Mechanic wise, what would be a good way to spice up non-magic combat beyond the "I attack it"?
There are so many options you need to narrow it down.
What sort of combat? Heroic? Gritty? Medieval? Modern?
What sort of 'non-magic'? Completely mundane? Sci-fi? Sufficiently advanced technology?
>>46921249
"I swing my mace at the orc's knees."
Bam, now if you hit he's probably gonna have trouble walking in addition to whatever HP loss he suffers.
>>46921249
"I use the environmental hazards to brutally insta-kill the enemy."
"I attack a weak spot in enemy's armor, making it fall apart."
"I tear the guy's arm off and use it as an improvised weapon."
"I use my pocket sand to temporarily blind the enemy."
>>46921278
Depends on the OP.
1) Mundane characters need a reason to not do the most effective possible thing every turn. Some kind of resource.
2) Once you've established that, you need enough widgets to non-magical combat that there's actually things to hinge on. If all enemies are uniform blobs of HP and your system isn't pre-equipped to handle getting a leg chopped off or sand thrown in your eye without the ability custom-defining what it does on the spot, start over and build a more robust chassis.
3) Once you've done THOSE, just start building abilities that take advantage of those levers, attach resource costs to them, and away you go.
>>46921299
Its not about the roleplay, its the mechanic.
What if you had a different roll to hit the orc in the knee, as a called shot?
>>46921299
Let's go one further. Make extra effects a separate, mandatory roll. Using your example, you're gonna roll for damage, and roll for knees.
Damage succeeds. Knees fails. You manage to slam his shield and knock his stamina down.
Damage fails. Knees succeeds. You manage to make him trip.
Both succeed. Bye-bye kneecaps.
>>46921249
>>46921317
Is there a system that falls into these lines?
>>46922851
REIGN.
>>46921438
A little of this.
>>46921317
What if the most effective thing isn't directly dealing damage?
Games that take gun/swordplay seriously offer a lot of options besides "I hit it", attaching bonuses and penalties in a variety of areas for a variety of effects.
>>46922953
>What if the most effective thing isn't directly dealing damage?
You'd get just as bored of saying "I trip him" every round, or repeating the same "I debuff his [x], then his [y], then his [z]" routine every fight.
The important thing is for "the most effective thing I can do right this second" to be changing constantly, either because you don't have the resources to pull it off anymore, or because the circumstances changed, etc. If it's the same from round to round or fight to fight (even with the same enemy), then the system has failed.
> germanfag
In The Dark Eye 4th Edition there is an extensive system for Endurance and Exhaustion.
So first there is a system, a "Currency" for how many actions in total during a certain (prolonged) period of time your character can take.
This is basically:
> Constitution, which's height determines the threshold of damage you can take before suffering a WOUND,
> Endurance, wich is a derived stat calculated from Courage, Strength and twice your Constitution.
> Exhaustion, which you can accumulate up to a threshold of your Constitution before gaingin...
> ... Overstress, which will then slowly eat away at your fighting ability, and make you incapable of going on with the fight as soon as it exceeds your Constitution.
> Every Attack you make, you lose Endurance in accordance with these factors
- how heavy is your weapon
- how heavy is your armour
- do you use a maneuver
Once your Endurance nears the zero point you need to worry and make what is basically two actions ( i.e. most of your actions in a turn ) to "Take Breath."
Each "Taking Breath" will have you instantly regain Endurance depending on how high your Constitution is. It will also gain you one Point of "Exhaustion", of which you may accumulate as many as your Constitution.
Once your "Exhaustion" exceeds your Constitution, you instead gain "Overstress", wich will temporarily lower your Constitution, make you slower and more prune to taking Wounds, as well as decreasing Attack and Parade value of your character.
Combats - especially extended combats, say for example the siege of a castle and continued fighting in corridors - becomes a Marathon for your characters, and you actively get feedback as to how exhausted your character is, until eventually he will break down from over-exhaustion.
>>46923182
(continued):
Next there is a wide array of different maneuvers available to fighters, wich work against each other in a rock-paper-scissors way, accomplishing different things.
> Depending on what kind of maneuver you do, you will lose more Endurance.
> There is Maneuvers to attack your Opponents Endurance as opposed to his Health
There is also WOUNDS on top of HEALTH, which will slow you down.
WOUNDS have different effects depending on where they hit you.
>>46923182
Thats drakensang, right? It scares me, every combat feels too deadly.
>>46922997
Then it's up to the gm to place enemies that the same tactics do not work on, different parameters, etc.
Your line
>You'd get just as bored of saying "I trip him" every round, or repeating the same "I debuff his [x], then his [y], then his [z]" routine every fight.
doesn't apply to say, Scion, WoD, SoS.
If the default action is ONLY "I hit him", then the system is failing to offer meaningful alternatives.
In SoS for example, binds, grapples, throws, step ins/outs all dramatically change combat for both parties.
>>46923206
A Fighter can try to make an enemy exhaust himself, instead of outright killing him.
There's the option of inflicting Wounds to incapacitate an enemy, without depleting his Health and thereby killing him,
or you can kill someone with a thousand cuts and deplete his health, possibly without inflicting a single wound to your enemy.
There is also the currency of dice modifiers which you can collect through various maneuvers and accumulate over the course of a combat.
However: Fights in The Dark Eye take longer, especially for someone unaccustomed to the system they take exceedingly long.
If you know the works, it is actually quite fast though, and exciting.
There is also an active defence, so:
> One Guy rolls his Attack
> Other guy has an array of defensive Maneuvers he can choose from to roll on.
So you're always involved, even during the enemies turn :)
>>46921249
No fireballs or magic missiles. Long rituals of 4 hours with complex incantations. Final destination.
>>46923222
Drakensang was a computer game, which footed heavily on the The Dark Eye System.
Combat is very deadly indeed. Even high level characters can die badly against easy encounters, if they gamble too highly, or get caught off guard or swarmed.
In The Dark Eye, when there's twenty Goblins descending on you, even the most high level groups will turn and flee 9 times out of 10,
UNLESS the Wizard has some Nukes to throw at them.
In The Dark Eye, there is also a very good balance between wizards and fighters:
Wizards will deplete their Mana very quickly, while doing a proportionally high amount of damage in a short amount of time.
But for prolonged encounters or even large scale battles, wizards usually run out of juice very fast and become useless. Most wizards are therefore required to act creatively and need to wait for the right moment to throw their spells :)
>>46923286
>non-magic
>talks about removing magic
>>46923252
>Then it's up to the gm to place enemies that the same tactics do not work on, different parameters, etc.
It being "up to the GM" doesn't mean anything, because the system's job is to assist the GM. The system has to do more than just not get in the way, because if I wanted a system whose only virtue is that it doesn't actively work against what I'm trying to do, I'd freeform it.
If the GM is doing all the work to make combat interesting, then there's no need for the combat rules to begin with.
>>You'd get just as bored of saying "I trip him" every round, or repeating the same "I debuff his [x], then his [y], then his [z]" routine every fight.
>doesn't apply to say, Scion, WoD, SoS.
It absolutely applies to Scion and WoD, because just hitting someone for damage dramatically outstrips every other option in combat. The Arm Wrack tilt does not fuck them up enough to make it equivalent to taking out half or more of their HP unless you're intentionally trying not to kill them, in which case the Arm Wrack tilt (inflicted twice) is an equally no-duh choice over regular attacks. There's no tactics involved in either case.
>>46923338
Assuming that the only thing you are trying to do is kill them, assuming you aren't using Arsenal or some other book that piles on combat merits, assuming that you are both mortals with no supernatural powers that make "I hit it" less attractive alone.
Why are the strongest Werewolf gifts in 2e massive environmental reshaping powers? Because it gives you a peerless advantage against a foe, more than "I hit it" alone ever could.
Do you think a demon is going to go "I hit it", or use a small handful of exploits that render "I hit it" inconsequential, if needed at all? Same with mage. "I hit it" is less powerful than "I reverse his localized gravity, then leave while he sorts his shit out without falling to earth and going splat".
It is the simplest option, a base denominator. It is not bad, but it is not the best, not the only, and your post makes a shitton of assumptions about what the fight started over and the objective of the people in it.
Stop white rooming.
>>46921249
I know what I'm about to say sounds crazy, but hear me out here. There are pretty much two large aspects of humanity which will always manage to interest and entertain us: violence, and sex. You're stuck in the predicament that violence simply isn't doing it for you? Well, you might just need to go the full five miles. It has to be implemented tastefully, of course, but there can be a lot of benefits to accounting for these sorts of things, instead of just assuming that everything beneath the head is one large blob of flesh with no differences in bodyparts.
Imagine a more detailed combat system, something that allows the player to make tactical decisions to go for sensitive areas, like the nipples, or underneath the armpit. Taking a crotch shot could incapacitate the target, or maybe you could grap a female enemy by the tit to give them movement penalties. In the end, if you want more than just "I attack it" then you're going to have to go this way.
But that's just my two cents.
>>46923472
Hey, OP said no magic!
>>46923548
Alright, SoS, a game that applies all of the unique situations hand to hand can find itself in, doesn't need magic to do so, where the difference between weapons can decide a match on it's own.
>>46923598
What is SoS?
>>46923472
>Assuming that the only thing you are trying to do is kill them,
No, I addressed that. If you aren't trying to kill them, your combat tactic immediately flips to an equally-trivial decision.
> assuming you aren't using Arsenal or some other book that piles on combat merits,
Ah yes, Arsenal, advent of "I can make 5 attacks per round, but nothing makes the non-damage options 5x better. Oh well!"
>assuming that you are both mortals with no supernatural powers that make "I hit it" less attractive alone.
Yes, that's the point we're discussing: the combat chassis itself.
>[supernaturals]
1) Supernatural powers literally do exactly what I told OP the combat chassis has to do. They introduce a resource (your supernatural mojo), additional levers to hang on that don't make your character a uniform blob of HP, and then they expounded on those lists until the options were exhausted.
2) Even then, a lot of WoD supernaturals don't CHANGE tactics, they just have an extra consideration at the start of the fight. "Do I have enough juice to use this fuckwrecker power?" and then you default to your choices.
>It is the simplest option, a base denominator. It is not bad, but it is not the best, not the only, and your post makes a shitton of assumptions about what the fight started over and the objective of the people in it.
The problem is not "I hit it" specifically. The problem is ANY repetition. I don't care if the optimal tactic is comboing 5 separate supernatural powers together in some clusterfucked gattai. If there's a "THE" optimal tactic, at all, for any given match up, your system needs work.
>>46923763
At this point, you are complaining that in a firefight, the best way of directly fighting back is shooting your own gun.
Now granted, in say, Dark Heresy, you can fire a single well placed shot, a handful of moderately aimed shots, or spray and pray, each with it's own bonuses and benefits, depending on gear, temperament and need in that combat round.
Of course, that also ignores suppressive fire to force pinning, different distances of engagement based on equipment of friend and foe, grenades, cover.
But please, according to you, none of that matters, because as long as you go "I hit it", everything is the same!
And continue ignoring games like SoS, Fantasycraft and Dark Eye which shit all over your premise.
>>46923628
Song of Swords.
>>46923921
>But please, according to you, none of that matters, because as long as you go "I hit it", everything is the same!
No, everything is the same because FOR A GIVEN CHARACTER IN A GIVEN FIGHT, one of those options will almost always blow the others out of the water, and they'll just do that every single round.
It doesn't matter if you're doing Suppressive Fire every round or Full Auto every round or casting Super Apocalypse every round, it's equally fucking boring and repetitive.
If the only way to force a character to change tactics in your fight engine is to change the match-up, it's not a good fight system.
>And continue ignoring games like SoS, Fantasycraft and Dark Eye which shit all over your premise.
Having played Fantasycraft, it is absolutely victim to this. For a given character, there's a pretty specific combination of Tricks and stances that work best for them against a given foe (and usually MOST foes), and the only way for an enemy to change it up is for the enemy itself to change.
I'm not ignoring SoS or Dark Eye, because I haven't played them, but if you're ascribing them the same credit you give FC, chances are they're also victim to this.
>>46921249
Sounds like you want Rolemaster and its many, many charts of damage dealing.
>>46924058
>one of those options will almost always blow the others out of the water, and they'll just do that every single round.
Except that is absolutely not the case at all, and the ignorance in that statement is outrageous. It entirely ignores risk/reward which is a necessity when it comes to determining strategy and tactics. That you have the audacity to blatantly ignore it or act as though it has no weight means you are either an idiot or a troll.
> For a given character, there's a pretty specific combination of Tricks and stances that work best for them against a given foe (and usually MOST foes), and the only way for an enemy to change it up is for the enemy itself to change.
So it is poor form to use working tactics against a foe, or to abuse weaknesses? Everyone uses fire against trolls in D&D, that makes it a bad tactic?
>I'm not ignoring SoS or Dark Eye, because I haven't played them
So you admit to making a blanket statement that only applies to d20 OGL games (even if that) when you are ignorant of games that expressly rail against it? And you continue to argue?
Yea, this is where I depart and wish you well in whatever game you decide to play.
>>46923921
All I can find about "song of swords" is a mobile game.
>>46924228
>Except that is absolutely not the case at all, and the ignorance in that statement is outrageous. It entirely ignores risk/reward which is a necessity when it comes to determining strategy and tactics. That you have the audacity to blatantly ignore it or act as though it has no weight means you are either an idiot or a troll.
No, the risk/reward is just very shallow in DH.
A character with less than 20BS? Suppressive fire is an automatic choice. 30BS and a decent gun? Single fire or automatic fire depending on which one you've invested more talents into.
>So it is poor form to use working tactics against a foe, or to abuse weaknesses? Everyone uses fire against trolls in D&D, that makes it a bad tactic?
It's poor form for a system to be so shallow that it becomes a specific, repeatable tactic.
"use fire against trolls" is fine in a general sense. "cast [fire weakness exacerbator-masturbator] if it's available, then swing with a source of fire damage until dead" is not.
>So you admit to making a blanket statement that only applies to d20 OGL games (even if that) when you are ignorant of games that expressly rail against it? And you continue to argue?
I admit that I'm not omniscient and open to the idea that a system could make combat something less than infuriatingly banal without resources and plenty of combat levers to rely on, but until/unless you're willing to do more than namedrop them smugly there's not a whole lot to talk about on the points.
>>46921249
4e.
>>46921249
Quite frankly, and I know this probably isn't what you're looking for, but modern firearms. Systems where non-magic combat is quick and lethal automatically make cover and force multipliers important. Deciding how many bullets to shoot someone with can be very important if you have a smaller mag, and recoil can make you decide to hold off even if you have a big old belt-fed gun. Supressive fire with fully automatic weapons lets mundane characters do the sort of crowd control that you normally think of magic-users doing, and grenades and other explosives always spice things up (though remember not to use them in a 10ftx10ft room with an orc!). Personally I think shadowrun does this pretty well, though translating it to your typical medieval setting is tricky.
Now, most of these are a bit hard to transfer to fantasy settings. Explosives can be easily downgraded to stuff like alchemical fire/molotovs/whatever, and supressive fire could be with primitive flame/sparkthrowers. Terrain being important would be up to the GM, since melee combat tends to negate terrain as cover, but something like fighting on stairs or other "they have the high ground/reach advantage" can make combat a puzzle. Incorporating other skills into physical combat to get extra benefits (such as letting very athletically or acrobatically skilled characters have extra options in combat) also both makes combat less stale and makes them feel those skills have value.
The trickier side is making it so that magic users can't easily just pick up the same toys and then have the same munande bag of tricks, plus their magical ones. SR gets around this with cybernetics that make your magic weaker but can give great benefits and difficult/impossible to magically replicate options to mundanes. This is partially due to a less "everything and the kitchen sink" magic system, which is honestly a good thing.
>>46924363
>A character with less than 20BS? Suppressive fire is an automatic choice
Unless you aren't in the half range for it. Or don't have the ammo. Or have a single shot weapon.
>30BS and a decent gun? Single fire or automatic fire depending on which one you've invested more talents into.
You mean the 0 talents that only apply to a single shooting mode? And which fire? The single shot for more accuracy, the semi-auto that is the borderline between extra hits and less accuracy, or full auto, which sacrifices accuracy for damage?
What is your range? Suppressive fire doesn't actually DO anything because it can't hit anyone, you need to have allies able to move forward to capitalize on it, either with grenades, scatter weapons, or melee weapons. You don't seem to have actually ever had to think about your approach in the game, and I feel pity for you.
>nless you're willing to do more than namedrop
There are ALWAYS threads about SoS in the catalogue, along with a free pdf, and DarkEye has a thread in the archive right now.
How am I supposed to talk to you about games you know nothing about, outside of you making more attempts to deflect? Go and read, fool.
>>46921299
This is the most intuitive thing that comes to mind.
But, and this is a big but: This usually doesn't work.
If you just add heavy effects for called shots in, that usually leads to a complete imbalance in the game. If all it takes to severely handicap an enemy is the declaration that you hit his knee, then everybody is going to do it all the time. That, in turn, trivializes fights.
The worst instance of this I've seen was in a game of Shadowrun I played many, many years ago. The DM declared "realistic" combat rules there, which boiled down to: Hit in the head = instant kill. The game quickly became the worst case of rocket tag I've ever witnessed.
Then you have games that do have called shot/body damage/handicap systems built in, but in practice these are often very clunky and impractical to use. Not to mention often also unbalanced.
Sword Path Glory is a rpg that works like this:
Each turn is 1/12 seconds, each action cost some amount of turns to do based on your char stats and the action itself, and x amount of turns after you decided to do the action you will act
You have acceleration based on your dextery, this means that combat movement will be a little like spaceship combat.
While attacking you can decide your attack speed, normal, slow, and fast, that influence amount of turns needed to attack and damage.
Your damage can be stabbing one, left to right, right to left of up to down, this influences damage and also where you will hit.
You can use the shield to defend that will reduce the enemy chance to hit.
Weapon and armor weight influence the damage and speed.
You can do aimed hit too
>>46924542
Which is exactly why HP exists.
>>46924474
>Unless you aren't in the half range for it. Or don't have the ammo. Or have a single shot weapon.
Circumstances that apply from outside the fight. They aren't tactical decisions they're strategic availabilities.
>You mean the 0 talents that only apply to a single shooting mode?
Bulging Biceps, Storm of Iron, and Deadeye Shot are talents that apply only one way or the other off the top of my head.
>And which fire? The single shot for more accuracy, the semi-auto that is the borderline between extra hits and less accuracy, or full auto, which sacrifices accuracy for damage?
With Accurate weapons and Heavy weapons talents, the trade-off goes away. It's all a matter of which one you have.
>What is your range? Suppressive fire doesn't actually DO anything because it can't hit anyone,
Potentially Pinning the targets with a much larger chance of success is better than potentially hitting a few targets with a pitiful chance of success, even and especially if you're all alone, because every turn is precious.
>You don't seem to have actually ever had to think about your approach in the game, and I feel pity for you.
Quite the opposite; players who never think about their approach to systems are the ones who are happiest with shallow combat engines, because they never notice or don't care how simple most RPG combat engines are.
>How am I supposed to talk to you about games you know nothing about, outside of you making more attempts to deflect? Go and read, fool.
The same way I just did, with DH above: by actually presenting relevant information.
>>46921249
I saw someone homebrewing a Dark Souls system that used "ticks"
every combatant had a certain number of ticks, determined by stats, or equipment or buffs
based on what equipment/weapons/spells you have there are various actions you take that have a time cost in "ticks" and "half-ticks" if 2 half ticks chained into each other they counted as one, if not they counted as 1 each action. spells usually had a higher tick cost depending on other factors...
for example
(heavy attack was 2 ticks and a half tick)
(dodge-roll was a half tick then one tick)
so to heavy attack>dodge roll costs 4 ticks
while Dodge roll>heavy attack costs 5 ticks
as I understood the system the actions were all placed on cards, all the players would select their actions for the round with a small time limit all at once. this with minimal communication.
once the DM and the players had selected their actions then the entity with the highest initiative would flip their cards and go through the combo they'd built, higher initiative entities could hold to change their placement in the turn order. for the round.
for a 3 page draft of a theoretical rule-set it looked pretty solid. I'd post it if I had a copy.
strategic,heroic,berserker,warmachine,shield user,distance weaponery,...
>>46926697
>different ways of saying "I hit it"
>>46921249
To introduce my players to the world of "/tg/ that isn't D&D," I set up a low-fantasy campaign in Hero System. It was a generic medieval setting, but it went over SO well. All of my players' premades were martially trained to some degree, and they were pretty much blown away when I introduced the combat system to them. It's not too crazy in Hero System (or rather, it doesn't have to be if you don't want, and it can get insane if you want, too), but they fell in love with the idea that defense skill was separate from armor (rather than AC being the catch-all), plus they all had bonuses to defense while wielding their weapons, so they started using that to determine if they'd dodged or parried when an attack missed.
Plus, there's the hit locations rules. You can aim at parts of the body with varying penalties to the attack roll (there are even two levels of aiming, one general and one specific: you can aim at someone's upper body or specifically the head), and they all impart different multipliers to damage. And there's the STUN/BODY HP system that lets you get knocked unconscious or otherwise disabled, like getting hit in the head or kicked in the nuts.
And lastly, Martial Maneuvers. Every character sheet has a list of the basic ones, like Haymaker, Grab, etc., which influence your offense and defense stats temporarily. Plus special ones for fighting styles. But I think it wasn't just the options that they liked, as you can make up whatever you want and try it in most games, but also having the rules track very specific things and handle all sorts of special actions in just basic combat. It makes the game feel much more complete and versatile. It feels like you're controlling an entire person, not just an entity X squares away from another entity.
Plus healing works pretty close to realistically, so the combat was really high stakes and rewarding.
>>46927772
Really nice, I'm interested, tell me more.
>>46927893
Well Hero System is basically GURPS but MORE. Champions uses it, so it's got a lot of really good super power mechanics, which for a fantasy setting is perfect for crafting whatever weird magic system you might have in your world. You roll a 3D6 for dat bell curve, which is nice. Um... it's got a speed stat separate from move speed, which influences how many times you can act within a 12-second round. Offensive and Defensive Combat Values are what you use for fighting, and they get bonuses and penalties when you do pretty much anything, so it makes fighting more strategic in that sense. And you can get tired, but sometimes it's fine to ignore the Endurance and Recovery stats if the setting doesn't need them.
And the rulebook is DENSE. There's, like, actual acceleration when falling (rounded up to 10m/s^2 from 9.8 for ease of use), a table for the flash points of different materials, shit like that. It's crazy. And pretty much all of it is optional, so you can build up to complexity with new players so things don't get bogged down. It's a good system.
>>46928141
Very interesting, thanks man.
>>46928194
Happy to convert.
>>46922851
Fate Core is probably 90% that. You can make use of the environment which go away after use, you can put effects on an enemy which other players can use, and the enemy can take on penalties (like the broken knee) to avoid getting knocked out of the fight outright.
>>46929359
Took a peek at the rulebook, its pure shit.
But thanks anyway,
>>46921362
Legends of the Wulin actually does this
>>46921249
If you look at RuneQuest 6, you have the combat manoeuvre system. Basically, beyond just doing damage, you also choose a special effect to apply to the opponent. If you have something like a spear, you might want to impale then in it and leave it in them. Fighting's hard when you have two metres of wooden pole stuck in you. Other actions might be too overextend the enemy to give them penalties to attacking, or moving into reach if they have longer weapons than you.
>>46929588
Fate is a scaffold system, which unfortunately means you have to write in or source a handful of extra rules to make the game fit with what you want.
It's a solid base, but you can't play with it alone; attached tactical overhaul is a good start to draw from to make combat not-shit.
Then again, you probably hate it because it doesn't have you rolling on tables in three different sourcebooks for every action.
>>46934433
Much appreciated, thats what I was looking for when I got the core book.
>>46924920
I actually considered doing a system sort of like that. This is kind of a tentative idea I sketched out a year or two ago and I'm not great at explaining, so this probably won't make a ton of sense, but I'll give it a shot anyways?
Basically my idea was to have your standard "initiative" take on the role of some kind of combined pool of initiative/fatigue/"ticks," the idea being you would burn points of initiative (which could also be considered combat advantage or something) to power actions, and the gap between your initial place in the initiative order and your adjusted place in the initiative order being the time it takes when your character is executing the attack (and is therefore open to interrupts/staggers/whatever). Hitting 0 Initiative would be a poise break type thing and you would have to take an action to replenish your initiative.
Spending more points of initiative on actions like attacks would make them stronger, at the cost of making them easier to dodge or interrupt or whatever. Like so if someone springs for a 5-point attack and their opponent uses a 1-point attack, if the former doesn't have a big enough advantage in Initiative then the latter's attack might connect in the middle of their swing and interrupt it. If you manage to keep everyone's current initiative pools secret or only obliquely hinted at it could actually be a pretty interesting risk-reward type thing, if it didn't end up being a broken piece of garbage.
>>46929757
RuneQuest 6 has a quite solid melee system, I have ran two games with it in homebrew settings and new players, and I think it pretty much nails it.
Special effects are the way to go. Even if there are effects like maximize damage and choose location, their usefulness really depends on the opponent you're fighting with. Also, your weapon of choice will have its own perks and downfalls, the most important being reach, so you would want to carry a spear or halberd and a shorter weapon to support you if they get close enough.
Shields are pretty fukken important, too, because you don't just parry with them, but they also act as cover.
Even magic can be very situational.
>>46927772
>HERO System
>Can't find any free SRD or whatever so I can at least check out what the rules look like before buying
>Core book is 20 bucks
Nah nigga.
>>46921249
Play anima, 40kRPGs(2nd ED fantasy works too) and GURPS so you get some ideas of what you can do with more "normal" stuff, and anima (again), 4ED D&D for the more "magical" side.
