What's a system with engaging, gritty combat...

What's a system with engaging, gritty combat? Something that keeps the players on their toe and makes every choice matter. I'm tired of just having a single roll of the die decide the outcome of every physical attack, I want blocks, parries and ripostes that don't rely solely on luck and/or fluff.

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well, the combat system in Agone does have this, but the amount of attack options one has to consider tends to make playing through the combat really tedious.

if you think your players will be fast enough at picking up how it works, then it has a lot of what your looking for, and can go smoothly, but if not turns can take an eternity to unfold.

Other descent systems with good combat options are SIFRP and the original 7th sea. SIFRP is pretty descent, but if you don't police your characters, or ad a house rule for allowing DnD esque critical hits (as in, something that gives even unskilled opponents a chance to hit someone, as combat defense can be power gamed really hard to the point even fairly competent fighters can not possibly hit you, although this is difficult to accomplish), the system can be easily exploited in to making unkillable combat monsters.
7th sea has a lot of good combat options, but it really isn't very gritty, as the players are supposed to be action hero esque and never actually die unless under very special circumstances.

Song of Swords may be right up your alley. Its a dicepool system where each player declares how much they'll throw into their defense or offense. Its got a bit of a mind game for initiative and its overall game goal is to simulate real world combat.

Mythras. Every attack is opposed by active defence, the result ranging from clashing of shields to knockdowns to disarmamament to bleeding out to instagank.

Mythras and the other BRP derivatives.
GURPS.
Riddle of Steel.

GURPS with the martial arts supplement

Anything like this with guns? Preferably geared towards 17th-19th century tech.

Again, Mythras, but with the free RQ6 firearms supplement.

RIDDLE OF STEEL

Song of Swords has all eras of firearms, up to bolt actions rifles.

The SIFRP game mentioned earlier has a generic Chronicle System supplement that adds firearms.

OP here. I'll check those out, thanks a lot guys.
A friend recommended looking into Burning Wheel, how's the combat in that?

Burning Wheel's combat system is intense and very deadly. And basically as complicated as you want it to be. There's everything from "one roll decides the battle" to "we are literally staging every move we make".

The one downside is, it's really clunky until everyone has fully gotten it. But then it's amazingly fun.

Traveller has some interesting mechanics with reactions like dodging and parrying. It also has a dynamic initiative system where your order can change depending on how many reactions you take, or if you get your initiative boosted by another PCs leadership or tactics skills.

Burning Wheel has 3 combat modes:
Versus Test: both fighting parties roll, whoever has more successes wins.

Bloody Versus Test: As above but includes determining the fallout in more detail (i.e. character a loses an arm)

Full Combat: Each fighting party chooses 3 combat maneuvers (from a fixed list i.e. "attack", "counter", "defend", "lots of more interesting options"), both write it on a piece of paper. When both parties have written down their actions, they reveal the piece of paper to the group. You then determine how the fight plays out. do both players attack? Does one defend? etc. The game manual assists in determining which actions interact in what way with one another.

Haven't been playing BW for a long time, but so far no full combat has lasted for more than 3 rounds because by that point someone is either dead or has taken a debilitating injury and is incapable of fighting on. Very brutal, very fun.

That sounds great. I like the aspect of being able to choose from multiple options, and that having different effects depending on the opponent's reaction.

Song of Swords sounds especially nice. I remember seeing lots of SoS threads around, what happened to those? Do they still happen on occasion?

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Its kickstarter got funded so a new thread usually pops up with a new update. Its currently in beta 2.0

Pendragon

Im gonna suggest Zweihander, though ill probably have someone call me a shill.

Zweihander has gritty combat with parries & such. Injury tables, & even gritty rules for medical treatment

I massively disagree, user. The times I've played Pendragon all combat seemed to devolve into chip damage, if any damage at all, and all combat seemed to be decided by "who rolls a crit first"

You should try Pathfinder, it's basically exactly what you're looking for

Isn't Pathfinder literally D&D?

Unironically: Ironclaw.

Its low magic and easy to get your shit pushed in

It's better. It is a near flawless system. The only flaw is that it's basically too good.

>easy to get your shit pushed in
Because of all the furry butt secks right

BRP/Mythras, Gurps, Song of Swords/Riddle of Steel all have mortal and meaningful combat (if you want, GURPS and BRP can be simplified).