An RPG thats more game-y

Torchbearer?

You know what, I'm what others might call a gay narrativist scum, but I woudl really like a tactical dungeon crawler that work for me. I think my gripe is that "tactical" seems to be equated with lots numbers -which is fine per se, or at least neutral- without much fiction directly related. DND 4e is too abstract, if that makes sense

I mean, the combat is gridded and is plays like a turn based tactics game that you would play just for fun even if there was no story, your loadout and moves in combat make a big difference and fights are more like the DM and players trying to outwit each other within the boundaries of the encounter. Im a skirmish wargamer and so are all my group so I guess what im saying is were looking for the fun you get from a really tactical skirmish miniatures game but with the added RPG elements. (I know about ganeshas attempt already)

Alright, nevermind. My suggestion had more to do with logistics than actual combat.

I will add that if you go for 4e you should be careful to nail down the expected optimisation level with your players. The gulf is less massive than 3.5, but you can still end up in a difficult spot if one person goes all out on a meta build. Figuring out how much you're going to use the character guides (I recommend looking at them because they explain how things work, but following them isn't necessary) or established builds vs just choosing things that look fun and interesting. Both work perfectly well, as does a middle ground, but it's worth ensuring everyone is agreed on what to expect so it all lines up nicely.

dnd 4th edition

DOTHRACKED

It gets shat on for being exactly the thing that you happen to want.

Which edition doesnt get shit on

D&D 4e, or Strike! (turn on the hardcore HP and tile-by-tile dungeon rules if you want to go really old school).

Strike! is imho easier to get into than 4E, as there's so much content out there for 4E you gotta sift through. Though if you like that kind of stuff, knock yourself out.

With CBloader and funin.space, 4e's content bloat never really adversely affected me. It's really easy to filter through it to find things and such.

Because people favors roleplay instead of rollplay?

Myself, I tried 4e. Not sure how Warhammer quest plays, but I found 4e to lack a little bit in player agency. It might just be how my GM ran things, but I found that every modifier that you could get was from the various spells and abilities your party had on them. Things like trying to get partial cover, using fortified positions, or evading attacks seemed to offer little if any modifiers, overall giving it more of a feel of an old JRPG that lets you choose where you want to stand rather than a true tactical game.

Still, it whet my whistle better than most of the mapless rpg combat systems out there.

That's honestly just your GM being bad. 4e has the tools to make all of that useful and valuable, it just requires the GM put some actual work into thinking about their map designs.

Although 4e does focus more on player cooperation and teamwork for the really big, meaningful bonuses and combos.

Superior Cover (fortifications fall into this) gives a -5 to attack, which is huge.

Normal cover is only -2, but normal cover should be relatively abundant, and it's still pretty big.

Admittedly, it may seem small because you have a lot of sources for bonuses, but linear distribution means you really only care with your bonus in relation to the target number, which usually means +/- 2 or 5 remains at roughly the same effectiveness throughout the game.

Index Card RPG
You can run D&D Basic and most retro clones like a board game as well. The other suggestions like 4e and GURPS Dungeon Fantasy aren't bad either.

WHFRP 3rd Edition.

This isn't entirely true

One heavily optimized 4e character really isn't that impressive, and probably won't overshadow others unless they made really bad power choices, which is hard because most classes only have one or two explicitly terrible powers per level. 4e optimization is best done as a group

For example, charging barbarians are good, but not the best in terms of melee strikers, but a charging barbarian being granted extra charge attacks by a charge-focused warlord can easily out-damage a two-blade ranger being granted the same support

I play in relatively low optimisation games, going with what's cool, and we had an unfortunate experience when a guy brought in a Warden who outdamaged the Strikers, outtanked the Defenders and was basically self sufficient on healing, making the Leaders less than useful. On top of the winter form power being very effective control.

Thankfully they were okay with swapping out the character later to something that fit in better with the party and didn't make anyone else feel obsolete.

Hmm, fair enough, Wardens and paladins are sort of outliers on account of their general self-sufficiency, even if they don't excel in any fields quite like other classes do

>Not MOUNTED
You had one job

>It just kind of falls flat without everything else.

Fuck off. 2012 called, they want their memes back.

Personally I found 4e to be something of an unwelcoming and chafing system.
Its presentation is simply more wholeheartedly focused on the execution of combat, while conceptual elements are either exceptionally rigid or exceptionally vague, which caused some frustration and dissatisfaction at my table. It has a very specific sort of framework for conceptualizing or building characters, and outside of that things become hard to represent or even a little contradictory.
I'm sure it's better now, assuming you have access to its library of content, but at launch it was ultimately a frustrating time.

For some strong contrast look at the 4e spinoff, Gamma World 7e. Despite its card-based "multiversal flux" mechanics it actually has many more opportunities to attach player choice and flexible conceptualizations to character options, mostly just by being better about how it engages groups to consider what it means for each mechanical element to be a part of their character.

Nothing wrong if you like 4e--different strokes for different folks--but it's simply not my jam.

It's likely something that only really came into its own later in 4e's lifespan, but something the game really should have informed people more directly is that it is really, really easy to refluff things. Due to the clear mechanical presentation of everything, even if a concept doesn't directly map onto the fluff of any class or option, you can almost always find a suitable set of mechanics that you can refluff into it.

Although it's also worth saying that 4e is a system specifically about fighting heroes. People who want to play a character who doesn't participate in combats won't have a good time playing 4e.

So, a video game?

One thing that really 'fixed' 4e to my group's taste were the Hybrid Character Class rules in PHB3 and the variant rules like Alternative Rewards in DMG2. For us they are better tools than the baseline kits and multiclass feats for helping underline aspects characters and settings, so you might get some joy out of them if you come back to 4e at some point.

>As a GM, 4e has a few flaws you need to work around. Every PC should get the Improved Defences feat
I never understood why so many peole claim this. I played 4e for 5 years as a DM and also a player and we never had trouble with too low defenses. There are so many options to raise your defenses (magical items, feats, better armor, increased ability mods). Sure, if you don't invest in any of those your defenses might suck, but that's not the systems fault.

>He doen't know that taking a wargame and making it a "tactical dungeon crawl with in depth combat" is literally how DnD got invented

The design team acknowledged it as a systemic flaw, which is why those feats exist. PC math lags behind what it's expected to vs monsters, and this only gets worse at paragon and epic tiers. The game likely still works without it, but PC's are more vulnerable and do less damage, which can contribute to fights feeling like a slog.

>Sure, if you don't invest in any of those your defenses might suck, but that's not the systems fault.
That's the reason people suggest it. You've got options, yeah, but you pretty much have to take at least one of them. Why do that when you could just give the players the option for free, thereby freeing up their magic item and feat slots?

Your mileage might vary, and by all means run a game without a free Improved Defences feat. That's why people do it though.

>The design team acknowledged it as a systemic flaw, which is why those feats exist.
Then why didn't they state it should be given to anyone for free? Also for most PC teams, even not all optimized ones, monsters of the same level are rather weak challenges (which is why the DMG states monsters of party level +1 are an average challenge). I don't see why this should be made even more extreme.

>but PC's are more vulnerable and do less damage, which can contribute to fights feeling like a slog.
Wasn't this intended to be solved by MM3/MV math with monsters having less HP and better attacks? With this fights rarely felt too long to me.

People often criticise them for just printing the fixes as feats rather than integrating them into the system.

And, as said above, the very fact that people need some source of the bonus stops it being an interesting choice. Feat slots are valuable, and I'd much rather my players be able to choose something fun and interesting instead of being forced to pick things just to keep up.

Serious question mate, have you run or played in a game that actually went to paragon? To epic? Because these feats really don't make much different at heroic.

>Why do that when you could just give the players the option for free
Well you could say the same about many things. If you don't invest in your attack stat, it will suck, if you don't invest ind your damage rolls they will suck. So, I was just asking why it's defenses in particular people usually mention.

>If you don't invest in your attack stat, it will suck, if you don't invest ind your damage rolls they will suck
People usually suggest giving some form of or Expertise for free too. It's just not as important because the math's a little tighter.

If you absolutely have to take something to function, it ceases to be an interesting choice and becomes a tax. Taxes aren't fun. You might as well fold it into progression and let people actually make fun choices instead of wasting slots on dull math fixes.

Well, let me put a different spin on that. You see, in 4e you do have player agency and that is in the way you build your character and the team and synergy that comes along with that. That means you, as the player, decide how the combat turns out. Do you have a lot of strikers and burst enemies down? Do you have mostly a mix of leaders, controllers and defenders and whittle the enemy down? This is all up to you.

Furthermore, 4e actually offers decent options in encounter design, but mostly in what kind of enemies you face, which can all be quite different and have different synergies (encounters with lots of minions require more AOE, encounters around two or three elites/bosses favor disables and debuffs), but at the end of the day, your GM is just one guy who has to do a lot of stuff and really interesting encounters are hard. On the other hand, since it's mostly you who decides how to interact with the presented enemies, you can still draw some agency even from more bland encounters.

As a GM, I've fallen in love with designing encounters for 4e. The MM3 math makes the underlying stats simple, and you can go wild on interesting powers and dicky monster synergies, as well as tuning encounters, both to mess with players and to give them chances to feel awesome. Both are equally important, IMO.

4e's hybrid (for half and half)+multiclass feats(for "dipping") setup makes it basically the best class system, short of some heartbreakers like Legend. If Paragon Multiclass got some access to hybrid telents, and maybe there was some "feat discount" on it, it'd be perfect.

>and I'd much rather my players be able to choose something fun and interesting instead of being forced to pick things just to keep up.
Ok, I can understand that, though it certainly doesn't always have to be boring. E.g. I played a warpriest once and invested some otherwise useless points in CON to be able wear a heavy shield thus increasing my reflex and fortitude (through the con points). Playing a plate armor and shield wielding priest was also quite fun in terms of roeplaying. Additionally I prefer it if PCs (as well as monsters) have a bit more varying defenses. It just feels strange when vastly different characters all have similiar defenses. The rogue should have clearly superior reflexes to the mage and the mage should have clearly superior will defense. By forcing people to chose what to invest in this gets usually more pronounced.

We capped at 23ish I think.

The trouble is, if the gap between the defences is too extreme it really, really fucks with the math.

Superior defense isn't there to shore up weak defenses, it's to bring ALL defenses up by a bit. You'll still have a "bad" defense.

Not for nothing, but doesn't the warpriest use wisdom as a primary stat and constitution as a secondary?

What were you using as a secondary stat?