In a system that measures distance in ranges and areas of effect in squares/hexes you’ve got to have squares/hexes.
If I was running a lighter game that still has combat as a common event I’d draw a rough map, then say, “If you can see ‘em you can shoot ‘em, if they’re in spitting distance you can fight ‘em, you can cover a hand’s width in one sprint.”
If the game isn’t about combat, you might be able to strip a fight down to one roll, after all, we need to get back to the important stuff, like who’ll win the Iron Chef competition or whether Diana will admit her feelings to Sandra.
But yes, if your combat is a big part of the game and there are expectations of distance and such that’s tough to theatre of the mind.
In Wreckage (I should start keeping score of its mention) the battle map is split into zones. You can’t melee with a target outside your current zone, and you can only shoot in this or a neighbouring zone (snipers have further range). It’s assumed every combatant is always moving, so you’re always close enough to fight someone in your zone, it’s no big thing to move whatever token is representing you around—helps that there isn’t a action to move, it’s shifting zones.
One of my biggest regrets with CollegeHumor going to DropOut (which I think was a good move for them, don't get me wrong), was there was gonna be far less Brennan in my youtube watching.
So somehow 5e is the goldilocks area of being simple enough for some of my friends to understand so they can play effectively (barring the weird edge cases that keep coming up and tripping them up), and crunchy enough for my other friends to minmax to their hearts' content. Once I finish my campaign, I still have some Avernus and Candlekeep stuff to work on, but I guess I can put them off to try a different fantasy game.
So I can't wrap my head about the way Powered by the Apocalypse (and therefore, Dungeon World) plays, and Pathfinder looks a bit too fiddly for some of my friends. If my friends are a bit more interested in a light hearted romp of throwing magical anvils, shooting their fire wands, punching bugbears, and saving beleaguered towns, punctuated by moments that remind them that shit's still serious and dangerous, which other systems would you recommend?
I recommend Worlds Without Number for you.
It's slightly lower complexity than 5E, it uses a d20, you can play it with whatever level of investment you want. It's got optional Heroic rules for making characters more badass (but honestly they're pretty competent to start with, the Heroic rules upgrade you from approx 5E characters to approx 4E characters). And the core book PDF is free (Heroic is part of the paid deluxe edition though), so your players might actually have a copy of it.
I understand the reasons they might not want to go *that* hard, but I would love to see a WotC CEO sketch from Brennan
I can already imagine it being just a whole bunch of ways to market stuff to people that also has a blurb somewhere that they own all your shit, and him getting mad about it.
Alternatively, him doubling down and just being like, "Don't you like to make D&D stuff, who cares who owns it? Just make more D&D stuff, it's fine! IT'S FIIIIINE!"
So somehow 5e is the goldilocks area of being simple enough for some of my friends to understand so they can play effectively (barring the weird edge cases that keep coming up and tripping them up), and crunchy enough for my other friends to minmax to their hearts' content. Once I finish my campaign, I still have some Avernus and Candlekeep stuff to work on, but I guess I can put them off to try a different fantasy game.
So I can't wrap my head about the way Powered by the Apocalypse (and therefore, Dungeon World) plays, and Pathfinder looks a bit too fiddly for some of my friends. If my friends are a bit more interested in a light hearted romp of throwing magical anvils, shooting their fire wands, punching bugbears, and saving beleaguered towns, punctuated by moments that remind them that shit's still serious and dangerous, which other systems would you recommend?
I've found the Genesys systems to be excellent for sitting in that same goldilocks zone of having enough specifics to actually get some synergies going and feeling like you have a character sheet that says things, but not getting too bogged down in a million different conditions and +1 modifiers and whatever. I haven't used their fantasy supplement, Realms of Terrinoth, but my scifi experiences with it in Star Wars (and playing the heavily-modified-Genesys game of fantasy samurai of the newest edition of Legends of the Five Rings) have both been excellent.
I been running my game from a discord call on my cell phone for years at this point. I used to have a few tricks to get gridded combat down, but at this point we’ve got a decent set of short hand for theater of the mind. The biggest problems for a DM trying to do theater of the mind on D&D is that while you should be visualizing the grid in your head, you should also be bending it to keep everyone’s turns interesting, and to “yes and…”through the encounter.
On my game at this point its less about trying to figure out where every enemy is and more about the players asking, “hey if I wanted to toast a few guys with my breath weapon could I catch more than one guy?”, and responding with, “sure you can catch 2 enemies with it, 3 if the Barbarian doesn’t mind catching it too, and that’ will put you adjacent to them but not in melee with the enemy”.
I mostly don’t use VTTs because they always seemingly require a ton of prep and setting everything up especially if you aren’t paying for assets and are trying to just use your own content. I mostly just tend a fire while I DM
I mostly don’t use VTTs because they always seemingly require a ton of prep and setting everything up especially if you aren’t paying for assets and are trying to just use your own content. I mostly just tend a fire while I DM
I tried to run Lancer on a VTT once.
The x5 prep time modifier convinced me this was distinctly not worth it.
I been running my game from a discord call on my cell phone for years at this point. I used to have a few tricks to get gridded combat down, but at this point we’ve got a decent set of short hand for theater of the mind. The biggest problems for a DM trying to do theater of the mind on D&D is that while you should be visualizing the grid in your head, you should also be bending it to keep everyone’s turns interesting, and to “yes and…”through the encounter.
On my game at this point its less about trying to figure out where every enemy is and more about the players asking, “hey if I wanted to toast a few guys with my breath weapon could I catch more than one guy?”, and responding with, “sure you can catch 2 enemies with it, 3 if the Barbarian doesn’t mind catching it too, and that’ will put you adjacent to them but not in melee with the enemy”.
I mostly don’t use VTTs because they always seemingly require a ton of prep and setting everything up especially if you aren’t paying for assets and are trying to just use your own content. I mostly just tend a fire while I DM
I do hear you on VTT's. Foundry has a very excellent VTT, especially for Lancer and PF2E, but even with all of the different modules and support for it, there's some work involved. However, far less than when you try to get Roll20 to do something and then it stares at you and demands that you do it correctly but doesn't tell you what that is.
Like my game is every Wednesday as long as I’ve got two players, and I might not know game comp until like 15 minutes before session. I literally don’t know the adventure till then, and I might not even know which characters we’re using that night until the session has started and I ask the Players which characters they want to check in with. Every so often I will see a map and know exactly where I can use that type of environment in a narrative and I’ll reference it loosely, but my players know I’m not being super strict to grid. They ask if something is physically possible, and then I tell them “Yes”, “No”, “No, but…”, “Yes, but…, or “Yes, and…”, and we figure out what their favored course is, then make some rolls about it.
0
Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
I've found that Foundry is a vastly superior VTT to roll20
+4
Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Open field combat doesn't call for a grid, it calls for a sand table.
...Or, more practically, a green table mat and a handful of plastic trees stuck into styrofoam hills.
Make the 90ft range on Entangle vs. the 600ft of a Longbow matter, anyhow.
Honestly if you don’t have to get out a tape measure to move and shoot, then end your turn facing a direction within 360 degrees are you even tactical combating?
Honestly if you don’t have to get out a tape measure to move and shoot, then end your turn facing a direction within 360 degrees are you even tactical combating?
Look, all I want to know is when does my rolling to determine the circumference of my anus become useful? It's just there on my character sheet, wasting space!
Honestly if you don’t have to get out a tape measure to move and shoot, then end your turn facing a direction within 360 degrees are you even tactical combating?
Look, all I want to know is when does my rolling to determine the circumference of my anus become useful? It's just there on my character sheet, wasting space!
Hey now, this is a Japanese folklore setting and your soul is up your ass, ok? That’s mythology man. This is a simulist campaign.
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
The same way I run the rest of the game I just make up numbers.
But I will also change the stats of the enemies to make the fight more appropriate to the importance it has in the story of the game.
Red Markets being a zombie game makes theater of the mind combat easier to conceptualize. Mobs of zombies have a vague stat of Distance that ticks down until they are in biting range. Shootouts between armed human combatants involve taking an action to narratively get in Cover vs a specific enemy/group of enemies. Instead of a map you have a narrative scene with relative relationships between various actors. The combat is less about strategic war gaming and more a stress point of worrying how much money all this is going to cost as capitalism zombies eat you.
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
Just wanted to say: Pathfinder 2E does this as well, though, but only after some learning pains everyone who plays D&D has to go through.
One of the first things everyone starts learning when they switch to PF2E is they need to stay the fuck away from the bad guys and make them spend one of their 3 deadly fucking actions to move next to you and use their remaining deadly actions*. You should not stand next to bad guys when your turn ends. It's a bad idea. My group wiped like 4 times learning the mechanics and learning these tactics when we first went to PF2E. It took a while to drill into everyone that they needed to give the Fighter enough space to disengage and still stand between us and the monsters.
So what ends up happening is stuff like in our Blood Lords campaign, when my mounted Tyrant Champion (sworn to the code of Tyranny!) is fucking all over the place. Partly because he's murdering people and needing new victims and is mounted, but also partly because he's leading tougher meaner bad lads around the room and outside and into the fucking woods. And maybe he'll come back with his armor stained with blood. Maybe his zorse (zombie horse!) will eat his dead body when the foe kills him, who knows? Nobody in the party knows, because they're miles away from his Boromir Moment.
This is one of many reasons I like PF2E, beyond the setting and the fact that I get cool shit whenever I level (I am giving you some major side-eye here, 5E), is that with 3 actions per turn, there are options you seldom see executed in a 5E game suddenly take place. Rogues will strike from the shadows and then run away and hide, all on the same fucking turn! Shield-bearers will spend an action to Raise their Shield to improve their defense. Melee combatants will spend actions on demoralizing their foes. It turns out that if you have the option between taking a -5 and attacking again, and doing something else that doesn't take this penalty, that you should, more often than not**, do that something else. Keep an action for moving away. Keep an action for raising your shield (or casting Shield!). Keep an action for telling your mount to do stuff. These things tend to be better than standing there staring at bad lads so that we can see how well the GM rolls tonight. Oh is the GM on fire? You're dead then. You died. Should have moved away or raised your shield or tried demoralizing. Literally anything other than swinging at and missing the bad lad. So there tends to be a lot of movement, even in a congested room, so the board doesn't just become melee lines that just sit there for the whole encounter.
All that said, I'm very interested in this Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras you speak of.
*Some enemies have an AoO but most of them do not. If they have one, you're gonna have to stand next to them, and you better do something to make their attacks less likely to murder you.
**Sometimes you're using an agile weapon or sweeping weapon and the penalty isn't as deep. Sometimes it's better to try to put someone down than to keep yourself alive. something.
It wouldn’t be fun but the only accurate way to do combat is:
1. Everyone decides what they’re going to do (players and enemy combatants).
2. Write it on a bit of paper, fold it up, put it in a hat.
3. Two bits of paper get pulled out and they get a turn simultaneously.
4. Everyone only has 4 HP and damage is 1d6.
Just a jumble of people getting the first shot off and killing their target, missing a target because they’re not there any more, failing to kill a target outright so they’re left wide open for reprisal next round, and two slamming into each other and falling down a hill mid-action.
It feels as though confusion over PbtA mechanics has to be the result of over thinking it
Which, coming from d20 I can understand, because maybe it feels like you're missing mechanics
But really it's just you have a list of moves, or actions, that players can take. There is only ever one roll, 2d6, and only ever one modifier to that roll, the stat (-1 to +2 usually). And every move describes what happens when you make that roll.
That is kind of the whole system, barring quirks in different PbtA games, but what is there is roughly true of all of them.
The hard part is adapting to the idea that the fiction is everything and the moves define the ways in which the rules interact with the fiction, and that anything else that happens is simply not under the purview of the rules.
I'd say the hard part is more realizing that you've always been trying to put some fiction into the mechanically oriented parts of a game, but because there were clear mechanical breakpoints you've also set up some fake-fake fictional breakpoints that are going to come back to haunt you.
I mean, you were trying, right? You were trying to describe the events of a battle as it went on, not just rattling off "ogre-25-to-hit-connects-for-24-damage-and-prone-Fightgar-19-to-hit-connects-for-32-damage" like some demented livestock auctioneer. But under it all there's still the breakpoint - first it was the ogre's turn, and now it's Fightgar's turn. Moving from that, to a system where only Fightgar rolls and it's your free decision when the ogre acts, creates two points of failure which might not be initially obvious.
The first point of failure is to make the ogre act too much - first Fightgar has to dodge or deflect the ogre's blows, then he can square up for a shot. Right? Well, probably not. Whatever combat move exists in a PbtA game is going to try to encapsulate an entire beat of combat, with both sides going at it as hard as they can. Only Fightgar rolls, but that roll and Fightgar's choices also give the ogre the opportunity to act. Having the ogre also act outside of that basically gives them a double attack, and in some cases that might make sense, if you're trying to give the impression that Fightgar's in over his head trying to tangle with this thing. But if you intend it to be a fight, that one roll is one progression beat of a fair fight.
The second point of failure is to make the ogre act too little - what threat does the ogre pose if Fightgar doesn't try to engage them at all? If you're used to the ogre (and, let's be fair, literally the entirety of your GM-run opposition) "getting its turn to act" then you might not think to present the ogre or anything else on the battlefield as an active threat, instead giving your PCs free reign to do as they please. If you have no threats coming and your PCs get clean hits you can drag your own stale silence out for quite an uncomfortable while.
The trick is to give your PCs all of what a move says they get and not skimp out, and the trick is to loom threats over your PCs so they engage with the actual dangerous elements of a battle and not just the odious existence of someone else's hit points.
(Tying into the other ongoing discussion, it's a lot easier to take a chaotic battle and present a PC with a more understandable slice of threat profile if you have a reason to give them that slice, and an abstracted tactical map which is mostly there to answer the questions "where am I and what nearby is dangerous" and "am I tied up with this dude right now y/n" is an excellent rationale for only telling people about dangers in the parts of the map they have ready access to.)
It wouldn’t be fun but the only accurate way to do combat is:
1. Everyone decides what they’re going to do (players and enemy combatants).
2. Write it on a bit of paper, fold it up, put it in a hat.
3. Two bits of paper get pulled out and they get a turn simultaneously.
4. Everyone only has 4 HP and damage is 1d6.
Just a jumble of people getting the first shot off and killing their target, missing a target because they’re not there any more, failing to kill a target outright so they’re left wide open for reprisal next round, and two slamming into each other and falling down a hill mid-action.
There's a board game called Robo Rally you should check out. Everyone lays out a sequence of actions they want to take in a certain order, but each order also has a corresponding number assigned to it. Each part of the sequence goes off for each player in order of the numbers, so it's very easy for a person's intended goal to get literally derailed by another player's action going before they had intended, and somehow interfering with their chosen path. A glorious cascade of unintended consequences.
There's also a small game called dungeon busters where everyone lays down cards facedown to defeat a monster, number 1-5. Monsters have some amount of hp, you want the groups number to equal or better that.
Trick is the lowest number gets the most loot, because they've got the most energy left to grab stuff after the monster is defeated. Of course if the monster isn't defeated, their over confidence results in them eating shit
And if two of the same number are played, the adventures are assumed to slam into each other/otherwise get in each other's way, and their cards are ignored that round.
Definitely haven't intentionally crashed into someone else just to make a third player eat shit!
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
Just wanted to say: Pathfinder 2E does this as well, though, but only after some learning pains everyone who plays D&D has to go through.
One of the first things everyone starts learning when they switch to PF2E is they need to stay the fuck away from the bad guys and make them spend one of their 3 deadly fucking actions to move next to you and use their remaining deadly actions*. You should not stand next to bad guys when your turn ends. It's a bad idea. My group wiped like 4 times learning the mechanics and learning these tactics when we first went to PF2E. It took a while to drill into everyone that they needed to give the Fighter enough space to disengage and still stand between us and the monsters.
So what ends up happening is stuff like in our Blood Lords campaign, when my mounted Tyrant Champion (sworn to the code of Tyranny!) is fucking all over the place. Partly because he's murdering people and needing new victims and is mounted, but also partly because he's leading tougher meaner bad lads around the room and outside and into the fucking woods. And maybe he'll come back with his armor stained with blood. Maybe his zorse (zombie horse!) will eat his dead body when the foe kills him, who knows? Nobody in the party knows, because they're miles away from his Boromir Moment.
This is one of many reasons I like PF2E, beyond the setting and the fact that I get cool shit whenever I level (I am giving you some major side-eye here, 5E), is that with 3 actions per turn, there are options you seldom see executed in a 5E game suddenly take place. Rogues will strike from the shadows and then run away and hide, all on the same fucking turn! Shield-bearers will spend an action to Raise their Shield to improve their defense. Melee combatants will spend actions on demoralizing their foes. It turns out that if you have the option between taking a -5 and attacking again, and doing something else that doesn't take this penalty, that you should, more often than not**, do that something else. Keep an action for moving away. Keep an action for raising your shield (or casting Shield!). Keep an action for telling your mount to do stuff. These things tend to be better than standing there staring at bad lads so that we can see how well the GM rolls tonight. Oh is the GM on fire? You're dead then. You died. Should have moved away or raised your shield or tried demoralizing. Literally anything other than swinging at and missing the bad lad. So there tends to be a lot of movement, even in a congested room, so the board doesn't just become melee lines that just sit there for the whole encounter.
All that said, I'm very interested in this Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras you speak of.
*Some enemies have an AoO but most of them do not. If they have one, you're gonna have to stand next to them, and you better do something to make their attacks less likely to murder you.
**Sometimes you're using an agile weapon or sweeping weapon and the penalty isn't as deep. Sometimes it's better to try to put someone down than to keep yourself alive. something.
I really love the decision to keep Attack of Opportunities as a special ability that only certain monsters have and PCs only get if they invest in getting them. It leads to movement actually being a part of combat again.
And yeah, it’s really important to think about your action economy and use all your tools. Standing there and swinging three times is almost always going to get much worse results than using an action or two on positioning, skill checks, utility abilities, etc.
The Bard pissing the monster off with a Yo Mama joke is gonna help your rogue get that big crit, the fighter luring the monster away is gonna force the monster to spend an action chasing him instead of using its big three-action fuck-you attack. Etc.
I'd definitely be surprised if one of the first things execs started complaining about once they bought it was that they weren't charging enough for the D&D Beyond subscriptions. They've owned it for a bit and they haven't, you know, done it yet, so presumably at least one person went, "what? no, what are you talking about"
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
Just wanted to say: Pathfinder 2E does this as well, though, but only after some learning pains everyone who plays D&D has to go through.
One of the first things everyone starts learning when they switch to PF2E is they need to stay the fuck away from the bad guys and make them spend one of their 3 deadly fucking actions to move next to you and use their remaining deadly actions*. You should not stand next to bad guys when your turn ends. It's a bad idea. My group wiped like 4 times learning the mechanics and learning these tactics when we first went to PF2E. It took a while to drill into everyone that they needed to give the Fighter enough space to disengage and still stand between us and the monsters.
So what ends up happening is stuff like in our Blood Lords campaign, when my mounted Tyrant Champion (sworn to the code of Tyranny!) is fucking all over the place. Partly because he's murdering people and needing new victims and is mounted, but also partly because he's leading tougher meaner bad lads around the room and outside and into the fucking woods. And maybe he'll come back with his armor stained with blood. Maybe his zorse (zombie horse!) will eat his dead body when the foe kills him, who knows? Nobody in the party knows, because they're miles away from his Boromir Moment.
This is one of many reasons I like PF2E, beyond the setting and the fact that I get cool shit whenever I level (I am giving you some major side-eye here, 5E), is that with 3 actions per turn, there are options you seldom see executed in a 5E game suddenly take place. Rogues will strike from the shadows and then run away and hide, all on the same fucking turn! Shield-bearers will spend an action to Raise their Shield to improve their defense. Melee combatants will spend actions on demoralizing their foes. It turns out that if you have the option between taking a -5 and attacking again, and doing something else that doesn't take this penalty, that you should, more often than not**, do that something else. Keep an action for moving away. Keep an action for raising your shield (or casting Shield!). Keep an action for telling your mount to do stuff. These things tend to be better than standing there staring at bad lads so that we can see how well the GM rolls tonight. Oh is the GM on fire? You're dead then. You died. Should have moved away or raised your shield or tried demoralizing. Literally anything other than swinging at and missing the bad lad. So there tends to be a lot of movement, even in a congested room, so the board doesn't just become melee lines that just sit there for the whole encounter.
All that said, I'm very interested in this Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras you speak of.
*Some enemies have an AoO but most of them do not. If they have one, you're gonna have to stand next to them, and you better do something to make their attacks less likely to murder you.
**Sometimes you're using an agile weapon or sweeping weapon and the penalty isn't as deep. Sometimes it's better to try to put someone down than to keep yourself alive. something.
I really love the decision to keep Attack of Opportunities as a special ability that only certain monsters have and PCs only get if they invest in getting them. It leads to movement actually being a part of combat again.
And yeah, it’s really important to think about your action economy and use all your tools. Standing there and swinging three times is almost always going to get much worse results than using an action or two on positioning, skill checks, utility abilities, etc.
The Bard pissing the monster off with a Yo Mama joke is gonna help your rogue get that big crit, the fighter luring the monster away is gonna force the monster to spend an action chasing him instead of using its big three-action fuck-you attack. Etc.
Moving being a form of crowd control is really, really cool, since in a lot of cases one PC action is less valuable than one enemy action. And even enemies who do have attack of opportunity can have it foiled by the right PC abilities. Rogues, for instance, can take a feat to let them ignore all reactions as long as they move at half speed (and it's easy to make that 3 squares). There's other options too, that's just the one I remember offhand (since I've had spellcasters invest in rogue before to pick up more skill proficiency, light armor, and that specific ability to get out of melee safely)
$30 a month would both A.) kill D&D Beyond immediately and B.) Increase piracy a shit ton as you have a bunch of people who were willing to pay a small fee to get access to a bunch of books from friends deciding to just download a pdf.
+8
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
I would probably not use any digital at all. Only reason I was on D&D beyond is because of being able to quickly search spells, items, abilities etc. PDFs wouldn't fulfill that, free or not. I'd just go back to using my physical books exclusively.
$30 a month would both A.) kill D&D Beyond immediately and B.) Increase piracy a shit ton as you have a bunch of people who were willing to pay a small fee to get access to a bunch of books from friends deciding to just download a pdf.
So I discovered DND beyond import to foundry vtt for shared books is black fucking magic. With the guy's Patreon you can import full adventures.
Also cancelled dndb subscriptions last until the end of the subscription period.
I think your beast generator is nicely laid out with a helpful opening. I know you’re after critic but it’s good, so not much I can add. Keep it up! It’ll be useful for any system, and I can see LANCER folks using it for wildlife on whatever planet the players end up on.
Edit: I think it’s at its strongest now you’ve committed to making it an idea aid rather than connecting it to a system. Anyone can use it, and they can use it across games and basically forever.
Grids are for tactical room clearing and nothing else.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
All that said, I'm very interested in this Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras you speak of.
Sword and Scoundrel is actually free to download and read through. It's general combat mechanics are heavily focused on 1v1's and other small skirmishes. Combat essentially doesn't start until people are within the 10ft range of two swords being able to clash and so on (Though there are some mechanics for how you get there and ranged weapons obviously).
Then each participant (We'll keep it 1v1 for simplicity and because dear god do not get outnumbered) draws up their combat pool based on their attributes and skills of d6.
Rounds go:
Draw Pools
Beat 1
Beat 2
Reset
On a beat whoever has initiative (Determined by a little pre duel mini game or just GM fiat for sucker punches/ambushes or just who won the last beat) declares an offensive maneuver and how many dice from their pool they will commit. The defender then replies with a defensive maneuver and how many dice they'll commit.
Roll the pools, most successes wins. Typically offensive options will do some sort of damage to where you aimed the strike and wounds will knock dice out of the wounded character's combat pool (Y'know, if they don't already leave the wounded character trying to back away and screaming for parley instead of a duel). Defensive options are typically going to either merely block attacks and grant initiative or, for more advanced ones (that cost combat pool dice) knock your opponents weapon away so it can't be used next beat or other ways to stagger their tempo.
Movement in a duel is presumed to happen in the back and forth but be unimportant for the most part. This is changed up in two cases:
1) If you're fighting multiple people you can take a gambit to try move yourself such that the crowd can't all target you. Essentially your foot work puts their allies between their blade and you. In this manner a skilled fighter can stylishly hold off three of the count's incompetent but fancily dressed guards.
2) Anyone can make part of their beat a gambit. Essentially paying some combat pool dice to try do something narrative for an effect. You could try push someone into the stream so their footing becomes unsteady, cut a rope to drop a sand bag on someone while duelling on stage or merely sling unkind words. This lets you incorporate non combat skills and also forces a second opposed roll (your opponent gets to section off dice too) about how it goes.
In general even if you're just using the basic rules (and not doing binding weapons, combos or other fancy things the system does because it's so aroused by sexy sword fights) it's all about anteing up for cuts and thrusts or countering them. Your tactics are not on a grid but instead in how many dice you commit to each action. You can over commit defensively to gain the initiative but then have no tempo with which to cut your opponent. You can throw it all in, lose to an unlucky dice roll and then be cut down. There's a romance in blades clashing with unarmoured flesh so easy to harm. You measure your opponent, they measure you as you go back and forth till a blade strikes true.
Meanwhile if Swords and Scoundrels combat is primarily about sexy sword fighters Mythras is all about blunt realities in a mythic setting.
In Mythras it's real simple: On your turn in initiative you use one action point (most people have 2 a turn, some high dex/int people have 3, terrifingly fast monsters have 4 or even more) to do an action. In most cases this is going to be an attack, you roll your combat style and then your opponent decides if they want to spend an action point to block or dodge (which in this case means throwing yourself prone, block like a soldier or dive like a peasant buddy).
You may ask the question of 'Hey, if I can see their roll and they failed, why would I want to spend my precious, precious AP trying to block a miss when I could just spend more AP in a round attacking?'
Because Mythras combat is built on how big of a difference there is between two results. If they miss and you roll a critical hit on your block you get two special effects to apply (Crit fail, miss, success, crit success in this case). Special effects are sometimes weapon specific, like impaling a giant with your spear to limit it's ability to fight, but most are pretty generic: Disarm people, knock them down, compel surrenders.
In Mythras any chump can get lucky and stab someone, real warriors express themselves by the special effects they pick. They stalk through the battlefield taking aimed shots at lesser mens throats, they confront an armoured brute by knocking him to the ground and stunning his sword arm so he can't fight.
Then they try to block a giant and fucking die. Which is the other part of the equation for Mythras combat: Weapons and shields have weight to them. If you try to block a great axe with a dagger you can generate special effects for succeeding but unless that defense was a crit so you can pick the 'perfect parry' and catch the great axe between your palms like a samurai you're still eating the damage for it being two sizes larger than your weapon.
Add this to the fact that characters and monsters get a damage modifier to their attacks based on their size and strength and Mythras is sometimes just about the blunt equation that even if sensei is a master of martial arts he's gonna lose to a dude twice his weight class unless the dice favour him.
Which is also why monsters are so scary: Ha ha, the giant only has a 50% chance of hitting you, but y'know, they're swinging a tree that does 1d12 damage and have a +1d8 damage modifier and it's a giant weapon so only the very strongest of shields will negate even half the damage on block. For reference the average torso has 6HP and you pass out at 0 and potentially die at -6HP. Even if you're wearing mail armour and negating 4 of that damage you're still hosed if it lands. So don't let it land, be willing to dive out the way instead, impale the giant with javelins from afar, bash and bully and harrass the beast rather than nobly duel it. The tactics that bring down this beast are different from the tactics which get you past a shield wall of the guards you pissed off which are different from how you deal with a group of bandits skirmishing with you using slings.
They literally sell Combat Modules which are just one shot combat encounters intended to tutorialize thinking about the special effects in a more complex way than "I hit the head and maximize damage,"
Mythras is a combat systems that's just based in blunt realities and how skill and guile can over come them. Armour, huge weapons and sheer weight class differences all make for obstacles for a side to conquer. Higher skill gives you a better chance of being able to express yourself and combat is sharp and punchy and visceral.
For movement default Mythras kind of assumes it just doesn't matter. You let ranged people get a turn before people say they move in but otherwise you just track engagement. Unless it's a significant distance it doesn't even cost AP to move if you're not engaged.
The advanced combat rules open options for grid combat where you have to declare your pace (walking, running, sprinting) which sets what you can do at what difficulties (can't sprint and shoot a bow unless you're a trained skirmisher) how far you move in each of the two 'pulses' of movement. It's very wargamey and feels like unneeded fluff in a game with already more complexity to it's combat than most games with a grid.
Posts
In a system that measures distance in ranges and areas of effect in squares/hexes you’ve got to have squares/hexes.
If I was running a lighter game that still has combat as a common event I’d draw a rough map, then say, “If you can see ‘em you can shoot ‘em, if they’re in spitting distance you can fight ‘em, you can cover a hand’s width in one sprint.”
If the game isn’t about combat, you might be able to strip a fight down to one roll, after all, we need to get back to the important stuff, like who’ll win the Iron Chef competition or whether Diana will admit her feelings to Sandra.
But yes, if your combat is a big part of the game and there are expectations of distance and such that’s tough to theatre of the mind.
In Wreckage (I should start keeping score of its mention) the battle map is split into zones. You can’t melee with a target outside your current zone, and you can only shoot in this or a neighbouring zone (snipers have further range). It’s assumed every combatant is always moving, so you’re always close enough to fight someone in your zone, it’s no big thing to move whatever token is representing you around—helps that there isn’t a action to move, it’s shifting zones.
Combat in an open field medieval style? Use Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras loose and vague rulings because grand movement doesn't matter with swords.
Gun combat? Gimme that theater of the mind or big, vague zone movement so I don't have mechs that can only fire 200m.
Most games where combat isn't a huge focus? I swear to god if you make me get a grid out for some nothing burger fight I'll bite you.
I recommend Worlds Without Number for you.
It's slightly lower complexity than 5E, it uses a d20, you can play it with whatever level of investment you want. It's got optional Heroic rules for making characters more badass (but honestly they're pretty competent to start with, the Heroic rules upgrade you from approx 5E characters to approx 4E characters). And the core book PDF is free (Heroic is part of the paid deluxe edition though), so your players might actually have a copy of it.
DIESEL
Against the Fall of Night Playtest
Nasty, Brutish, and Short
I can already imagine it being just a whole bunch of ways to market stuff to people that also has a blurb somewhere that they own all your shit, and him getting mad about it.
Alternatively, him doubling down and just being like, "Don't you like to make D&D stuff, who cares who owns it? Just make more D&D stuff, it's fine! IT'S FIIIIINE!"
I've found the Genesys systems to be excellent for sitting in that same goldilocks zone of having enough specifics to actually get some synergies going and feeling like you have a character sheet that says things, but not getting too bogged down in a million different conditions and +1 modifiers and whatever. I haven't used their fantasy supplement, Realms of Terrinoth, but my scifi experiences with it in Star Wars (and playing the heavily-modified-Genesys game of fantasy samurai of the newest edition of Legends of the Five Rings) have both been excellent.
On my game at this point its less about trying to figure out where every enemy is and more about the players asking, “hey if I wanted to toast a few guys with my breath weapon could I catch more than one guy?”, and responding with, “sure you can catch 2 enemies with it, 3 if the Barbarian doesn’t mind catching it too, and that’ will put you adjacent to them but not in melee with the enemy”.
I mostly don’t use VTTs because they always seemingly require a ton of prep and setting everything up especially if you aren’t paying for assets and are trying to just use your own content. I mostly just tend a fire while I DM
I tried to run Lancer on a VTT once.
The x5 prep time modifier convinced me this was distinctly not worth it.
I do hear you on VTT's. Foundry has a very excellent VTT, especially for Lancer and PF2E, but even with all of the different modules and support for it, there's some work involved. However, far less than when you try to get Roll20 to do something and then it stares at you and demands that you do it correctly but doesn't tell you what that is.
I use it for Mythras and my friend runs 5e on it. Pretty darn seamless.
An open field swiftly stops being open after the Druid casts entangle and the Wizard casts grease. You could probably theater of the mind that except next round the Druid stone calls an area partially overlapping the entangle and the Wizard casts create pit in yet another area. How do you adjudicate how much damage the charging quickling takes from stone spikes if you don't know it's exact location? (No, our party for Kingmaker in Pathfinder didn't have any melee classes why do you ask?)
...Or, more practically, a green table mat and a handful of plastic trees stuck into styrofoam hills.
Make the 90ft range on Entangle vs. the 600ft of a Longbow matter, anyhow.
Look, all I want to know is when does my rolling to determine the circumference of my anus become useful? It's just there on my character sheet, wasting space!
Hey now, this is a Japanese folklore setting and your soul is up your ass, ok? That’s mythology man. This is a simulist campaign.
Yes this is a very D&D brained way to think about combat in a game.
Like, to be very blunt, I used Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras because they're both more realistic/grounded in their combat and also eschew grids for stylish "sword fights go everywhere" mechanics.
Mythras has grid mechanics in the advanced rules and it's ltierally more involved than anything D&D has due to trying to capture semi real feeling movement constraints and actions within them.
The idea that a 5ft grid is more real or accurate than another system is purely due to the weird grid magic and ranges your system presents.
The same way I run the rest of the game I just make up numbers.
But I will also change the stats of the enemies to make the fight more appropriate to the importance it has in the story of the game.
{Twitter, Everybody's doing it. }{Writing and Story Blog}
Just wanted to say: Pathfinder 2E does this as well, though, but only after some learning pains everyone who plays D&D has to go through.
One of the first things everyone starts learning when they switch to PF2E is they need to stay the fuck away from the bad guys and make them spend one of their 3 deadly fucking actions to move next to you and use their remaining deadly actions*. You should not stand next to bad guys when your turn ends. It's a bad idea. My group wiped like 4 times learning the mechanics and learning these tactics when we first went to PF2E. It took a while to drill into everyone that they needed to give the Fighter enough space to disengage and still stand between us and the monsters.
So what ends up happening is stuff like in our Blood Lords campaign, when my mounted Tyrant Champion (sworn to the code of Tyranny!) is fucking all over the place. Partly because he's murdering people and needing new victims and is mounted, but also partly because he's leading tougher meaner bad lads around the room and outside and into the fucking woods. And maybe he'll come back with his armor stained with blood. Maybe his zorse (zombie horse!) will eat his dead body when the foe kills him, who knows? Nobody in the party knows, because they're miles away from his Boromir Moment.
This is one of many reasons I like PF2E, beyond the setting and the fact that I get cool shit whenever I level (I am giving you some major side-eye here, 5E), is that with 3 actions per turn, there are options you seldom see executed in a 5E game suddenly take place. Rogues will strike from the shadows and then run away and hide, all on the same fucking turn! Shield-bearers will spend an action to Raise their Shield to improve their defense. Melee combatants will spend actions on demoralizing their foes. It turns out that if you have the option between taking a -5 and attacking again, and doing something else that doesn't take this penalty, that you should, more often than not**, do that something else. Keep an action for moving away. Keep an action for raising your shield (or casting Shield!). Keep an action for telling your mount to do stuff. These things tend to be better than standing there staring at bad lads so that we can see how well the GM rolls tonight. Oh is the GM on fire? You're dead then. You died. Should have moved away or raised your shield or tried demoralizing. Literally anything other than swinging at and missing the bad lad. So there tends to be a lot of movement, even in a congested room, so the board doesn't just become melee lines that just sit there for the whole encounter.
All that said, I'm very interested in this Sword and Scoundrel and Mythras you speak of.
*Some enemies have an AoO but most of them do not. If they have one, you're gonna have to stand next to them, and you better do something to make their attacks less likely to murder you.
**Sometimes you're using an agile weapon or sweeping weapon and the penalty isn't as deep. Sometimes it's better to try to put someone down than to keep yourself alive. something.
1. Everyone decides what they’re going to do (players and enemy combatants).
2. Write it on a bit of paper, fold it up, put it in a hat.
3. Two bits of paper get pulled out and they get a turn simultaneously.
4. Everyone only has 4 HP and damage is 1d6.
Just a jumble of people getting the first shot off and killing their target, missing a target because they’re not there any more, failing to kill a target outright so they’re left wide open for reprisal next round, and two slamming into each other and falling down a hill mid-action.
I'd say the hard part is more realizing that you've always been trying to put some fiction into the mechanically oriented parts of a game, but because there were clear mechanical breakpoints you've also set up some fake-fake fictional breakpoints that are going to come back to haunt you.
I mean, you were trying, right? You were trying to describe the events of a battle as it went on, not just rattling off "ogre-25-to-hit-connects-for-24-damage-and-prone-Fightgar-19-to-hit-connects-for-32-damage" like some demented livestock auctioneer. But under it all there's still the breakpoint - first it was the ogre's turn, and now it's Fightgar's turn. Moving from that, to a system where only Fightgar rolls and it's your free decision when the ogre acts, creates two points of failure which might not be initially obvious.
The first point of failure is to make the ogre act too much - first Fightgar has to dodge or deflect the ogre's blows, then he can square up for a shot. Right? Well, probably not. Whatever combat move exists in a PbtA game is going to try to encapsulate an entire beat of combat, with both sides going at it as hard as they can. Only Fightgar rolls, but that roll and Fightgar's choices also give the ogre the opportunity to act. Having the ogre also act outside of that basically gives them a double attack, and in some cases that might make sense, if you're trying to give the impression that Fightgar's in over his head trying to tangle with this thing. But if you intend it to be a fight, that one roll is one progression beat of a fair fight.
The second point of failure is to make the ogre act too little - what threat does the ogre pose if Fightgar doesn't try to engage them at all? If you're used to the ogre (and, let's be fair, literally the entirety of your GM-run opposition) "getting its turn to act" then you might not think to present the ogre or anything else on the battlefield as an active threat, instead giving your PCs free reign to do as they please. If you have no threats coming and your PCs get clean hits you can drag your own stale silence out for quite an uncomfortable while.
The trick is to give your PCs all of what a move says they get and not skimp out, and the trick is to loom threats over your PCs so they engage with the actual dangerous elements of a battle and not just the odious existence of someone else's hit points.
(Tying into the other ongoing discussion, it's a lot easier to take a chaotic battle and present a PC with a more understandable slice of threat profile if you have a reason to give them that slice, and an abstracted tactical map which is mostly there to answer the questions "where am I and what nearby is dangerous" and "am I tied up with this dude right now y/n" is an excellent rationale for only telling people about dangers in the parts of the map they have ready access to.)
There's a board game called Robo Rally you should check out. Everyone lays out a sequence of actions they want to take in a certain order, but each order also has a corresponding number assigned to it. Each part of the sequence goes off for each player in order of the numbers, so it's very easy for a person's intended goal to get literally derailed by another player's action going before they had intended, and somehow interfering with their chosen path. A glorious cascade of unintended consequences.
Gamertag: PrimusD | Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Trick is the lowest number gets the most loot, because they've got the most energy left to grab stuff after the monster is defeated. Of course if the monster isn't defeated, their over confidence results in them eating shit
And if two of the same number are played, the adventures are assumed to slam into each other/otherwise get in each other's way, and their cards are ignored that round.
Definitely haven't intentionally crashed into someone else just to make a third player eat shit!
Steam: https://steamcommunity.com/id/TheZombiePenguin
Stream: https://www.twitch.tv/thezombiepenguin/
Switch: 0293 6817 9891
lol
lmao
I really love the decision to keep Attack of Opportunities as a special ability that only certain monsters have and PCs only get if they invest in getting them. It leads to movement actually being a part of combat again.
And yeah, it’s really important to think about your action economy and use all your tools. Standing there and swinging three times is almost always going to get much worse results than using an action or two on positioning, skill checks, utility abilities, etc.
The Bard pissing the monster off with a Yo Mama joke is gonna help your rogue get that big crit, the fighter luring the monster away is gonna force the monster to spend an action chasing him instead of using its big three-action fuck-you attack. Etc.
My Let's Play Channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC2go70QLfwGq-hW4nvUqmog
Moving being a form of crowd control is really, really cool, since in a lot of cases one PC action is less valuable than one enemy action. And even enemies who do have attack of opportunity can have it foiled by the right PC abilities. Rogues, for instance, can take a feat to let them ignore all reactions as long as they move at half speed (and it's easy to make that 3 squares). There's other options too, that's just the one I remember offhand (since I've had spellcasters invest in rogue before to pick up more skill proficiency, light armor, and that specific ability to get out of melee safely)
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
$30 a month would both A.) kill D&D Beyond immediately and B.) Increase piracy a shit ton as you have a bunch of people who were willing to pay a small fee to get access to a bunch of books from friends deciding to just download a pdf.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
So I discovered DND beyond import to foundry vtt for shared books is black fucking magic. With the guy's Patreon you can import full adventures.
Also cancelled dndb subscriptions last until the end of the subscription period.
>_>
I think your beast generator is nicely laid out with a helpful opening. I know you’re after critic but it’s good, so not much I can add. Keep it up! It’ll be useful for any system, and I can see LANCER folks using it for wildlife on whatever planet the players end up on.
Edit: I think it’s at its strongest now you’ve committed to making it an idea aid rather than connecting it to a system. Anyone can use it, and they can use it across games and basically forever.
Sword and Scoundrel is actually free to download and read through. It's general combat mechanics are heavily focused on 1v1's and other small skirmishes. Combat essentially doesn't start until people are within the 10ft range of two swords being able to clash and so on (Though there are some mechanics for how you get there and ranged weapons obviously).
Then each participant (We'll keep it 1v1 for simplicity and because dear god do not get outnumbered) draws up their combat pool based on their attributes and skills of d6.
Rounds go:
Draw Pools
Beat 1
Beat 2
Reset
On a beat whoever has initiative (Determined by a little pre duel mini game or just GM fiat for sucker punches/ambushes or just who won the last beat) declares an offensive maneuver and how many dice from their pool they will commit. The defender then replies with a defensive maneuver and how many dice they'll commit.
Roll the pools, most successes wins. Typically offensive options will do some sort of damage to where you aimed the strike and wounds will knock dice out of the wounded character's combat pool (Y'know, if they don't already leave the wounded character trying to back away and screaming for parley instead of a duel). Defensive options are typically going to either merely block attacks and grant initiative or, for more advanced ones (that cost combat pool dice) knock your opponents weapon away so it can't be used next beat or other ways to stagger their tempo.
Movement in a duel is presumed to happen in the back and forth but be unimportant for the most part. This is changed up in two cases:
1) If you're fighting multiple people you can take a gambit to try move yourself such that the crowd can't all target you. Essentially your foot work puts their allies between their blade and you. In this manner a skilled fighter can stylishly hold off three of the count's incompetent but fancily dressed guards.
2) Anyone can make part of their beat a gambit. Essentially paying some combat pool dice to try do something narrative for an effect. You could try push someone into the stream so their footing becomes unsteady, cut a rope to drop a sand bag on someone while duelling on stage or merely sling unkind words. This lets you incorporate non combat skills and also forces a second opposed roll (your opponent gets to section off dice too) about how it goes.
In general even if you're just using the basic rules (and not doing binding weapons, combos or other fancy things the system does because it's so aroused by sexy sword fights) it's all about anteing up for cuts and thrusts or countering them. Your tactics are not on a grid but instead in how many dice you commit to each action. You can over commit defensively to gain the initiative but then have no tempo with which to cut your opponent. You can throw it all in, lose to an unlucky dice roll and then be cut down. There's a romance in blades clashing with unarmoured flesh so easy to harm. You measure your opponent, they measure you as you go back and forth till a blade strikes true.
Meanwhile if Swords and Scoundrels combat is primarily about sexy sword fighters Mythras is all about blunt realities in a mythic setting.
In Mythras it's real simple: On your turn in initiative you use one action point (most people have 2 a turn, some high dex/int people have 3, terrifingly fast monsters have 4 or even more) to do an action. In most cases this is going to be an attack, you roll your combat style and then your opponent decides if they want to spend an action point to block or dodge (which in this case means throwing yourself prone, block like a soldier or dive like a peasant buddy).
You may ask the question of 'Hey, if I can see their roll and they failed, why would I want to spend my precious, precious AP trying to block a miss when I could just spend more AP in a round attacking?'
Because Mythras combat is built on how big of a difference there is between two results. If they miss and you roll a critical hit on your block you get two special effects to apply (Crit fail, miss, success, crit success in this case). Special effects are sometimes weapon specific, like impaling a giant with your spear to limit it's ability to fight, but most are pretty generic: Disarm people, knock them down, compel surrenders.
In Mythras any chump can get lucky and stab someone, real warriors express themselves by the special effects they pick. They stalk through the battlefield taking aimed shots at lesser mens throats, they confront an armoured brute by knocking him to the ground and stunning his sword arm so he can't fight.
Then they try to block a giant and fucking die. Which is the other part of the equation for Mythras combat: Weapons and shields have weight to them. If you try to block a great axe with a dagger you can generate special effects for succeeding but unless that defense was a crit so you can pick the 'perfect parry' and catch the great axe between your palms like a samurai you're still eating the damage for it being two sizes larger than your weapon.
Add this to the fact that characters and monsters get a damage modifier to their attacks based on their size and strength and Mythras is sometimes just about the blunt equation that even if sensei is a master of martial arts he's gonna lose to a dude twice his weight class unless the dice favour him.
Which is also why monsters are so scary: Ha ha, the giant only has a 50% chance of hitting you, but y'know, they're swinging a tree that does 1d12 damage and have a +1d8 damage modifier and it's a giant weapon so only the very strongest of shields will negate even half the damage on block. For reference the average torso has 6HP and you pass out at 0 and potentially die at -6HP. Even if you're wearing mail armour and negating 4 of that damage you're still hosed if it lands. So don't let it land, be willing to dive out the way instead, impale the giant with javelins from afar, bash and bully and harrass the beast rather than nobly duel it. The tactics that bring down this beast are different from the tactics which get you past a shield wall of the guards you pissed off which are different from how you deal with a group of bandits skirmishing with you using slings.
They literally sell Combat Modules which are just one shot combat encounters intended to tutorialize thinking about the special effects in a more complex way than "I hit the head and maximize damage,"
Mythras is a combat systems that's just based in blunt realities and how skill and guile can over come them. Armour, huge weapons and sheer weight class differences all make for obstacles for a side to conquer. Higher skill gives you a better chance of being able to express yourself and combat is sharp and punchy and visceral.
For movement default Mythras kind of assumes it just doesn't matter. You let ranged people get a turn before people say they move in but otherwise you just track engagement. Unless it's a significant distance it doesn't even cost AP to move if you're not engaged.
The advanced combat rules open options for grid combat where you have to declare your pace (walking, running, sprinting) which sets what you can do at what difficulties (can't sprint and shoot a bow unless you're a trained skirmisher) how far you move in each of the two 'pulses' of movement. It's very wargamey and feels like unneeded fluff in a game with already more complexity to it's combat than most games with a grid.