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Smirg · 06-10-2008, 09:05 AM

Depends heavily both on the campaign and the game system.

The only game system I can still enjoy a good tactical combat with is GURPS with Martial Arts and a good amount of options turned on.

One of my other groups which plays Dark Eye recently got more combat heavy after over a year of almost no combats (which I really enjoyed) and despite it (in its 4th Edition) being one of the more options-heavy combat systems in theory, in practice it's just the plain old attack-defend-damage (if hit) scheme round after round, because the options really become viable only at combat-god skill levels. Before that, you actually reduce your chances to win by using those options, and most of them must be bought first to be available at all.
I was bored with it pretty fast. It was mostly clear who would win from the start, with only minor variance in outcome due to extremes in the many spread-out dice rolls. So I basically asked myself, why bother at all? Roll a die and call it a die (of one side of combatants - ok, "die" was not entirely grammatically correct here) rather than spend an hour and a half with meaningless dice rolling.

In general, I'm on the little-combat side, though (in recent years, since moving away from D&D almost entirely). Especially as a GM, unless it's a specific combat one-shot, I use almost no forced combat and always provide (usually better or at least equally viable and safer) alternatives to my players.

06-10-2008, 09:05 AM	#19
Smirg Join Date: Aug 2006 Location: Austria	Re: How important is combat to your game. Depends heavily both on the campaign and the game system. The only game system I can still enjoy a good tactical combat with is GURPS with Martial Arts and a good amount of options turned on. One of my other groups which plays Dark Eye recently got more combat heavy after over a year of almost no combats (which I really enjoyed) and despite it (in its 4th Edition) being one of the more options-heavy combat systems in theory, in practice it's just the plain old attack-defend-damage (if hit) scheme round after round, because the options really become viable only at combat-god skill levels. Before that, you actually reduce your chances to win by using those options, and most of them must be bought first to be available at all. I was bored with it pretty fast. It was mostly clear who would win from the start, with only minor variance in outcome due to extremes in the many spread-out dice rolls. So I basically asked myself, why bother at all? Roll a die and call it a die (of one side of combatants - ok, "die" was not entirely grammatically correct here) rather than spend an hour and a half with meaningless dice rolling. In general, I'm on the little-combat side, though (in recent years, since moving away from D&D almost entirely). Especially as a GM, unless it's a specific combat one-shot, I use almost no forced combat and always provide (usually better or at least equally viable and safer) alternatives to my players.