Which RPG have you played where combat was done in record time? 

Then again, this requires you to have played more than one RPG.  Otherwise there can't be a comparison.

For me the game that is ultra fast, almost too fast, is a very kid friendly RPG called Amazing Tales.

DT-RPG — Amazing Tales

The combat can be as short as the GM wants it to be.  It can literally be a single skill test.  If you pass (and as a kids game it's weighted so they usually do), the fight can be declared over.

"You engage the evil robot in hand to hand martial arts!  Roll your fighting skill.  Success!   You've defeated the robot, which sparks and makes odd whirring sounds until it stops talking and moving."

Or, as I ran it, I typically ran combat as a best 3 out of 5. 

Now, I don't expect you guys to run combat as a single dice roll, but I'm still interested.

A more "normal" RPG that's got fast combat is Mini-Six bare bones.  I'll admit that one way to speed that game up is to use the Static Defense combat introduced in the game, combined with a dice rolling app on my phone.  In fact, I had to find alternative dueling rules for 1vs1 sword fights to make them last longer and be more cinematic.

I know you can do potentially fast combat are Amber and Wushu.  In Amber, your demi-god PCs could simply out class a critter so badly that the GM could say something like, "How badly do you beat the bandit?"  In Wushu, you pile on details and this builds your dice pool.  So, it is possible to totally out do an opponent/thug in a single roll.

Hostile Solo has a scene resolution system where you layout your plan, add up your mods and do a single dice throw and narrate the results. (You can also go into a more detailed round by round system with Cepheus Engine.)

In some flavors of Fate, you can get so many success levels that you can overwhelm an opponent on a single roll.

I want my combat to be dictated by the demands of the "genre" with some wiggle-room.

While I err, in general, on the side on the side of cinematic combat with a touch of the "over-the-top", my fantasy games lean to the S&S vibe, where arms and limbs are routinely severed. Blood will spurt and spray etc.

That kinda stuff can be tricky make your players feel in a HP-based system (any veteran GM should be able to do it and make it feel right) but it can be done.

In terms of mechanical smoothness - I feel that GMing familiarity with any system will vastly help with speed. If we're talking just the system itself?

CP2020's Interlock System - pretty damn fast. Not due to the specifics of the task resolution mechanics. d10+Skill+modifiers (Gear etc.) vs. Static Target Number. Pretty standard stuff. What makes it fast is that characters aren't typically going more than a round or two before the fight is over due to the health-system vs. damage values.

Obviously SWADE - I find SWADE fast, but it's not "super-fast". Definitely faster than d20 in pace because there is less calculation required to do lots of different things using much smaller numbers. Combat is generally pretty damn fast since it uses minion rules.

Talislanta is fast too. Simple Stat+Skill - Target's Skill. Pretty much like d20, but since HP values are RADICALLY smaller, fights end very fast.

You'll note the games that have the fastest combat for me, are also the ones I talk about the most. I want systems that do what I want them to do without getting in the way of the actual game.

90s vampire larpers.   Rock paper scissors... done.   Occasionally best of three for "epic" goth battles where the clamato must flow! 

Call of Cthulhu (BRP) combat is quite fast. Percentile-driven, and injuries are very bad. If you get impaled, it is typically lights-out

Masterbook combat can be pretty fast as well: if you get shot, it's very bad. Combat is very realistic, and there aren't situations where you are swinging swords for 20 minutes.

B/X D&D with its lower HP and fast resolution can be pretty quick.

Palladium system is notoriously janky for those who know it.  Even I think it's oddly written, and I'm a fan.

However.

Palladium Fantasy 1E is actually really fun.  It's what the system was written for.  It also has a more logical combat system than D&D in my opinion. 

I know that D&D, with six ability scores and 1D20+bonus vs enemy Armor Class is super popular, but I'm not a fan.  I liked the opposed rolls of Palladium system, strike roll vs parry roll, defenders always win ties.  Armor protects against most hits, but as armor hit points go down, so too does the Armor Rating number. 

Quote from: MerrillWeathermay on January 27, 2025, 01:13:37 PMCall of Cthulhu (BRP) combat is quite fast. Percentile-driven, and injuries are very bad. If you get impaled, it is typically lights-out

I agree, but this isn't about the percentile mechanics per se. The #1 issue with how long combats take is how many rounds they last.

This depends less on the mechanics of how dice are rolled, but more on how fragile both sides are compared to the damage being dealt out.

For example, in my experience, serious FATE combats take a really long time unless the opposition is just mooks who have no chance of seriously damaging the PCs.

Quote from: weirdguy564 on January 27, 2025, 01:27:07 PMPalladium system is notoriously janky for those who know it.  Even I think it's oddly written, and I'm a fan.

Those people clearly just aren't trying.  Palladium rules and their interactions are quite simple and well thought out as shown below!  It's why they haven't had to change the rules significantly in 40+ years after all. 

Basic combat in Burning Wheel (and its related games) is crazy fast. It gets that by stripping out a lot of the choice, abstracting things, and boiling most of the action of a round into a single die pool roll.  Or you can play the alternate systems that provide more choices but make it take longer.

I'm not interested in fast combat as a primary goal.  I want interesting combat that preserves some of the choices and feel of what is being played. Then as a secondary goal, make it as fast as possible without sacrificing that feel and those choices.  Or at least not sacrificing too much, since it is always a compromise. 

Also, it's not the number of rounds.  It's the number of rounds times the average length of the rounds, with special call out to anything that causes the pace to grind to a halt.  If I can resolve everything for the round in 1 roll, but it takes so long to set up that roll that everyone at the table has forgotten what is happening, that's not really helping very much.

You can play a whole "short" adventure in Toon in 20 minutes, with multiple or almost continuous conflicts.  Still, it's not a lot of detail.

My system is almost as fast as BECMI/RC played simple, and somewhat faster than BECMI/RC with the options turned on.  My base system has about the same complexity as that game with all the options turn on (though distributed somewhat differently).  I can routinely run mid-level, major fights, with 8-12 characters and more opposition in under 20 minutes. Depending on the options, AD&D can sometimes match that.

Fantasy Hero/Champions can do very fast combat, though it is a steep, front-loaded learning curve to get there.  Though it helps a lot if alternate rules are used instead of the Speed chart for pacing, as well as some kind of simplification if you get into the upper reaches of damage dice. In practice, it usually isn't all that fast, because even when people know the rules, there's a lot of dialog and posing, which one might expect for a system with its superhero origins.  Different goals, different results.

Finally, there are plenty of games that run just fine with 3-4 players that start to really sputter as you add players and/or lots of foes.  A 4-player D&D 3E game below 9th to 11th level will run just fine for the most part against an equal number of foes.  It trails off rapidly the more you try to do with it.  If the game doesn't scale to handle the load you want to put on it, then doesn't matter how fast it is in optimum conditions.

I've found Runequest reasonably fast with some players and horribly slow with others.  Maybe that's learning curve.  I think it being so deadly, that a lot of casual players get paralyzed with trying to turtle or even avoid combat, and thus don't develop a lot of practice with the system.  Dragon Quest is similar, where even winning a short fight can be a party killing loss because of the infection rules.

Systems that eliminate to-hit rolls, like the Into-the-Odd-likes, are pretty fast. That was one of the main reasons for ItDR creation. Having played almost all TSR-era D&D games, none come close in this department.

Depends what you want to emulate. I use the "300" rule.

How many rounds does it take to simulate this 2-minute slow-motion fight scene in "300"?

https://youtu.be/VeK-d553Mjk?si=ZDuUNOok-Q8Ya7tN&t=226

In Savage Worlds, assuming you've got Leonidas statted as a Heroic rank character, you can do this entire thing in about 2-rounds. That covers many attacks on him, and about 14-kills.

In Deluxe edition it might be one round.

P&P is the fastest I've seen without being literally a single roll, and without sacrificing a variety of interesting player options to use during a battle.