What TTRPGs have the best tactical combat rules?

[Morrus]

D&D in every edition is for me the gold standard here.

Wow! You need to play some RPGs!

 

[Morrus]

My first thought is D&D 3.x, but I know a lot of people would argue 4e.

4E is certainly more tactical than 3E.

 

[aramis erak]

One of my few concerns about Car Wars as either a combat game or a rules-light RPG in the vein of Lancer is that you can definitely lose a fight during the vehicle design stage if you either don't know what you're doing or your opponent has advance knowledge of what you're driving. It's not hard to trump most builds when you know they're what you'll face.

Which isn't wholly a bad thing, because running intel-gathering and counterespionage ops in roleplay mode just adds to the variety of stuff you can do. And that's pretty deep already, especially with the AADA Road Guides for inspiration.

In RP mode, the design-for-success is MUCH reduced... because to change the car, the character needs to have a shop, mechanic, and parts... Also, very seldom is the game won in the design step, tho' it can easily be lost there. And one can easily limit the design for RP mode by requiring them to use stock vehicles. This is because the biggest exploits require knowing when to apply them, and if misused, can cost you right there.

 

[Deset Gled]

4E is certainly more tactical than 3E.

"More" is one facet of the discussion. "Best" is a bit more complicated. I don't know about you, but I don't have the stamina for the latter discussion.

 

[Morrus]

"More" is one facet of the discussion. "Best" is a bit more complicated. I don't know about you, but I don't have the stamina for the latter discussion.

Probably the wrong thread for you given the title then?

 

[Deset Gled]

Probably the wrong thread for you given the title then?

I'm happy to stick around for GURPS modules or Battletech.

 

[payn]

I'm happy to stick around for GURPS modules or Battletech.

Some body say Battletech?

 

[aramis erak]

I don't think car Wars qualifies as a RPG any more than, say, Battletech does.

Given that CW, since the Compendium-deluxe edition's premier, includes a bunch of non-combat skills, and that the Truck Stop subtitle includes Role Play, and that many of the ADQ scenarios are very much RPG mode. SJ said it was an RPG. Aaron Alston, who wrote a bunch of adventure modules for it, also notes it's an RPG. Even contrasting it against Highway 2000 and Battlecars.

Battletech only has vehicle operation skills included. Piloting, Gunnery. Piloting is specific to a category... but to get non-combat skills you have to go to Mechwarrior.

Car Wars, from Compendium 1 on, includes Area Knowledge, Animal Husbandry, Computer Tech, Engineering [Vehicular Engineering], Espionage, Fast Talk, Hobby (specify), Journalism, Law, and half a dozen vehicle skills in what has been, since 1987 or so, the core rules of the game. The ones I noted above? When is Animal Husbandry going to come up in non-RP play of the game? Or Espionage? Or, given the 1 second rounds, Fast Talk? Clearly, the intent is that there's more than just combat.

the GURPS version of the setting, GURPS Autoduel, was NOT being asked for by most of the CW fans... it was being asked for by GURPS fans who didn't like Car Wars' rules... and yet, in keeping with the GURPS 1E philosophy, GAD converted GURPS to the Autoduel Setting, used a close variant of the Car Wars Rules, and pissed off most everyone - it was too much CW for the GURPS side, too much GURPS for the CW side, and too much of both for a lot more. Hence, after GURPS Vehicles was written, GAD2 was a pure GURPS thing... and none of my GURPS fan friends would touch either one. The CW fans felt no need to go to GURPS.

I've only played about 4 duels-as-duels. I've played two highway chase scenarios that weren't part of a campaign. I've run 3 or 4 amateur night scenarios which weren't RP. I've played one drag race (yawn). Everything else has been within an ongoing campaign structure with continuing characters and upkeep expenses, maintenance, and repairs.

If D&D OE counts as an RPG, Car Wars does, too. Car Wars has more about downtime than D&D OE. More character types (largely by being skill driven). Actual costs of downtime. Mention of day jobs (and for mechanics, how much pay.) And it's not like SJ didn't write hybrids before... (original TFT core rules are the two boardgames, Melee and Wizard, and the book In the Labyrinth.) Later, SJ would prerelease GURPS' core mechanics as a boardgame, too - Man to Man.

I'd never argue BT is an RPG, largely because FASA never intended it to be a hybrid; the hybridization was always put in the RPG module.

 

[Celebrim]

You kind of need to define best as it is really subjective. Some rule sets are very realistic - but overly burdensome in details.

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.

Realistic rule sets typically only produce highly tactical games for aggregates of a reasonably large number of participants - say platoons. This mitigates against the luck factor and effectively your units become your hit points. One soldier might get unlucky, but over the course of a sufficiently large battle the luck will (probably) balance out and thereby allow enough opportunity for skill to shine through. This is how games like ASL, Bloodbowl, or Necromunda work. But this isn't particularly well suited to tactical role-play because one of the innovations of an RPG was that you were running a single character per participant and not a small army.

I've yet to encounter the system that was trying to be realistic about it that didn't end up making luck more important than tactics. That isn't to say that you can't do reasonable things like "take cover" or "maneuver to flank" in such systems, but that ultimately at best you are mitigating luck but will still get hosed by it eventually.

 

[Peter BOSCO'S]

I thought I was pretty clear in the OP. Maybe read that instead of just the title?

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?