Which RPG has the quickest combat system? D20 and D100 are easy to pick up, but even a simple encounter can eat time out of a session and can knock the wind out of a scene or game as everyone sort of just waits around.
From what I can tell though, few if any systems have combat systems that are fast with a degree of depth to them.
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Depth and speed are opposing goals, design-wise. The best way to achieve speed without simplifying all the fun out of combat is to just git gud at whatever system you use.
Only correct answer.
If I can run combats with players and their retainers versus 40-50 enemies in four hours or less via text only in fricking GURPS, nobody else has any excuse for fighting five bandits to take more than twenty minutes.
>Dodge City, Kansas, 1999. Location unknown. A group of hardened autists hunch over a bank of desktop computer terminals, their fingers punching a tattoo into the keys. The air is thick with BO and talc powder. One man presides over the scene, thumbing through pages of Dragon. He looks up at a heavy exhale from one of his colleagues.
>”Done?” He receives a thumbs up, and heaves himself off the desk with a sigh. They’ve been wrangling the Generic Universal Role-Playing System for just over seven hours, but it’s finally over.
>They’ve just finished rolled initiative.
>Now the real battle begins.
Generally speaking, you don't roll initiative in GURPS. I like your post regardless.
>Dragon Magazine
>GURPS
Also you don't roll initiative in GURPS unless you want to use the optional rule for that see how cool GURPS is way cooler than your stepdad
>Depth and speed are opposing goals, design-wise.
sp approximately bp
Frickign weird to see Guild Ball art in the wild.
I assume it got picked because it has unironically the best quick combat rules ever invented?
It makes up for it with the kicking mechanics, that makes d&d5e shine with pride
Yes.
Also no one plays guild ball.
>empaitirkosu.wordpress.com/2023/09/02/combat-in-poet
There’s lighter systems, but for me this hits the perfect amount of depth.
The One Ring 2E
>Gridless, uses stance system and TotM exclusively
>Endurance (aka hp) that reduces your combat efficiency as it goes down, you are unconcious when at 0
>HOWEVER also uses a 2 wound system where all hits reduce your endurance, but you make a protection roll on piercing blows that result in actual wounds on failures. 2 wounds and you're very likely to die and it results in serious permanent injury
>Most monsters can only take 1 wound, and endurance levels are generally low so combat goes very fast
>Weapons deal constant damage (no damage rolls) so this speeds up combat as well
Basically all attacks are 1 roll only (2 on a pierce AKA crit). And there arent really spells, just a few situational abilities or combat tasks besides usual stuff (moving, attacking, etc). In my experience it is MUCH faster than other systems I've played, primarily because there is less stimuli to paralyze players and because it is highly lethal.
So If I understand that correctly you get attacked and everything hits but you roll to see if it pierces you? Does armour come into play at all?
You have two ways of "falling"
>lose all Resistance, which all successful attacks substract X value from
>fail a Wound roll, which is directly related to armor. You only roll for Wounds when the enemy gets a penetrating hit (crit), you roll your armor value vs. the Wound value of the weapon.
So yeah, Armour is kind of a wargame save throw against criticals that can leave you half dead. Resistance just keeps getting lower until you fall unconscious.
TOR really has a great combat system for what the LoTR setting represents. Combat never takes more than three or four rounds, and a bad roll can get a character in dire straits. Keeps combats very tense and the risk of dying is real if your companions don't come to your aid quickly
Tunnels and Trolls
Into the Odd and spin offs like Cairn.
No attack roll, roll damage every round, mobs of weak creatures combined into a single statblock (or a stat 'line' since the game is so simple).
Winning fights is about creating narrative conditions, rather than min-maxing. You want to stage an ambush where you trigger a landslide on your enemy and your henchmen open up with ranged fire before you close for melee.
People hate on hipster minimalism but I've never seen a combat system in an RPG that made crunch interesting for anyone but buildgays and HEMA autists.
I've also been reading Hollow Earth Expedition, and I like the idea, but good luck getting a group to play a 20 year old indie game that doesn't map onto the D&D formula.
The numbers just don't make sense, looks like it just turns into rocket tag.
>Quickest
Friday Night Firefight
advanced fighting fantasy/troika
it's fast, fun, and makes sense as long as you keep it moving
Prowlers and Paragons, and it's not close.
Something like Neverwinter Nights. The computer runs the combat. If the players can't pause because MP server and the DM turned it off, it's pretty quick.
I like the rules for year zero games.
Punchy, brutal combat where hits actually matter and can be brutal.
I also think Cypher system fights can be quick but tactical (I've never played it though)
I think cribbing the rules from Killteam in an RPG could make tactical combat that is also simple enough.
Original D&D with the Greyhawk, booklet rules, The easiest to understand? No. But once you do it's lightning fast.
Risus
Genesys can be quite fast and the combat has a decent amount of crunch to it. With most groups at my table it averages out at around 30 to 45 minutes.
Although I also had two groups that took two hours per combat. Both were with online randos who were challenged by the concept of PC initiative slots and picking a result for their rolled advantage, from the table.
Ubiquity, for it has a whole slew of features that allow to go through an entire round of combat for a party of 5 and 7-9 enemies in a span of a single minute. They messed it up a bit in the licensed games, but HEX from the original creators was ALL about having both speed and mechanical granularity to it. And it has additional subrules for initiative that makes the combat even faster.
I highly recommend reading that system just to see how much pointless shit regular games do that ultimately just extends the turns, without any real benefit.
This guy gets it
The sole fact Hollow Earth has single roll resolution and option for auto-resolve is fast already, but it also handles mass combat efficiently, so number of enemies kinda doesn't matter. AoE is also handled in a way that promotes speed. And it's not a storyshit system, so you always have actual numbers to rely on, rather than doing "mother, may I" with your GM.
Good stuff
Is all Ubiquity stuff tied to the settings they've released, or is there something like a core rule book?
Unfortunately, the dumbass who created this system never figured its real potential, so he never released it as a generic ruleset.
Said that, the game works just fin if you take it as it is. HEX has all the shit you will ever need, and if you need either more melee stuff or more pure fantasy, there are respectively 'All for One', a Three Musketeers gamen and 'Desolation', a post-apo in a fantasy world (plays better than it sounds). Other licensed games unfortunately trade away speed for over-elaborate autism of combos.
Still, I would suggest getting your hands on HEX and just check it in the raw form, because it's the sort of the system that even without official blank universal release is modular enough to be repurposed for anything you wish.
How is League of Adventure? I wanted to get into a vernian campaign.
It's pretty much repackaged HEX. The main difference is that it takes the followers rules from All for One, rather the one from HEX (so: slightly less exploitative, while also explaining the concept of platoon play better). But other than that, it's 1:1 reprint under different title
Plus, HEX is the easiest to get without paying.