Vampire the Masquerade: Love the setting but not the system

In Vampire as written, combat is a failure condition. As others have noted, you can step around it by employing another system, but you do need to work some thought into the powers because dots in a discipline let you do things and set boundaries on those things in V5. It's not just a raw modifier.
 

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In Vampire as written, combat is a failure condition.
Yep. That’s why I said my GURPS: VtM playtest character was nominally an “Armageddon button”: he was maxed out in potence, celerity, and generation.

IOW, he’d been Embraced by a truly ancient vampire, so his strength & speed were outside the realm of any other active character in the playtest.
 


I'd actually just jump to Curseborne (or, a Storypath Ultra-- the base generic system, adaption of VTM based on it), its another game in the World of Darkness legacy, but the furthest one out setting-wise because it isn't the same IP, it has a power system that includes all the discipline style stuff you'd expect. It's a 'World of Darkness' style setting that isn't the World of Darkness setting, but you do still have vampire 'families' which are like the clans, and so forth, but across multiple supernatural creature types, which also offers a wider set of tactics and powers.

It's an improvement, but it's a bit more a subtle one than some of the other suggestions you might be getting. You still roll d10 pools based on Attribute + Skill, and you total up the 'successes' but in SPU you have 'Tricks' which are benefits you buy using the successes, and 'Complications' which are traps that you suffer if you don't buy them off, and the game is replete with different ways to prompt

There's a list of generic tricks, some of which impose complications foes may have to buy off, a condition that does something (like some form of ongoing damage), or crit which is 3 successes for an extra point of damage.

But then there's tricks that you get from spells that you cast, spells are like disciplines but they involve holding or bleeding curse dice which are a resource you get in various ways (including choosing to act out, or deal with inconvenience, with respect to certain 'torments' you select) and you have to watch your pool because if you go to zero you end up dealing with a 'damnation' that is a burden your curse imposes on you. Spells can also summon other entities, give you special effects on your weapons, bypass obstacles, move you range bands, and so forth.

You also develop momentum, which is a per session resource that can come from failure, inconvenience, and a base pool-- and you can bank it for the party from extra successes on your rolls using tricks, and you can convert it into additional successes on rolls.

Its kinda like the system VTM uses, but to my knowledge there's more going on because there's a more interesting economy at work via successes and what you can use them for, the tactical side of it still comes primarily from dice pool manipulation, but there's more moving parts to engage with.
 

Even D&D has them, but many games are a bit blurry as to when a combat stops to be a combat and starts to be a chase, especially when only one or so members of a party decide to flee.

Still, this is the way to go IMO

In a constrained genre...I'm thinking of vampires in a victorian/gothic city...chase (or escape) rules could contain really fun random tables, with obstacles and opportunities. One table for each of various terrains (rooftops, mansions, sewers, city streets, parks, etc.) and each table would contain some entries that transition to different terrains.
 

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