Savage Worlds with no combat?

Cortex Prime just doesn’t click for me - I get fuddled in the midst of assembling a dice pool and applying results. I can’t find any particularly good reason this should be so, but it is. Ryuutama is neat, but feels very much of a particular kind of setting and story, and I often want other stuff. I love the Fabula Ultima atlases, but the core mechanics focus on things thst don’t engage me. But I appreciate the thoughts - I am, um, not unfamiliar with discovering something useful thst had been right in front of me, being overlooked by me.
 

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Another interesting aspect is that lack of a CR-style mechanic
Try again! SWD pp 123-124, §Combat Ratings.
It was dropped in SWADE for a fuzzier combat balance metric (SWADE, pp. 198-199, § Balance, §§ Crafting a Challenge), Deluxe editions 2011, 2015, and 2016 have combat ratings. (I checked my PDFs...)
The first ed combat rating was a separate download, not in the core.
 

I don’t play Deluxe, and I doubt anyone getting into the system would, either. The advice in SWADE boils down to ‘start with an enemy with a d6 in their combat skill and eyeball it from there’.

I don’t consider that a system for balanced combats; others are free to make their own mind up.
 

I don’t play Deluxe, and I doubt anyone getting into the system would, either. The advice in SWADE boils down to ‘start with an enemy with a d6 in their combat skill and eyeball it from there’.

I don’t consider that a system for balanced combats; others are free to make their own mind up.
The dice are so swingy that trying to balance encounters or creatures is functionally impossible, and SWADE finally recognized that.
 

The dice are so swingy that trying to balance encounters or creatures is functionally impossible, and SWADE finally recognized that.
Page 234 of Savage Pathfinder has a chart with ideas for combat encounter balance.

For instance a ‘weaker’ encounter is a Wild Card leader plus 3-4 extra per hero.
 

That’s not what the table says, it says if the enemy is weaker then each PC might face a wild card and 3-4 extras. Again, the section makes clear that this just guidance, not a CR system: “Savage Worlds doesn't use challenge ratings for combat encounters.”
 

Let me define my terms. :) By “no combat” I mean a campaign where we never use any combat-specific mechanics. There may well be chases and sneaking and races against the clock, and lots of social interactions, and all of that. We might import the battle of the bands mechanics from the Fate Core supplement Rockalypse. But characters will never be trying to injure or kill others, and they will not face opponents dishing out attacks intended to injure or kill them. (I used to think that this would be obvious. I also used to think people wouldn’t answer a question about no-gore horror movies with Alien and Hellraiser. Sometimes the world lets me down.)

With that constraint, what does Savage Worlds bring to our table? Are there enough skulls and edges to allow for differentiated characters and NPCs? How are the various companion books for genre-specific support? Any plot point campaigns that could work with this, or so they all call for some bloodshed?

Thanks in advance, all of you with experience!

(There also are low-but-not-zero combat options that interest me, but experience tells me if I don’t obviously focus on zero combat first, I never get useful answers about it. Gotta absolutely nail down my right flank before advancing.)

I like Savage Worlds. It just has a great feel. It is the type of game that you don't have to think too much about the system for. Everything is pretty straightforward and relatively simple. And it is rules light but not too rules light (I think by current standards it might not even be rules light anymore). On non-combat stuff it still has plenty of options but if you are looking for deep subsystems or mini-games, rather than just making a skill roll or things like chasing rules, it might not be a good fit. Though it can vary. I remember the Pirates of the Spanish Main book pretty quite robust and offering a lot of stuff like ship rules. Other supplements seem lighter. I have heard the complaints of NPCs not being distinct enough. For me I haven't found this. Though I find I also don't need games to be super granular in that respect.

Generally it is a game designed for use with miniatures. That is not typically my preference, and I think it can be played either way. But you will get more out of the rules if you use miniatures I think. It is basically a great system for genre and pulp. And it has some really cool settings like Necessary Evil. I have only really been a player in Savage Worlds. We have a GM in my gaming circle who likes to run it. Also some people have criticisms about corner cases with the math related to dice. I personally haven't really notice any big issue here in practice but it is one of the two big complaints I usually see (the other being the NPC issue you mentioned).
 


That’s not what the table says, it says if the enemy is weaker then each PC might face a wild card and 3-4 extras. Again, the section makes clear that this just guidance, not a CR system: “Savage Worlds doesn't use challenge ratings for combat encounters.”
I was just pointing there was some guidance available to build encounters.
 

Oh, something I should add for anyone else looking at SW from outside. Thanks to disabilities, it is often tricky for me to handle some of the polyhedral dice types and playing cards. But the size and enthusiasm of SW’a fan base means there are now excellent online solutions for all the various lares and penates involved. There are folks out there taking accessibility in various forms really seriously, and that makes me very happy.
 

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