Fightingsmart:

So do you know any good combat systems that reward fighting smart?

I was thinking about it recently. Myself I am 6ft Tall, and like 190 lbs, quite athletic with good muscle bulk and surprising speed for my weight. I am doing boxing currently and I have over 12 years experience with different martial arts (including striking, self defence and some basic groundwork). Within my boxing club I can pretty much take on anybody of similar reach as mine and while there are some people who are obviously better skilled and trained than me and would win even being lighter or shorter, I would still put up a fight. So let's say I am a considerable fighter.
Now I've been thinking let's say I'm facing somebody stronger and bigger than me in a street fight situation and the only way I could possibly win would be to bring some "tools" or use the environment to my advantage. After all I am also a resourceful person. It made me come up with a character idea of a smart fighter. Character with an average physique and good skills who relies on his brains to defeat enemies rather than his brawn or pure trained skill.
How would you handle it in your settings?

/tldr/ Intelligence/Charisma/Wisdom as combat stats. pic unrelated

GURPS.

The answer is always GURPS

It's one of the few all-rounder systems that don't shy away from crunch and meta tactics for its base mechanics. Not that it's faultless mind you, you can go to the SJ forums or gurpsgen if you want to know its flaws.

Overall though, GURPS doesn't just do something most other systems don't, it also does it very well since the people involved in making GURPS were very good at math.

If you have a decent GM the system shouldn't really matter.

FATE. It's well suited for the "using your environment" style of fighting.

Indirectly, a lot of systems allow you to build fighting characters who rely on the INT stat.

Martial arts fag here. It has always been obvious to me that to defeat someone stronger, you have to be faster. Also, fighting dirty.

Dirty tricks include: Sand in eyes, crotch-shots, weapons that allow you to grapple, like caestus, spitting and biting, pulling on loose things like hair, piercings and genitals, and my personal favourite: small joint manipulation like twisting and breaking fingers, wrists and kneecaps. Dont underestimate kneecaps.

>small joint manipulation like twisting and breaking fingers, wrists and kneecaps
other martialartsfag here: my favourite lesson I took away from my old intructor was 'the bigger the person the smaller the joint' against someone smaller than yourself twist an arms or whatever, about the same size, wrist, the freakin mountain, just snap a pinkie or something (you'd still lose but you'd have some bragging rights)

Brawler or arena fighter make hevy use of environmental elements. All fighters utilize wis secondary. System is dnd 4e

Those fighters are still STR based.

But you could be a knight/other essentials MBA martial with Intelligent Blademaster or Mlee training (INT) for example.

Intelligence decides how many total martial and magic skills a character may learn; representing, well, their capacity for learning.
Magic power and resistance could be assigned to an "attunement" stat, representing their alignment with magical energies.

Wisdom acts as a minor bonus to all Damage reduction and dealing, representing the application of all the character's knowledge; knowing where to hit, how to hit, how to move, all the little nuances that veterans know to make their lives easier.

Charisma could work towards the benefit of your allies, through encouragement, and to the downfall of your enemies, through taunting, coercion, misinformation, distraction, etc. With Wisdom also granting bonuses to this; being charismatic is only half the battle, you need to know how to apply it.

RECON gives playing in character bonuses and xp boosts for not being a retard when shtf. Super punishing. Recommended read is Small Unit Tactics pdf the US Army put out. If playing VC style, Learning To Eat Soup With A Knife is top teir, just long.

Keyboard warrior here with generations of family in service and therefore a lot of manuals: only have a couple months of training with notable hand to hand skills. One thing I remember my instructors showing us is how to destroy the willingness to fight then stabbing shooting them.
Army "combatives" at low levels teach you to dominate a grapple while your buddy stabs them. Higher levels teach you more. Older versions, pre 2000's, tell you how to crush testies, snap fingers, and tear out eyes. OSS manual is mostly chokes and dagger usage while their tactics books were more focused on small team raids and ambushes. Nathainel King, a notable mountain man and beaver trapper in the 1820's, often sited in his diary that there was no rules in a fight for your life. World War 2 Marines would learn how to trip, dick kick, and maim then kill their opponents( With The Old Breed). From the same book, there is a great scene where E.B. Sledge tells about the marine weilding the flame thrower. He recounts how he sees this guy trotting all over the island and after clearing out a bunker, thought to be clear, of Japs, he just trots away. Frightfully scenic.

You can make an ultra real historical detail (or whatever theme you prefer) wank fest combat system, and it will still sound incredibly silly or awkward during a session unless the players are very familiar with the source material, have the same goal in mind and play their characters well.

IF you have players who are great at role-playing and familiar with the source material, they'll make any system sound great.

The better my group is and the more I feel we are on the same page, the more likely I am to run a very bare-bones system.

You can even consider if you think that your fighter being smart and using lots of situational awareness is more of a plot point, or more of something you want simulated in depth in the rules.

Is the important part that you go through 10 steps during combat where you get to choose between different options or is the important part that your character makes up for his lack of stature with bonuses from whatever cool idea you think of in the moment?

At the end of the day, the rules should facilitate the kind of mood and story you want, they're there to make things run smoothly. The rules are not the point of the exercise, and when you try to make the rules the game, you're better off playing board games or computer games.

The fiction is the strength of role-playing games.

This imo as a DM as long as my players give me a semi smart plan I give them anywhere to +3 to +6 depending on how smart it is.

Shouldn't ALL systems reward this?

Its less about mechanics and more about the plan and prep.

My experience of GURPS was endless parries and only a 90% chance of hitting someone when I was literally holding my blade against them

Was the GM running it wrong or is GURP just a shitty system?

This is one of the things Savage Worlds does well. It has Smart Tricks and Agile Tricks, which let you distract, stun, or potentially even wound enemies you're too strong to fight directly.

Your GM was running it wrong. Very wrong, by the sound of it.

OP here and from experience - Charisma can be all. More times than I would even start trading blows I would just scare the guy away before anything happens or just unload the situation with some humour. In fact the confidence goes a very long way and that's why so many proffesional fighters will trash talk. Most fights are won before they even happen. There's this guy on youtube Charisma on Command is his channel name and he made some good analysis on MacGregor.
Other than that, ther was this system back home where before each fight enemies would stare each other down with a Charisma test and the loser would suffer a considerable penalty to all combat actions against the winner.
I always pick Charisma on my characters.

Never played. Might look into it.

Would be nice if apart from spouting GURPS you guys told us how the game does it. I mean, I know it's a meme and almost the boku no pico of Veeky Forums, but still.

lurk moar fag

Well, once you're "stuck in," as it were, you don't really think in the sort of puzzle-solving brainiac way that you're describing (if I'm getting your meaning).

You're still responding to the fight as its going on, but those responses are either a)instinct or b)trained in.

The "fight smart" sort of stuff primarily comes in before hand. Like my kung fu teacher knew a guy that studied under HIS teacher that used to be a Hong Kong street fighter. One time he got basically baited into a trap, but he knew it was coming. So he took out the squirt gun he'd filled with acid, blasted a dude in the eyes and got away.

Pocket sand should always be a caRd you can play.

Blackbird pie rewards creative problem solving for breaking large problems into smaller ones.

The way the stats work its really tough to one hit someone like the big bad, so, instead you narrate smaller victories or preparations to reduce the DC of the "kill him" roll.

For example, if you wanted to summon a powerful demon and bind them, instead of just rolling for it you can roll to prepare the ritual, roll to mediate, roll to summon and then roll to bind.