Verisimilitude tends to be the word people use. Do the rules plausibly support what is happening in the fiction? That can be both in terms of giving players reasonable options to leverage, and in terms the mechanism generating plausible outcomes.
This is where simple HP systems fail if, for example, a fall of 10 or 20 feet cannot kill a PC RAW.
Back to combat, there are clearly scenarios where a combatant might parry their foe, and clearly scenarios where that seems impossible (human with a knife defending against giant with a club…) so some other defence like a dodge would be needed. It’s a matter of personal preference whether you want a system that cares about the difference or not. Then there are orders of magnitude on the granularity that might involve in the rules.
When all these things are done to the player’s liking it gives them that feeling of verisimilitude.
This is where simple HP systems fail if, for example, a fall of 10 or 20 feet cannot kill a PC RAW.
Back to combat, there are clearly scenarios where a combatant might parry their foe, and clearly scenarios where that seems impossible (human with a knife defending against giant with a club…) so some other defence like a dodge would be needed. It’s a matter of personal preference whether you want a system that cares about the difference or not. Then there are orders of magnitude on the granularity that might involve in the rules.
When all these things are done to the player’s liking it gives them that feeling of verisimilitude.