Dealing with fighting

My system of choice has fairy detailed and granular melee combat, meaning fluff rarely is 100% simple fluff; there's a mechanical difference between an uppercut to the nose and a karate-chop to the throat or a katana swung at and arm and one thrusters at the torso.

Fluff and combat descriptors mostly come down to degrees of success i.e. a graceful arc of a blade vs a clumsy lunge.

Currently looking for a system that would support lots of melee stances/maneuvers, any advice? Checking out Song of Swords, Riddle of Steel, 5e.

I know this fucking pain more than you can imagine, to the point where I have simply given up

here. I use GURPS and I love the level of detail you can get. For maximum 'tism, grab Martial Arts, Technical Grappling, Low-Tech, and Gladiators.

My players don't really do it, so I do my best to describe combat. It's getting pretty hard to find new ways to say "you killed it with your greatsword," though. Damn great weapon fighters....

A lot of the time I'll admit its me describing their attacks for them either because they don't do it themselves or because I guess I don't let them. Its something I'm going to change and I'll start giving them bonuses for describing their attacks.

What about the opponents then?

>I'll start giving them bonuses for describing their attacks.
Thank you for reminding me that's something I could do.

Lead by example. Let their opponents do extra stuff based on your descriptions and point out that they can do it too. Reward the behavior you want to see more, basically.

It would be playing fast and loose with the rules, which is not something I'm to comfortable with considering I struggle to stick to the rules in the first place.

It would have to be soft bonses, nothing with rules already for it like tripping or grappling. But like...
"Your devlish assualt over powers his defenses. You slash at his face but he jerks backwards. The tip of your blade merely cuts through the bridge of his nose, but put him off balance and he slumps backwards against the stone wall"
Move him backwards a square against a wall, has to stand up straight on his turn or take a minus to his attack, but is easier to trip because hes off balance.

Thanks, I'll check it out!

On a different note, if someone here has knowledge of both GURPS and Anima:BF, how would you say are they different in regard to combat? I'm looking to run high fantasy sort of game.

Your description is shitty.

>DM: "You bring your Greatsword round in a mighty swing, the blade digging into the throat of the Kobold. Your hands shudder slightly as the Greatsword finds bone, but with effort you force your blade through the Kobold's spine, decapitating him where he stands.

No "Heavenly red rain slice muh heart" bullshit.

Yeah, something like that sounds about right. You'll just have to play it by ear, and don't be afraid to recall your judgement if you went too far. Just be open about it!

Not in 5e. It's mentioned in the DMG under the Inspiration section. Basically gives your player a free reroll.

>but with effort you force your blade through the Kobold's spine,

that's not how it works. your blade either stops in the spine or it doesn't. if it did, it halts the whole motion, but would probably still jerks the kobold sideways (and killing it obviously). you don't stop and force it through, this is not anime. it's not about strength, it's about momentum.

I have knowledge only of gurps but it seems pretty gritty to me, I don't like using it outside of 'people die when you shoot them' sorts of games

When GMing I try to give short descriptions that are dramatic or at least amusing, hit or miss. I think it helps that I don't actually flatly say what's mechanically happening unless the PCs are outright confused or something. I've been told it makes things more engaging/immersive, but my paranoia makes me think they just say it to not hurt my feefees since none of them ever do that shit when they GM.

When playing I don't bother since no one else does. It's very awkward being the lone guy embellishing his actions while everyone else just rolls dice. I was in an adventurer's league game once where everyone was super into it though. Embellished descriptions, character accents, the works. Felt totally outclassed in that group.

I usually give descriptions BECAUSE the HP system is an abstract one. so when the wizard gets 17 damage and he still has more than half his hp, i just say the sword comes directly to your face, you stand there frozen, scared to death, but your mage armor flashes up and stops it just centimeters from your eyes and the blade bounces away. you jerk back, not thinking of the moistness in your pants.

>"He's bent over so do I get a bonus to hit?"
"He would recover in the time it takes for you to ready your next action. Though if someone were to get into flanking position and attack sooner, he would be hard pressed to mount a defense..."
the "bonus" would simply be normal rules now.

i meant to bring up HP because players often misunderstand what damage represents. so this way it's easier for them to imagine.

Nah, you want to entice your players with small bonuses. You can't force them to describe their actions with more color, but you can get them into the habit by coupling it with bennies.

>I usually give descriptions BECAUSE the HP system is an abstract one.

It's not and derivations of DnD trying to say it is flat-out lie, because they still have poisons, and characters chewed on and swallowed by Colossal monsters, and shit.

>so when the wizard gets 17 damage and he still has more than half his hp,

"The blow carved up your chest with a spray of blood, but neither your lungs not heart are easily visible from outside yet, so you can fight on".

Whatever you do, avoid Blade of the Iron Throne. It is objectively terrible. Never has it taken me so much time to stab a man to death, and never have I been so bored while doing so.

Minimally. Time is limited enough, spells and maneuvers are more worthy of description and require it more so that players have easier time visualising what they do, so normal attack spam only deserves special attention only when something extraordinary, like le epic crits, happen, or when players' attention must be drawn to pertinent facts, such as their attacks doing no damage.

>"The blow carved up your chest with a spray of blood, but neither your lungs not heart are easily visible from outside yet, so you can fight on".
This is objectively false way to describe the wound, because the character isn't suffering from penalties, bleeding, or shock from the blow.

>Never has it taken me so much time to stab a man to death, and never have I been so bored while doing so
Did they forget to copy wrestling rules from TRoS? It's brutal against armored and tough opponents.

I got in s weird mood once while running a simple combat against eight goblins, so I inserted flavor text as they were slain which created significant emotional relationships between them.

One player said that he felt like he'd killed the goblin cast of Downton Abbey, and another had their character swear a vow of pacifism and started rolling up another.

So, being descriptive is both desirable and not, and there is decidedly a point of diminishing returns.

I see. I like the concept of epic magic, as per D&D high (up to 10th) level spells, maybe AoW series global map spells.

All right, thanks!

>It's not and derivations of DnD trying to say it is flat-out lie, because they still have poisons, and characters chewed on and swallowed by Colossal monsters, and shit.

it's a mish-mash, but poisons that cause direct damage can be easily interpreted as causing pain and other distracting effects, muscle weakness etc, that are not high enough to become a status like dazzled or str damage, but enough to strain your survivability.
when you start to fight colossal monsters you can safely assume superhuman abilities, but still, one of the DMGs suggested using the character's class as explanation. martial classes are just crafty, put your shield into the mouth of the enemy so it can't exactly chew on your bones, or put a stick into it like Luke Skywalker did, holy types are protected by divine favor, mage types use lvl-1 tricks and superior analysis to get out of these situations without suffering serious wounds.

also, if you have a divine healer in the group, you _can_ cause serious wounds, wounds that are believably allow the character to keep on fighting for a minute (which is 10 rounds), and need treatment only after that.

>This is objectively false way to describe the wound, because the character isn't suffering from penalties, bleeding, or shock from the blow.

Even in real combat there is very little middle ground between 100% fine and 100% disabled within typical timeframes of DnD (most battles over under a minute). People do not even notice all but the most serious and disabling wounds during the initial adrenaline rush. Sometimes even if those wounds are fatal, just no immediately.

DnD, however, does not emulate real combat. It emulates heroic fiction, with Conan the Barbarian close to the bottom of its power ladder and street-level supers being about normal. In such fiction, no matter how badly a hero is torn up (and even Conan more than once had his skin hanging in tatters after a fight), he generally remains at 100% combat capacity for the entire fight. It is even a fairly common complaint that being beaten up and mauled means jack-shit and that the good guys pull complete reversals at the point where their brains should be dripping out of their ears. The rare exceptions are more often than not associated with being hit by some unusual condition.

Burning Wheel, check the fight section

I hate descriptions. I just want to hit the fucker, I don't care where, or how I hit him. I want the fucking damage and move on. So I get my next turn faster, and do it again.

No, it then becomes anime: The Game, with players trying to do retarded shit for cheap flavors.

>this is not anime
But what if it is?

Then I stand up and leave the table.

Anime is only good if its a superhero game.

This feels like bait, but its got some validity. Game sessions take forever if you describe everything you do in flowery prose detail.

If I describe my attacks, I save it for when there's an interesting time. I don't narrate how I slaughter every kobold I come across.

discribing fights is not one of my strongpoint as a DM.
My problem with players explaining things is that they always expect to get something out of it.

As in "If i explain my attack i expect to get combat advantage"
It annoys me. I enjoy it when someone does something different that does something that would normally not be mechanically feasable, but i just hate that expectant look they have on their faces when they tell me how they want to attack.

I guess i originally wanted to encourage roleplaying in them since they are fairly inexpirienced but somehow they havent realy understood what this is all about.
Somehow they seem to believe that it is for my beneift that they explain what they do and then expect to be rewarded.

When in reality it is for their benefit and it mostly means i have to come up with houserules on spot for their retarded ideas.

Ive recently started punishing them for doing shit thats completley fucking retarded. Now the party has been enslaved by hobgolins and they have to escape, hopefully their escape plan actually makes sense...

to add something:

A thing i actually do is giving them options.
For example the druid attack a hobgoblin standing in formation in bear form.
He hit and i gave him the option to either just hit the single hobgoblin for damage, ro to use his bulk as a bear to topple the entire formation to grant combat advantage to his allies.

It may be a bit forced if i give them the option but i just hope that this will give them ideas in the future.

Try not to condition them into thinking description equals bonus, theyll get mad if you refuse to give them a bonus in the future and at worst theyll just start doing very mechanical cookie cutter descriptions in order to get boni as part of their "meta".

Encourage it, but dont hand out boni like candy.
Descriptions are for options, not for more power.

There's also Band of Bastards in the TRoS family grandheresy.com/anatomy-of-a-bastard/ As SoS this one's currently still in development.
And for TRoS, you should really use the Ranged Combat rules from 'The Flower of Battle', I think.

Thanks for the info.

We don't use dice, we use cards. Martial combat can either be over in a single action or it can turn into a series of plays and counters until someone gets the advantage. So yeah, it gets pretty descriptive.

It also helps that I use a five second hourglass to push my players along. As long as you're actively describing your action/reaction while you're deciding on which card to play your good.

The moment you just stare into space or try and take your time I flip the hourglass. If the sand runs out you forfeit your action.