What tabletop games have the best combat? Besides D&D, since we all know how good that one is- I'm looking for something a little different. Preferably fantasy.
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What tabletop games have the best combat?
My homebrew
Post it
There's no english translation yet.
My friend made this back in 2003 and has been working on it ever since. It's the only one I play. It's Called "Realms of Glory"
The riddle of steel. good luck finding a book, though.
Yiff in hell. No furgay will ever sit at my table.
That's conan you idiot
The riddle of steel is HEMA weapon autism, not furgays.
Play some Ironclaw, it's surprisingly killy.
I don't really like the game's skill system, but the combat/wound system is pretty kino I will admit.
It was mostly a meme to avoid people shitposting over D&D.
>It was mostly a meme to avoid people shitposting over D&D
And then (
) had to frick it up.
>D&D has the best combat
Support your position. In before someone cites a bunch of bullshit they had to add to D&D and gives the game credit for shit it doesn't do.
Sarcasm motherfricker, do you speak it?
I speak it fine.
It doesn't translate through text, though.
Have you tried playing 4e?
Have you tried playing Pathfinder 2e?
Yeah. It sucks
Yes, that's why I won't play it.
Would literally rather have anal sex with a fire elemental
Legend of the five rings is neat.
>have anal sex with a fire elemental
top or bottom?
I once had a friend describe Pokemon Tabletop United as "D&D 4E done right", and would not elaborate further. I've hardly looked into either of these games, so I have no idea what they frick he was talking about. Is anyone capable of explaining this to me?
I think he means that 4ed was very modular and cookie cutter with everything looking more like a framework than an actual system overall. Maybe...?
I've already gotten tabletop united but haven't read trough it so that's my best guess on what your friend meant.
Different how? What games do you like and why? What tone do you want combat to evoke?
I have most experience with D&D, some homebrew, FATE, and a few other really basic games mostly. I'd prefer things less crunchy and more open to flexible combat stuff- less lethal and more heroic but not too easy if that makes sense. Less rolls are preferred over more but I haven't found a single roll resolution engine that adds enough granularity for my taste.
13th Age?
I mean that's the same as D&D so...
I mean. It's not. Suit yourself though.
Genesys is exactly that, and it does high fantasy.
Theres even a D&D conversion for more specific D&D flavoring
Finally someone asking the real questions instead of getting dragged down into shitposting.
Pathfinder 1e is like D&D but with more moving parts. It does take on more crunchiness though to make up for the options. Can't talk about 2e, but might worth to take a look.
Maybe Savage Worlds? It is a pretty flexible system, and tries to invoke larger than life action heroes by giving you a quantifiable amount of heroism points you can spent in a pinch.
I also like GURPS for its flexibility and plenty of options, but if D&D was too crunchy for you then you might have a hard time wrapping your head around that.
Fursona bros…
SotDL.
This is the complete opposite of what he's looking for.
Gurps
>No hp bloat
>Hit locations with different to hit modifiers and damage modifiers and location specific effects
>Weapon choice actually matters. They might have different parrying capacities, different damage types and reach, so meaningful advantages and disadvantages and weapon specific techniques (for example hooking with an axe)
>Cool techniques and skills you can use, feinting, doing stronger attacks that are easier to defend against, or attacks that are harder to pull off, but harder to defend.
> 3d6 bell curve makes modifiers more interesting
>Combat is pretty fast and brutal, any fight might be over with one good hit, all fights might not end with killing everyone, but maybe rather in getting knocked out because of a big injury.
>Low hp makes the combatant slower and kind of weaker, so if you are at 1 hp, you are not just running around at full power until you die
> Can be run with a fast and easy ruleset, or you can include as much autism as you could hope for, all completely optional, of course
3d6 bell curve makes combat more predictable, moron. Bell curves are for cowards.
Yes, it makes critical far more worth and game changers since they are harder to get.
It lets you know what the most likely results of every roll are going to be, the rarity of crits doesn't mean shit.
>the rarity of crits doesn't mean shit.
Far from it, it ensure that a critical will change drastically the scenery of a game since it's very unlikely to happen considering how most characters will get average results.
Relative to the fact you know the most likely result of every roll before you touch the dice, the rarity of crits does not mean shit. Was that clear enough for your tiny gurpsgay brain?
But you know the probability of a dice independent of the type of dice you roll, I am saying the fact that critical have lesser chance do bring a wild change to a game scene because they are far from the common result.
Yes, you know the probability of a dice roll before you roll it. But a bell curve means, by it's very nature, that there is a range of results for the roll that are more likely than others, and you can plan your actions with the assumption that this is where your result will land with a decent level of confidence. You keep harping about this crit crap like it SOMEHOW changes that.
>you can plan your actions with the assumption that this is where your result will land with a decent level of confidence
Exactly why I am telling criticals are extremely game changers in a bell curve system. It goes way beyond the norm that in a flat curve
Why the frick do you think the likelihood of a crit is relevant in the first place? I do not give a shit about crits in a bell curve system. When I say "crits don't matter" I'm not talking about if they matter in the game, I'm saying the odds of a crit are not relevant to bell curve systems being too predictable.
Because that is the main point of having criticals in a game, creating a wild scenario where things can drastically change, which having a critical with a less likely chance to happen make it far more worthwhile to get .
And how does that even remotely change the absolute fact that in a bell curve you can predict the results you get?
>hurr durr but sometimes it's way different!
Doesn't fricking matter, brainlet. The rare wildly different result changes nothing.
>extremely game changers
Not that anon, but it really isn't when you already plan for the safe route to begin with
you're not remotely explaining why that's a bad thing.
I have, several times. You just don't like it.
No, guy, you really haven't.
+5 vs AC 20 is 75 %
SL 12 is 75%
All the bell curve does is change how modifiers influence things at different target numbers.
Given, a competent character is going to hit most of the time, but he's also going to defend most of the time, which is where, you may not believe it, actually making decisions and playing the game comes in.
Or you could say "I attack," and flip fricking coins until his HP hits zero, you do you.
>+5 vs AC 20 is 75 %
You're still assuming 5e, moron.
Hits AC 10 75% of the time. Typo. You can win off that if you want.
And if this was going to some argument about thaco, it doesn't change anything. The dice succeed whatever percent of the time they succeed.
Absolute, meaningless gibberish.If I know the difficulty of a task, and the bonus to my roll, I know how often I'll succeed, flat rolls don't change this.
The only difference is that in an AC system the GM can lie about the enemy AC more easily.
>If I know the difficulty of a task
Only a shit GM would tell you how hard something is before you do it. Or do you play some kind of freakish baby mode where you get to see the stats or everything you fight before you fight it?
>hurr durr monster stats in book
Doesn't mean shit, the GM can change anything they want, and if you start acting like you know everything already, any decent GM absolutely will use altered stats just to frick you. If they don't, they are a shit GM.
>You can win off that if you want.
No, I'll win off actual facts instead. Flat probability means at best you know what you have to roll *at minimum* to beat a target number, but it doesn't matter. Every die result is equally possible, there IS NO SUCH THING as how likely you are to hit that target AC, because you are as equally likely to roll high enough as you are to roll too low. When every possible result is equally likely, every roll is tense. At BEST, you can get a vague idea how high you have to roll, EVENTUALLY, because you've rolled for that target before. Then you can start to figure your odds, but unless you roll a 12 and miss, then a 13 and hit, you have no idea what the target roll needs to be, and until you do you cannot accurately predict your odds.
Conversely, with a bell curve the target number you're aiming for doesn't matter as much, because your die rolls have a predictable range, you know what you are most likely going to be capable of before you roll anything. Whether you know what you *need* to roll means nothing, because you already know what you are *most likely* to roll already. That, is boring. And a game that's boring has failed at it's primary purpose. GURPS=failure.
All you've convinced me of is that you're autistic.
Why don't you just flip a coin every time if you like not knowing what the numbers mean anyway so much? Basically no different, is what you're telling me.
Let him be, for the way he talks he is clearly an angsty teen troll. he just contradicted himself and is clearly only fanboying his favourite system
>Only a shit GM would tell you how hard something is before you do it.
There are tables for dificulty in 3.5, so yeah, players can know. They can also read and learn the system, if they can't then they don't care enough.
>>any decent GM absolutely will use altered stats just to frick you. If they don't, they are a shit GM
Completely arbitrary opinion based on nothing but your own experience and maybe your need to be right. Any gm can choose to change or keep whatever he wants for whatever reason he wants, cause if you are changing everything then you are not playing the game you claim, but your own homebrew. Which is also nice if that's cool with you, but it's STILL a homebrew
If you are:
changing how hard is a task constantly without any other reason than "good gm improvise durrr",
change the mosnter stats because "good gm change durrrr"
Asume everyone is only versed in 5th ed while clearly demonstrating a lack of understanding on the average numbers in past editions (yes, even in the one you claim to use) or just plainly misconstructing your own homebrew as "the 3.5 ruleset" then yeah, sorry but you're only an angsty teen angry that other people are criticizing your game.
And yet again, before you cry foul, let me remind you with a page from the 3.5 edition where it shows you examples of the dificulty expected by the system (NOT your HOMEBREW), where you can clearly see that the ruleset for 3.5 EXPECTS difficult checks ranging from 10 to 20 for low to mid level characters, 21 to 25 to HIGH level characters, and 43 to a lvl 20 maxed out character.
So yeah, even in 3.5 we knew what range we were aiming for
None of the other anons.
There is a nuance.
Change basic checks - why?
Change checks because of a situational appropriate reason - sure.
I frick around with monsters all the time but mostly to shake things up for players who know the mm by heart but mention at least a hint in the description of the mob.
HP is mostly a suggestion - often shorten or stretch them to let combat flow better. When stretching mostly because players are steamrolling the encounter and I see no big danger in doing so.
So you can frick with values but the goal should always be a better player experience.
And I do agree on some fudging, let's take Traveller for example (2d6)
An average DC is 8+, you can add/substract increments for circumstances if you like, and climb it to a 10+ or 12+ making it considerably harder in a 2d6 range, but a character built for those circumstances will (as intended) have a better chance than a char built for something else.
Also fudging hp or minor adjusments will always be made by gms either to avoid a tpk or avoid a 1hit BBEG whipeout
Thing is the anon talked about +10 not being an average since he can stack indefinite number of modifiers. and also about the players knowing the average DC's as something bad and almost unholy somehow arguing that nothing of that was ever in 3.5 wich is either trolling or a complete lack of understanding of both the ruleset and the "bell curve vs flat rate" argument overall
Yeah that anon seems to be on the other end of the horseshoe. Giving a lvl 15 group trouble to break a normal door just because they can achieve higher numbers and is too easy is as easily as bad as taking the values literally. They are 15 - it should be easy. Like fricking bands of bandits suddenly becoming lvl 20 just because the players are. Why are you stealing? Just sell that +4 sword. The point is that the players are getting stronger - everday actions don't level.
Yeah.
And I might have come off as claiming "hurr dnd bad", but by no means. I was born as a player in the final 2ed years, and most of my gaming life was 3.5, played a bit of 4th and 5th but grew tired of it overall and that was when I orbited towards other sistems. Having a life and taking care of keeping a job also had an influence since my lack of time pushes me towards systems where less fudging from my part is needed.
I don't consider it bad, I just dont frickin like it. For playing with d20 I rather use modiphius 2d20, and that one is almost dnd with a few extra steps... thing is, those extra steps give more weight to character builds so I can bear with the clunkiness if it means my players choices will matter against the dice. It is still clunky tho
Well most of dnd is bad.
1 - bad.
thac0 tuesday - creative goldmine at the time but still bad.
3.5 good if you know which supplements top rip out of your players hands and throw out the window.
4 ... Actually decent once you notice that it was made to homebrew the shit out of it.
5 - bad.
It's still the system many remember most fondly because it's easier to get a dnd campaign started than anything else.
The system isn't the actual game.
>Only a shit GM would tell you how hard something is before you do it. Or do you play some kind of freakish baby mode where you get to see the stats or everything you fight before you fight it?
>Doesn't mean shit, the GM can change anything they want, and if you start acting like you know everything already, any decent GM absolutely will use altered stats just to frick you. If they don't, they are a shit GM
And just to make clear how little you know about what you're talking about before I stop feeding the angsty teentroll let me share you a nother bit of the 3.5 book where they talk about the players keeping track of the numbers.
It clearly states that the importance of that is only to keep them from paying atention to the numbers and let you fudge them. Something that can still be done in ANY ruleset
Finally you seem to be misunderstanding basic probability, since more than once you've stated that knowing the nunber you are looking for is somehow a certainty of what you will roll. But knowing the DC and getting the result are two diferent things.
True, you will know what are the average and high values but you'll STILL need to build your character around that. And that's the main point of the argument. The way you build your character stats is more meaningfull with a bellcurve than a flat rate. You clearly don't like that, but then i would argue that your 3.5 character builds are meaningless because they depend on the chockfull DC Mods That you gave them. NOT what the player built
Now go to sleep under a bridge and eat a goat, I'm done with your angst
>dat graph
When you combine the bell curve with a low spread for character damage, you get nice combats where characters are ground down slowly, depending on their individual skill levels, but no combatant is immune to disaster and a quick death from crits. GURPS does this well, but Melee does it better. It is so much better than some shitfest where a fighter with 75 hit points wielding nothing but a d20 wades through a small army of goblin tomato cans.
But you do you, friend.
>you get nice combats where characters are ground down slowly
I bet you also complain about HP bloat.
You should recognized that you are dealing with a moron, the moment he used a ridiculous ad hominem.
You're as moronic as he is.
Flat probability is for morons.
Flat probability is for people who don't need their hand held, who like not knowing what's coming. People who like bell curves are like vidya journos who want an easy mode to cover for their incompetence.
So...
>Flat probability is for people who don't need their hand held, who like not knowing what's coming.
Each number has a equal chance of being rolled. Multiply that percentage by the number of successful results and there's your odds of success, moron.
As many have stated before me, "Better" depends entirely on your own preferences
Some anons like
don't like bell curves and are happier with a flat probability even if that means their character is less relevant to the result. and before he jumps to say how relevant the character is, there is already a couple of videos on the math of the system, on average you have only 25% influence on the result of the d20, and AT BEST (with a +10 mod) it's a 50-50 chance.
If you like that, then systems with similar dna should fulfill the criteria.
some other anons like
enjoy the bell curve with a lower spread, gurps has been mentioned, but there is also traveller with it's 2d6 system, in those cases the way your character is built can really influence the outcome of the result.
I have been cracking up the math (i'm not too good with it) for another system that so far seems to place even more weight to the character build, but is definitively clunkier overall than ANY of the other games I've mentioned, and that would be the 2d20 system of modiphius. in it your bonus determines the target number for the d20´s and any number equal or under gets you a success, the difficulty of the tasks can range from 0 to 5. it is an interesting system but as I said before, is clunkier and can potentially slow down the game a bit. but as with the flat rate or the bell curve, it all depends on your criteria of what a game should bring you to the table for you to consider it "good"
A good combat system isn't just the rolls, it's about tactical decisions and high risk = high reward for me. Do the players actions during combat actually change the outcome - movement, terrain, weapon choice etc.
Some people mentioned dnd 4e and it can be a very satisfying there to push a mob into flanking position and allowing your teammates an opportunity atk.
The actual math isn't as important as how the player can influence it.
and I completely agree with that,
but that doesn't come from the ruleset, that comes from your players and you as a gm, because let's be real, once on the table, the group as a whole are going to pick and choose what works for them and what doesn't. even the most crative players won't enjoy a game where the gm doesn't allow anything that isn't regulated by the rules in some form. and even the most flexible gm will have a hard time with players that won't do more than what you ask them/tell them to do.
It is you as a gm who sets up the scene and descibe whatever you can think for your players
it is your players that will use whatever you described or the options in their sheet to obtain whatever they are seeking. no amount of rules can guarantee that in a table. so I don't use that as a metric when looking for a game.
My usual metrics given my viewpoint above would be:
- will it be easy for me to grasp and to explain?
- will chargen be fun, swift, mindfull?
- will I be able to easily homebrew?
- will it give me enough building resources for things that I would like to try?
- Is the artwork interesting and ilustrative of what I'm reading?
- will my choices for developing the character's skills and habilities matter?
as long as half of those are fulfilled I'm willing to give the system a shot to see if it's what I would call "Good". but maybe the correct term would be "Good Enough"
anyways sorry for the long post
One of my dozens of half finished homebrews allowed to combign two skills if the player could explain what the char does and why it makes sense. For example you could roll acrobatics + attack to deliver a kick swinging from a rope and the dm could assign Boni according the result. I'd like it when the System would incentivice the players to use things like this and the gm just needs to style the encounters a bit.
Neat.
I'm mostly a Traveller player, if my players would try something as that I would make it a chain task, making them roll the acrobatics, and adding the effect (if the dc. was 8 and they rolled a 12 the effect would be a +4) to the attack roll
>Boni
Since the Latin noun would have been bonum, the plural would be bona. Use "bonuses" like a smart person and you'll sound like less of a dweeb.
>Since the Latin noun would have been bonum, the plural would be bona
Latinlet detected.
"bonus" is an adjective, and it can be "bonus," "bona," or "bonum." In English, we only use "bonus" as a noun.
In that case, it has to be masculine, so "bonum" only works as the accusative. The plural then would be "bonos," not "bona." Furthermore, "boni" is perfectly acceptable as a nominative plural.
>on average you have only 25% influence on the result of the d20
That's why you don't play a game with bounded accuracy, fricko. Based 3.5 doesn't have a limit to how high your bonus can go. I'm sorry you assumed I play 5e, but...nope.
https://www.nuklearpower.com/2012/01/11/nerding-it-up-with-legends-of-the-wulin
If you want involved combat, LotW is certainly out there and a kind of fantasy.
Song of Swords.
I like bell curve for systems with opposed rolls, so that the outcomes are not too wild
what if I told you every opposed roll is a bellcurve?
I think mine's probably better
>what if I told you every opposed roll is a bellcurve?
You'd be wrong.
>>what if I told you every opposed roll is a bellcurve?
>You'd be wrong.
Or lying.
FENG SHUI 2
Feng Shui 2
Fantasy Craft
Cortex system stuff
Open Legend has attacks be against the relevant defense, and damage is how much you beat that defense by. Beat it by enough and you apply a status effect.
FFG Narrative Dice (if it clicks with the whole group)
From what I played Blades in the Dark excels at short, desperate fights. 'Wrestling around on in the dirt trying to get control over the gun' sorts of fights.
>FantasyCraft.
hell yeah one of my favourite systems of all time despite its' issues.
>Mythras
also fantastic
depends on what you like. intense and very intricate?
>try riddle of steel.
like it quick and brutal but creative?
>try dungeon crawl classics
like anime over the top action with special attacks?
>idk
4th edition dnd was pretty great if everyone knew their sheets and the dm had some milk jug rings to keep track of status effects.
i havent found any super satisfying squad based games like x-wing or wh40k's kill team but for fantasy
Have to jump on the GURPS train here.
Attacks that land can be opposed by active defences (dodge, parry, block).
Armour doesn't make you harder to hit, but does give you damage resistance, reducing the force of incoming blows.
You can make telegraphed or all out attacks if you're a humble peasant frick who doesn't really know how a sword works, to compensate for your lack of skill.
Similarly, highly skilled professional warriors can perform feints and deceptive attacks to frick up the defender's chance of successfully defending.
Health system means that when you're hurt, it's harder to fight, and there's a good likelyhood they fall unconscious before they die, so you can still take them alive.
Actual rules for damage to limbs means you can reasonably tell when a blow would take someone's arm off, or just injure them slightly. Also means you can deliberately incapacitate people by targeting an arm or leg so they can't fight or run as effectively.
Honestly I wish GURPS got the love it deserves for being as well thought out and researched.
Haven't tried GURPS yet but all your points are applicable to WFRP which is a good thing for me. I'll check it out.
Mythras. HEMA inspired geeky combat. Quick and deadly but also has options beyond maiming and death to end fights.
+1 for mythras
You want to stop a charging monster by impaling it on your spear? Kill an armoured enemy by jamming a dagger in his visor? Throw sand at an opponent then disarm it by cutting his arms off? Block his attack and immediately counterattack? You can do all of that with zero GM fiat and not in a narrativist way.
Meh. Mythras is great for one on one duels, but trips over its own feet with multiple combatants on each side. Even two on two is difficult to run and lacks clarity. One of the designers even admits it himself.
Fair enough. And I think if I wanted those big fights and still maintain some of the same feel of combat but simplified, I might go with some kung fu action, pic related. Has combat condition/special effects similar to mythras, mook rules, easy d100. Plus it is fun.
Might have to check it out, I also got my hands on Feng shui 2ed and wanted to run a full on major cheese kung fury plot type campaign with zombie space nazis and over the top everything, but alas it never came to be.
a minor noble house and controlling several knights or something in battle would be neat.
Wasteland warfare is a wargame with a set of rules to play it as an rpg (yes, also from modiphius but separate from 2d20), haven't read them though and it aint medieval fantasy, but it might help you with a frame for what you are looking for
I really like the premise of feng shui. It is just awesome gonzo, but it just didn't do it for me on the mechanics side. The setting is just so awesome though, I think battling over chi sites in a skirmish game like fistful of lead would be pretty sweet.
What do you think of Wushu?
Is it in the Trove? I'm curious to check it
you already know the answer
Correct. Hero System is the best. Thank you, random frog anon.
You know thats the GURPS frog, don't even try that shit.
Battletoads?
Nobody posted Shadowrun 4e? It has the best combat system of them all. Good action economy, good initiative pass system, lots of modifiers, untrained guy with a gun is still dangerous, etc.
I know I'm bringing D&D up again, but if you are looking to spice up combat in that system:
"Slash, stab, hack Repeat!" might be worth a look to giving your combat more crunch
>Besides D&D
I'll pretend I didn't read that
>What tabletop games have the best combat? Besides D&D
Vampire in the early aughts where all you did was use Celerity first thing, and anyone who didn't automatically lost.
Nobilis
GURPS saved me from thinking I hated RPG combat.
I've also come to realize I hated most RPG combat because it amounted to being a skirmish-level wargame where you only controlled one guy, thus functionally neutering the point of it.
On the topic of combat being like a skirmish level wargame I would like an RPG based on that concept. I already like skirmish games with character growth built in so something like leading a minor noble house and controlling several knights or something in battle would be neat.
Anima.....
Shit I can't do this to you.
As cool as it is on paper it's clunky as frick.
>Roll for energy gathering.
>Check if energy is big enough to make you go Goku screaming up a lightning storm
>Apply DMG to bystanders due to environental effects
>Roll exploding d100 and apply skill - lets say +180
>Enemy rolls def
>(ATK - DEF) squared by the root of armor class devided by the general theory of relativy - if it's in the negative get counter attacked
>Give up on the formula and look into the two page table
>Notice that damage has a different table
>Notice that you still have to apply 8 special conditions
>Give up on the tables and use the app
>Apply dmg
>Roll to see through how many buildings the enemy crashes
>Determine bystander casulties by population density.
>Determine crater size from Impact
>This was one ATK
And there are 5 completely different systems in that game ki/psi/magic/summoning/martial arts with their own rulesets.
Peak autism
Damn, seems even clunkier than cthulhutech, and I thought THAT one was clunky af. Hell, it might be the clunkiest thing i've ever seen
If i'd greentext magic and go into applying the metamagic feats from the FF styled spheroboard I probably need to split the post. Summoning makes you basically play two chars... or more.
Also notoriously hard to dm because the system has 15 lvl max and a lvl 10 char could easily launch 16 nukes in a round or be a samurai that slightly excells at bar fights.
>Best combat
Depends on what kind of game you're running, most people don't like combat that goes too far in depth because then you're looking up shit tons of tables and rolling multiple dice and tracking multiple modifiers, and we know that sometimes people dont want that, see D&D's decline in popularity during 3e and 4e
World of Five Nations.
The super-dead Legend did some WILD shit that is still broadly unchallenged as the best or most interesting.
Still got some core problems that makes it a challenge to play 'correctly' however
>Functionally incomplete creature template system can make creatures HARDER to make
>Too many scaling secondary values that you have to root around for in a few different sections
>The game requires miniatures, but the nature of those scaling values makes the required space balloon as they affect all attack ranges
In theory, with enough enthusiasm, those problems are entirely solved by VTTs. I don't think anyone is working on that, unfortunately. I think the track system means a super basic character/creature creator could be a fun project to learn to code but I don't quite know where I'd start.
Going by your OP I think you're Palladium Fantasy man.
[haven't read thread
Best fantasy: Rolemaster, bar none. Crunchy yet fast and easy.
Best combat period: HERO system, bar none. Hyper-detailed and crunchy, yet fast and easy
Spellbound Kingdoms. I've heard great things about it.
Wow, one of the only actually good recommendations in this thread. You have class, sir.
Please, elaborate, it sounds interesting
It’s Rock Paper Scissors Lizard Spock, but with different stances that affect your attack and defence. There’s a bunch of different fighting styles, and learning them is as much a part of the game as predicting your opponent’s next move (keeping in mind that they’re also trying to predict yours).
The rest of the system is just gonzo as well, where your character’s archetypes really do matter (they can literally warp reality).
That indeed sounds very interesting, I'll have to keep an eye for it and give it a try soon
>admits hasn't used it
>probable samegay
>almost certainly a samegay. System described is fiddly not flexible. Would drag out combat hideously long, seems designed as a standalone game for nogamerz
>confirmed samegayging, and shamefully so.
I’m
. Meds.
>the 'probable' samegay wasn't
I'm so heartbroken.
And if you think Spellbound K is great, your opinion is suspect, anyway
I respect your differing taste, atrocious though it may be.
Yeah, we are all the same people aparently. I guess he can't concieve the idea of more than one person wanting to read a game that deviates of what he likes.
And I will decide what I consider difficult after I read the ruleset and see what I can manage with or without
Now Troll away to darker underbridges
4e was really good, and with the electronic tools it's actually a breeze to play nowadays.
It was memed to death, but if you want a game with good tactical combat elements there are very few actual contenders.
It is however somewhat fiddly, and if stacking small bonuses and linear is not something you enjoy that much, Strike! is a similar chassis but much condensed and extremely streamlined. Very handy if you are more of a hombrew kinda person.
I'm playing PF2e, it's pretty fun though I feel like it's a bit simple compared to 4e and less fantastic. Feels really tight fisted with a bunch of fiddly shit.
LANCER and ICONS is also pretty good from what I hear (and have read) but haven't had the chance to play them yet.
>4e was really good, and with the electronic tools it's actually a breeze to play nowadays.
>It was memed to death
4e is definitely at an optimal point to play now that it's static and we have ubiquitous virtual tabletops. Its core-only experience was kinda shitty, but now there's a lot of Fun™ to tool around with. Still not my favorite game or even type of game, but I respect it.
As for it being memed to death: yes and no. The actual effect of the less informed or overstated criticism it got is seemingly rather minimal--it's important to always remember that online conversations in enthusiast spaces are a cross section of a cross section of a cross section and usually don't represent a 'real' userbase for D&D.
4e failed because it was managed like Batman & Robin, produced to be toyetic and be a hardpoint for other products.
There are even some first-hand insights into that. With some digging you can probably still find the official 4e developer podcast. In a few episodes they outright talk about how some content was cut and replaced with worse stuff to use it as a basis for another book in development. Gnomes and barbarians, many monsters, many spells. I feel like that encapsulates why 4e failed.
4e was actually successful for its first ~12 and last ~12 months when things were more focused and delineated, but for the middle of its lifespan it choked on its own publishing schedule and communication issues. The master plan was for at least one new physical product every month? Nobody is going to buy all that. No FLGS could even STOCK all that! Good luck getting people excited about any given book. Good luck getting people to settle on a common pool of content or resources (pic related, from Greg Tito's great 4e postmortem series written while still at The Escapist).
Good luck getting new players when you vaguely insist that every book on that crowded shelf is crucial.
And then they royally botched every element of presenting Essentials!
I consider it to be such a Fing shame that during 4e's runtime, CRPGs weren't really a thing. 4e could have had some seriously cute video games associated with it, even if they were ultimately just adventure games with a good combat engine.
It needed a Neverwinter Nights.
Yeah, you didn't get the open-ended flexibility of "real" D&D or 5e compared to 4e, but the game back then still had really strong setting lore that could have been tapped.
>As for it being memed to death: yes and no. The actual effect of the less informed or overstated criticism it got is seemingly rather minimal--it's important to always remember that online conversations in enthusiast spaces are a cross section of a cross section of a cross section and usually don't represent a 'real' userbase for D&D.
Where I disagree with you is that if a person who is new is looking around, when they google 4e, they'll find the fricking puffin forest video.
Sure, the dedicated core (of either haters or supporters) might not matter for the sales of a thing at its advertising and publishing height, but it definitely matters for the longevity after that time passes.
HERO System has the best combat system ever, hands down. It combines relative ease of use with meaningful tactical options. The two-tier damage system does a much better job of modeling damage than any HP or wound tracking system. It also has excellent rules for dealing with being knocked back by overwhelming force, like when a giant uses a club to play mini-golf with your PC.
I see the gigaBlack person "bellcurves are stupid" anon is at it again. Remember, your characters shouldn't be able to assess probably outcomes like skilled people can in real life. And that probability stops being probability as soon as one thing is more probable than another!