Mechanics you love in a system

I'll start:

>no specified number of actions you can take, you can do multiple things, but each action beyond the first imposes a penalty on all rolls

>Checks against a contantly rising number; wounds instead of HP, strain instead of mana/ki/whatever

What systems do this?

Unisystem, though there is a cap to stop "I take a million attack rolls."

I'm still in love with the core mechanic of Legends of the Wulin. It's so incredibly elegant and achieves things I've not seen any other system manage, like multiple simultaneous actions with different values on the same roll. It creates so much interesting decision making almost every time you throw the dice, making rolling interesting rather than just perfunctory.

I also love abstract damage systems, particularly ones which avoid or invert the death spirtal, like Tenra Bansho Zero.

>though there is a cap

So it's basically like every other game at mid-levels.

>Every other game
>Levels
Sure, kid.
On the off chance you were being serious: Unisystem usually simulates fairly close to human characters, and there's not a decent supers splatbook for it so yeah, I suppose. The cap in Classic is usually your Dex+1, so between 2 and 6 actions in five or so seconds. Note that things like autofire are rolled into longer actions, not resolved as single shots.

LotW seems very interesting, but if everyone can take several actions with one roll, does a single turn take a long while? Or as after the roll it's just number allocation, a single turn doesn't take almost any longer than with a regular game?

>not having a cap equal to your skill level

Star Wars d6 did it really well:
Imagine you have a blaster skill of 4D:
You could shoot once at 4D, twice at 3D, three times at 2D, or four times at 1D.

Turns can be slightly longer in LotW, it is a very involved system, but it's part of what I like about it. For those looking for a lighter RPG I wouldn't recommend it as much.

>XP can be spent to improve your attributes as well as getting short term benefits (you make up some reason like, 'oh during my days as a thief I knew a shady guy who can show us a secret way into the castle') or even rerolls.

Numera does this and it's one of the things I liked the most from it.

Common houserule. A lot of tables (and all the Cinematic Unisystem games) just cap at three.
To be honest, it rarely comes up at my table as the extra actions in a round are usually things like aiming (works differently), draw and fire in the same turn, or fire and maneuver.
The one truly ungodly firearms expert we had would rather stack up called shot penalties than multiple action ones.

Eurgh, no. Spending permanent progression on temporary bonuses is the fucking worst, it just takes the uneven XP problem and makes it more severe.

Talislanta

It's not a mechanic itself, but I love high granularity.

It's just nice to have sufficient detail to model a character being slightly below average, or slightly better than a layman. Not just crippled->bad->average->good->superhuman.

Dynamic fights rules. Aka everyone move at the same time.

Is there any system at all that does it well except super-light ones?

Retraining rules, where I can change an ability choice I made if it's not working out, like if I end up not finding any opportunities to use it.

You can houserule most games with simple initiative to simultaneous action, the problem is that you end up relying on dex checks or whatnot to determine order when it's relevant, or end up with combats where both parties can die at the same time (unsatisfying at best).

"treasure for xp" and the implications that it has in classic D&D.

You adventure to gain treasure, which grants you XP. Because of carrying capacity, figuring out how to bring it back to civilization gives room for clever plans that interact more deeply with the game world.

Once you return the treasure to civilization, you have to cash out. Some little village isn't going to cash out a bunch of exotic artifacts, and not everyone wants what treasure you recover. For example, if you have 10,000 gp worth of silk bolts, finding someone who you can sell it to can be a fun roleplaying experience.

Then there are mechanics which drain money, like training, sages, carousing, and building temples/wizard towers/castles at high level. So you have to adventure some more, and the process begins anew.

One Roll Engine.

I love the fact that in TBZ, the more damaged you are the more powerful you become, to the point where you can accept a death-blow to basically do anything.

Dogs in the Vineyard poker dice. If it wasn't too crunchy for indie fags it would have spread further and FFG would have bastardized it already.

>The worse your stats are, the more cool or unique things you get to make up for it
Into The Odd does this quite nicely, with your character having a chance to own an artifact right off the bat. The Gene Hack also does this as well, with worse stats giving you more HP and abilities to survive. Makes rolling characters very fun because they all become more viable in their own ways.