Which system's combat do you enjoy the most?
>>46300756
Savage Worlds can be badass, I like the idea behind Riddle of Steel even if execution can be meh.
>>46300756
OpenSix and MiniSix are pretty close to perfect for me.
>>46300756
Once you learn the intricacies behind it, GURPS has a pretty enjoyable combat system.
>>46300756
Cyberpunk 2020. No fucking around.
>>46300756
The Riddle of Steel. It's interactive, fluid and intense.
4e and Strike!
But I have been interested in RoS.
>>46304781
>Another person on /tg/ who likes 2020
How can this fragging be
>>46300756
I find all combat systems to be disgusting abstractions.
With that said, Gumshoe's system is by default very simple and also very scaleable if you must have "crunch."
>>46301533
Savage Worlds, fuck yeah. Tactical, decisive, lethal.
But I also like >>46305004
>>46305004
I used to not like 4e because it was too gamey but now that I've been playing 5e for like a year I think 4e had it right.
>>46300756
GURPS is my favorite, probably because I'm so knowledgeable about the rules that it flows super fast.
I like Only War though. A bunch.
>>46308125
>>46301996
>Muh niggaz
>>46308094
Do you mind explaining your reasoning?
>>46308166
It may just be my group, but 5e seems inherently unbalanced due to magic items and spells. Take reverse gravity for example, which makes an enemy fall upwards to a distance of 100 feet, and drops them at the end of the duration. Someone in a recent session casted that on a dungeon boss, nearly one-shotting it in fall damage, simply because the DM didn't account for the spell by including a ceiling. This isn't helped by the fact that boss-tier enemies like ancient dragons and whatnot only have 300 to 400 hp.
I can see how class powers and features are more balanced, but magic items and spells can be used in game-breaking ways assuming the players are moderately creative.
4e's at-will/encounter/daily seems to work better in the sense that classes tend to not overshadow each other and combats require more tactics, instead of you're sorcerer pulling some shit like "I circumvent the puzzle by earth-walking through the door anyway," or "I use my bead of force to imprison the guy and throw him off a cliff since he now weighs five pounds."
Legends of the Wulin. Best high action combat system in any RPG, ever. It's crunchy, but that it's built with the narrative flow of a fight scene in mind, rather than adherence to 'realism', makes it really unique and compelling. It's just a shame the systems barrier to entry is so high due to godawful editing.
4e gets an honourable mention for being the only edition of D&D with good combat.
>>46310590
Here's the thing though. That sort of situation, where spellcasters can solve every problem through a modicum of creativity? That's what a huge amount of people loved about 3.5, regardless of the fact it made the game a broken mess. It's why PF was so popular after WotC improved the game by removing it, and why they'e gone back to it with 5e. It's a terrible mechanic, but it's one people apparently love. Well, caster players love it, and the people who play non-casters seem to have this odd sense of stockholm syndrome towards playing useless cheerleaders.
>>46310686
Oh gosh, I don't see what there is to love about it. Every fight my party gets in quickly turns into a fucking cartoon. Last night my druid one-shot a pit fiend by weaponizing ten-thousand fish which he acquired with a trident of fish command, stored in a bag of holding, and buffed with crusader's mantle. There is literally an item in 5e that makes things you paint come to life. My campaign has literally become Looney Tunes. Fuck 5e's loot tables I want out.
>>46310893
I don't either, but I've never really understood the roleplaying scenes gigantic boner for 3.PF. I enjoyed a few games of it until I realized how fucked it was, and then switched to better games. But a huge chunk of the D&D playerbase threw their toys out of the pram at not being able to invalidate encounters at will. It's rather bizarre.
>>46308166
Not that guy, but what I like about 4e is that it's super intuitive, especially compared to 3.x. It's much easier to play, especially for new players, it's easier to make houserules for, it's easier to balance encounters for, etc. Not necessarily because it has less options (though the massive bloat definitely didn't do 3.x any favors in that regard), but because it's much easier to oversee all available options and compare them by a single standard, rather than 3.x which has a complete mess of different systems that sometimes interact in awkward ways and sometimes barely interact at all, leading to shit like the old "linear fighter, quadratic wizard" problem.
People often call 4e "videogamey" as if that's an insult. I could come up with several different interpretations about what they actually mean by "videogamey", but either way I don't think that's a bad thing. As a system, it's far more "pure" than 3.x ever was, far more comparable to 2e AD&D in that regard. It doesn't try to jam its sticky fingers into every single aspect of roleplaying nearly as much as 3.x did which is a rollplayer's game with rules for just about fucking everything. 4e has much more of the purity of AD&D, but with less unnecessary complexity and a far more unified and elegant ruleset, making it the superior choice for "babby's first roleplaying system" without ruining the fun bits for more experienced players. The only players who have a good reason to hate 4e are the CharOp min-maxers, but fuck those faggots anyway.
It's definitely not a perfect system and I should probably note that I'm not exactly the biggest fan of -any- version of D&D, but as far as the system goes it's definitely the best version of D&D. Almost none of the actual problems the system have come from the core system itself, and most of the flak it got was knee-jerk "not muh" bullshit frm people who never gave it a fair chance.
Since we are talking about combat systems...
Any system which works with a single player and a GM?
>>46316139
Most systems will work just fine with one player.
The hard part isn't finding a good system, it's being comfortable with playing one-on-one, and having a GM that can keep games interesting for just one player.
>>46316193
In my experience with OGL based systems the player needs a lot of boons to keep up with the many possible situations of daily adventurer life, like more skill points, lots of wands if they aren't a caster, and maybe even improved ability scores.
Now I'm planning on running a post-apoc exploration game for a friend of mine, as a solo game, and wanted something different. Not too crunchy but well organized and with a degree of tactic, maybe mixing magic in the game too. Any suggestions?
>>46316293
Well you can go either way. Either you make the player more powerful/versatile or you take more effort to tailor the challenges to the player. Or both, of course. The good thing is that you don't have to worry about party balance, so even if the player ends up being OP as fuck it's not really an issue.
I don't have any solid recommendations since it depends on the kind of games you like to run, but like I said almost any system will work as long as you're a decent GM. You might want to consider systems that lean a bit heavier on the crunch side with some interesting cmbat options (say, GURPS, Burning Wheel, Riddle of Steel) since it'll be far less cumbersome with only one player to keep track of, but there's no real reason you couldn't make something like FATE work just as well if you wanted to (and if your player is up for it, of course).
>>46301996
>>46308125
>>46308153
These.
Goddamn GURPS is so flexible and visceral and punchy and god fucking damn.
The grappling rules are the tightest shit, same with the martial arts extras.
I'm currently sporting a semi.
>>46300756
RuneQuest 6
>>46300756
Burning Wheel.
Never seen a system pull off such a tense, interesting, yet visceral gridless combat system.
>>46305004
Seconding this anon.
>>46316708
Why, what do you like abvout ROS?
>>46304781
Cyberpunk 2020 has a very solid combat system. Once you played a few combats, it becomes totally intuitive.
There's a lot of difference in what people call a good combat system.
Some people want something incredibly light and simple, where you can throw a few dice and have the combat done.
Other people want more combat depth, but even then there's a lot of distinction. Whether you want granular details and gritty, realistic rules or a more broad, action-movie setup, with heroes pulling awesome moves and mowing through mooks, etc etc.
In the end, you have to assess a combat system by what it sets out to do. Although even then, a lot of RPGs fail. Even if the combat systems aren't bad, a lot of RPG combat systems are very perfunctory, implemented without much thought or innovation.
The new Delta Green edition has probably one of the best combat systems around. It's very simple, yet deadly and realistic which fits the Delta Green theme pretty damn well.
>>46300756
As a GM, Cypher System combat is incredibly easy to set up, run, and tailor on the fly.
>>46300756
The One Ring (the Middle Earth RPG) handles fights pretty well
Rifts. Simple despite what idiots who can't be arsed to read claim while being way more realistic than D&D. Wotc could learn a lot from Palladium
>>46313451
>>46310893
>>46310986
Not to start the standard edition war, but isn't being able to invalidate encounters with creative use of powers and abilities kind of a purer expression of the tabletop roleplaying game as a medium than a balanced, crunchy miniature tactics game?
Like, as a combat system, 4e is almost certainly objectively 'better,' but it doesn't really play to the medium's strength. Of course players aren't barred from roleplaying and doing things out of combat just because the rules are light on that front, but if your entire game can be basically automated by a computer then what's the point of dealing with dice and pens and paper? Like at that point why not just go play Dark Souls or something, it'll be a lot faster and more visceral, and probably have nicer visuals for those who are lacking in the imagination department.
I've always thought giving players the ability to circumvent or defeat encounters with clever planning is a pretty key part of actually utilizing to the medium's strengths. That being said, if certain character choices let you do that more than others, or if there's a way to do that for every single encounter without any real cleverness or forethought, then that's fucked, of course.
>>46324855
>I've always thought giving players the ability to circumvent or defeat encounters with clever planning is a pretty key part of actually utilizing to the medium's strengths. That being said, if certain character choices let you do that more than others, or if there's a way to do that for every single encounter without any real cleverness or forethought, then that's fucked, of course.
This right here is why 3.5 is no better than 4e in that regard.
Neither system puts any barriers in the way to stop a GM working with his players to come up with a creative solution to problems, through planning, preparation and use of resources.
3.5, however, makes it trivially easy for a subset of characters, casters, to do so in almost all circumstances, without any need for planning, preparation or cleverness.
I think that's part of why so many people defend 3.5's combat system. It's utter dogshit, but half the time they ignored it anyway.
>>46324855
I agree with you, but this thread is about combat systems, so its kind of a moot point.
I, personally, thought Runequest's combat system was the most fun out of all the systems I've played... which granted is only two outside of DnD and its cousins.
I'd like to hear more people saying why a particular combat system was cool, rather than just reeling off system names without any real context.
>>46324924
Easiest way to do that is to point to earlier posts and say their system is shit, forcing them to defend it.
>>46324924
Dungeon World, made combat faster and easier to add flavor, faster because you only roll once to determine damage
BasicFantasy(OSR) fast and deadly you feel that every step matters
>>46324949
You're favorite system, sir, is shit.
>>46305004
Stop shilling Strike!
Why does /tg/ keep on shilling Strike!?
>>46325054
Not sure, and I say that as someone who liked 4e. I glanced at it, and it didn't seem bad, but it seemed oversimplified for my tastes. I can understand wanting to streamline 4e, but it seemed like it streamlined it so far as to remove the majority of what I liked about 4e.
>>46325044
Cypher system is my favorite system to run combat in because the enemies are generated by picking their difficulty on a scale of one to ten. Hitting them, and getting hit by them, revolves around that number you choose, as do their HP and damage. After you pick the number you can easily add any special ability you can think of without any work.
I had a random encounter where the PC's fought a dozen bandits, which ended in minutes. I like that I can throw in something simple and off the cuff and have it not slow down gameplay.
>>46325128
There's a thread up right now on how melee/ranged in Cypher is really goofy.
>>46325054
Just one shitty guy to be honest, nobody else likes that shit
>>46325149
Yeah, I've actually never seen that come up in play. Though I GM Numenera, where ranged weapons do less damage then melee.
Point-Blank range is an odd stand out in a system that usually doesn't have small defined modifiers like that. Which, is definitely a failing on Monte Cook's part. That said, the system still works really for me. Other GM's may want more narrativism or more crunch, I like the middle ground that Cypher straddles.
>>46325149
The system is retarded
>>46300756
World of Darkness, back in the 90s. You got to be creative with it, the setting for difficulty is obvious, and I rolled well on D10s.
>>46300756
Most of the ORE games but Reign the most for combat
>>46325128
This seems like it'd fall very much into the fast/simple resolution category, but lacking a lot in the way of depth.
I enjoy the combat in Shadowrun a lot, actually makes it fun and worthwhile to really plan things out. Also the FF WH40k systems, although that is with one or two house rules to make armour not retarded
>>46316661
100% this
>>46305599
>Another person on /tg/
All of us here secretly like Cyberpunk 2020, choomba.
If you want to go maximum autism then there is always Ops and Tactics.
I really like Riddle of Steel and its descendents. I'm running Song of Swords now and my group's really happy with it. You can remain really simple and fast with it, or go into a lot of detail with different maneuvers, tricks, and mindgames. Plus, hits actually have a lot of weight to them. Combat puts the fear of God into players, which is something I really like for the tone I'm using. I also love RuneQuest for similar reasons, though I haven't had a chance to run it much yet.
I've never found a light combat system that I can say I really like. Stuff that works well, yes, and stuff that fits the game, but nothing that's ever stood out to me. Does anyone know of any lighter combat systems that do something interesting and don't take the default path of just getting out of the way?
>>46300756
Ironclaw, the back-and-forth combat can be used for two duelists or entire armies without a hassle.
>>46326695
Less simple then the ultra-lights like Risus, but yeah.
>>46327938
What's the difference between Riddle of Steel and Song of Swords?
My favourite would probably be 3.5, if you include Tome of Battle so melee combat has variety. Second-favourite is Dark Heresy, for the critical hit charts.
>>46329487
Riddle of Steel's combat system is actually well designed. It's also the game that's been printed and published.
A longer explanation would go into a lot of minutia, and talk about how Song of Swords misses the forest for the trees, but I don't want to start an argument here.
GURPS
I like how total noob players can simply describe what they're trying to do, miming that shit complete with "Hyaaah! Wham!" noises and any decent GM will just translate that into one or more modified rolls, keeping the game flow smooth.
>>46329818
Well fuck you to buddy.
>>46329818
Well come and start one here then, seriously we need something to talk about.
>>46308373
>>46300756
- 1 Car
+/- 0 Dog
>>46325054
>>46325222
Pretty sure there's at least two of us.
>>46325071
Anything missing in particular?
I'd only call the tactics module "really good" out of the complete package. And maybe team conflict. But those are good enough to carry the rest (and you can just bolt on whatever skill/stat system you like anyway).
>>46324604
My man.
Despite its flaws I really like the one in Unknown Armies. It's fast and dirty and I love how quickly the situation changes once you start getting weapons in the mix.
>>46330561
Okay then.
>>46332204
I dropped by the Song of Swords thread a few times. I was the guy who asked why the game needed 22 different varieties of dagger, given how similar their statistical benefits are. Most of my issues and suggestions were rebuffed by people saying "We like the game this way, you just don't get it, stop trying to ruin our fun." So, yeah, not going to start that any time soon.
>>46300756
It's not the /best/ one I've ever played, but I honestly like the combat system in FFG's 40k RPGs a lot. It just feels right to me.
