Just gonna ramble here for a bit about a combat system I'm making. It takes inspiration from the two games mentioned in the title. Let's break it down so the people here (who are mainly fans of OSR from what I can see) can understand.

Abstracted Combat-

My game is a lot like a JRPG battle screen. Your enemy is at one side. You and your friends are on the other. Pick from one of the 6 avaliable options in combat. There's no need to have a battle map, or get out a ruler. No.

Have fun.

Bravery- What Does It Mean

Bravery is the abstract rendition of a character's narrative advantage. Their strength, speed, durability, and magic are all smashed into one depletable stat. An example of a character's Bravery stat at level 1 would be 46.

All attacks (which work in a simple way- roll to hit, then add 'weapon damage' and subtract enemy durability) steal Bravery and add it onto your own. If Bravery hits 0, you enter Break. In Break, people can make Finishing Blows on you, which takes all the stored up Bravery and deals it onto your HP as damage. If your HP hits 0, you die. You exit Break in 3 turns. You get 10 Bravery then if you haven't stolen any Bravery, which you should because you steal double the Bravery while in Break.

This is meant to represent the ebb and flow of fictional battles, and how they build up to a single final strike. I like it better than DND combat, honestly.

Combos-

To deal Bravery Damage, you need to use your weapon in certain ways (called Weapon Mastery Skills)- with three types of attacks. A, B, C. All have to link in a combo to get a bonus.

A links forward. A-A-A- doesn't work because the last A has nothing to link to and it wants to link.

B links backward. -B-B-B doesn't work because the first B has nothng to link to and it wants to link.

C does not link. C C C does not work because it does not link.

There are one attack combos and two attack combos.

Philosophy behind this-

To make a tabletop game like JRPG combat. Unconventional JRPG combat, at that. And also to make something not like DND combat, or a little less like it in this case. I try to keep the numbers small- stats should go from single digits to mid double digits at most  say 60 for specialized stats and 38 for non specialized stats. Mecha are the exception- they have hundreds of HP to deplete.

Looking back, the numbers are too big. This is a game made to be played with the human brain as well as a few digitial assistants- a dice rolling bot and a calcuator. I tried to keep it low tier to make it easy to play but it looks like I messed that up.

Two tabletop games that utilize mechanics similar to a turn-based JRPG: Ryuutama, and The One Ring. They definitely have the abstracted combat mechanics as well as "lines" of battle. Could be something to look into for further inspiration and implementation.

i played this with a few friends of mine. here's some notes:

1. numbers end up managable. Brave is in the hundreds but that's surprisingly okay. if you give enemies ebough HP they can survive a Finishing Blow.
2. Offense outpaces defense in this game.

overall it's insanely fun. i can post the document here for anyone who wants it.