What's the best combat system?

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>So maybe there's no concrete answer.

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About Dices:

When you pick your dice it's like you pick your sword, when you throw it it's the swing, when your opponent pick up his dice he's picking up his shield, when he trows it it's his block maneuver.

With that in mind what I can say is that throwing just a bunch of dices and counting the results get's boring real fast,
the best system to deal with dices that I ever found was a "battle of dices" system, let's say I have Attack d4 and my enemy has defense d6

I throw my d4 and he throws his d6. He wins.
I throw my d4 again and so does he. I win.
I throw my d4 one last time, and FUCK YES!. I win

So in this system this test in particular had a 2 win condition, you could make it 1 win, or even six/whatever wins, according to the test.
In this system you also need to use DICES for abylities/skills, you then can add modifiers OR upgrade the dice, you can even add two attributes (eg. AGI+DEX) and make the combat roll based on them.

Different dices on the table are fun, at least for most people, so rolling different dices combinations are more fun (again, for most people) than counting modifiers.

(continue)

>>54923047
Now,let me tell you about double rolls, give the players an action/inspiration/karma/exaustion system, so he can roll again or add another die to the result.
Why?
Imagine the situation, you need a result of 7, you roll your 1d10 and roll a 1, in this test you can roll another die of 1d6, so you pray for RNGesus and... a 6!!! ---->This feeling here is VERY satisfying and player will remember this moment, you want as much moments as these as you can on your table. Also keep in mind that more rolls equals to less extreme results.
This sistem work very well based on consequence (I attack x to cause y) than result (your attack DMG is 17), and the scaling difficult gives a lot of freedom for the master to keep results in check, you want the player to be able to break his opponet arm with his mace? Make it easy, give him a 1 win condition vs 3 losses. You REALLY don't wanna that player to cut of that Dragon's head? Make it 4 wins against one loss, tell him it's very difficult to keep balance for an attack when you're climbing a dragon.

And finnaly here's the logic I used to apply the tests and how the dices reflects a player capability(eg.swordfighting) and conditioning (eg.strenght):
With it you can guess the difficult of a test, example if you want a test that is impossible for someone with basic training make the difficult 7.

D4: Common.
D6: Basic training/conditioning.
D8: Advanced training/conditioning.
D10: Elite trained/conditioning.
----
D12: Domain, you're a master in subject/top conditioning.
D12+D4: You're a legend you're among the best of human race (Bruce lee dexterity or Thor Bj. strenght)
D12+D6: You reached the peak of human limit.
D12+D8: Over human.
----
...
D20+D4: Super Human.

I also have a "precise" sistem so a player can use half of his maximum result instead of rolling his die out of high-stress situations, so a master never lose against a begginner in normal situations.

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About Initiative:

Huge fan of Arcanis: The World of Shattered Empires. I use the initiative system from that game in almost every other game I ever run.

It's based on the weight of the weapons/armor/tools your using and the speed of your actions. Your initiative score determines how many d10's you roll, and you take the lowest one. Now you're on a clock ranging from 1 to 12. You have your own clock, and the GM has a master clock. On 1 on the master clock, everyone with a Speed of 1 acts. Then 2, then 3, etc, etc. If your speed is 6, you wait until 6 to act.
It's faster than you'd think. There might be 1 or 2 people with speed lower than yours, so it takes no time at all. On top of that enemies usually go on the same number. In my games I make the enemies go on 6 to start with.
Whenever you attack, perform an action, cast a spell, whatever, it costs a number of Speed. Let's say you are on 3 on the clock and you attack with a greatsword. It's Speed is 6, so you add 6 to the 3 and now you're on 9. Now you wait until 9 to act again, and anyone with speeds lower than 9 can act (their actions will add to their speeds also, and have to wait until that new value).

A lot of players will choose light weapons because of this, Why swing a greatsword once when you can stab 3 or 4 times? To avoid it you just need to give nice DMG reduction to defenses/armor to make light weapons not so effective, so each kind of weapon has it's time and place.

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>About Hit Points:

Fuck Hit Points!!

No, but really, they shouldn't be in a roleplaying game, especially in insane amounts like DnD.

>Made an NPC threaten a player with a crossbow to the head.
>He laughed and said "Shoot it, common, do it, do you know how much HP I have?"
>All the table laughed.
>"Well, at this distance and angle his crossbow is an automatic critical hit"
>"Pfft, whatever"
>"Ok, are you using an helmet? No? Then it will straight kill you in a hit.
>"Bullshit! I survived way worse! The bolt wouldn't even faze my skull." Table agree "That's not on the rules, that's cheap master talk".
>They're right...

Hit points sucks, it's all a matter of managing a imaginary energy bar, there's no real damage to it, you know that despite your description of how the mace bash twisted your opponent arm in a nauseating angle, in the end it's just flavor. There's no consequence to it, you can add, of course you can, but can you be consistent with it? Wouldn't be better to have a system to back you and your players up?
It gets even worse because of easy and instant healings all around.

But, even with all that considered, I've never found a system that deal wit wounds, impact, debuffs, and localized DMG in a maneageble way... So, I'm stuck on this...

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>About combat Maneuvers/Talents/feats:

They shouldn't be named, by the rules at least, feats and similars should be only be about powers/capabilities, not maneuvers.

>Introduce DnD to a new player. He makes a Barbarian.
>An group of goblins, he's very excited.
>"I run towards the bulk of the goblins and use the momentun to swing Mahwife (his battle axe) and do a circular-motion attack on the bastards"
>"Do you have Whirlwind Attack?"
>"No, why?"
>Show him the rule, he's pretty disappointed.
>Later... "I use whirlwind attack", "I use whirlwind attack", ""I use whirl..."
>Well, there goes his interpretation...

Maneuvers shouldn't require a feat or talent, they should require tests and risks to use. If a player do it all the time, why not make it his "trademark" and give him a permanent bonus on doing said maneuver? You could make him spend xp for it, why not?

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About Armors:

Armors are very misinterpreted, first as you can see in the video below, Armors don't really restrict your movements or slow you down as much as people think:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzTwBQniLSc

They could make you lose a little bit of agility, inflicts penalty on swimming or maybe a little on jumping, make you uncoufortable and tired faster. But not as restrictive as most systems make it to be.

Also their protection power is so fucking weak. I mean, with a full plate set there's nothing much in medieval times that can harm you, you better off using blunt weapons, a longsword will hardly faze a full Plate Knight without skilled and very precise strikes to the right spots. Luckily over-human strenght, dexterity (like your heroes for example) should be bypass this protection to some extent! So don't worry a high level protection will NOT ruin your whole System, it will actually make the players strategize more. Hell, let them devise their own weapons against armor, let's make a quest to get the first firearm ever created!
Finnaly their EXPENSIVE only nobility used to have them, you don't need an Adamantine+5 armor on every campaign when a basic steel full plate is already rare enough.

Categorize the DMG by HACK/PEN/SMASH and let armors do their jobs. A rule of thumb, a Long Sword DMG alone (without more than average modifiers), shouldn't be able to bypass steel plate reduction.

About Balance:

Throw it out of the window! You may think you want balance, but you do not. Well, maybe there's someone out there that do, but hear me out.

Imagine playing a game of Street Fighter where you can only play as one character. Balanced, but boring.
Let the players go wild. Because no matter what they can throw at you, you can throw it harder.

this is "babbies first homebrew system" tier trash

don't feel bad, we've all been there

pick up GURPS or Savage Worlds or something

>>54926014
Mythras is also a good pick, seems like it would suit OP

>>54926014
Step by step right?
And here I'm thinking that the system was pretty developed by using (i dont know the term in english) but I would use STR+AGIx2+DEXx2+INT+PER+WeaponSkill
Divide it by 6 and the result is your attack modifier. You can buy talents that make STRx2 and so on and this applies to a lot of other functions that are calculated before the game.

But this was not a "hey look at my homebrew" I wanted to gather some ideas and see what happens... sadly nobody wanted to contribute...

>What a combat fantasy should be like?

If you ask me...

>fast
>simple, ruleswise
>not super lethal, but clearly with risk involved
>dramatic
>cinematic

and, most important of all

>rare

combat is dramatic device, that adds much to the narrative if used sparingly, but when it begins to be used too often, it starts to be tedious game element, that loses all it's dramatic impact.

This can be achieved by making combat not the most effective method of dealing with problems. Basically, if PC's have to fight, in four out of five cases it is because they somehow failed. Not because combat is so risky that one fight is going to kill them, but because it eats up resources like time, endurance, supplies, magic etc. and makes them less able to deal with further challenges - and not just combat ones.