In your opinion, what types of situations, maneuvers, and factors should any traditional RPG combat system cover in some detail?  By that, I mean providing specific procedures, modifiers, and rules to handle the situation as opposed to leaving it up to subjective GM and/or player assessment or highly abstract rules.  I'm looking for personal preferences and if you do like wholly subjective or abstract systems, that's a legitimate answer.

+Standard attack
+Agressive attack: Too risky compared to a standard attack except when you need that extra bit of damage.
+Defense: Good if you're moving the battering ram into position or you just want to survive until reinforcments arrive.
+Tackles, shoves, trips and grabs: These are more exciting than standard attacks which is why the climax of every movie has guns on the floor and fistcuffs durring the climax. The 3.x edition gave them a bad name but they should be viable in an RPG.

+Evading: Running through a battle zone.
+Disengage: Escape combat
+Hiding

Depending on the game world I'd expect to see
+Cover: If walls and shields are strong enough to deflect weapons.
+Throws and knockback: If combatants are generaly strong enough to toss one another about.
+Morale: If the combatants are smart enough to surrender or flee.
+Disarms and/or sunders: If genre appropreate.
+Gunpoint/knifepoint: Whereby a character is rendered helpless by the threat of a readied weapon.

Initiative

Hitting (actually striking another person who is resisting said strike)

Situational Modifiers or Guidelines for the GM to create his own

The Result (physical Damage or other reprecusions) or guidelines for the GM to create his own

Fleeing (I'm still waiting for an elegant solution for chasing down a fleeing target, the best I've seen is Warhammer - the wargame)

EDIT: I, um, didn't cover the basics -- I covered 'the advanced' -- let me preface this by saying that the *basic* rules should provide a *framework* that can be extended to the 'advanced' stuff without warping it. The stuff covered above (Initiative, hitting, defending, etc.) is all the right answer -- but in my games stuff listed below comes up a lot and it's nice to have rules that can be logically extended (without breaking them) to cover these things.

Assuming this is genre non-specific, I think the rules should model a variety of interesting combat moves and situations that

1. Distinguish one character from the other
2. Give characters a lot of options -- not just tactical ones, but also options to over power / subdue opponents (rather than just kill them)
3. Cover exotic-but-likely situations like animal attacks well

Some specifics

Weapons rules:
I think rules for a variety of weapon effects and how they impact combat are important -- this is because of tactical issues (when you *need* a shotgun, having a rifle won't do) and because of character conception / individualization. I also want fights to *feel* different.

In Kill Bill, when The Bride (katana) fights Go-Go (ball and chain) I think it's cool that the ball-and-chain introduces a new tactical and... for lack of a better term, 'tactile' element to the combat. It just 'feels' different from the sword combat.

In Terminator, the Terminator buys a variety of weapons (shot gun, hand gun,  uzi) all of which have their own specific uses.

As an example, I'd like the rules to distinguish the advantages, disadvantages,  between

* Shotguns (accurate, short range, can possibly take out crowds)
* Rifles (long range, lots of killing power)
* Assault rifles (multiple burst settings for mix of shot-gun and rifle effects)
* Sub-machine guns (inaccurate, suppressing autofire)
* Hand guns (and distinguish between caliber)
* Staff (blunt weapons in general)
* Flails (lots of cool moves)
* Knives (deadly in-close, not so much at range)

Also, more exotic stuff

* Wolverine claws / Light sabers / Thundar Sword (cut through almost anything / ultra sharp)
* Darts (poison)

Non-Lethal Weapons
I think it's cool to have non-lethal weapons work in a game. This means they can't be super-dominant (unless they're the standard weapon in a game like a phaser), they can't utterly change the dynamic of combat (so if they short-circuit all the stuff most characters spent points on, that's bogus). But they should have a reasonable place as an alternative to trying to kill people.

Also, the rules should be streamlined enough so that when the nets come out, the players don't flee the table, because now combat is going to take 10x's as long. A brief list of non-lethal weapons:


*Nets
*Tasers / electric stun guns
*Rock-salt shot guns
*Tear gas
*Pepper spray
*Bolas
*Flash-bang grenades
*Phasers (rules for humans are straight forward: you're hit, you're stunned. But what about shooting a water buffalo? What about shooting Godzilla?)

Hand to Hand Combat
All the caveats about not changing the dynamic of combat *too* much, not making hand-to-hand combat super-dominant, etc. apply. Also, the caveat about not being overly complex applies.

I'd like a hand-to-hand combat system that covers the D&D basics (but works) including punching / pummeling and grappling. I'd like the rules to cover what happens when 3 guys jump and try to subdue one guy.

From the little bit of Mixed Martial Arts I've seen, it looks to me like knowing how to grapple and ground-fight gives people who've trained with that a significant advantage over folks who haven't. Ideally rules would reflect this.

Many on one
A) Rules should handle this elegantly. Some systems do not.
B) You should decided what your game is about here. In real-life, I think fighting many people at once is a recipe for losing quickly if they all coordinate their attack.

In fiction, it's different--so your rules might address this.

When animals attack
Rules should cover animal attacks that are likely to occur and make fighting, say, a tiger different from fighting a man. That would include what happens when a dog or tiger bites you and holds on (both doing physical damage and holding / grappling you).

Also, it's useful for games to cover swarms of rats, hornets, etc. D&D does a good job with all this stuff.

Special Moves / Dirty Tricks
Rules for throwing sand in someone's eyes. Rules for scattering caltrops on the battle field. Rules for trying to light the guy on fire. Rules for biting to make someone let go of you. Rules for trying to blind the guy with your super-bright flash light.

In general these trick moves shouldn't be overly effective. In real life,they're mostly effective at gaining a temporary tactical edge. on someone. But in the right place (and done by the right guy) fiction dictates they can make a huge difference. The game should cover this.

Cheers,
-E.

In general terms? Just two things:
1. Who wins?
2. Who loses?

Everything else depends greatly on the system, game style and how detailed you wanna go, but winners and losers of the combat have to be determined in some way in order for it to be a game.

Given my preferance for GURPS and Rolemaster?  My answer would have to be yes.

Quote from: alexandroEverything else depends greatly on the system, game style and how detailed you wanna go, but winners and losers of the combat have to be determined in some way in order for it to be a game.

OK.  But answer about your own typical game style and preferred level of detail.  What sort of detail do you normally like to see in a combat system?

Fighting with allies / fighting in formations / fighting with group tactics (shield walls, phalanx, etc).

As much as you can cram in, while keeping as close as possible to the "one roll per action"-formula.

You certainly need to see if you hit (against a fixed number, where the defender doesn't roll dice) and how far your action contributes to taking out your opponent (by damage, stun etc.). Anything else is a nice detail (like seeing where exactly you hit in Reign), but nothing that I would require for the game to be fun.

If combat is significant to the game (like in Savage Worlds and Feng Shui), I enjoy having a wide range of maneuvers that you can employ to modify the outcome of your attack or defense. I also enjoy having things incorporated, that are not direct physical attacks, but still help you in some way (like Tests of Will in SW). I like combat systems, where it is "all-or-nothing" (meaning: either deliver a significant blow that brings your opponent very close to defeat or the attack has no attack whatsoever)- situations like "And you damage him for... another five hit points... gee now he has only 5789 left" are boring and pointless to me.

Certainly everything you can do in a combat should be possible in a RPG, but that doesn't mean everything should have an unique rule set. If the system sacrifices some detail for efficiency (like, say, using the same set of rules for Grappling and Disarming), it is a plus in my book.

If combat isn't significant to the game however (like in Vampire or L5R) I really don't mind if there are no maneuvers at all and it is assumed that combatants are using the most effective means available to them to kill their opponent. These games should be very unpredictable (more like games of chance), so players are wise to seek for ways to defeat their opponents outside of combat (or significantly stacking the odds in their favor). In any case in this type of game the combat (meaning the stuff going on at the gaming table)  should never last longer than 10 minutes, before one side is victorious.

The effects of damage on your combat ability, whether it be "no change until you're at 0 hit points," "taking damage risks bowels voiding and paralytic fear," or anything in between.