Questing in Not!Japan

Japanese fiction has a real segregation between what would be called 'classes' in an RPG.

Ninja stories are about ninja only. Samurai stories are all about samurai. Onmyo challenge yokai and evil onmyo.

There's little overlap between them because they occupy different fields. A wizard wouldn't end up in a warzone. Maybe ninja might kill a samurai, but that wouldn't be the goal of a ninja story, it'd be a random event in a samurai story.

But you can have fun story with combinated team.
Samurai with loyal shinobi in party. It's opportunity for great roleplay.
And monks like Benkei will work too.

I'm trying to create a basic combat system for my quest and I'm thinking of a one-strike high lethality system where combat is decided with a single opposed roll.

It'd go like this;
>there are 3 combat stats - Might, Skill, Awareness
>these stats go from 0-10
>Might + Skill = Melee Power
>Skill + Awareness = Ranged Power
>when people fight, compare their Melee or Ranged Power depending on the style of combat
>roll an opposed d100
>the player with a higher Melee/Ranged Power adds 20 to the roll for each point they outrank the opponent by
>the lower scoring player then rolls on an injury table where death and crippling wounds are extremely common
Since you're dealing with opposed rolls, a fair fight would carry a high risk of death. Fighting a significantly superior opponent is suicide.

What then balances out this system is the following;
>in a mass combat, all allied parties add their MP/RP together and the total is the groups power, so a samurai can kill a number of weaker opponents but will die if he's absolutely swarmed
>all weapons provide a different bonus to your combat power
>you can also use situational modifiers to reduce your opponent's abilities - for example, getting them drunk will reduce their Skill and Awareness, fighting with the sun in their eyes reduces Awareness, prior injuries will reduce their Might or fighting on slippery ground will cap each fighter's Skill at a certain value
Those modifiers can pretty much be added or made up on the fly and will count so long as the players ACTIVELY choose to gain that advantage prior to the fight taking place.

Thoughts on this system? Is it even a good concept, disregarding the number crunching?

But how will you handle firearms?
You really need Nagashino/Shiroyama type battle for full package.

All weapons will add Skill or Might, based on their characteristics. Some will let you choose which to add, or add both.

Guns will add more Skill than bows as a crude representation of increased lethality, however they'll have the disadvantage that they're loud.
All ranged weapons will be Skill based (except for the Ozutsu cannon, which lets characters use Might instead)
Once I figure out armor mechanics, I might have to balance guns around this, for now I'm keeping it abstract.
Characters without a ranged weapon will still roll in melee combat - this represents them using their reflexes and deftness to avoid being hit, they just can't attack their opponent.

This system isn't really built for mass formation combat, it stops making sense after skirmishes, so it's probably better for Edo period clan/sword school combat than full scale warfare. The biggest problem is there's no possibility for an inconclusive outcome, or winning with injuries or losses. Perhaps the percentage a group wins by should determine the outcome, so you don't just win or lose.

Basara bandits and warriors teaming up with sea lords for MAXIMUM ADVENTURE.

What's the point in loyalty during an age of the lower commanding the upper anyway?

You are common folk caught between the squabbles of petty lords, so you and your forefathers mastered tricks, traps, and misdirection to keep both of their forces away from your village. Now everyone thinks you are Ninjas and want to pay you money to murder people or do ninja magic to people as the rumors of your settlement’s prowess have sped wildly out of control...

Fuck it, you guess you are ninjas now.

>trying to create a system

Just use Legend of the 5 Rings or Legend of Wulin

>use a bad, overdeveloped magical system to simply simulate realistic duels
Why though?

Quads aside, this is a pretty good idea. Got a pdf link?

five rings nails the "one cut and you'll probably bleed and die" samurai duel system to an absolute T. complete with skill-measuring opponents and dropping out of duels before you get hurt as a viable method to settling duels.

Do something akin to Seven Samurai or Yojimbo

Just play Legend of Five Rings if you want the Warring States thing.

Nab Imperial Historries and set the game in the clan war era and you are on your way to Warring States town.

Nab imperial histories 2 if you wish to use gunpowder based weapons, extra cool because you get to see the effects of blowing shit up with guns in the spiritual world too.

mediafire.com/folder/6sar1o14399xv/SIFRP

Stop recommending L5R. Its faux-Japanisms are absolute shit pleb tier and it has more in common with Imperial China than warring states Japan.

...

And OP asked for Warring States Not!Japan, not virtually the opposite of the Warring States in every possible way Not-Even-Close-to-Not!Japan.

This desu

If you're looking for inspiration, I would suggest you read some manga,
particularly Hyougemono, and also anything done by Hiroshi Hirata, Goseki Kojima, Jiro Taniguchi, Hitoshi Iwaaki and/or Sanpei Shirato

Use the system, not the setting, you Caucasoid.

Why use a janky system if you strip away the setting that carried it?

You never played L5R, huh?

Point taken.

Everything in L5R’s system beyond the basic idea of rolling X amount of dice and keeping Y amount of them then comparing them to a target number is intrinsically tied to some aspect or convention of the setting or another.

go watch 13 Assassins