So what's the best combat system you've ever seen in tabletop? Roleplaying games, wargames and board games invited

So what's the best combat system you've ever seen in tabletop? Roleplaying games, wargames and board games invited.

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Honestly? The most fun I've had in a game with the right mix of simplicity and crunch was Ironclaw 2e. I was surprised.

Legends of the Wulin. I've rambled about it before on Veeky Forums, and quite recently, so I shouldn't go into too much depth, but long story short it's a unique system which combines narrative leanings and sensibilities with a crunchy, mechanically satisfying combat system that makes conflict a key part of storytelling.

I wrote up a combat example over at , but to best explain why I love the combat system so much I'll give an example from memory of a pivotal combat in a game and the results of it.

It was, oddly enough, a PvP situation. My PC and another character had never seen eye to eye, since the start of the game there had been friction between them. Over the time it grew and grew until it eventually came to blows.

The fight was fantastic. Not only was it a mechanically engaging and enjoyable struggle, it was an expression of our characters- Their philosophies, ideals and beliefs manifest and directly relevant to their strength and martial prowess, every clash of blade and fist letting them learn more and more about the other.

I don't really remember who won, because at the end of the fight it didn't really matter. Through the conflict, they'd gained a mutual understanding and respect, starting what would become a strong friendship.

And here's the amazing thing- Sure, in another system you could roleplay all that. LotW mechanically supported it. Beliefs and ideals granting beneficial Chi Conditions that you made use of in the fight directly informed the opponent about what they cared about, and the strengths they manifested based on them clashing were a literal duel of wills.

And then, when all was said and done? The systems flexible system for end of battle consequences let us impart benefits onto each other- More beneficial conditions representing the understanding we'd gained and the strength they shared going forward.

LotW has a lot of issues, I can repaste them if need be, but goddamn when it works it is like no other system I have ever played.

I like On Mighty Thews' because it's so simple and I don't like battling very much.
You roll whatever your warrior die is - d4, d8 or d12, and any skills you might have on d6 or d10. A simple warrior type character will usually have d12 in warrior, and d6 in sword, something like that.
You and enemy roll, and both actions always succeed - but for every 2 points the winner has above the other, you get an extra action. May it be hit again, or usually cancel the other's action. Players and important NPCs have 3 hp, less important enemies and characters have 1. One attack always deals one damage. That's it.

"Best" is 100% subjective, but I love GURPS combat. Mechanics tied very closely to the "fiction" of what happens in the game world, and being able to plan or strategize based on the weapon, user's skill and techniques, situational context, enemy's skill and techniques, moment-to-moment upsets etc. It's neat to have and make moment-to-moment decisions/choices that really matter and are based on things in the game's 'reality', knowing that the ogre's blade you just barely dodged could have actually taken your arm off as opposed to just knocking off a few HP or giving you a narrative Consequence, etc.

It also makes accomplishing "cinematic" things really impressive and all the sweeter in a "realistic"-style game. Of course, there's room for other stuff too. I like how easily it scales out to doing crazy shit like ninja flipping around dudes with machine guns and going all Black Widow on them, crazy road chases with insane motorcycle jumps followed by split-second opportunity fire at the wheels of the bomb-laden semi and cackling like mad as it loses control, jacknifes through the dividing barrier and into the cops driving to the scene from the other direction; all the way up to supers games where my Speedster can just roll DX to grab a passing missile and then ride it like a surfboard all the way to a few dozen meters before impact, leaping off and landing in time to do a cool pose near the target.

Anyway, rambling complete.

I really like Strike! for squad based tactical combat. I'm not sure it has many contenders in that category, aside from like 4e.

I would kill to see that kind of stuff in a less crunchy system. Having read some of LotW, I love the fluff and ideas, but the complexity of it all just kills me.

Maybe I've just spent too much time with my own thinly-veiled storygame with super-abstracted combat to even be able to read proper complex combat systems anymore.

>Ironclaw 2e
>first post
Good taste, my man. I don't know if I'd substitute it for EVERY game I played, but it has such a good mix of speed, lethality, and ease for the GM. My only problem with their whole "Cardinal System" is that the default reloading and misfire rules for firearms have been kind of underwhelming for each of their settings, whether it's supposed to be renaissance, sci-fi, or noir.

It'd be great to see more systems take ideas from it. Although I enjoy the unusual combination of mechanical crunch with narrativist design, I could see a cut down/simplified light LotW being an excellent game in its own right.

Sadly with the company imploding we'll get nothing new from them, and we've not heard anything in ages about Sage Genesis's own system, which started as a large scale LotW rewrite and ended up being something entirely new.

FFG Star Wars, oddly enough. One of the few games I've seen where everyone stays engaged during combat and roleplay doesn't come to a screeching halt as soon as initiative is rolled.

>tfw will never find an english sauce that isn't sadpanda

Honestly even as a degenerate furfag I went in with very, very low expectations. I was surprised at how well done it is.

The combat's fast and deadly, character building's fun with plenty of options and the setting's actually very good with no thinly veiled fetish crap. Definitely in my top 5 games.

Maybe I could take some strides for it... Once I've finished starting a sole proprietorship and publishing my first game, that is. Though, the game text is mostly ready by this point, so nothing's really keeping me from starting a new project, except needing to master and playtest the game I'm currently working with.

We'll see what kind of stuff I might come up with for it. I have millions of things lying around, but hasn't stopped me before.

Even your explanation of it was just... Kind of mindboggling. Although I'm publishing a game in a few months, I couldn't catch the red thread of it, it was so packed with stuff.


The real question lies in this:
Where would I even start?

Ideals? Probably, because I could see a system that has, instead of classic stats, numeric values for several types of ideals + some keywords. The fights would then take place more in the mental space rather than being strictly physical, with more diametrically opposite battles being more intense. The type of battle (doesn't even need to be a fistfight) and the "disagreement" (can be outright hostility) would determine which ideal would be used for which.

Probably have a kind of two-fold battle going on, where you cannot win the physical mettle without winning the mental one, and winning the mental one would give hard bonuses to beating the opponent. The game would probably then mostly be about trying to balance the two fights going on.

Now I'm just rambling, though.

It's a good kind of rambling, coming from a place of creativity and exploring new ideas. Good luck with getting your stuff finished and published, friend user. I know how hard it is for designers to really make their break in the indie RPG scene.

Please repaste issues.

Literally 5 seconds

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I can go into more detail, but in short

>Although as much as I love the system it comes with some heavy caveats. It's a very unusual system with a lot of different assumptions to usual, which isn't helped at all by the core book being an awfully edited piece of trash which makes actually figuring out how to play the game a total fucking pain, and the core book is imbalanced at points. Nowhere near 3.PF bad, but it still needs a bit of tweaking to run smoothly.

What parts are imbalance? Are certain options stronger/weaker than others? Trap options?

>Pissing by the fifth page
Fucking ew

I didn't read it, just sourced it.

I'll go through the few main ones and the solutions the groups I'm in use.

Of the two main defensive stats, RAW Footwork is much better than Block. Footwork lets you defend just as well as Block, but it also governs mobility. The fix to this is also allowing Block to be used for moving between zones, with the idea that doing so with Footwork represents moving over or around things, while doing so with Block represents moving Through things.

Armour, RAW, is really bad. It penalises important stats and skills to a ludicrous degree while providing nowhere near enough benefit. We remove all the penalties save the one to mobility and it works just fine.

The styles in the core book aren't properly balanced. Of the Externals, Destiny Cloud Fist and Great Ultimate Dragon are kinda bad while Flying Red Silk and Graceful Crane are really good. of Internals, Fire Sutra sucks while Heaven's Lightning is ridiculously OP. The fixes for these are a bit more complicated but they can all be found on the Wulin Legends wiki and in the Half Burnt Manual fan errata/supplement. Keep in mind that the wiki itself is also to be taken with a pinch of salt, it's hard to tell what is or isn't OP until you've learnt the system enough to tell. The guidelines they give for homebrewing your own stuff are sadly lacking.

The biggest lingering issue is Elemental Chi, which doesn't really have a proper fix yet. RAW, Elemental Chi is just better than Normal Chi, giving you a bonus pool which refills independently and can be spent for double on techniques of the same element, letting Elemental Chi users always be more efficient than Neutral Chi users.

There are a lot of potential fixes for this- Making everyone have Elemental Chi, making everything Neutral Chi, changing the rule which govern how Elemental Chi is regained etc etc. It's the fiddliest of the lot, sadly, without a real consensus on the best way to fix it.

Thank you.

Pathfinder

Thanks for encouragement, I will try to hang on.

But yes, back to the thread itself!
...
I actually hit a roadblock with this one. Maybe it's because I really dislike most combat systems that I created my own? But that answer would be a shitty cop-out. This angers me, because I really can't think of any game with combat, combat of which I would have enjoyed GMing. Playing is a different beast, but my experience with that is so limited that I can't really even say concrete answers to that.

Just go to Exhentai it's easy
>Clear your cookies
>Get an E-hentai account
>Visit the forum, maybe enter a board
>Done, you can now bypass Sad Panda

Ok here's my list of favorites in no particular order:
Street Fighter the Roleplaying Game.
The card/moveset system is fucking awesome. Except it kinda sucks in a RPG format because it requires shit ton of time for the gm to prepare cards and moves to named bad guys.

If this game was a full on wargame with miniatures and shit it would still be talked/remembered fondly by Veeky Forums I guarantee.

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
The best combat system in any super hero game, ever. Fight me 1v1 faggot - But I'll explain why:
- All the mechanics of the game converge into creating dice pools and keeping dice for numeric value and effects. Meaning it's super easy to pull off all sort of bullshit it would require an afternoon of reading shit in GURPS or Hero System (and I'm not dissing these systems they are all good - for different reasons)
- The Doom Pool. Holy shit, ok get this: The entire game session is a time attack roleplaying game, surprise! You need to use all your shit, all your powers, all special effects, all the plot points you get along the way to finish up encounters as quickly as fucking possible because every turn can mean that the doom pool growns. It is your duty to put the ever living pressure on the DM, force him to use his own resources for two reasons:
1) You roll non combat skill rolls against the doom pool, so as quickly it is depleted the easier is to do shit out of combat
2) If it reaches the maximum value the DM can fucking spend all the Dice in the Doom pool to simply say "Dr. Doom pulls out a fuck you gun and fucks your shit up before he escapes through his time machine".

YOU NEED to make that fuck face of a gm to spend those dice or to quickly reach the end point of the session before he can fuck your shit in with the doom pool.

For this combat system to work, you need a DM who isn't afraid of fucking the group over. It's ok though, the system gives the players -power- to play around.the most intense game of tug-of-war ever put to pen

(con)
And then comes... Shadowrun Anarchy
Let me start by saying that I love Shadowrun 3e, 4e and 5e for all different reasons.

And I've always loved the combat in said games, it's crunchy I know but when stars aligned you get some fucking awesome and intense action scenes.

Enter Anarchy.
Sure there's that pesky "cue system" trying to be all unique how you play out of combat, whatever. The combat has been streamlined, yet at the same time expanded. Expanded because the game brings guidelines on how to create your own cybernetic enhancements, magic, rigger bots and whatever the fuck. Once you get it, you can create some cool shit on it. It's not as comprehensible as 5e, but it's so easy to custom tailor your shit that is still cool.

NOW add a similar system from Marvel Heroic. Sure, there is no "time attack" doom pool mechanic, however you still get to spend plot points and whenever you do, the GM gets it too. You can essentially break the game with these, countering attacks, healing your ass, attacking twice and so on. You get to use these points once a turn and a good dm is flinging them like candy as long you are still alive and roleplaying.
The game is like regular shadowrun combat scenes, but ON STEROIDS. Shit is exploding, reinforcements are rappeling down your ass, you are killing 4 niggers per turn with your bare fis, so on and so forth.
Anarchy essentially has a system where combats can turn into chaotic messes and I love the SHIT out of it.

Has anyone played Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition? I've been interested in running it for a long time. Is the combat as visceral as it seems, or should I just run Riddle of Steel?

Yes to both questions.
Do play it though, it's a great game.

RuneQuest 6/Mythras is the most engaging battle system I have used. At first it seems complicated until you run it, then it runs too smoothly as you feel like some of the effects applied by attacks are OP, and then the GM (me) starts throwing advanced strategies at the players and they have to scramble and use the full system to win a fight.

Takes about the same amount of time to play a fight out as D&D, but with the satisfaction of something like GURPS with a bit more elegance. The supplemental rules on firearms and mass combat are great too, and the combat system directly translates to vehicular combat making it easy to have incredibly cinematic conflicts.

>Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

my Wakandan brutha from anotha motha

Kickstarter soon fellow Hero.

Not him but tell me more, I played a session of Heroic a few years back and I never got into it again but I like what I saw.

>doesn't like piss
No taste.

To sum a long ass story short:
- OG game was hamstring as shit due to Marvel being kinda ignorant to what people expect/want from a roleplaying game, they pulled the plug just as they were picking up with one of the hottest supplements I've ever seen (Anhiliation was fucking dope, hunt that shit down if you can)
- Margaret Weis, the publisher, said it would run a kickstarter in 2016
- Turns out the old lady wanted to focus on some other projects, sells the book rights to one of the main dudes that worked on it
- Dude is super approachable and answer questions all the time, I personally asked him about the future of the franchise and he said in a google + community (yeah I know...) he will be running a Kickstarter in 2017 to finally get the game back on track, this time unbound by Marvel limitations, using an original setting but the same mechanics + expansion to finally give the game a better character creation ruleset.

Future is bright, let's hope they don't fuck up.

I can't get enough of runequest. It can be difficult to get into and there are a lot of rolls but fights never last more than a couple of rounds, kinda like fencing. Characters without armor rarely survive the first hit and even if they do the damage is limb based so they will probably end up disabled

I'm looking for similar systems to try preferably ones that track bleeding and organ damage, does anything like this exist?

>
I'm looking for similar systems to try preferably ones that track bleeding and organ damage, does anything like this exist?
GURPS does this in the basic set, and expands on both bleeding and hit locations/organs/vitals/arteries/joints etc. in Martial Arts.

Only other one I'm aware of.

I got the manuscript ready for a wrestling game that tracks bleeding in specific body parts as well the disabling of said body parts in a match, not sure if it's what you are looking for.

Only if he renames his dick to "Holy Vengeance" and cumming to "smiting", so at the climax he can scream

>DEMON!
>I SHALL SMITE YOU WITH HOLY VENGEANCE!!

>Kickstarter soon fellow Hero.
so hype

Anima's.

Which kind of combat system? Just asking for "the best combat system" won't help you in any way unless you want to play the exact game that gets suggested. What kind of game are you looking for?

OP is probably looking for ideas to implement in a game, rather than looking for the game itself.

But that's exactly why I'm asking him what kind of combat system he wants. If he for example wants a minimal system and all the answers he gets are pathfinder or whatever, how is that going to help him?

Well, theoretically OP can just pick and choose from all the options, and check some crunchier out to figure out interesting dichotomies.

Taking a one or two good ideas from a crunchier system and putting it to a lighter one, or vice versa, is not that difficult, in the end.

Also, now that I read this all again, now I have started to understand how the game works. Really interesting stuff.

My biggest hurdle in understanding that system is the Loresheets. Specifically, what happens if you lose something you bought? For example, an NPC you wanted hooked into the story gets murdered through PC action, or you abandon an organization you joined. Do you get to spend the points elsewhere? Are they lost? Do they subtract from your Cultivation until you re-earn them and buy something else?

Came here to say the same. It's an oddly great system, from what little I've played of it so far

That's one of the things the book does an awful job of actually explaining.

Honestly, Loresheets are kind of a clusterfuck, letting you earn significant mechanical benefits alongside pure fluff effects or even single use temporary things like starting a tournament.

The way the groups I'm with play it, Entanglement and Destiny put into Loresheets cannot be lost. If you'd lose something you invested in you get the points back to invest elsewhere, while for temporary things like starting a tournament, after the tournament is resolved the E/D is spent on loresheet benefits related to the events and results of the tournament.

The whole system is kinda janky though. A bugbear of mine is forcing people to pick between mechanically useful options and flavour stuff, since I think it's never a fun choice if you have to pick one of being useful in a fight or having something fun and flavourful for your character. If you're lucky they're one and the same, but that's not always true.

My current rather janky solution is splitting Entanglement into two separate progression currencies, Entanglement for pure fluff things and 'Lore' for anything mechanical.

>Marvel Heroic Roleplaying
A lovely system that is utterly fucked by those people with terrible no-fun habits from no-fun RPGs who are confused when you ask what they're actually doing.
God damn you, Kris, you joyless self-absorbed hack of a "writer."

I'm excited for the Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG, whenever that's coming out. Based on what I've seen it's pretty much a spiritual successor (and it's even designed by Cam Banks, who designed Heroic).

...

Does the Half-Burnt Manual stop a Graceful Crane + Removing Concepts + Courtier character with Quick Work from snapping both combat and noncombat in half?

As far as I can remember, that is one of the game's most powerful builds from character creation.

4e DnD.
Best and most interesting combat system there is.

the SFRPG got "updates" in the form of Fight! and Thrash, fighting game RPGs that make things slightly less retarded. I think they still aren't good games though.

Overall I quite like the card based initiative/action combat system, and am working on my own.

Seconding this.

Out of board games, basically all of the Fantasy Strike games are about combat on some level, and they are quite fun. Yomi is probably the most in-depth, but Flash Duel is pretty neat little game as well.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

because it's good?

In my limited board game experience I'm going to have to go with Forbidden Stars.

If it was, nobody would be complaining.

If it wasn't, nobody would like it

Risus, surprisingly. Once you figure out that it's mostly a diceless system using dice things get oddly tactical with teaming up, cliche pumping, and inappropriate cliches.
I'd also like to mention Swords & Wizardry White Box (and to a lesser extent OD&D) since I rather like the group-based initiative, single saving throw, and morale mechanics. I also like how hit dice and weapon damage both use d6 dice, it feels more elegant that way.

3.PF exists.

I think you're kinda overstating how good that particular combination was, although you're correct in that it's one of the strongest RAW combat builds.

I can't remember how the HBM does it, but in my groups we just rule that skill boosting Chi techniques don't apply to Secret Arts attacks, to make the Chi cost of various techniques make sense. Actual secret arts boosts should be as or more expensive than Strike boosters, while Skill boosts make sense being cheaper for the same degree of bonus.

I was trying to counter one bullshit absolutism ("If it was good, nobody would complain about it") by making another ('If it was bad, nobody would like it") to show how retarded it is.

So yeah, PF (and most other systems in existence) being both loved and hated is sorta the point I'm making.

>Street Fighter the Roleplaying Game
I agree. It should really be a game where you sit down with premade characters and go Final Fight on some asses.
>tfw Player's Guide is stuffed to the gills with stupid shit

>MHRP
Have an Internet high-five. Great system bogged down by some issues with character creation and the fact that it's way too easy to take some people out. Fixed somewhat by PP and the Doom pool, but a d12 power taking almost anyone out in one still bugs at me.
Stress track needs to be modified, but it's pretty excellent otherwise.