payn
He'll flip ya...Flip ya for real...
True, I think the CaS or CaW indicates the focus of the game. Not to be confused with the game lacking the opposite entirely.
What TTRPGs have the best tactical combat rules?
For my part,in an RPG context, I am not interested in anything above the squad level -- specifically, PCs versus their opposition.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
Then they're flatly using the term wrong. You can have highly tactical games with relatively little crunch (c.f Loverdrive's example), and intensely crunchy games where no actual tactics are involved, just flailing away with big numbers. There's no consistent link between the two.
Argyle King
Legend
Fair enough. I can understand that point of view.
For me, there are times (such as castle sieges, ship-to-ship exchange of cannon fire, helping defend a town against a powerful dragon, taking out an enemy super-weapon during a space dogfight, and etc) when the PCs fit into a larger picture.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Out of curiosity, are you aware of one in the RPG sphere that is both low crunch and tactical that is not heavily dependent on GM decision making?
Andvari
Hero
By tactical combat I usually think the general plan for a shorter term conflict. So for example, if you are about to have a small-scale encounter, such as an encounter in a dungeon, a tactic might be to position ranged combatants and a spell caster at the top of a staircase, while positioning your front line at the bottom to prevent the orcs from reaching them. If your group does this, it is engaging with combat in a tactical manner.
But I think what some people refer to when they mean "tactical combat" in terms of an RPG is:
Either type of gameplay can be a lot of fun, but to me that's just which rules define how the execution the combat is resolved. The tactical layer is step above that. These rules come into play whether or not either side in the battle have a tactic or not.
But I think what some people refer to when they mean "tactical combat" in terms of an RPG is:
- There's a battle map with miniatures (as opposed to theater of the mind.)
- Characters have a list of clearly defined "hotbar button abilities" that can be activated to cause various effects. They might be "Whirlwind Attack", "Intimidating Shout" or "Knockdown Strike" (as opposed to looser rules where only basic combat maneuvers are covered, and anything else, like shoving someone away, is up to negotiation with the GM).
Either type of gameplay can be a lot of fun, but to me that's just which rules define how the execution the combat is resolved. The tactical layer is step above that. These rules come into play whether or not either side in the battle have a tactic or not.
Argyle King
Legend
I think it can also be a question of whether or not tactics are rewarded by the game's structure (as well as what the game does reward in general).
For example, some games have rules for cover and concealment, so that may come into play when trying to engage foes who use ranged weapons. Likewise, it may take time to load, aim, and fire; and that plays into how to tactically approach an objective.
In other games, someone using a ranged weapon may have little to no impediment to just firing into melee and still hitting the desired target and they can reliably fire every round. In those particular games, the normal tactics of trying to take cover can still be done but there's no benefit to doing them.
What's rewarded changes how tactics are defined. In a game where "whirlwind attack" is a reliable and readily usable technique and facing doesn't matter, fighting in formation might make less sense than in a game where shield walls, facing, and flanking matter.
Thomas Shey
Legend
Depends on whether you consider the latter to require specific buys to do. As I noted, most things you'd want to do in the Hero System are covered by core manuevers; you don't need to invest anything special to try them at least.
And choosing which and when to use them is very much an element of tactics.
Ruin Explorer
Legend
I guarantee there's an indie out there which is, but my knowledge of the indie sphere is insufficient to identify if specifically. Honestly you could just tack a very low-crunch squad combat design on to an RPG as @loverdrive shows. The combat and non-combat rules of many RPGs don't necessarily interact that much.
It's obviously trivial to provide reverse examples - i.e. high-crunch combat-centric RPGs which aren't very tactical - the vast majority of high-crunch of RPGs would fall into this category. What's interesting for this thread is that a lot of medium-high crunch RPGs are quite tactical. Like, whilst Champions/HERO has a lot of rules and complex rules flexibility, I would put it as like an 8/10 crunch RPG (or even a little lower) where something like Rolemaster is 10/10, and vastly less tactical.
You can see this in the wargame/boardgame sphere too - BattleLore, for example, is an extremely pared-down wargame, but if you've played it you'll know it often involves more actual tactics than WHFB did. And much as I'm loathe to admit it, 40K 3E paring down the rules massively from 2E 40K made it drastically more about what actual tactics you were using, rather than just what horrible OP characters/items/units/vehicles you'd brought to the table.
Wofano Wotanto
Hero
Offhand, the first engine that springs to mind for that would be Lumen. I haven't played all the games using it by any means, but some of them (eg NOVA, PHOTON) certainly fit the tactics-heavy, rules-light ask for me. Of course, where you draw the line on low versus medium crunch is pretty subjective, and the GM is still making decisions - they're just decisions based on hard rules rather than narrative fiat. You can browse the (I think) whole spread of Lumen games on itch.io here.
They are very small games, and they inevitably lack the depth of tactical options something with a higher page count could manage, but there might be enough there for you.
