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Combat a Skill Check
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I've had the odd thought before that perhaps a story and roleplay-centric system would be better served with a skill check-style system instead of crunchy combat system that involves lots of tracking and minutiea.

I guess what I'm imagining is that classes have combat "actions" that inform the player of how to roleplay what they're doing in combat with basic mechanic benefits; for example, a Paladin might have a "defend others" action that reducing total party damage taken by the end of the fight. I imagine the player would describe in flowery terms how they duck and dove around blocking hits with their shield to keep their allies out of harm's way.

So, combat would be resolved in a number of rounds maybe determined by enemy difficulty/how rounds transpire, and the actions the players take would determine the outcome. Good rolls would end it sooner with fewer hiccups (whatever those would be, health/morale/metacurrency/money/whatever). Actually, gold as a hiccup sounds appropriate, whether enemies take it or it reflects the cost of healing up or repairing gear.

It definitely would not be hardcore gaming. It would be a loose class based system meant to Inspire roleplaying without heavy tactics or numbers.

I guess it sounds like an outright game I'm pitching, but I'm really just curious about the potential of the concept of resolving combat like how skills are handled in games like DND, where the eventual outcome isn't really in question, but rather how long it takes to get there and how you roleplay the results.

Cheers.

EDIT: I clearly need to look into PbtA

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I would encourage you to read around a bit more - what you're describing is actually quite a bit more crunchy than the combat systems I already use! Class-specific combat actions are still quite a D&D mindset.

Here's a few to look at:

Masks - perhaps the most popular Powered by the Apocalypse game. This is fairly similar to how you describe - you have fairly broad combat Moves ("Unleash Your Powers" etc), and the players and GM flesh out the details and the consequences.

Blades in the Dark - the original Forged in the Dark game. Here, there are no special rules around combat at all. "I bash down the door" and "I stab the other guy" are both treated the same way - the players and GM make sure they're on the same page for what the action is and what the potential consequences are, and you roll and find out what happens.

Note with both Blades in the Dark and Masks, NPCs don't roll at all, even in combat. "You get stabbed while attempting to stab the other guy" is instead a consequence of a failed roll or partial success (in which case you probably both hurt each other).

Dune - Adventures in the Imperium - this is an interesting one, which does have a mildly crunchy Conflict system. However, any type of conflict is done with the same system - whether it's House politics or a knife fight or a spy sneaking through a palace. One thing here is that minor NPCs can be defeated by a single action - although any appropriate and successful action can do this, it doesn't single out combat actions. You could stab a Harkonnen with a knife or intimidate him into running away, and both use the same mechanic - just a skill check - although the difficulty may differ between the actions, depending on the situation and your assets.

There's also a number of "middle ground" games where you do have an action economy (e.g. "one minor and one major action per turn") but are kind of loose in what is meant by these actions. This would include Stars Without Number, Traveller, and many Old School Renaissance games. Here you might have something like turns and hit points, but you don't select from a list of official moves - you decide an action that makes sense, and the GM makes a ruling on how to do it (although the books often have a lot of suggestions and advice and examples), which typically is some sort of skill roll or skill roll modifiers.

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7 months ago