Are there any RPGs that do tactical combat well for non-casters...

Link to PDF?

GURPS is more than -X +Y

Anyways, try Mythras / Runequest

or any of the WH rpg's

Hârnmaster, the spiritual successor to both works too.

Try to ban us, you faggot WOTC employee.

>GURPS is terrible
>X to get +Y to a roll is not interesting.
What do you want?
It's got hit locations, so martials can disable enemies by cutting their legs off. Or cutting their arms off. Or hands off. Or stab them in the eye for huge damage.
You can disarm with any weapon, it's a manoeuvre. (Some are better at it though) You can grab weapons and wrench them out of enemy's grip. You can grab someone and smash them down on your knee, or on a wall, OR ON YOUR SWORD. And it even does bonus damage (at least +2). These functions don't require special feats. You can do them with any grapple skill, or DX.
Hell, GURPS has armed grapples, so you can use your sword to keep someone in, then takedown, and pin. Pinned foes are pretty much fucked.

Let's talk polearms & spears. Any weapon with reach can really fuck an opponent of lesser skill, or even equal skill by keeping them at range. Stab them, and then they have to move back to get the spear point out if you choose to keep it in them, or they can try to move down the point to reach you if they can pass a Will check. You can also attempt to parry their body as they move into close combat with you, in order to achieve a similar effect.

Positioning is also a big deal. You're at -2 to defend against things in your peripheral vision, and at an extra -2 to parry against attacks on the opposite side to your weapon arm. You can't defend against attacks from behind unless you're a bugeyed alien with 360 vision. Positioning is a big deal; attackers from behind can claim +4 to hit you for free, and even stack that with another +4 for All out attack, so they can target the skull and still have a net bonus.

OP, did you just play GURPS like it was D&D, and then complain that it has no interesting options other than the ones that give you bonus damage or bonus to hit?

>4e D&D: blast encounter powers, blow dailies as needed, default back to at-wills if enemy survives

Literally everything is worse. I have read most of the systems recommended in this thread, and all of them pale in comparison to playing warlords and fighters in 4e combat.

>ignoring Tome of Battle when you complain about 3e
Every fucking time.

OP what you want is Dungeon World

It's pretty much objectively one of the best currently out there. It has fast easy to use mechsnics and is perfect for beginners, it's a lot cheaper than most of these other rules bloated systems that cost fifty dollars. There is no reason for extra rules when it is he role playing that matters. Dungeon World is fast and innovative and still feels exactly like the spirit of ADND before DnD 3.5 destroyed the hobby and ruined a generation of role players.

You want fast, intuitive combat? Dungeon World does that.

You want real, deep roleplaying mechanics? Dungeon World does that.

You want great mechanics that reward diversity of play? Dungeon World does that as well.

My last session of Dungeon World my human fighter wrapped a vampire in a bear hug and wrestled him out a window. This is real roleplaying we are talking about here, not babby 3.5 shit. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Dungeon World today, it is an evolution and perfection of the half-formed ideas in Apocalypse World (the game it is derived from)

B-but anything that makes martial characters useful is weebshit!

>people falling for OP's bait

Is there really anyone this genuinely retarded?

Why is this copypasta now?

Before I forget. There's also Extra effort, so you can get all these extra offensive and defensive effects, like damage, reduced extra parry penalty, by spending Fatigue points. If your GM is challenging you, you should be using some of them.

GURPS Last Gasp also makes combat highly tactical if you can deal with tracking the Action Points.

Where are your amazing suggestions then? Faggot.

GURPS

or any PBTA game

or Risus

now we only need the strike! shill and we got a complete set.

It had been since GW came out officially.

Why should I even bother? If he can't even appreciate 4e, Strike! tactics would be way beyond his comprehension.

>PBTA
>Tactical combat

wat

>not being a completionist
kys

Play a wargame

But Strike! isn't even very tactical.

>Snowflake Dice Systems
>Tactical Combat

Yeah no

I like ToB, I like 3.5 with ToB+Psi content more than 4e, but if you think ToB isn't proto-4e you're nuts.

ToB was literally pitched by Mearls when he was on the development team for 4e to bring the ideas to 3.5

fantasist.net/dragonquest.shtml

>Dungeon World is an evolution and perfection of the half-formed ideas in Apocalypse World

It's arguably on par with 4e, depending on how you value their differences.

>Shutting down one of the only real answers for the prompt
>Demonstrating a severe lack of understanding
>pic related

>-X to get +Y to a roll is not interesting
What did he mean by this? Because the fag didn't specify, I'm assuming he meant using different attack techniques which either drain a resource or require a skill challenge to succeed. As such I will explain to the tiny baby-man the basic principle of why this is, and why it's not the only option.

From a game-design standpoint, it encourages strategic play. Also, it's pretty intuitive. Who'd have thunk that it's mildly challenging when you use your skill to be tricksy? Deceptive attacks, feints, etc, all require you to beat a slightly challenging roll so that the next roll is in your favor. If you're a heroic master of the art fighting a noob, this isn't really necessary. It becomes necessary when fighting someone who's really fucking dodgy, or when your skill is too low to reliably hit. What a shock that the system presents you with way to overcome challenges that require some amount of cost in the form of a turn where you don't attack or a more difficult roll for attack. It's even more compelling when making the maneuver requires eating a 24% drop in your chance to succeed, and it increases tension at closer to average levels of play.

This is already way better than the options present in most DnD. There are very few ways to improve your odds, but GURPS gives them to all players, allowing for more freedom and strategic thought.

It also, again, isn't your only option. As explained, weapon reach is important. Facing is important. You have maneuvers available to all players which are more difficult but more damaging. In the basic book alone there are three fucking chapters of optional material for combat. Martial Arts gives even more autistic detail about techniques that experienced characters might pick up.

In short, fuck you OP. GURPS gives fucking amazing tactical options.

>Tome of Battle wanking
It's not in the core books, most people don't even know it exists, it might as well not be a part of the game. That's not to speak of its quality or legitimacy. That which can be explained by malice is usually more easily explained by ignorance or incompetence.

Strike! is pretty cool. It doesn't tie classes to power sources, so technically everyone can be a martial.

If you prefer classless, Savage Worlds maybe?

Gurps if you want tacticool shit
FantasyCraft or 3.5 ToB+EPH if you want high powered fantasy stuff
Mythras if you want fantasy, but something more grounded and realistic
Song of Swords if you want something REALLY realistic and are prepared for fights to take awhile

I really would not suggest playing Savage Worlds. It is a badly designed system with terrible meta-mechanics that encourage not only metagaming but ending session early, it also makes it near impossible for characters to fail at anything. The gun mechanic are broken, and literally do not make sense. The only thing it is good for is being a miniatures wargame, and it even sucks at most of that. Exploding dice make stupid shit happen constantly, the damage is way overkill for 90% of the threats allowing characters to one-shot massive creatures with tiny weapons. On the other end, characters literally cannot fail, because they have three bennies per session which allow them to reroll whatever the fuck they want (not damage rolls, to be fair, but still). And the GM is told he is a piece of shit if he doesn't hand out more bennies for "good roleplaying" (in other words, stupid nat20-lolz bullshit). Also the characters get to roll a wild die with their normal roll and take the wild die if it is higher, thus making them even less likely to fail at anything. Not to mention the cancer of the bennies being basically a safe-space for retarded character actions, CAN and WILL spread to other RPGs you play with this group. Just count down the sessions until your character asks during D&D after failing a roll "can I have a bennie"? No, get fucked faggot. Failure is an important part of RPGs and Savage Worlds throws that shit out the window.

As much as I despise this meme, I must say it because this is one of the few times it is applicable.

"Have you tried not playing D&D?"

Have you tried playing in a good group?

Why do I keep hearing about Mythras? Isn't it just a reprint of Runequest or something?

It was Runequest 6th edition before Chaosium bought back the rights and turned Runequest into a solely Glorantha thing again.
However, 6th edition had a lot of changes to the original 2E Glorantha stuff. 6th edition was kind of a toolbox for your own fantasy setting. Because it was so different, Chaosium let them keep the name, but The Design Mechanism had to stop calling it Runequest.
The biggest changes were to the combat system, which was given more options but also was made crunchier, and the introduction of multiple magic systems to use as you wanted.

Cool, is 6e or Mythras better?

Get back in the cuck shed Adam.

There are plenty of RPGs with fun combat. You should listen to your own memes in this case, and look outside of D&D. Runequest has an interesting system that is intricate and rewarding. Savage Worlds is fast and fun, taking queues from skirmish wargaming. GURPS is actually pretty good and has a lot of positional thinking. Song of Swords emphasizes fancy swordplay.

They're different names for the same game, user. Guess I didn't make that clear enough.

Mythras has better formatting overall. The games are pretty much the same. Runequest has a setting already baked in I suppose, in case that really matters to you.

It's not even close to as good as late 4e, doesn't have the same support, and trying to read the books is physically painful thanks to the writers not understanding anything about how printed media works.

>You can grab someone and smash them down on your knee, or on a wall, OR ON YOUR SWORD

How do you do this in game?

(please specify, I am starting to play GURPS, would like to know)

It's different from 4e, but it's not categorically worse. Characters are less complex overall, and there's less modifier stacking, but this alone doesn't make it tactically less deep. Go isn't less deep than Chess, despite the latter having more complex pieces and rules either nor is 4e less deep than 3.5 despite having less subsystems and broken bullshit.

As for the layout, yeah, sure, it's shit. Doesn't actually impede gameplay.

Fantasy Craft and Legend.

rolling double sixes meant nothing.

Allright I'll bite on this shit

> You want fast, intuitive combat?

Fast? Maybe. Intuitive? Not past the most basic things in it.

> You want real, deep roleplaying mechanics?

What mechanics?

>You want great mechanics that reward diversity of play?

Hamfisting literally everything into being handled by the same "ability" is not what I'd consider great in any way. But sure it's great at hamfisting.

Why not just play a fluffed up wargame then if you want your entire playtime spent in one combat encounter

Martial Arts page 118.

B: Basic Set
MA: Martial Arts
>Grappling actions
B370-371. You can attack a grappled target w/ Close range weapons like knives, daggers, etc.
MA118
As GM Fiat, I would treat slamming into environmental dangers like spikes as Thrust+1 damage of respective type. Broken glass might be impaling, a _fucking_ pencil youtu.be/nPwPgQDyt_0?t=2m17s would probably be small piercing.
>Using a long-range weapon in close-combat
MA117

Great example of composablity and elegance in GURPS. It's by combination of discrete rules that you get an awesome, codified, tactical decision.

>inb4 autistic detail and rules hampering awesomeness
1) These are all tactical decisions, perfectly valid in the circumstances that make them possible, and defaulting towards realism. Having them codified in an official way is better than some homebrew improvised bullshit. That leads to annoying weeb players doing annoying weeb shit and expecting the group to go along with it because the rules don't say you can't. Even then, GURPS explicitly states in the books that many rules are optional and that it is sometimes better to roll and shout.

2) There is at least one place in GURPS that a rule _explicitly_ tells the GM that for cinematic games, you should give bonuses for cool attack descriptions, instead of negatives. The cooler the description of the attack, the better the bonus. (Personally, I would roll 1D6-2 >= 1 as a bonus for such descriptions, so as to remain impartial and not have the appearance of favoring someone.)

...

The Mythras pdfs use different font size & formatting to fit more info into less page. Apart from that they're the same.

It's a great system sadly it gets very little attention.
If you're interested in trying remember you don't need to use all the rules, just pick and use what you need. For example only a minority of gms track Fatigue levels during combat.

How does a combat exchange go? How do I roll? How do I get hurt?

First you roll for initiative. I haven't played in a while but I believe it's 1d10 + your initiative.
You get a number of action points depending on your INT+DEX score. Average is 2. If you use one to attack, your opponent can use one to parry or dodge.
Then you compare the levels of success and gain a number of special effects. Normal success vs Normal success gives you 0, normal success vs. a failed roll gives 1 effect, critical vs failed roll gives you 2, and a critical vs fumble gives you 3.
There's a ton of special effects such as Disarm, Pin Weapon, Bypass Parry, Maximize damage and Choose location. Some of them have special requirements.

Assuming you didn't miss, you calculate damage using the armor points of the hit location you chose (If you don't use Choose Location, you have to roll 1d20 to determine where the blow lands) or the armor points and HP of the weapon used to parry.

If enough damage gets through the defender can lose a limb, permanently obviously. In case this happens you can roll 1d3 to determine exactly where the limb is severed (shoulder, elbow, wrist)

The way the system works, combat rarely lasts more than 2 or 3 rounds. If you parry too much your weapon will break and if you fight more than 2 people at the same time you will burn all your action points defending yourself

Gotta be honest that doesn't really appeal to me.

>people trying to discuss systems in this thread
>it's clear they have no idea what they're talking about

This thread is laughably bad. It's like this thread is some sort of magical idiot magnet.

...

I hope you're not one of the idiots doing their best to show off how little they actually understand games.
Because, you'd be pretty damn sad and pathetic for trying to defend how dumb you are.

Why are you still playing games with shitty DMs?

In any edition of D&D a dungeon master would let you make an attack roll or roll a save/skill during combat to pull off some kind of feat. In any edition of D&D you could grab a kobold and throw it over a cliff if your DM wasn't a retard.

Stop making shit threads and stop playing bad games with bad people. Stop blaming D&D for your own fucking problems.

>taking OP's bait

hat-trick!
two virtualoptim pastas and strike! mention

13th Age. The escalation die keeps it from being "blow all your good stuff at the start" but otherwise it's like 4e without the grid. And each class actually looks mechanically different.

The fact that you're an unimaginative fuck doesn't mean that D&D is incapable of handling interesting tactical encounters.

Watch a Musketeers movie for once in your life. Christ.

>a movie
What does that have to do with anything?

It doesn't have anything to do with anything. MTP fags think that any system is good since you can just make shit up.

>taking OP's bait

Honestly. How much more of a ridiculous cunt does he need to be for you to go "Oh, shit, this guy is just too fucking retarded, I should ignore him"?

He's pushing past any sensible limit already.

Musketeers movies tend to be well-choreographed and should give a lot of ideas for what a martial can do in combat besides just swing a sword. The Mask of Zorro (the Banderas one) is another great one to watch.

Of course a fight is going to be boring if you just stand still and make attack rolls. You know what else is boring? Standing still and slinging save-or-sucks until someone fails. That's not a failing of the system, that's a failing of the player.

It's boring because stepping outside of the bounds of to-hit and damage invalidates any competency martials have invested in combat. You can't be both competent at disarming and killing in the D+D. One or the other, and the other won't matter half the time, because you fight more than just humanoids with weapons.

Why are you even bothering with this idiot?
He has zero interest in anything except showing off how retarded he is.

Are you really so unimaginative that you can't think of anything else to do in combat than either disarm or kill an opponent?

Look, here's the first Google image result for me for "D&D battle map". Look at all the shit there is to do here! There's crates and barrels to climb on top of, knock or toss around. There's buildings to climb and rooftops to run around. There's stuff in the crates or on tables to toss around.

That's just the terrain, that's not taking into account any items the martial might be carrying on himself. Bottle of oil and a tindertwig and you can get some buildings on fire, which is always fun.

Have some damn imagination.

>system encourages players to do X because X is optimal for success
>it's a failing of players
90% of DMs will fuck up stunting or penalize non-standard combat actions. SORRY.

I just want a high fantasy game where I can be a warrior that can slaughter through demons without needing magic of some sort.
DnD has too much feat tax.
Mythras is way too realistic.

>Are you really so unimaginative that you can't think of anything else to do in combat than either disarm or kill an opponent?
The game is so unimaginative as to only let me do one or the other well. I can think of many things someone can do in combat, but that's moot if I can only be good at one thing.

Stop. Is this your first time on this board?

Or, are you just curious to see how low OP will sink in his arguments? He's really only doing this to keep his thread bumped.

Ok, the RQ6 book is a bit better and easier to read in terms of the layout. Mythras has a better version of Animism and some new stuff in combat.

This is really outdated trash at this point. Sorry. There's no reason to read or play this, just read an article on the internet about FRONTS which is the only interesting thing to pull out of the game. Otherwise it's a lame spoof.

RQ6 was voted the BEST RPG on RPG.net's forums last year. I think it gets attention, it's just not something you find in Barnes and Nobles like 5e.

13th age is my main because my group likes High Fantasy and it's an excellent D20, but Mythras is my favorite.

Fantasy FASERIP?

This guys fucking gets it

Dungeon Fantasy does this quite well.

It also has a decently active forum on the Design Mechnism website.

I think fatigue is one of the things I am most aware of in combat, but then again I had players like to use Bleed.

And whay any of that is going to accomplish? Tossing a table around isn't going to kill the enemy faster, it's just wasting your turn. Combat in D&D is all about action economy, and you want to finish every fight quickly and efficiently, spending as little of your resources (spells and HP) as possible. Instead of trying to give your opponent a small penalty for a turn by tipping a barrel on him it's always more preferrable to just use full attack to try to reduce his HP to zero and deny his future actions.

Burning Wheel

u r welcom

Yeah, but it's more fun to flip a table on them.

I didn't know dying was fun, user. How does your GM make dying from dumb decisions in combat fun?

Properly speaking any attack that doesn't remove an opponent from combat is not a good use of action economy. Denying an opponent their action is actually better than chipping away at their HP, generally.

Using the map above as an example, shove an empty barrel over an opponent and you've effectively blinded them, restrained them, substantially cut down on the distance at which their words can be heard, and removed their ability to do pretty much anything other than get the barrel off of them on their next turn, which might not be easy if you're, say, still holding it on, or sitting on top of it.

Then your friends can chip away at his HP or cast Dominate or something instead.

ANOTEHR EXAMPLE!

Ballroom scene. Guy you want to get to is on the other side of the room. Rather than directly charge across, grab a chandelier's rope and cut it so you can swing across the room as the chandelier falls, which also has the benefit of at the least creating difficult terrain so as to help protect your party's ranged attackers and spellcasters. It's way cooler and probably gets you where you're going faster than a Move-Dash would.

And of course, there is no situation that can't be improved by a bottle of oil and a tindertwig, as long as you're not fighting in a featureless room of solid stone.

>he's never played D&D

>shove an empty barrel over an opponent
If we're even trying to be realistic, this should be a very difficult endeavour, much more so than attacking. Of course, there's no real need to be realistic, but D&D encourages it anyway because D&D is a contradictory mess.

Fire is always good, however.

Because it's so easy to pick up an empty barrel and catch someone with it. You know, an improvised, unenchanted weapon without feat support, that's much less likely to succeed against the enemy than your weapon that's keeping up with the game math. Five feet of difficult terrain from a crashed chandelier is nothing, and fire's just as likely to hurt you as it is to help.

>If we're even trying to be realistic

We're not. D&D is not and has never been a Real Life Simulator; the closest example to that was D&D 3rd Edition, and that led to utter ridiculousness.

Musketeer movies, or Aladdin's "One Jump Ahead" sequence, are my go-to for D&D.