What TTRPGs have the best tactical combat rules?

[Ruin Explorer]

Hi, I did read that and it was unclear to me. You said that you wanted tactical choices to matter but you did not say how much time you were willing to spend to get that nor what levels of detail would be too much for you. Do you want a game like "Fringeworthy" where shot location has to be figured down to the square inch because your belt is extra armor on top of your pants and we need to know if the shot hit your belt or not? Also, is it a leather belt or a cloth belt?

The confusion is one you seem to have manufactured for yourself.

Your example has absolutely nothing to do with whether a game has "tactical combat" or not. It merely details an extremely simulationist/process-driven approach to doing damage in a game. Such a game might or might not have "tactical combat". It's an entirely separate axis of design from simulationism. They don't interrelate any more than a car being a convertible and having an automatic gear box interrelate.

For example, generally speaking, Cyberpunk 2020 had a more simulationist and detailed approach to gun combat than say, early editions of Shadowrun, to the point of determining damage individually to every bullet in a spray of machinegun fire, each one being possible to hit a different bodypart with different armour, etc., but various rules in Shadowrun 1-3E meant that in combat situations, Shadownrun tended to play out a little more "tactically" - i.e. with people thinking about what they're doing, using cover, manuevering, taking advantage of the Chunky Salsa rules, using spells carefully, and so on.

Millennium's End, back in 1991, was probably the first attempt at making a "tacti-cool" RPG, and attempted to combine the overcomplicated rules of a lot of RPGs of the era with actual tactical combat, with the players making genuine decisions about how to use cover, where to aim and so on, because you used little acetate overlays to determine where you hit. Was it tactical? Just about - certainly more than most games of the era, but it was mostly "tacti-cool", wherein modern weapons, weapons accessories, ammo, and body armour are essentially turned into fetish objects (in all senses of the word fetish).

Weirdly I'd give Champions/HERO a shout-out here. It was never, ever a good superhero game, despite people managing to run good superhero campaigns in it (an inappropriate system has never entirely precluded a good campaign!), but it was a weirdly decent game for like, small-unit combat, with the hexes and way the timings of turns worked. You could have quite interesting tactical combat with it.

Personally I'd rate 4E as easily having the best tactical combat of any game I've played. It's fun, it's engaging, it's reasonably fast (for tactical combat), your decisions matter, teamplay and coordination matters a ton, terrain and where you are is hugely relevant, and so on. No other edition of D&D is even close to this - and I don't hate those other editions, certainly not - but what they offer is absolutely not on the same level, tactical combat-wise. Including 3.XE/PF, which, like Peter here, seemed to confuse complex rules and needless detail with "tactical".

 

[Thomas Shey]

Weirdly I'd give Champions/HERO a shout-out here. It was never, ever a good superhero game, despite people managing to run good superhero campaigns in it (an inappropriate system has never entirely precluded a good campaign!), but it was a weirdly decent game for like, small-unit combat, with the hexes and way the timings of turns worked. You could have quite interesting tactical combat with it.

Even though I modestly disagree with you (probably because I expect genre to change based on medium), I've always said Hero often worked better for Heroic scale games for some of the reasons you mention. Among other things, the martial arts and combat system elements in combination makes it absolutely one of (if not the) best games for playing a martial artist or fencer I've ever seen.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Even though I modestly disagree with you (probably because I expect genre to change based on medium), I've always said Hero often worked better for Heroic scale games for some of the reasons you mention. Among other things, the martial arts and combat system elements in combination makes it absolutely one of (if not the) best games for playing a martial artist or fencer I've ever seen.

I can sympathize with the "genre to change with medium" position (something often ignored), but I felt like what Champions/HERO did to superheroes took them so extremely far from the genre in comic books as to become something entirely different. Whereas FASERIP, despite also being a different medium, did a remarkable job of keeping the genre feel relatively (albeit imperfectly) consistent with comics.

But yes I think that's right re: martial artist/fencer-type heroes - or equally The Shadow-esque gunmen - or one of the more "street-level" Batman-analogues such as Daredevil - Champions/HERO was pretty good for a bust-up with a bunch of armed thugs in an alleyway or a dimly-lit factory or the like, making it actually engaging and have some heft gameplay-wise (at the cost of being pretty slow until the players got into it).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can sympathize with the "genre to change with medium" position (something often ignored), but I felt like what Champions/HERO did to superheroes took them so extremely far from the genre in comic books as to become something entirely different. Whereas FASERIP, despite also being a different medium, did a remarkable job of keeping the genre feel relatively (albeit imperfectly) consistent with comics.

Whereas it always still felt like superheroes to me. As with most such things, mileage varies.

But yes I think that's right re: martial artist/fencer-type heroes - or equally The Shadow-esque gunmen - or one of the more "street-level" Batman-analogues such as Daredevil - Champions/HERO was pretty good for a bust-up with a bunch of armed thugs in an alleyway or a dimly-lit factory or the like, making it actually engaging and have some heft gameplay-wise (at the cost of being pretty slow until the players got into it).

Well, honestly, anything with decent tactical engagement that isn't heavily GM-dependent has a certain amount of learning curve. I don't personally believe its possible to have all both of those (tactical engagement not GM dependent) without that.

 

[dbm]

the martial arts and combat system elements in combination makes it absolutely one of (if not the) best games for playing a martial artist or fencer I've ever seen.

When I tried running HERO for our group I was quite impressed by the use of things like variable power pools to represent fighting forms. In that respect HERO is perhaps the ultimate expression of a ‘gamiest’ approach (in a positive sense). You can build anything from the game components and it will be reasonably balanced.

GURPS has a similar level of completeness but some items are bespoke rather than modular and so extrapolating is more difficult.

Savage Worlds is less granular but its pulp agenda is less demanding of precision so that is fine at the table in my opinion.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Well, honestly, anything with decent tactical engagement that isn't heavily GM-dependent has a certain amount of learning curve. I don't personally believe its possible to have all both of those (tactical engagement not GM dependent) without that.

I think you can have systems that are a lot more player-friendly and easy to deal with than the initiative/segment system which was the main "slowdown factor" on Champions/HERO. There will always be some learning curve, but that wasn't so much learning, as having to practice with it, and I feel like it was outrageously clunky and also gave some characters way more spotlight time (but so did Shadowrun - it is a danger of tactically-oriented systems - if there's a way to take multiple goes, it's everything).

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think you can have systems that are a lot more player-friendly and easy to deal with than the initiative/segment system which was the main "slowdown factor" on Champions/HERO. There will always be some learning curve, but that wasn't so much learning, as having to practice with it, and I feel like it was outrageously clunky and also gave some characters way more spotlight time (but so did Shadowrun - it is a danger of tactically-oriented systems - if there's a way to take multiple goes, it's everything).

Eh, once you had a table put together--and that wasn't hard--it really didn't slow things down notably intrinsically. Decision paralysis was a much bigger problem, and that's an issue with any game where you have a lot of meaningful options with trade-offs. Admittedly, there's a simple fix there that they didn't do, but they wouldn't be the only one.

(And Hero Speed was nowhere near as bad as 1st Edition SR actions, because they were spread out rather than piled up at the top).

 

[Argyle King]

My problem with realistic systems is not necessarily just that they can be slow to play, but that too often the random factor is greater than the skill factor. That is to say ultimately your choices don't matter so much as everything comes down to just who can get a critical hit or equivalent first, and then death spiral sets in (if one side wasn't one shotted). In GURPS for example, you can mitigate against luck but fundamentally it's all done to which side gets hit hard first.

...

I'm not sure that I agree with this assessment.

I think it's more that, in (default) GURPS, the game's lean toward verisimilitude means a combination of 1) better/worse tactics tend toward better/worse results; 2) what most people think of as "good" tactics in something like contemporary D&D really aren't (good tactics in virtually any other environment); and 3) combat has lasting consequences.

Sure, luck is a factor -as it can be in a real-world battle. History is full of examples of a battle going a different way because of "luck" or other such intangibles. That's why we roll the dice. However, a proficient commander; a team that works well together; and/or a better battle strategy can mitigate the impact of those intangibles.

I can't speak for other games that you may have in mind. For GURPS specifically, I find that there exists a good balance between actual tactics being rewarded and dice providing the uncertainty I would expect from the chaos of battle.

 

[woefulhc]

I'll toss in my $0.02. I think GURPS. In part because the base version allow and supports from theater of the mind up to where terrain, facing position and team work are deciding factors in a battle. Because of the modular design, it works to use any of those levels of tactics. Most of the games I've run over the last 7 years have freely switched between level of tactical detail.

I came to GURPS from CW. My recollection from 80s era Car Wars that (car) facing mattered as did targeting things like tires. GURPS does allow (but does not demand) that level of detail. If you want to have all attacks his the hit points, that works. If you want to allow the option of hitting something more specific (hand, leg, neck...) that is well supported.

A central theme of GURPS is that it is a toolkit for building a specific game, rather than a completely laid out game. Personally, I don't think having super detailed sniper rules fit well in a martial arts themed game. Nor do I really want my players fumbling with which options they have. In practice, this means I may present them options or tell them the game mechanics of doing something wild. The Barbarian in my Dungeon Fantasy RPG game likes to use their spear to pick up foes they have run through and use the foes to beat their friends. While there is no specific write up, that I know of for this, I do know how difficult I think it should be and am able to move from there.

This isn't to say it is the best for everyone. It is my preference, though.

 

[Reynard]

GURPS is a good tactical game. I'm not a huge fan of the rest of play, though, and generally speaking HERO is a better toolkit.