Systems Where You Dread Running Combat

[Thomas Shey]

Crikey Turnip. In WHFRP 2e it's even worse for whiffy dice rolls. The opening intro paragraph has a tale of a pc making lots rolls under 35% or something. Not gonna happen.
The setting should be grimdark, not the system

One thing a lot of systems seem to be super-shy about is giving any reliability to skill rolls, especially in combat. Its one thing when an opponents defenses can make things hard, its another when even the baseline requires a lot of semi-Hail-Mary's.

(Depending on background, this could happen with some editions of RQ).

 

[payn]

A buddy of mine had Aces and Eights a western RPG. The rulebook was enormous and seemed interesting but ended up too damn complicated for its own good.

Combat in theory seemed pretty cool. Everyone declared what they were doing and a timer ticked off and the things would happen. There was a circle template that you would roll on to see if your shot hit the target or not. Turned out pistols were wildly inaccurate and your best bet was to just grab a shotgun. You then would run at your enemy while they missed all their shots and give them both barrels at close range.

I'd not go back to that again.

 

[Gradine]

Hmm...

I definitely dread playing Dread, but I gather that's the intended effect

 

[zarionofarabel]

I think you have to take a pretty broad brush to lump everything in that group together. OD&D combat and D&D4e combat were both "hit point attrition" but they were pretty vastly different in how you did things and the benefit thereof.

Yeah, but the HP attrition is still the main factor, it just gets worse in the newer editions as HP bloat makes combat take forever. It's just tedious.

 

[turnip_farmer]

Crikey Turnip. In WHFRP 2e it's even worse for whiffy dice rolls. The opening intro paragraph has a tale of a pc making lots rolls under 35% or something. Not gonna happen.
The setting should be grimdark, not the system

The example in the opening doesn't give you any stats. What you don't realise is that Imke has an Int of 45, double mastery in the Perception skill and the Keen Senses talent. That's an 85% chance of success - of course she made the check!

But seriously, I only learnt the word 'whiff' recently (right on this here forum) and it doesn't bother me. The average human in 2e will hit about a third of the time. An experienced warrior can potentially get that as high as 80%.

If you're not an experienced warrior and bothered that you keep missing - try and avoid getting in fights with scary monsters!

 

[TheSword]

I think even within a system you like at some levels there can be elements that are just a nightmare.

For instance Pathfinder and 3e just became an absolute nightmare to run past level 13ish. The weight of stacked spells, powers, summoned creatures, maths etc bogged the game down into a slog fest that sucked all fun out of the game. The solution… don’t play high level Pathfinder or 3e.

 

[niklinna]

Yeah, but the HP attrition is still the main factor, it just gets worse in the newer editions as HP bloat makes combat take forever. It's just tedious.

Wait I thought combat in 5e only took three rounds, every time, making buffs useless because you have to waste a turn doing them. ;-)

 

[innerdude]

GURPS. Oh my gosh, GURPS GURPS GURPS.

First off, the whole "1 round = 1 second" thing is both tedious and ridiculous. Especially when a lot of times your whole action is, "I ready my weapon." Great.

Then you have to sit there and watch while 4 other people go through their combat turn.

"Declaring an attack . . . but do I apply penalties for hit location? Oh, so do I roll my actual weapon skill now, or the separate 'Hit Location Skill' number? Whatever, then I attack . . . but the defender has two possible defenses (parry and/or dodge). Did I hit? Yes? Oh. Cool, now what happens?"

"Oh, roll damage . . . but then look up what the hit location effect is if I did enough damage. Oh, and now the opponent has to make a Health check?"

And that doesn't even count the whole GURPS 4th edition stuff with burning fatigue to improve results, extend a particular maneuver, etc etc.

It's wasn't uncommon for a SINGLE ROUND of GURPS combat to take 20+ minutes.

 

[Voadam]

As a DM I'm a D&D guy.

I have played a lot of Vampire and I own a bunch of White Wolf stuff but I would not want to gauge how tough an opponent would be for a group. As a player I don't like the take dice away from your attack to defend aspect, but I can run my characters fine and do my best in combats, but I would be very uncomfortable judging the potential lethality of combat situations.

Same for Shadowrun, I am fine with designing my troll mage and throwing down lots of d6s, but I barely have a handle on the actual damage systems and running a combat would be an uncomfortable dive into blind guessing about lethality.

GURPS I do not like the 1 second rounds where a lot of times you could be not attacking. And going beyond basic combat felt like playing battletech with a 10 hp low level D&D character.

I tend to take narrative concepts from systems like World of Darkness, Ars Magica, Shadowrun, and GURPS and throw them in my D&D games where I am mechanically comfortable as a DM.

 

[jhingelshod]

GURPS. Oh my gosh, GURPS GURPS GURPS.

First off, the whole "1 round = 1 second" thing is both tedious and ridiculous. Especially when a lot of times your whole action is, "I ready my weapon." Great.

Then you have to sit there and watch while 4 other people go through their combat turn.

"Declaring an attack . . . but do I apply penalties for hit location? Oh, so do I roll my actual weapon skill now, or the separate 'Hit Location Skill' number? Whatever, then I attack . . . but the defender has two possible defenses (parry and/or dodge). Did I hit? Yes? Oh. Cool, now what happens?"

"Oh, roll damage . . . but then look up what the hit location effect is if I did enough damage. Oh, and now the opponent has to make a Health check?"

And that doesn't even count the whole GURPS 4th edition stuff with burning fatigue to improve results, extend a particular maneuver, etc etc.

It's wasn't uncommon for a SINGLE ROUND of GURPS combat to take 20+ minutes.

Reminds me of playing Car Wars where we sometimes played all day to find that about 10 seconds of game time had elapsed...