What systems have a combat system structured not around chance, but skill?

What systems have a combat system structured not around chance, but skill?

I'm not talking about a system ENTIRELY devoted to combat and its nitty gritty details, but a system that has a combat system that gives players enough choices without overwhelming them. Dodging, blocking, parrying, moving around, all being used actively and not just as fluff resulting from a die roll.

I remember 4E being a lot like that, but it's been almost a decade since I last played it, so I don't remember a lot about it.

Pic related because I was trying to come up with some cool Zelda inspired dungeons for an OSR game, when I realized that the exciting combat encounters in those games would just boil down to mostly luck, if not avoided at all, in an OSR game.

Legends of the Wulin has a really interesting combat system with a lot of meaningful choices involved. It's still somewhat random, dice being dice, but what you do in combat and how you exploit the environment and your opponent is key to victory.

LotW isn't a system for everybody though. It's crunchy while also having narrative sensibilities, makes a lot of odd assumptions and does things differently to the norm, and makes it all that much harder to actually learn and use with an awfully edited and laid out core book.

I fucking love the system, but it's certainly not something for everyone.

bump

The old Marvel system had a system where you assigned stones to attacks and defenses and from that would get results. There was no randomness of any kind, just how much each side comitted to what and how long they could keep it up.

MYFAROG

I'd suggest looking at Wushu. It still uses dice technically, but the success of every action will hinge on how well your describe it. You're encouraged to make the biggest, flashiest description of cool ass stunts as you can for more bonuses.

So it's "skill based" in terms of the player skill of coming up with/describing cool action sequences.

>I'm not talking about a system ENTIRELY devoted to combat and its nitty gritty details, but a system that has a combat system that gives players enough choices without overwhelming them. Dodging, blocking, parrying, moving around, all being used actively and not just as fluff resulting from a die roll.
Riddle of Steel, combat is a game-within-a-game that functions exactly as what you're looking for.

No, it's not as fucking complicated as some retards think it is, Song of Swords overcomplicated it.

All of them.
Those numbers on the sheet? That's the SKILL of your fucking character. They represent how good he is at dodging, blocking, parrying, moving around. Playing Advanced Rock Paper Scissors with your DM in addition or lieu of rolling doesn't make it skill based.

>Playing Advanced Rock Paper Scissors with your DM in addition or lieu of rolling doesn't make it skill based.

It absolutely does though. It's just usually at odds with roleplaying; what if your DM wants you to go up against a really badass warrior, but he himself is bad at the skills the game is testing (since we are talking about a system with weighed RPS, that'd be valuation and reading your opponent)? He'd be unable to play such a character without arbitrary inflated stats, which has its own problems. Basically, the more skill it takes to play a game, the harder it is for the players/gm to portray a skilled person effectively.

I still love the concept of such games though. A pity I don't know any that are good enough that I'd recommend.

LotW, Riddle of Steel, were mentioned already. If you like the 4e style strategy, I quite like Strike!, which has a streamlined version of its class based combat system. Valor does something similar, but I prefer the class based approach.

Any of them. When you have a swordfight in game, you have to beat the DM in real life swordfight. Isn't that how RPGs are meant to be played?

I think he just wants a well defined area of competency. Most D20 games boil down to, "roll 8 or higher for 3 rounds in a row to succeed."

Well, I can't really use d20s since the DM permanently smashed my remaining hand with a hammer.

To think of it, we don't really play anymore since my mate spilled his guts. Shame.

The thing about 'fun' is that it is strongly contingent on suspense. There is something innately fun about watching that die roll to see if you get your number, something innately fun about having only a one-in-ten shot of success and having it work out. Randomisation also negates the sting of loss a little - if you roll a one, well, the dice were against you, there's nothing you could do.

You might be able to negotiate the space between randomisation and skill by having a set pool of results, which are not refreshed during encounters, and causing your players to decide how to spend those dwindling resources. Like, before the battle begins, have each player roll their dice 10 times and note each result on a slip of paper, then have them tender those slips in response the challenges they have to meet. As their resources are limited, they'll need to carefully plot their moves, and sometimes accept a small failure in order to save a big success for the late game.

A system which used card pools could be successful in this. You cap skills at '7' and each player has a deck of ten cards which go "1,2,2,3,3,3,3,4,4,5" with the goal being that you must combine the skill of your character + the card to equal '8' or better to pass the challenge. For added chuckles, add a 'critical fail' and a 'critical success' card for a deck of 12. You can then have players play cards to pass challenges, and not allow them to be refreshed until a condition is met - the party rests, for example. In battle, the DM's minions could have small decks of three or four cards, depending on their level, and players could draw the top three cards of whatever remains in their deck. The minion flips the top card 'war' style, and the player chooses from their limited pool how to respond. I'm sure a system like this already exists, but it's one way to negotiate the fun of chance and the strategy of skill.

Dread is skill based. At least at first. As it progresses things get harder. Maybe a player fails to be skill enough, maybe they were unlucky and there was nothing they could do. Either way the tower falls and their PC dies.

I understand all of that; I'm not advocating against randomness in RPGs. I'm simply looking for alternative methods of resolution that don't rely too much on dice.

Huh, that sounds interesting enough. Let me give it a read.

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

>I'm going to be a pedantic dick hole, that will make me look smart!

Holy fuck, go back to /v/.

Recommending something isn't shilling, you absolute fucking mongoloid.

>I understand all of that ... I'm looking for alternative methods of resolution
Did you only read the first paragraph, or..?

pay him no heed, it's just a meme.

> What systems have a combat system structured not around chance, but skill?
Wargames and eurogames? Not RPGs?? What is this question even???

I did read the rest, it's a nice idea.

I've thought about using cards like that before. There's also the Burning Wheel/Mouse Guard/Torchbearer method, that while still having dice, shakes things up a bit by having the players script their actions in advance, trying to figure out which moves the enemies will try and pull next.

I thought about making "mini-dekcs" for each enemy type, which would result in enemies having a predictable yet still somewhat random attack pattern, which would add to the "Zeldaish" combat feel.

>I thought about making "mini-dekcs" for each enemy type, which would result in enemies having a predictable yet still somewhat random attack pattern, which would add to the "Zeldaish" combat feel.

Kingdom Death has something like this, may be worth a check if you can get the rules pdf.

Legends of the Wulin, Riddle of Steel and 4e always seem like an interesting trinity to me, because they all have good combat systems in very different ways. GNS is a very flawed metric, but it works as a vague descriptor here, with 4e being an excellent example of a 'gamist' combat system, Riddle of Steel and its various successors being flagships of good 'simulationist' combat, and Legends of the Wulin being one of the only examples of a good, crunchy 'narrativist' combat system.

I've checked it out already, thanks for the suggestion though. It was definitely very crucial in advancing my idea.

I had this first idea when discussing how a Megaman-inspired board game should work, and a friend then proposed using the idea in a tabletop RPG.

OP if you want a system that's a good match for Zelda you should focus on one more thing besides skill over luck: speed.
For how much skill a system may involve, it will not feel like Zelda if it is slow clunky and complicated.
I don't have any reccomendations myself, but I suggest out of all the ones you get in this thread, you try to find a good compromise between skill based and simple and fast. Emphasis on compromise, obviously one of these qualitties tends to get in the way of the other (the more complex a system is, the more skill it can require, but it'll come at the cost of speediness).

I'm looking forward to finding out what your ultimate pick will be.

So, for people that know their way around in LotW: Can you attack multiple people with one attack, outside of an AoE marvel? Can't find anything in the rules, but at the same time it'd be weird if you couldn't punch two or three guys around at once in an kung Fu Adventure game.

RAW, you need to declare a single target when you make your attack roll and target all your stuff on them. We tend to think this is dumb and let you assign your multiple actions against any eligible target, although this gets a bit confusing when you're dealing with Malicious Joss.

Do you solve this by making multiple rolls, or do you make one roll and need to assign the sets you get?

Never make multiple rolls. LotW doesn't work if you let anyone make multiple rolls for the same action. The latter is always the case.

I see.
So, another question: You can pretty much attack anyone in a zone, but how exactly do you handle it if you want to prevent somebody from attacking someone else? Or does RAW just not have rules for that?

Numenera/Cypher

Player's still have luck based die rolls, but tasks and tests are easier in magnitudes(!) if you are more skilled in XYZ.

... And if you are you are skilled enough you auto success at some tasks- no dice rolled. This includes combat related tasks.

RAW there aren't rules for it, which IMO is an oversight. There are a few homebrew Internal Styles on the wiki which lets you do it, but I think having a Marvel, Wave or some other sort of default action that lets you do so would be cool.

You're gonna need to be more specific about what you want. Every system I have played with a specific set of rules for combat has actions/moves/whatever for everything you specified, and I've had players make use of just about everything in the combat kits to great effect.
All in all, I've had very different combat experience than you have. Can you explain why you think it mostly boils down to luck?

This is impossible to read. Seriously.
Is there a tldr anywhere?

Check out runequest for dynamic reaction/action combat.

I honestly don't know. About six times so far, I've been in a game discussion with some idiot, and out of nowhere he starts telling me about how great his 4e heartbreaker is, when it's probably one of the most awkward and unlikable systems conceived.

I've basically just gone ahead and decided that if we're talking systems, and someone brings up Strike!, I just bow out. It's essentially an instant "I have no idea what I'm talking about" card.

It's horror game jenga. Actions are pulling from the tower and when the tower falls your character is removed from the game.

Song of Swords.