you are doing, or try to do some goofy things every now and then.

Once things cooled down, more people took a closer look at 4e and some came to like it. Whereas 3e tried to go the simulation route with rules for lots of things, 4e took the 'heavy combat rules, lite non-combat rules' approach. I initially disliked it then looked into the rules and it grew on me. It is worth a look.

Play Mythras (formerly RuneQuest 6) with the Classic Fantasy supplement. It combines the really solid skill system and amazing combat of RuneQuest 6 with D&D classes and magic. It even changes combat to use miniatures.

I played SotDL before. It's fucking fun but it's rules lite as hell. It's basically 5e-lite version of WFRP.

It's easy to modify stuff too but it's pretty damn lethal. Rogues are literal gods in it because they are masters of everything and can do an absurd amount of damage.

Tell me more about ripped playtest content, please.

This makes me feel a bit better about starting a game in it, I think the only reason I was wary was I'd heard a few people saying to give it a pass and absolutely nobody saying it was good. I think my group kind of needs a rules-lite system, they get bored too easily.
Did you modify anything in it when you played? I'm curious as to what you mean.

It suffers from a lot of the limits that Dnd has, namely that magic can get pretty scary at higher levels, but the martials can easily stomp through a dozen men by the time you get to level 10. The combat system is more of a "who has more HP and/or DPS" than anything, just like 5e. You throw blows at each other, and don't really worry about hitting at higher levels. That said, it's not bad.

Our GM kinda restructured leveling up since it happens at a group rate, and occurred at the end of the story. He changed it so we would just level when we finished a large plot event instead of a story. Also changed the magic so that the spells that you can cast are just the fast cast spells, and that rituals are everywhere but take varying amounts of time to complete, since the setting is filled with stuff like that but there's no mechanics for it.

Important thing to note, you don't add you Strength mod to you damage. There's class that does that. Also the leveling system stop at 10 for now.

Re the Rogue:
The rogue has a few conditional attack damage benefits - but he also supplies the condition for himself so without negatives to counteract it, the attack damage applies.

That benefit is the Trickery ability: Once/round, make an Attack or Challenge roll with 1 Boon. If you attack with 1 Boon from this ability, you deal an extra 1d6 damage.
A boon is a d6 you add to your roll - but if you've multiple boons you just take the highest. Banes are the same but in reverse, and they cancel each other out 1:1 before you do the roll. Technically it's in any order, so as long as you have 1 Boon at all, it can be the one you got from Trickery.

Trickery applies generically to Attack and Challenge rolls, which are the only types of rolls in the game. So you can get that boon to picklocking, attacking, climbing a wall, etc.
Rogues are competent. A Priest can however do the same thing with a Prayer (more or less), and a Warrior has a bunch of +boons and +damage to hitting that are just always there.

Overall I rate the game as pretty solid, definitely better than 5e, fairly rules-light, and kind of interesting - although my experience with it is limited.

>are just the fast cast spells
the what?

>the what?
The spells optimized for being able to be cast without needing to pour through the tomes. Basically, they're the simple spells that one can memorize and empower without needing a long song and dance.

>The combat system is more of a "who has more HP and/or DPS" than anything, just like 5e. You throw blows at each other
I'd like to say there are a fair amount of combat actions that you can do - tripping, blinding, lunge attacks, guarded attacks, etc. It can be more than just slapping at a dude, mechanically. So it's not quite as dull as this may make it sound. Also a lot of Paths get at least some mild magic access, so that's a few more options.
But yes combat comes down to beating their HP while you keep yours, in the end.

Sorry do you mean like all the normal ones listed pages 115-148?
Have we completely misinterpreted how magic works, or is this just weird terminology and I'm being dumb?

Normal spells are just cast with saying some words, doing implement things, spending the required action, and then expending a casting of that spell. Regaining spells is just resting and then meditating/studying/whatever for a minute.
The ones that require reading a piece of paper/tablet/pottery/whatever and take an hour to make are incantations.
The book is a bit light on the idea of advanced rituals though, as you said. The best I've seen is just make rituals refluffed incantations that are immediately casted, but those still base off an existing spell.

Last I checked magic was garbage in Exalted 2e.

Oh shit, you're completely right. Although a large part of that is I think they weren't really intended for player use... a lot of the really meaningful effects take rituals, and a simple dispel can break almost all of them easily. But yeah, I suppose it's no coincidence I've played quite a bit of Exalted compared to other tabletops...

The 13th Age Barbarian and the dual wield Ranger can do crazy, crazy amounts of damage. We've been playing for about a year now and while the Sorc can clean up, those two "simple" classes just hit so fucking hard all the time. I can't speak for the fighter as no one in our group has played them.

It's a BETTER DESCENT. It was poorly marketed as an RPG. Should have been sold in a BIG BOX with cool miniatures and miniature/book based supplements.

I don't know-- I think Mythras by itself is fine.

>4e was good

4e was very balanced, it wasn't very good. It was easy peasy to run but the combat went on far to long.

Isn't that more-or-less what they've done with the "Adventure System" boardgames? The rules for those have a pretty heavy touch of 4e to them.

Sure, it's easy. But it's a system that isn't supposed to have trash fights. Every one should be significant.

Then again, it doesn't combine well with 4 encounters/day requirement

You're doing it wrong then. Cut monster HP by 2/level, give players alternative victory conditions, don't make them fight scrubs unless there's a reason to (such as to protect an alternative victory condition).

Combat in 4e was suppose to be very epic in feeling, and thus should have been used sparingly with two to three well constructed set pieces per adventure. More if your table likes smashing skulls that much. The average band of brigands on the side of the road make for a nice opener to the game, but not a decent sort of encounter for anything beyond a groups very first adventure with the system. For everything else, skill challenges served better for handling conflict than combat.

Note that skill challenges are also encounters by 4e's definition.

And the DMG offers suggestions, such as having very tough battles count as two encounters, while very easy battles may not count as one at all. Though in the latter case, I'd just do what I did in my Mutants & Masterminds campaign: Ask them how they take down Worthless Mooks #1 through #6, no dice rolls necessary, so we can move on to the actual challenge.

You literally described it. Run it and make sure you are organizing skill challenges/traps like combat encounters for rewards purposes. Its a good system if you want crunch.

Hollow Earth Expedition/ Leagues of Adventure/ Desolation.

They are die pool systems, but the movement and combat rules are reminiscent of 3rd and 4th edition. The game has "talents" which fill the feat niche.

Fantasy Craft is more or less 3.5 that's been completely reworked to have sensible and fun rules. Combat is much more fun and varied, with maneuvers and tricks being viable, spelling being reined in, and a skill system that is built to work hand in hand with the rest of the system. It also has a very good NPC builder tool and a way to convert OGL stuff to work with it, so it would work with Shadow of the Demon Lord.

Yeah, it's a problem that 3.5 had that 4e likewise had. Being designed around (in 3.5's case, as much as you can say it was designed around anything) X number of setpiece encounters per day was stifling. I've heard it said that 4e was built to improve upon how 3.5 was played, but I feel all it accomplished was highlight just how ridiculous that style of play was.

>spelling being reined in
U wot m8?

Pretty much. The adventure board games are great because of that actually.

Out of curiosity, has anybody tried running a fantasy game using FATE before?

I've done it in the Eberron setting, works fine. Anything pulpy adventure is Fate's wheelhouse, and that includes sword+sorcery.

Oh, it is- it's just classic fantasy is outstanding. You have a fantasy race replacing culture, class replacing your career, and have passions built into character creation.

You achieve higher ranks (which basically codifies cult ranks) by meeting specific target numbers on all you class skills, and each rank gives special benefits and abilities along with additional luck points. And then it has miniature combat rules that are really crunchy but pretty cool looking.

I would stil probably prefer sticking to one book over two, but if I was going to run a combat focused dungeon crawler type game it would be the best system for it.