Best game for God of War-esque action?

[DonTadow]

Forget the stats, the modding, the maxing and the power gaming. There is only one accessory you need to pull off all those moves in God of War.

Ready?

Your imagination. Get creative with your rolls, you don't need the Iron Heroes books to try to pull of a stunt in the middle of a combat, just ask the DM if you can combine a skill check with your attack roll.

I am playing a Fighter in a Shackled Cities campaign. Last game, my character ran up the side of a bridge, dropkicked a grell and spun his blade into its center. And this is a first level character.

All you need to do is be able to imagine what your character is doing and then describe it.

 

[Alzrius]

As a minor off-topic mention, Upper_Krust (of the Immortal's Handbook fame, posted a review of the first God of War game on his website, which includes his d20 statistics for Kratos, as well as for various enemies and magic items.

Back on topic, I think that there's something to the idea that D&D has enough combat mechanics in it that it can be seen as a sort of inhibition to coolness. Anyone who has ever wanted to whack a goblin so hard that he went flying back has probably felt that. I think, though, that rather than jump to another RPG system for that, it's better to just come up with some house rules. Or even better, write them down and publish them; you'd make a killing.

 

[Nightfall]

Good Ole Krusty mate comes through in the clutch!

Ice,

mm some interesting ideas. I think though I'll stick with BESM.

 

[Imaro]

But anyway, I digress. I don't play D&D to do big cool things, but I do recognize that a large percentage of players do.

I guess you never played a Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, Monk, Wizard, Bard, etc. cause all these characters do "big cool" things, magic alone is a "big cool thing"

My experience is that players that want to 'chew the scenery' tend to get upset when the scenery chews back.

I think this statement is false. A cool maneuver, attack, special power, etc. can be cool*both descriptive and mechanically) rather it's inflicted by or on the PC. When me and my players played Exalted they often gave me stunt bonuses for cool stunts. It's like this...

When a player's character get's the same cool maneuvers done to him and stands up from the dirt or muck, bloodied and still alive, ready and itchin for round 2... that too is bad ass.

Again, this is just a scale issue. If you want to chew the scenary, face alot of things that are more than 4 below your CR. Divide the hit dice/hit points of everything in the monster manual by 5. Give the PC's a 'I have a license to chew the scenary' package. Go to town. My guess is that to a certain extent, you'd be unhappy with that because it interferes with the illusion of 'badassness' to 'see' how explicitly things have been weighted in your favor. To avoid that, use a system you aren't as familiar with - like say Mutants and Masterminds - and do basically the same thing - face hordes of mooks with 5 power levels or so below your characters. Have even the big Collosal foe have a PL at most a couple below yours. Chew the scenary accordingly. This works particularly well if you don't know the details of the system you are playing at all (as you don't usually in the case of a computer game).

See and upon reading this quote I realize you don't get it past a certain point. It isn't about making everything easily beatable it's about (in the words of the coolest mutant alive...Gambit) "Doing it wit style, chere". Killing a monster is killing a monster but getting to the end result can be a totally different experience depending on the system. Most of the time in D&D nothing beats a basic full attack. BOOORING. Almost anything else you try, except under certain specific conditions, just ain't worth it.

So, give PC's a 'badness' package that among other things lets them ignore all circumstance penalties. Cover? Heroes don't worry about cover! They fire arrow through coin sized holes without penalty! Improvised weapons! Real heroes don't worry about whether a stick, a table, or the jawbone of a donkey is less effective of a weapon as something made of hardened honed steel purpose design to be a weapon! Real heroes are weapons, and they are perfectly capable of kill a cyclops with a paperclip!

The system you are going to be happy with is going to do something like that anyway.

What I'm trying to say is that D&D is putting these 'barriers to coolness' in the way for a reason. Perhaps that reason could be best explained as 'Batman is much cooler than Superman.'

Once again it's not about having no challenge at all. It's about letting them accomplish their goal in an imaginative way, without hindrances to what they think would be cool for their character. Alot of games already do this and without the assumptions(Exalted, BESM 3e, etc.) that you propose.

Batman's cool because he does "big cool things" doesn't matter how many powers he has...cause he fights wit style

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't care about the fact that it's a video game. I care about the fact that saying,

"I grab the minotaur by its throat, hoist it over my head, rip off its horn, stab it in the heart with it, hurl the horn into the face of the Medusa across the room, and then swing the minotaur by his feet in an arc around me to knock back the oncoming hordes of undead Athenians"

is a hell of a lot cooler than,

"I make a touch attack. Okay, I hit. I make a grapple check. Alright now I sunder his horn. Oh, you can't sunder natural weapons? I guess I'll release the grapple and just make a normal attack against him."

For me, it's all in the description. That "drop them below 0 hp" is usually some suitably gory spray of gunk.

Though, really, what you might like is some sort of Stunt System (like Iron Heroes), so that you can cause this kind of havoc easily.

You might also want some Mook Rules (I believe Hong has some pretty good ones) so that you don't have to worry about rolling to hit each fiddly little minion.

My "fast and loose" solutions to achieve these effects have been:

#1: Description. You just reduced that goblin to negative hit points? "Twisting from a recent blow, you casually extend your arm, and, as it hits the goblin's neck, the head flies off in a spray of gore."

#2: Quick approximation/Mook Rules:
"You face a hoard of 50 goblins. Make an attack roll."
*dice* "I rolled a 18."
"With a valiant cry, you swing your blade through the hoard, forcing the group back with only your own strength. By the time your blade's arc is finished, 9 goblins lay dead at your feet."

#3: Stunts:
"I want to grab the harpy as it flies by and throw it to the ground."
"Okay, make a Grapple check, -2 penalty."
*dice* "I rolled a 15."
"As the harpy flies past you, a little too close, you jump up and grab it's talon with your hand. Caught off guard, surprised, you manage to fling it to the ground. Do you want to continue to wrestle with it?"

That works well enough for my group, but I'm a sucker for a cinematic battle, so I try to minimize the fiddly bits when possible.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess you never played a Sorcerer, Druid, Cleric, Monk, Wizard, Bard, etc. cause all these characters do "big cool" things, magic alone is a "big cool thing"

I have played such characters. But I did not play them because they did 'big cool' things. I do not think I have ever played any character because of what that character could do. Figuring out what the character can do is what I do after I figure out who the character is.

The rest just shows how differently we are approaching the art form.

 

[Imaro]

I have played such characters. But I did not play them because they did 'big cool' things. I do not think I have ever played any character because of what that character could do. Figuring out what the character can do is what I do after I figure out who the character is.

The rest just shows how differently we are approaching the art form.

Soooo, you didn't play a sorcerer because he coud cast spells?

Ok let me guess you made up a "character" first...but at some point magic(a big cool thing you're character could do) became a part of that concept, then you chose a sorcerer because he could do those big cool things(within the mechanical context of the game). Uhm...I'm confused You played a sorcerer because he could do those things. Otherwise, if you didn't want to be able to do those cool things you would have chose fighter as your class or rogue or commmoner.

Now please explain to me the difference once more.

As far as the "art form" goes sometimes it's just to have fun(IMHO this is the highest form our art can achieve)...wait, no I'm having badwrongfun because I want to play and do things I find fun and cool from my imagination and find a game that supports my idea of this. Shame on me I guess.

 

[Nightfall]

*lets Imaro and Cel have their fun*

Maybe using Iron Heroes in some fashion might indeed work out with say a M&M type deal or even True d20.

 

[hong]

For me, it's all in the description. That "drop them below 0 hp" is usually some suitably gory spray of gunk.

Though, really, what you might like is some sort of Stunt System (like Iron Heroes), so that you can cause this kind of havoc easily.

You might also want some Mook Rules (I believe Hong has some pretty good ones) so that you don't have to worry about rolling to hit each fiddly little minion.

Hm? Nope, not that I recall... I did have some ideas for turning big groups of wimpy monsters into a "mob", a bit like a swarm. I only did this a few times, though. There's something viscerally satisfying about dumping a heap of minis on the map, and watching the PCs steadily cut their way through them.

Besides, turning lots of 1HD warriors into a 10HD swarm does funny things to the balance of area effect spells and feats like Great Cleave.

To simplify mobs, what you could do is:

- any attack doing X or more damage instantly kills a mook.

- any attack doing less than X damage "wounds" the mook. Put a die next to its mini/counter. The next time it gets hit, it dies regardless of damage taken.

This way you don't have to keep track of hit points individually, which is where things can go pear-shaped with lots of combatants. Players also don't have to roll damage if their minimum is X or more, which speeds things up. However, they can still feel like they're making progress if they don't do enough damage to kill a mook with one hit.

You might want to allow people with x3 weapons or higher (picks, scythes) to roll crit damage anyway, because there's just nothing like doing 100 points of damage to something that only has 5.

 

[Khairn]

Yet another voice for EXALTED. It seems to be almost tailor made for GoW.