Which system do you like best for combat and why?

Oddly enough 5e's system works fairly well. I like the AC as a to-hit number system. Everything seems to flow along alot smoother.

For older games. I loved Star Frontiers system, percentile dice and pretty darn straightforward. Roll to hit vs skill with modifiers. About as straightforward as it gets. Oh, and lasers with damage sliders.

Marvel FASERIP.  Percentile dice are easy to roll, the color chart is simple to use, and the possible effects (stun, slam, grandslam) work great for what it does.

My top one would be The One Ring. I like its use of assymetrical design to create simple and meaningful choices, without the need to heavy resource management or battlemap. It also does a good job of encouraging the players to treat combat as a group affair.

I also really like Dungeon World. Its lack of initiative sees action flow quickly and fluidly, whilst its "Yes but" weighted dice system snowballs the danger effortlessly.

GURPS

I love the detail and realism there.

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I love the vague abstractions.

Interlock (used in Cyberpunk) is well regarded I think.

I don't want to be "that guy" in the RPG discussion, but in my view it isn't so much 'best combat system' as 'best system of combat for the emulation of the material presented in the RPG'. I've never seen a RPG combat system that was intrinsically best for RPGs, but I have seen the best possible system for what the RPG is trying to accomplish, and that's "King Arthur Pendragon". It perfectly emulates heavily armoured knights bashing the stuffing out of each other with broadswords. I doubt it would well emulate any other genre as well.

//Panjumanju

Dark Heresy and any other Warhammer 40K rpg.  Then again combat has to be their thing.  Stars Without Numbers and DnD are pretty good as well.  Just make it short, sweet, and simple.

The worst I had was with the storyteller system.  Especially with Exalted and Scion.  I am sorry, but ticks are worst than initiative.  I rather wait for my turn in a proper order than deal with the screw up mess that is the tick wheel.  Secondly and by far the worst they take forever to get a turn done.

I would say storytelling system would come second, but it has a excuse.  The system is straight forward and simple.  It is the players that decide to take forever to do that is the problem.  Then again some of those players came from years of dealing with the storyteller system so they assume the more time they take the better they are.  Which I might add is pretty damn selfish and no one wants to read your paragraph long post in how you hit a vampire with a baseball bat.

Quote from: Snowman0147;805374The worst I had was with the storyteller system.  Especially with Exalted and Scion.  I am sorry, but ticks are worst than initiative.

I loved the concept of Scion but fuck if the mechanics weren't terrible.

Mongoose Traveller. Easy to do combat in real-time pretty much.

Hero System's combat engine can be tuned for simple or as complex as you want.  A group can get as much out of it as they are willing to put into it.

I guess it depends on what your looking for out of a game. I myself, like a couple different systems. For the realistic end, if I'm in that mood would be T2K 2ed. If I'm wanting more abstract, and easy. I think its really hard to beat one of the various D&D editions. Its just really intuitive to me. Probably due to lots of experience and history with it.

Just for tactical combat, GURPS is my go to system. The detail of meaningful choices both offensively and defensively and the importance of timing and distance really help the system stand out.

It is also great that a certain level of realism can be emulated if you want it but it isn't required to have great and exciting combats anyway.

Quote from: jan paparazzi;805359Which system do you like best for combat and why?

Harnmaster followed by GURPS.

Harnmaster combat comes off feeling gritty and realistic while remaining quick and playable due to the frontloaded character sheet and ingenious design of the combat card.

GURPS because it is well designed. It only issue is that there are many options to choose from due to it goal of covering many different types of settings and genres. However when you pick a set of options the result is not that complex.

I think 5e deserves an honorable mention for adding just enough options to have some tactical complexity but no were near as overwhelming as 3rd or 4th edition.