What Makes A Great Combat System In Your Opinion?

[Reynard]

NOTE: Combat is not important for all games, or all campaigns. That's cool! But this thread assumes you are playing a game or campaign where combat IS important and figures prominently.

In your opinion and in line with your preferences, what makes for a really great TTRPG combat system? Do you prefer speed over tactical depth? Do you want complexity? Verisimilitude? Swinginess? Predictability? Do you value synergy between characters, or strong spotlight time for individuals? How do you like your attack and damage systems? Do player characters and adversaries work the same, or have their own rules? Who rolls? And do these preferences change depending on what side of the screen you are on?

 

[Reynard]

When I GM, I want the enemies at my disposal to have plenty of cool things they can do, but I want the basic resolution system to be quick and for turns to be short -- a move and an action, and then next player goes. I like Daggerheart for its versatility, but the damage system can slow things down if folks are not familiar with it. I really like how Dragonbane "monsters" follow different rules than PCs and mobs (I still plan on integrating that system into Shadowdark). I must admit that I like to roll as GM -- even though in my own system I am going with players make the rolls (because it does the thing I want beyond the roll).

 

[Tigris]

A good combat system is novel and has fun, individual, decisions which matter.

• I want to experience new things (and learn a lot) not repeating the same over and over again.
• Decisions should be exciting. "I roll a d20 which decides if I give +1 (the smallest possible bonus) to your next attack roll" is not exciting (lookung at you PF2). "I try to kick you back 7 meters into the fire" is.
• If 1 players can just make easily the (clearly best) decisions for all players then why play as a group? This is seen more in boardgames (Sleeping Gods..) but can also happen in RPGs. Gloomhaven is great at having measures against the quarterback problem.
• The decisions should matter. If me using animal form and attack or me using a spell to attack or me using a weapon to attack all lead to the same situation, then its not a decision just a narrative (Daggerheart can feel like this). Your decisions should change the situation. Status effects (different ones not just all weakend), forced movement (if positioning matters) and ressource costs are good ways to make sure the situation does actually change.

 

[payn]

I tend to prefer a much more comprehensive strategy-focused combat system as opposed to a tactical rock, paper, scissors exercise. By that I mean I like a combat system that is won on the table by decisions that form as the battle carries on. I do not like games that are won beforehand with prep and mechanics that shutdown foes and make things a cakewalk or turkey shoot. I dont like things such as mechanics that cant be countered, overpowered tech items and general system mastery etc..

Part of that is the classic wargamer in me. I want a good fight as much as a fair fight experience. I understand the GM is supposed to lose, and the players have a leg up in most, if not all, fights, so RPGs have some room for slack on my position. A lot of modern wargamers tend to be more of the tactics mind where gear, synergies, and outsmarting the opponent before the fight is valued. Those battles tend to be much shorter in length, so you have many more of them in comparison. I've become pretty cognizant of the differences.

I think if a designer understands the power curve or not is extremely important. Traveller, for example, is pretty much flat and the big differences are going to be gear driven. D&D and likes, have a lot of the power improvement inherent to the character, and sometimes also through gear. If the combat system becomes more involved and interesting as the power level increases that is great. If it stays basically the same, but with bigger numbers, it needs to be great from the start.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

If I were to take a guess at the most amount of joy and fun players had in a combat it comes most often from...

- Swift play. When a player gets to 'play' the game every few minutes, I see they are engaged, and interested since it's so often 'their turn again'

- Useful Actions. When the game let the players build competent characters who can do a variety of things - and rolls allow those actions to be useful.

- Reactions. this is the dark horse here, or some such. Players seem to really like a combat rule system when they get to roll to act on their turn, AND then roll to react on someone else's turn or also when enemy attacks them. Getting rid of passive defense/passive boost - and making it active looped us back into making play feel swift, even if it wasn't your turn - you have a thing you can do.

 

[RenleyRenfield]

What makes combat feel "bad"

- Actions can do nothing: i swing and miss and nothing happens. no enemy reaction, no sub-option, no plot moves forward.

- Long turns. It takes too long before someone gets to play again, swing, miss, nothing. Then wait 30min till is your turn again... sooo tedious and bad.

- I attack! ...Characters that can only do the same thing over and over. When a character is limited to the same attack roll or same heal check over and over, its not interesting. This is NOT player creativity i am saying, i mean...game systems where the character has no or too few mechanic options.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

1) I love Fantasy AGE 2e unpredictable results caused by not knowing who (and when) the 3d6 rolls will generate stunt points used by characters or enemies to do spectacular actions. It makes combat fresh every round, keeps players (and me) on their toes.

2) I love Dragonbane Monsters. As a GM not rolling attacks and determining the monsters attack based on the situation is fun.

3) In Cypher the GM never rolls, and I like that a lot. The players roll to defend instead.

As system that would do all three would be heaven.

BAD: Too many combat options, a slew of combat feats and combat talents spoils the fun, because they make combat last longer. It's often an illusion of choice. There are always combos that are better than others. Players choose those and then rise & repeat every round. It also penalizes players who are not as good at cracking the systems 'combat rules puzzle'.

 

[aramis erak]

In your opinion and in line with your preferences, what makes for a really great TTRPG combat system?

Meaningful interesting choices.
Meaningful: you have enough information to make a reasonably informed choice.
Interesting: at least two viable choices with different outcomes by choice.

 

[zarionofarabel]

It really depends on the game and can vary wildly.

I like the combat engine in Mythras because it produces very "realistic" combat both in how it functions and results. However it is also on the crunchy side so it is not super fast, though because it is deadly, fights tend to not last too long. It's great for a campaign that will have combat as something that characters will probably engage in on a regular basis and makes experiencing combat an exciting and scary thing, though a character that has good equipment and abilities will probably have a great chance of overcoming foes and survivng combat without too much risk of grievous injuries. Though there is still a distinct possibility due to the particulars of the engine, which means even the most well trained combatant still has a slight chance of falling to a lucky hit by an untrained foe. All in all it means characters built to excel in combat will, with a slight chance that the whims of the dice will get the better of them.

I like the combat engine in Pendragon because it is much more random and risky than the one featured in Mythras. The engine itself is much simpler and combat is super fast and often ends after a round or three. It is also extremely deadly and gratuitous injury and death is a common result for even well trained and equipped combatants. Even the most well trained knight can fall to an untrained peasant and combat is not something to be entered in to lightly. Then again, that is the point. Pendragon is a game about heroic knights risking life and limb for the things they are passionate about, and the whims of fate are often unkind even to the most virtuous of heroes. There are also several quirks of the engine that make it an unusual experience compared to other combat engines. It ultimately means that combat in Pendragon is far less about the minutae of the fight itself and far more about why the fight is happening and whether or not the fight is really worth risking life and limb. Also, because of how the reward system works in Pendragon knights are discouraged from combating lesser opponents as they receive NO reward for doing so, whereas they receive great glory for defeating foes that are more capable. It works phenomenally well considering the kind of game that Pendragon is and what the game is about.

I like the combat engines in Far Trek and Vampire The Masquerade V5 as they are similar in that they are very simple and are not by any means the focus of gameplay. Combat in both systems is extremely fast and easy to adjudicate. VtM has a fun mechanic that guarantees combat ends after the 3rd round with the final outcome decided by the GM based on the performance of the combatants during the 3 combat rounds. VtM combat is not very lethal, though it can result in lingering penalties for the losing side, which means the focus is on stakes other than survival. Far Trek combat is completely non-lethal (save for specific PCs that have the Red Shirt feat) so again the focus is on stakes other than survival. Considering what the games are about and the types of characters that the Players portray, both engines do a great job for what is needed in these types of games.

I also have a couple TTRPGs that don't have dedicated combat engines and instead have conflict systems where the particular rules are used for all manner of conflict resolution from physical combat, to chases, or even political debates.

There's more, though I would have to dig through some books to get in to details, and this post is long enough. Cheers!

 

[500 Toads]

Fit for tone and the rest of the system.

Pathfinder 2E sits comfortably in the heroic, high-fantasy niche. Character customization, mechanically speaking, can be fairly involved. Various factors make it so that even low-level characters have a variety of options to consider in combat, and a basic "swing as many times as possible" approach is rarely good; and it is intentionally designed to encourage teamwork in everything from positioning to debuffing to recalling and communicating knowledge and what-not. As one might expect from a heroic game, it is not simulationist in terms of lasting wounds and what-not, and most damage won't actually impair you until it actually downs you; and most attacks also won't cause you any mental trauma of any kind. It's also designed so that the encounter building rules should generally work decently in terms of estimating encounter challenge, between such things as limiting modifier stacking and attention being paid to how most character and monster features get balanced.

Twilight 2000 is designed to be a gritty survival game, where combat is generally going to mostly rely on firearms, vehicle cannon, and explosives. The 4E rules encourage such things as suppression and overwatch, careful use of cover, attacking from ambush... torso and head hits might kill instantly, and injuries anywhere can lead to death (on various timeframes -- as fast as checking every several-second round, as slow as bleeding to death over hours and requiring similarly involved surgery to 'fix') if not treated; eyes, arms and legs can be permanently lost. Even bullets that don't physically hit you, might inflict stress damage that can result in a lasting disorder. Combat is meant to be nervewracking and potentially very unfair, and should only be engaged in with great care along with ruthlessly seeking every possible advantage.

Call of Cthulhu is a lot less combat-focused than those games, and -- aside from the clunky rules for automatic fire, which personally I'd rather replace with mechanics from Delta Green re: lethality rolls -- relatively streamlined. Even Pulp characters won't have that mechanically-complex repertoires, unless they have sacrificed a lot of sanity and time diving into grimoires and practicing rituals. "Theatre of the mind" is a common way of handling combat, as exact positioning is generally not that crucial. There can be "nothing happens" turns, but hit point bloat doesn't exist (at least for investigators!) so combat remains tense as investigators are always under serious threat in any 'real' combat. Combat will tend to be resolved fairly quickly, perhaps by fleeing as quickly as possible , with any survivors resuming (or terminating in fear) the rest of the investigation.

Paranoia XP is very fast and loose with the combat rules, with a lot of explicit room for GM fiat and high lethality. Troubleshooters are meant to be killed pretty easily and just as easily replaced by clones. There's no real tactical crunch. As a satirical game with a very specific tone, death is meant to be fast and funny, and you really aren't meant to be doing things like carefully considering plans of attack and optimal use of whatever abilities and gear you have -- if you even know for sure what gear you have, since maybe you've been ordered to test conveniently unmarked and unidentified experimental gear or w/e.

All four of these have combat systems that reflect the purpose of play, and they make sense for the sorts of games they're trying to be. Swapping those styles out would work less well. My personal inclinations run towards the more serious end and I'm perfectly fine with crunchy combat systems, but, say, I wouldn't encourage trying to shoehorn TW2K4E's system into something like Paranoia XP; it just doesn't seem appropriate; nor would I suggest replacing Pathfinder 2E combat mechanics with those from RuneQuest, which are more appropriate for rather fewer but much more hazardous combats.