What Makes A Great Combat System In Your Opinion?

[dragoner]

Ease of use, with enough crunch to give it some depth, except not so much to make it a grind.

 

[SteveC]

What creates that feeling for you?

That's a really good question, but I've played a lot of games this year, and they've all hit the mark. The single biggest thing is that I want a minigame that's going to operate as fun rather than punishment. So we're talking combat as sport and not combat as war. So that OGL game, or a game like C'thulu where when I start with a feeling I've done something wrong at a fight starting doesn't work.

And neither does a game like a PbtA game or Blades in the Dark where there really isn't a transition to a combat, it's just part of the conversation like everything else. I want that flash and twisting of the screen that says "combat" to tell me I'm moving into a different mode of play.

And when I get to act, I want to have multiple paths towards "winning" and having things that are fun and exciting not be
a bad idea.

And then I want to be engaged with the game when it's not my turn. Maybe it's Nimble's Reaction system, or a way to interrupt things to react to events.

I don't know how useful that is because there are many ways to get to that feeling, but the most useful way to create it is to encourage me to do something different in different fights based on the Fiction and have them be effective. I want to avoid the entire combat coming down to a big blob of damage that I have to do to win.

And not to get a feeling of dread at what the next minutes/hours/whole sessions are going to be.

 

[Thomas Shey]

My general feeling is that I want a lot of meaningful choices, not all always equally useful, and output that gives me a good sense of what has actually happened in the attack exchange. I also prefer that at some of the useful ones don't require specific traits of the attacker to be functional, but its fine if those traits open up options.

On the whole, even though I haven't used it for some time, the Hero System combat system when used at the heroic scale, using hit locations, impairing and disabling, was probably really close to my sweet spot.

 

[Reynard]

My general feeling is that I want a lot of meaningful choices, not all always equally useful, and output that gives me a good sense of what has actually happened in the attack exchange. I also prefer that at some of the useful ones don't require specific traits of the attacker to be functional, but its fine if those traits open up options.

On the whole, even though I haven't used it for some time, the Hero System combat system when used at the heroic scale, using hit locations, impairing and disabling, was probably really close to my sweet spot.

Hero had a good maneuver/stance system built in. It was robust and provided meaningful choices, even if your PC was not a dedicated martial artist.

Hero combat was crunchy and had a lot to track but I never felt like it was too much effort for too little benefit as you sometimes do with complex combat subsystems.

 

[bsss]

13th Age is my Goldilocks game, so that. But what is it I think makes it perfect for me?

Character options with a lot of variety and per-round and/or intra-turn decision points, facing a simple-to-run enemy roster with concise stat blocks but equal variety, that make a tactical combat game. Too much reliance on a grid is a no-no these days, because I prefer TotM and some dynamic interpretation of the battlefield to allow for stunts (aka the forced movement and grid part became the most fatiguing part of D&D 4e for me). Combat tuning in the system to make for approximately a half-dozen rounds, which helps avoid boring slogs. Accurate encounter building rules.

 

[Koloth]

I find games more entertaining when there is real risk that the party will fail a combat. This doesn't have to mean character death. It can mean it becomes obvious that "This isn't going to work." and retreat is in order. Or after some character(s) does something stupid that screws up the well crafted party plan.
Too many combats these days assume the party will win. If that is the design intent, why even play out the combat? Save the time and needless die rolling and to straight to the loot division.
If party victory is baked into the design, the combat system doesn't really matter.

 

[bsss]

Oh, real risk reminds me of another one --- a couple health states beyond "dead (no hp)" and "not-dead (has hp)". Bloodied/staggered, down and dying/making death saves but not dead-dead, what 13th Age 2E does with Skulls, that kind of thing --- also on my list of loves.

I was also thinking of 13th Age's "narrative loss" rule as an escape hatch to avoid undertuning combats to avoid TPKs, but it's kind of orthogonal to the combat itself.

 

[Zaukrie]

Turns are relatively fast.
Characters have unique things, as do monsters.

I think those are my main things. And for me, Nimble achieves that mostly.

It's possible 13th age would as well, but I've only read it. 4e is still my favorite DnD.... Because of the variety and many things you could do in combat, but the turns were sometimes too long. I think @mearls game has a chance for me as well, because the monster stat blocks are so easy and the characters all feel different, but I don't know.

 

[billd91]

I like combat systems forgiving enough that good cooperation gives you an edge, not is so required that you can’t meet the challenge of your mathematically appropriate opposition.

 

[500 Toads]

I find games more entertaining when there is real risk that the party will fail a combat. This doesn't have to mean character death. It can mean it becomes obvious that "This isn't going to work." and retreat is in order. Or after some character(s) does something stupid that screws up the well crafted party plan.

Too many combats these days assume the party will win. If that is the design intent, why even play out the combat? Save the time and needless die rolling and to straight to the loot division.
If party victory is baked into the design, the combat system doesn't really matter.

Taking too much time (in-universe, not at the table!), leaving too much evidence to readily dispose of, triggering alerts, and expending too many resources all come to mind. Characters don't have to keel over grievously injured for things to go seriously wrong.

D&D 5E theoretically is supposed to be balanced around a resource attrition model, although I doubt that a lot of tables strongly adhere to the "adventuring day" or are very strict with rests to make that work. I've been in a group where we treated an attack on a giants' stronghold as a single continuous, high-speed raid -- never pausing for more than a minute to evaluate things, let alone taking a short rest. We did this because the giants were organized opposition in their own stronghold, we were there to stop a particular event, and we weren't willing to have our characters act genre-aware (i.e. assuming that the plot schedule would conveniently alter itself for maximum drama, so that we could take as much in-universe time as we felt we needed and still magically reach the climax in the nick of time); but this is probably unusual, and most parties probably 'go nova' more than the system design nominally intends.

For something like the Shadowrun setting -- well, you may easily overpower the odd corporate security guard, but you can assume that they're networked with the rest of corporate security, and you don't want to still be there when e.g. a corporate high-threat response team shows up; so discretion and speed come into play. And, depending on what you're doing... well, "regular" data theft jobs on corporate targets and the like might not draw much in the way of retribution if you do manage a cleap escape (it's just a cost of doing business, their main grievance would have be with whomever hired you, and if you did things very competently and professionally they're probably more interested in hiring you for similar jobs rather than taking revenge); but if the results of your job humiliate a high-up in a powerful crime syndicate and you leave a sizeable evidence trail, well, you might have a problem down the road.