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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dbm" data-source="post: 9377345" data-attributes="member: 8014">So, I am going to come back to the first suggestion from [USER=6900337]@schneeland[/USER] - Savage Pathfinder would be an excellent choice in my opinion. I'll talk about Savage Worlds in general here but Savage Pathfinder is Savage Worlds with a number of 'combat spelunking' options pre-created for you.I'm not quite sure what that means, but Savage Worlds has an excellent mix of traditional and somewhat narrative elements. Certainly the GM role is mostly a traditional one, and the system mostly goes with 'action resolution' in combat encounters. But the system has more narrative sub-systems like Dramatic Tasks where the players can be given a lot more flexibility if the GM wishes. We find it a great mix of play elements. The meta currency of Bennies can be used for dramatic scene editing (with GM approval) by RAW however Bennies are so widely valuable that we rarely see this done at the table in my group.This is a big win for Savage Worlds. Once you are comfortable with how the system works it really flies and you can fit a lot of play into a shorter session. We play weekly evening sessions of about 3 hours including table chat and the adventure moves on at great pace. One of the subtle ways that Savage Worlds promotes this is that there is no need for filler combats in the system. It is not based on an attritional model that assumed X level appropriate encounters per day. So you can just use the full combat system for interesting and meaningful combats and either remove all 'filler' fights or run them in a zoomed out way using Dangerous Quick Encounters that are intended for fights which are basically certain victories but the main question is 'at what cost?'.Savage Worlds has a flatter growth curve than D&D, with the PCs starting more like 3rd level characters and topping out more like 12th level characters for the most part. You can push the power level higher with supporting materials if you want to.  The exploding dice mechanism and how damage works means that all enemies remain a threat whatever your character level, and conversely any challenge can theoretically be overcome. This is where GM discretion is needed. Only use the 'full' encounter rules for scenes where the outcomes is in the balance. For cake-walks just use a quick encounter. For impossible tasks just say so and stop the players burning bennies in a futile attempt. Also, it does not have ever-escalating hit points that need endless filler combats to wear them away. Every fight can be an interesting one.Perfect, it is not a D&D offshoot.Savage Worlds came out of The Great Rail Wars war-game set in the Deadlands world. It has tactical combat by default though you can choose to put more or less emphasis on this as is your preference. It doesn't technically use a grid, it uses table inches and gang-up bonuses etc but using a grid to make positioning and movement quicker than whipping out a tape measure is standard for us. It is easily as tactical as 5e in my experience, probably more so as tactics like disarm, shoving people, grappling, distractions and so on are all available to everyone. Again, you don't need to use those additional rules unless you want to, but they are there and there is no 'feat tax' to use them. Once you have the system down combat moves quickly in our experience and balances speed of play with meaningful choices well.I can't comment on those other games, I'm having too much fun playing Savage Worlds to try them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> On a more serious note, Savage Worlds meets basically all my personal gaming needs and I have pretty much stopped looking at new systems as a result.The core rule book has all the rules a player or GM needs, and the meat of that is about 30 pages, comic book sized.Savage Worlds characters have a baseline competency because of the Wild Die which gives them a additional chance to succeed at skill checks in comparison to minor characters (major NPCs get the same benefit) and it's a skill-based game at the core with no hard-and-fast character classes*. It supports any character concept and the rules for Testing Opponents mean that you can use any reasonable skill to make enemies distracted (less like to succeed) or vulnerable (more likely to succumb to attacks etc.) and so, for example, a purely academic character pointing out vulnerabilities to their combat-focussed allies would be a viable option. As characters advance they can take 'edges' which kind of encompass both class abilities and feats from a D&D perspective. These give additional options and sometimes there is a lesser and greater version but I would not describe any of them as 'traps'. Since there are no classes* there are no power differentials baked in between character types and resource utilisation.Another potential benefit - Savage Worlds and Savage Pathfinder have excellent VTT support across multiple platforms, so if you want to play on a VTT you are very well covered.Savage Pathfinder has a sizeable bestiary and covers the core classes from Pathfinder 1e in the base book. There is an Advanced Player's Guide with some more edges and powers (plus other stuff) and currently a Kickstarter for APG2 and a second Bestiary as well. We have been playing a Savage Pathfinder game for the last year which started off as a 5e game then moved over. We are all having much more fun that we would have been with 5e which we have also become burned out on.* Savage Pathfinder has 'class edges' which are short edge-trees with three or four edges in them. They aren't actually trees, more like families since you only need to take the first edge to get access to the others and they aren't a chain of mandatory picks; if you only want the first and third edge in the family that is usually fine (some edges do build on top of pre-requisites so specifics vary). This is used to help give the niche-protection feel of D&D-like systems without a more restrictive class design. In core Savage Worlds there are no classes at all and it's all about the choices you make enabling you to pick up later edges with higher pre-requisites to mechanically differentiate characters.</blockquote>

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