Rpg combat tactics

The combat mechanic that I have the most memories of is actually the Critical Miss. I don't know that it ever influenced tactics because it is strictly luck based, but when I look back over the decades of role playing that I have done, the most things I remember are the critical misses. They were the most entertaining, and the events that caused the most intense parts of the game. Of course our DM typically had critical misses be a lot more than just a miss.

One time we had a dwarf holding a bottle neck canyon against a bunch of orks or something. It was so tightly bottle necked that nobody could get beside him, but one of our casters decided to conjure an ice elemental, which could see over the dwarf and provide some fire (well, it was an ice elemental, figure of speech) support. The dwarf critical missed his opponent and instead hit the ice elemental. Where he rolled a double critical hit and blew the elemental to shards in one shot. This even happened probably 15 years ago, and it is sill one of my clearest memories of gaming.

Maybe then one of the simplest tactics that could make a big difference would be to use weapon reach. You know, typical sword axe whatever has a 5 foot reach, whilst spears and their ilk have 10 foot reach. Special weapons like whips, or maybe the chinese meteor hammer or rope dart could have longer reaches. Of course shooting attacks have superior range.

This forces players to choose their targets carefully or work in concert with other players to achieve the desired effect. Someone with a spear is good for keeping enemies away, but as soon as an enemy closes, the spear is less effective.

Hmmm, my edge suggestion may not be what you're looking for, then. The weapon reach above is a great idea, I've seen that done to good effect. Another would be abilities that worked off of others, either own abilities or other player's abilities, MMO style. Like in EQ2 where you have heroics that do something special if you do certain types of abilities in a certain order. Flanking is another tactic.
Give the creatures players are fighting abilities that are difficult to overcome unless a plan is formed. One could have AE so they'd have to somehow reconfigure for all ranged or rush in/rush out attacks, another could teleport so a character with CC would be much used during that battle.
The problem would be needing a balanced party, but with enough abilities spread out, or items, it could be interesting.

One of my favorite combat mechanics is how the D&D Adventure Board Games work. You roll a d20, add any ability or item modifiers, and are trying to hit a target number (or higher). It's simple and allows for a lot of flexibility.

Some of the challenge comes from which monsters to attack. If there is a room of lots of minions, a few tougher enemies, and a mini-boss, do you start clearing out the weenies first? Do you focus-fire on the mini-boss first?

Another element to the strategy is when to use certain abilities. Some items and abilities only have a certain number of uses, so you have to decide when to use them. This makes for an exciting decision. "But if we use the scroll of teleportation to catch the boss off guard, we won't have a means for an easy escape if we find ourselves overwhelmed."

Combat can be done many ways, but it's most important to make the players feel like their decisions can make or break their success.

I think you need to go out and do some research.

Yes, it's great to ask the community what they think, but you know what kind of game you want to make, so all of our suggestions isn't really going to hit what you may be looking for in a mechanic. It's like we're trying to hit a dunk tank bullseye while blindfolded.

Use the internet. Go out and watch Dice Tower or any other review site videos on RPG board games (even other board/card games). If all you're looking for is a mechanic, then you'll run through more game mechanics watching videos than waiting for the few responses from this forum. Then you'll have quite a few ideas that you can choose from.

I almost never ask people here for game mechanic ideas. Not that there aren't any intelligent people here (there certainly are a lot of very intelligent people here), but when I make a game, its focus has to be so sharp that I either have to hunt a mechanic down or modify/create a new mechanic. My mechanics have to account for a lot of things, so I use a whiteboard to map out the impact of my mechanic as it relates to everything else in the game.

It's like, "Hey, I'm building a house, how should I build it?" Well, you have to look at several things...cost, location, availability of resources, who's going to live in the house, how are they going to live, how it all affects everything else. How you build your house has to account for how you're going to use it...and only you can answer that.

I know this isn't really a straight answer, but this is how I approach looking for a game mechanic for something I'm creating.

Okko: Era of the Asagiri

Excellent combat design.

Looking back I think I was a tad bit cold in my response and I apologize. I think at the time I just didn't have anything in mind which is probably why I gave the response I did. When I get stuck I find myself hunting down game mechanics in reviews...especially bad games because sometimes there's a great mechanic that just didn't realize itself in that game.

The trick is to find something that fits your game direction while being something that appears new and fresh. That's my advice.