In your most unhumble and raucous opinion, which RPG has the best combat system? And much more importantly...why?

My definition of "best combat system" is the RPG mechanics which when used in actual play at the game table produces the most exciting and fun combat for the GM and the players.

I am acutely aware that a talented GM and engaged, immersed players are far more important than mechanics BUT let's assume we already have those and now we are looking at which RPG mechanics do combat best for not only this rarified group, but for even less amazing RPG groups.

So we're strictly looking at combat from the system mechanics perspective only.

Fight!!!...and remember, anyone with a different opinion that yours must be destroyed!!!

RuneQuest 6, it builds on Steve Perrin's original RuneQuest combat rules by adding Pete Nash's 'Special Effects' with the result that combat feels realistic, quick, unpredictable and exciting.

Just the invention of the 'attack' - 'parry' dynamic from the original RQ was a revelation that other game systems seem almost completely oblivious to, even after all this time other games seem to tie themselves in knots trying to work out what to do with shields or how 'blocking' works (it's called parrying guys...) and means, or how armour works, when all of this was worked out in a playable way in 1978, and now RQ6 has added a significant twist which gives it extra sparkle.

QuoteFight!!!...and remember, anyone with a different opinion that yours must be destroyed!!!

...Must make a Willpower roll against Compel Surrender*.


*  Assuming the target is sapient and able to understand the demand.

Quote from: Bilharzia;826208RuneQuest 6, it builds on Steve Perrin's original RuneQuest combat rules by adding Pete Nash's 'Special Effects' with the result that combat feels realistic, quick, unpredictable and exciting.

Just the invention of the 'attack' - 'parry' dynamic from the original RQ was a revelation that other game systems seem almost completely oblivious to, even after all this time other games seem to tie themselves in knots trying to work out what to do with shields or how 'blocking' works (it's called parrying guys...) and means, or how armour works, when all of this was worked out in a playable way in 1978, and now RQ6 has added a significant twist which gives it extra sparkle.

GURPS has it down pretty well. Shields are used for blocking, weapons & unarmed techniques for parrying.

I haven't read all of RQ 6 yet or had a chance to play it, so I can't really compare the systems side by side.

Another vote for Runequest, though I haven't played 6th in full yet. 2nd edition was the first I saw of BRP and it was a revelation after playing D&D.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;826209GURPS has it down pretty well. Shields are used for blocking, weapons & unarmed techniques for parrying.

You're right, it does get these concepts, last time I tried playing it I found it overly complex and too fussy though, coming from an RQ perspective.

Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP.  I have no clue if it's the best, but dammit, it's the most fun.   My friends and I have been playing it for almost 30 years and it's never gotten old or stale.  Nailing a villain with a solid right hook and slamming them 10 areas...  oh man- a blast!  Those games always end up with us whooping and hollering and cursing and falling over laughing.  Running a combat in MSH is beyond easy with that color chart.  

Gods, I love that game.

Without a doubt, the best combat system in any RPG ever is the one provided by White Wolf in 'Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game'.

Why?

You make a Street Fighter. That Street Fighter can kick ass in his or her own fabulous way. At the same time, if luck is supremely against you, or you are just dumb about choosing which maneuvers to play, a gang of thugs in an alley just might take you out!

"But, I thought my guy was supposed to be a bad-ass?!?!"

Oh, are you feeling sore that your character got his ass kicked? Well... let that fire burn! Let it drive you towards martial arts revenge! In Street Fighter, rivalries burn bright and long. And why is that? Street Fighter contains absolutely no rules for dying. Did someone embarrass you? Did they take your girl!?!? 15 minutes later your health is back, and you're back on the trail, burning through the henchman of Metro City's Big Boss. Does he back the Mad Gear gang, or is he tied to Shadoloo? Hell, maybe even the Illuminati are involved! Why would the Illuminati kidnap your girlfriend?!?!

With the wisdom to ignore the dumbest maneuvers of the post-"Secrets of Shadoloo" supplements, you can take a variety of paths towards being the best fighter in the world. Choose the right combos. Make a grappler than can take a huge hit, but punish it with sustained massive damage. Make a striker that does likewise. Maybe you'd like to try a fast move-cancelling grappler? Perhaps a fast striker with a variety of tricky moves. A solid defense can even make you feel good, as you work out your opponents stats in your head, remember his combos and stuff him when he goes with something predictable. Hell, maybe even go with some unusual Chi based supernatural maneuvers.

The end result is an interesting deck-building kind of character fighting style creation. Once you get the basics of your style together, XP tends to give you more options rather than directly power you up, aside from upping your Health. It leads to authentically tense moments that anyone who knows the game can observe... "Do I choose Punch Defense, thinking he'll throw a Dragon Punch and I'm pretty sure I can eat it... or do I go for a quick jab... because I think he's only got 2 Health and I have 1 Willpower left!?!?! Is there anything I've overlooked? A trick up his sleeve I forgot that makes this whole debate in my head moot?!?! Oh my God! The pressure!!!"

You prove you are the best Street Fighter by handling the pressure! Outwit that chump, knock him on his ass, stroke your long Fu-Manchu and say to him "You a big fool!"

This combat system is unapologetically meant to provide an entertaining game that rewards smart play without giving a damn about realism or grit. Exalted thought it would be better, but Exalted was dumb! Feng Shui had style out the ass, but as a fighting system... SF:TSG is the Street Fighter to its analogously worse fighting game (I'll choose Battlearena Toshinden).

I'm sorry Robin D. Laws, I backed your Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter anyways, even though I know Street Fighter will remain undefeated in the realm of modern cartoonish over the top martial arts action.

Thus ends my entry on "Best RPG Combat System".

FASERIP MSH is a worthy contender. I ran it a month back and have 2 more sessions coming up in 2 weeks. Hopefully I'll get enough play in to reveal the many varied joys you describe. The fight the PCs had in my last session was interesting, in what the PCs knew and didn't and how effective that made the villains. How I could see the fight going differently if the other villain managed to win initiative that one round... all in really cool Super Hero shaded ways.

RuneQuest 6: Very solid. I've been playing in a great campaign of this for over a year now. It is gritty in a good way for the material. Definitely high up the list. Rampant limb loss, rolling percentile and a more realistic focus tend to make it not a favorite for my tastes, however. It is very good, but not... fun? Just as a personal tone/taste preference.

Quote from: RunningLaser;826213Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP.  I have no clue if it's the best, but dammit, it's the most fun.   My friends and I have been playing it for almost 30 years and it's never gotten old or stale.  Nailing a villain with a solid right hook and slamming them 10 areas...  oh man- a blast!  Those games always end up with us whooping and hollering and cursing and falling over laughing.  Running a combat in MSH is beyond easy with that color chart.  

Gods, I love that game.

Thats my vote, followed by RQ6 for serious play and Streetfighter for just balls-to-walls combat.

Runequest is best for you-are-there simulation. 4e D&D can do a great job of action movie cinematics, albeit in sort of super-slow mode, everything is Bullet Time. I've been finding 5e D&D combat very good, it plays a lot like pre-3e, very fast, but instead of the low level 'forest of whiffs' it feels meaty and visceral, people take and inflict lots of damage.
It also is simple enough to lend to GM improvisation, eg a PC was fighting goblins in a confined space and did twice a goblin's hp in damage with one blow, I described his sword cutting through two of the wee buggers.

WEG d6 Star Wars combat is good, but a bit more high-powered than the OT movies, starting PCs can cut through hordes of stormtroopers. Solution is probably just better stormtrooper stats, system itself is great.

Quote from: Spinachcat;826201In your most unhumble and raucous opinion, which RPG has the best combat system? And much more importantly...why?

As you ask for an 'unhumble' opinion, I'm going to say Bounty Hunters of the Atomic Wastelands has the best combat system.

Let's be clear BHAW combat is shallow as hell tactically and does not do realism in any shape or form. But it's just very playful and very exciting.

It plays fast with very little book keeping and the player only rolls approach keeps the players full engaged throughout. It's not the sort of combat system players end up spending a good amount of time waiting for their turn.

It's brutally random. Encounters are rarely made up of homogenous groups of opponents with roughly the same abilities/levels. And initiative system is (team based, rerolled each round with random bonuses for either the party or their opponents) makes the fight itself insanely unpredictable. There not many games I've seen where the tide of the battle can swing back and forth a few times in the course of a single fight.

In the scheme of things BHAW combat feels more like a beer and pretzel boardgame than a serious minded, simulation orientated wargame. It delivers cheap thrills, but cheap or not, they are still big thrills.

Beyond that I will agree with other posters who mentioned Marvel Super Heroes. My experience with MSH is just from the one campaign I ran with it but it was glorious. We used the initiative system by the book with the fog of war effect with declaration made before initiative is rolled and that led to interesting results.

Quote from: Bilharzia;826208RuneQuest 6, it builds on Steve Perrin's original RuneQuest combat rules by adding Pete Nash's 'Special Effects' with the result that combat feels realistic, quick, unpredictable and exciting.

I guess I don't get to claim I was ninja'd, seeing as I'm posting a good 9 hours later, but, yeah.  RQ6 gets my vote.  90% of the goodness of RoleMaster, with 100% fewer table lookups.  (Well, OK, you might need to do a few table lookups when you're getting to know the system, but they're internalized relatively quickly and then you never need them again.  There's no way in hell that you'll ever memorize even a significant fraction of RoleMaster's tables.)

Obviously the answer is Palladium.

Quote from: NeonAce;826216Without a doubt, the best combat system in any RPG ever is the one provided by White Wolf in 'Street Fighter: The Storytelling Game'.

Why?

You make a Street Fighter. That Street Fighter can kick ass in his or her own fabulous way. At the same time, if luck is supremely against you, or you are just dumb about choosing which maneuvers to play, a gang of thugs in an alley just might take you out!

"But, I thought my guy was supposed to be a bad-ass?!?!"

Oh, are you feeling sore that your character got his ass kicked? Well... let that fire burn! Let it drive you towards martial arts revenge! In Street Fighter, rivalries burn bright and long. And why is that? Street Fighter contains absolutely no rules for dying. Did someone embarrass you? Did they take your girl!?!? 15 minutes later your health is back, and you're back on the trail, burning through the henchman of Metro City's Big Boss. Does he back the Mad Gear gang, or is he tied to Shadoloo? Hell, maybe even the Illuminati are involved! Why would the Illuminati kidnap your girlfriend?!?!

With the wisdom to ignore the dumbest maneuvers of the post-"Secrets of Shadoloo" supplements, you can take a variety of paths towards being the best fighter in the world. Choose the right combos. Make a grappler than can take a huge hit, but punish it with sustained massive damage. Make a striker that does likewise. Maybe you'd like to try a fast move-cancelling grappler? Perhaps a fast striker with a variety of tricky moves. A solid defense can even make you feel good, as you work out your opponents stats in your head, remember his combos and stuff him when he goes with something predictable. Hell, maybe even go with some unusual Chi based supernatural maneuvers.

The end result is an interesting deck-building kind of character fighting style creation. Once you get the basics of your style together, XP tends to give you more options rather than directly power you up, aside from upping your Health. It leads to authentically tense moments that anyone who knows the game can observe... "Do I choose Punch Defense, thinking he'll throw a Dragon Punch and I'm pretty sure I can eat it... or do I go for a quick jab... because I think he's only got 2 Health and I have 1 Willpower left!?!?! Is there anything I've overlooked? A trick up his sleeve I forgot that makes this whole debate in my head moot?!?! Oh my God! The pressure!!!"

You prove you are the best Street Fighter by handling the pressure! Outwit that chump, knock him on his ass, stroke your long Fu-Manchu and say to him "You a big fool!"

This combat system is unapologetically meant to provide an entertaining game that rewards smart play without giving a damn about realism or grit. Exalted thought it would be better, but Exalted was dumb! Feng Shui had style out the ass, but as a fighting system... SF:TSG is the Street Fighter to its analogously worse fighting game (I'll choose Battlearena Toshinden).

I'm sorry Robin D. Laws, I backed your Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter anyways, even though I know Street Fighter will remain undefeated in the realm of modern cartoonish over the top martial arts action.

Thus ends my entry on "Best RPG Combat System".

If this is even remotely accurate, then I must acquire this game. It sounds like it would be awesome for some Sharks vs. Jets/The Warriors/ chopsocky movie action.

Quote from: Matt;826600Obviously the answer is Palladium.

I'll see your Palladium and raise you Phoenix Command!