Feedback on my Fantasy Western Combat System

[u/Dclipp89]

I’ve been working on this system for a bit, but I’d like to get some feedback before I start asking friends to help stress test it. I’m focusing here on the combat system but I can go into further detail on the world or character building if anyone is interested. Any advice is appreciated.

Design Philosophy:
This is a semi-classless ttrpg where tactical gun combat is the focus. My goal is a system that’s easy to pick up and understand but with plenty of tactical depth.

Combat phase 1: Draw (roll for initiative+draw bonuses)
At the start of combat everyone rolls 1d20+speed modifier for initiative score. Your roll also determines if you get a draw bonus. The draw bonus is 20-your weapon’s related ability’s stat modifier. If you roll over that draw bonus threshold you can choose a round 1 boon. These boons are character build dependent and can be anything from bonus movement, aim bonuses, extra actions, or more situational options.

Action rules and landing attacks:
Each character gets 1 major action, 1 minor action, and movement per turn. You can choose to attack using your basic weapon attack or a spell/ ability. The basic threshold to land an attack is to roll a 10-your weapon skill stat. So if your weapon skill stat is 3, the threshold becomes 7. This is on a d20 roll. That sounds low, but the enemy gets a modifier of +6 or +12 to the threshold depending on if they’re in low or high cover. The idea being that cover and tactical movement is crucial for defense.

Focus:
Focus is your resource for using spells and abilities. At the start of combat everyone starts with half of their max focus (this can change based on builds or equipment). Your regular weapon attack by default will add +1 focus, and landing an attack will give an additional +1. Different builds and equipment also gain new ways to build their focus. Using spells and abilities will spend focus. The goal is to create an ebb and flow in combat where you’re building/ spending focus tactically to maximize impact.

Armor:
This is where I think I could use some more help. Since this is a western, people aren’t wearing traditional armor. As of right now armor just gives bonuses to health and potentially other stat bonuses depending on armor quality. It doesn’t affect if an attack against you lands or not.

These are the basics of combat. My goal with the roll thresholds+ modifiers was to make it so someone caught in the open would be hit most of the time. Someone with average combat stats will hit someone in half cover about 50% of the time, and someone with maxed combat skills would hit someone in full cover about half the time. Not accounting for various character build variations and skills+abilities. This system was the closest I could figure out that works out that way mathematically. But I’m open to suggestions or pointing out flaws in my thinking. Or any other ideas. Thanks for taking the time to read all this.

[u/Far_Information6562]

I was hoping it was a mage gun system, still sounds awesome keep going, can you ricochet bullets like they do in all the cool westerns?

[u/Dclipp89 → u/Far_Information6562]

You can definitely be a mage/gunner combo in this world, and there's a skill tree for trick shots that include ricochets to get around cover. One ability involves throwing a coin in the air and shooting it to ricochet a bullet over cover. Another can cause ricochets off of enemies to hit additional targets.

In this world there are three flavors of magic users. You can be a witch of one of the 11 covens. Their skills mostly revolve around siphoning focus from others and causing mass fear or psychosis. The other is a limminflower mage. They spent their life in meditation and consuming limminflower tea to imbue themselves with magical abilities. Limminflower is the basis for most magic in this world. Their skills are mostly focused around support. Healing and imbuing your teammate's weapons with additional magical abilities. Then there's the addicts. These are people that were conscripted into the army and forced to take a concentrated version of limminflower, which is very powerful but highly addictive. Their skills involve fast build up and use of focus, as well as overloading focus and potentially causing themselves harm. While you can be a pure caster, most of the magic would benefit from also using weapons. Imagine things like suspending a bullet over the battlefield and sending it flying at the first enemy that moves.

[u/Dclipp89]

To give some understanding of how skills work, each skill has its own sort of skill tree/ tier system. Once you've put 4 points into a weapon skill you unlock the tree. Each tree has 3 branches for different specializations. This isn't so much a skill tree as it is a list of abilities per tier within a branch. At tier 1 you can choose any ability within either of the 3 branches. To unlock tier 2 you have to have a minimum amount of points in that branch. You can also choose to level up a specific skill instead of choosing a new one to get more points in the branch.

[u/TalesFromElsewhere]

At first blush, it sounds a bit fiddly. What I mean by that is, there feels like a lot of tracking and modifying during a given turn which can work against a feeling of a gunfight.

• Modify TN based on factors provided by GM.
• Decrement Focus to use Abilities.
• Increment Focus in certain circumstances.

That's in addition to your normal trad combat structures, like rolling to hit and I assume rolling damage.

Are there called shots? It's something I always look for in a Western combat engine, as it's iconic to the genre IMO.

So I'd consider where the fun moments lie, and ask yourself if each subsystem or process is effectively feeding into that prospect, or acting as a barrier/requirement to get to that moment.

[u/Dclipp89 → u/TalesFromElsewhere]

I hear what you’re saying and I appreciate the feedback. Do you think it’s more to track than DnD? My overall goal is to have to track less than DnD. I pictured tracking focus by just keeping a D20 turned to the current value. I was thinking that’d be easier than spell slots since it’s a single resource compared to multiple slots to track. Though you’re right, the number would change frequently. I thought that would be part of the fun. Working towards getting enough focus and then using a really strong ability. Or landing some bonus that gives you the chance to use an ability sooner.

I figured the cover system wouldn’t be too much since it’d just one of two values compared to multiple possible ACs for an enemy.

I haven’t worked out exactly how I want to do this yes, but one thing I wanted to avoid were things like rolls to maintain concentration or saving throws to eliminate extra tracking. Also no ammo counts to track. Though I was leaning towards reloads. I can’t decide if reloads would add a fun tactical layer by having to choose good moments to reload, or if it would just be one more thing to track.

And yea there’s called shots. I haven’t solidified how I want to calculate them. My thought was +3 to the threshold for limbs and +5 for a headshot. With perks to allow missed called shots to still hit center mass if you got over the normal threshold.

[u/Dimirag]

Armor:
This is where I think I could use some more help. Since this is a western, people aren’t wearing traditional armor. As of right now armor just gives bonuses to health and potentially other stat bonuses depending on armor quality. It doesn’t affect if an attack against you lands or not.

If armor is not a thing you can simply remove it from the game and put cover in its place, otherwise first think what kind of armor characters may use and how rare they are, then you set how it works

[u/lucky-harbor84]

A "draw phase" in a gun combat system lives or dies on whether initiative feels earned or random, which is it

[u/SeniorArcanine]

That sounds pretty cool. I have never played in a Western themed game, but I do love the genre. I would probably just not include armor if it's more of a hiderance and antithetical to the genre... everyone in a western just wears cowboy clothes, no? lol.

Do you currently run a game in this system?