Gotta be Mythras for me. Special effects, active defense, hit locations, armor as damage reduction, shields are not bullshit, reach weapons make logical sense, and so on.

Quote from: Aglondir;1002177I've had this one on my shelf for years, but never tried it. I afraid of the crit tables. How often did the players end up losing limbs and spleens?

Memory is hazy, but IIRC very rarely, but not never. Indeed having the bad guy roll badly on the Evil Crit table was perhaps more exhilarating, dodging those bullets.

Just as importantly there were plenty of other outcomes which just added plenty of flavour.

Quote from: Raleel;1002193Gotta be Mythras for me. Special effects, active defense, hit locations, armor as damage reduction, shields are not bullshit, reach weapons make logical sense, and so on.

Quote from: CRKrueger;1000644Mythras - Special Effects for the Win.
Rolemaster and WFRP - for the awesome critical tables.

Yes! Mythras (formerly RuneQuest 6, formerly MRQII) has the (hands-down) best combat system of any RPG.

Also, I have fond memories of MERP/Rolemaster, mainly for the colourful critical results. But MERP/RM lacks the tactical nuances of Mythras.

D&D combat (TSR versions) is pretty bland but has the virtue of being fast. 5e is slightly more interesting, but still pales in comparison to Mythras with respect to vividness and flavour. (3e combats were torture.)

Finally, I like the CoC system because it's fast, deadly, and sometimes has interesting results.

I really like the Savage Worlds combat system. For the tactical options it allows, it plays really fast and it's not too deadly while still feeling dangerous.

Quote from: Pyromancer;1002309I really like the Savage Worlds combat system. For the tactical options it allows, it plays really fast and it's not too deadly while still feeling dangerous.

This is one of mine as well, for the same reasons. Although in some cases, I've found it can be deadly enough.

When you're low on bennies and you take a head shot, trust me it's deadly. (As it should be.)

My other favorite is Hero System/Champions, particularly for the superhero genre, because it's designed to handle over-the-top maneuvers and action. There's a learning curve and it takes an experienced group to keep it moving along at a good pace, but with that being said, some of my all-time favorite games used Hero, and the fight scenes were truly epic.

I'd also give a nod to Blue Planet v2.0; the Synergy system is simple, easy to run, and deadly. I always enjoyed running combats in that game, and my players caught on very quickly: shoot first, shoot last, don't let the other guys shoot at all. Getting shot actually sucked in that game.

Quote from: Pyromancer;1002309I really like the Savage Worlds combat system. For the tactical options it allows, it plays really fast and it's not too deadly while still feeling dangerous.

Me, too. Savage Worlds represents combat in a way that simulates pulp action really closely. It doesn't have as many bells n whistles as systems like DnD, but it's great at what it does.

Hands down Atomic Highway, second The Fantasy Trip, third AD&D but we played it "wrong" as had to simplify the initiative rules to the extent we even understood them. (See DMPrata)

I have played Runequest for ~40 years and love it; thats why it made my list of favorite combat systems a few pages up. But your comment is objectively ridiculous. Every turn of Runequest melee combat, each combatant is likely to make 3 rolls (attack, parry and damage - which you often have to roll even if you parry a blow due to weapon damage rules). In some cases spell casting or some other action might up this to 4 or more, but 3 is a good average. And each combatant will probably have to do at least one arithmetic operation to deal with damage to weapon or self, and its consequences. 1 calculation per round per character is probably a reasonable estimate of the average. GURPS is different in detail but works out to about the same average number of rolls and calculations per combatant per turn. There are a million forms of D&D, but in its standard form, on average each combatant makes somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 rolls per turn (an attack roll, with some finite chance of a damage roll), and will perform a calculation (reduction in HP) once every few rounds (let's say 0.2 to 0.5 calculations per round). You could quibble about details, but there is no reasonable discussion of this that doesn't recognize the more elaborate combat systems generally involve ~2-3x more rolls and computations per combatant per turn. They are slower. It is totally obvious, despite whatever your subjective experience might be. It may be that you adapt combats to fit some time window, like by running only small groups and duels in Runequest vs. the battle royals that often occur in D&D. That is common in my experience.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1002142The last bit: "Then D&D is a pretty good answer," is reasonable. The rest is nonsense. RuneQuest blew up the combat system. By the third session, with veteran D&D players trying out RQ, combat was going faster than it was in our D&D games. I know that people have had similar experiences with GURPS. D&D wins the argument because people compare it to sessions where people are still trying to learn another system and because people have an emotional investment in it. We played for two hours tonight and had two combats, one of them pretty involved, and we had just under 1.5 hours of non-combat. And that was in an admittedly crunchy system that tries for a realistic feel, although not for realism per se.

Quote from: Xanther;1002516Hands down Atomic Highway, second The Fantasy Trip, third AD&D but we played it "wrong" as had to simplify the initiative rules to the extent we even understood them. (See DMPrata)

I don't know Atomic Highway; what is combat in it like?

Quote from: Motorskills;1000500For consistent fun....maybe WFRP 1e/2e. Swingy, dangerous, scary, hilarious.

Having played a lot of WFRP 1e the last few months, I would say yes to this.

I also really love combat in the game Sorcerer: Everyone declares actions first, then dice are roll to determine the order actions "go off." A PC who is about to attack can commit to his action with a low defensive die roll, or abort the action with much better odds of defending.

Actions are anything from shooting someone to "I grab the idol from his hands!" (straight up fights toe-to-toe, party-to-party seldom happen in Sorcerer.)

The system isn't quick -- as each player is forced to often make fraught choices about committing to their actions or going full defense (the system is harsh if you take damage) but every moment of a conflict is very intense and engaging.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1002528I have played Runequest for ~40 years and love it; thats why it made my list of favorite combat systems a few pages up. But your comment is objectively ridiculous. Every turn of Runequest melee combat, each combatant is likely to make 3 rolls (attack, parry and damage - which you often have to roll even if you parry a blow due to weapon damage rules). In some cases spell casting or some other action might up this to 4 or more, but 3 is a good average. And each combatant will probably have to do at least one arithmetic operation to deal with damage to weapon or self, and its consequences. 1 calculation per round per character is probably a reasonable estimate of the average. GURPS is different in detail but works out to about the same average number of rolls and calculations per combatant per turn. There are a million forms of D&D, but in its standard form, on average each combatant makes somewhere between 1.2 and 1.5 rolls per turn (an attack roll, with some finite chance of a damage roll), and will perform a calculation (reduction in HP) once every few rounds (let's say 0.2 to 0.5 calculations per round). You could quibble about details, but there is no reasonable discussion of this that doesn't recognize the more elaborate combat systems generally involve ~2-3x more rolls and computations per combatant per turn. They are slower. It is totally obvious, despite whatever your subjective experience might be. It may be that you adapt combats to fit some time window, like by running only small groups and duels in Runequest vs. the battle royals that often occur in D&D. That is common in my experience.

We didn't run any battle royals but we rarely did in D&D either. Each round did take longer but RQ averaged fewer rounds. High-level combat had begun to look to us like "two huge bars of soap carving flakes off of one another" and it took forever. Comparing a RQ fight to a party of adventurers slaughtering mooks makes D&D combat look quick. With a more balanced, high-level fight, the RQ fight ends the D&D fight can be like a cricket game.

Quote from: Larsdangly;1002529I don't know Atomic Highway; what is combat in it like?

Fast and lethal. It uses a dice pool system where you roll a number of d6 equal to an attribute; every 6 is a success. You get to bump up your rolled numbers by a number of points equal to your related skill. So for shooting someone with a gun, you'd use Nimbleness + Shoot. Every success gets multiplied by the damage of your weapon to find the final damage. Characters have a limited number of reactions every turn, so teamwork and avoiding situations where you can get outnumbered is important. Ranges are abstract and simple, and the vehicle combat is easy yet allows for some tactics and a lot of customization and strategy when it comes to designing vehicles.

Overall it's a great little system. There's a bunch of optional rules right in the core book, and you can nab the PDF for free. I've ran a few Mad Max-esque one-shots with the game and even played around with the Firefly conversion that someone on the official forums did.

Quote from: WillInNewHaven;1002569We didn't run any battle royals but we rarely did in D&D either. Each round did take longer but RQ averaged fewer rounds. High-level combat had begun to look to us like "two huge bars of soap carving flakes off of one another" and it took forever. Comparing a RQ fight to a party of adventurers slaughtering mooks makes D&D combat look quick. With a more balanced, high-level fight, the RQ fight ends the D&D fight can be like a cricket game.

You can think of scenarios that work out that way, but Runequest has its own high 'level' problem: there is a fixed recipe for a powerful highly experienced character, and it results in someone who is pretty much bomb proof unless you happen to have a special attack that circumvents or overwhelms their Shield spells, iron armor and 150% parry. D&D combat isn't made for duels; it is made for resource management across a bunch of fights that might happen over the course of an adventure. Runequest combat is made for duels, and is great at that for a certain range in power level, but above that level it results in stalemates or dropping of some special 'trump card'.

...also, if a magic user is on hand, a D&D duel is not two bars of soap chipping away at each other. It is one bar of soap melting another bar of soap into slag on the first round.

Probably never achieved high enough levels to run into that.