The most ballanced combat system you know

Greetings, TL;DR: I would like to ask you about your experiences regarding ballancing in P6P Rpgs. I played some P&P Rpgs all of them disapointed me when it came to combat ballance. So I said to myself: you can do better. After years of tinkering and redesigning I created a system that fullfills most of my needs. Never the less I would like to ask you about your experiences regarding ballancing in P6P Rpgs. Personally, the worst thing was the meele vs Ranged ballance in the Wh40k system. A meele guy had to close the distance to the ranged guy, and if he did so he got only 1 attack. The ranged guy could simply pull his auto-pistol and schoot an full auto attack (up to 3hits and +30 to the w100 roll). There was just allmost no Incentiveto be a meele guy. :(

IMHO, no reason to have a balanced system. If one guy with a spear and one with an uzi have the same chances of winning a fight, all our armies should go back to spears, after all they are cheaper to produce. I think that a good player is one that succeds wathever the odds, not because the game system has tilted the odds for his benefit. But YMMV.

I'm assuming you play a bit of 40k then? You might consider trying to implement a version of the idea I've been working on in a way that works for you. You take the standard 40k tabletop wargame rules and leave them largely in their original form, so if you like the way that system is balanced then this may work for you. Force organization rules would no longer be in effect though. Instead of character sheets each player starts with 20 points to spend on a model (maybe a few more if you want to allow them to play sergeants, but no more than 30). This allows them to buy a single as-is model up to that value (say a grey knight strike squad justicar), or buy a cheaper model like a guardsman and outfit him with specialized equipment (or maybe even a veteran sergeant with meltabombs and a veteran companion). These all count as independent characters and may choose to join together into a single squad (if this happens, it may be agreed upon that one is the highest ranking character and dictates movement, or the highest value rolled under a model's leadership would choose movement for the squad that turn). You might bump up the number of wounds each model has to make them more playable as a single model character. You distribute "encounters" around the tabletop terrain using the base points of the squad as a target for purchasing hostile enemies, and place various objectives (seize the cogitation engine, destroy the chaos portal) or kill quotas (reduce the force attempting to flank the supply line by 14 tyranids) on the map that the players need to complete. When a player loses his last wound he becomes [Wounded] instead of being removed as a casualty. His speed is reduced by half (unless he is aided by an ally. if he is aided then that ally also suffers the following attack penalties). He may only make one ranged attack per round (if a weapon fires more than one shot then it is reduced to one) or one melee attack (he may assault with his squad, but will only do one attack, and gains no attacks from assaulting or wielding more than one CCW). If the entire group of players becomes [Wounded] then they are removed as casualties. Wounds may be healed by resting. When resting, a broken enemy squad that has fled the board may make a leadership check to enter the board from the side they left (it is a good idea to note the remaining strength of a retreating unit). Depending on your preferred speed of play, the squad may level after a certain number of points, objectives, or tables cleared. Their points pool is increased, and each model rolls on a table to determine what stat is increased by an increment. The model may be refunded back into the players point pool to buy a different or more valuable model, but doing so will forfeit the ability increase. Wargear may be purchased with remaining points and do not forfeit the ability roll as they do not change the model's information. Figure out something that works for you as far as skills go (rolling under a relevant sounding attribute may be a good idea).

Personally, the worst thing was the meele vs Ranged ballance in the Wh40k system. A meele guy had to close the distance to the ranged guy, and if he did so he got only 1 attack. The ranged guy could simply pull his auto-pistol and schoot an full auto attack (up to 3hits and +30 to the w100 roll). There was just allmost no Incentiveto be a meele guy. :( This reminds me of a bit in HindSight , the fantasy supplement to an old and obscure SF game called ForeSight : "The mêlée combat system in HindSight is the same as that in ForeSight , which you might not be familiar with because in ForeSight mêlée fighters tend to be reduced to cinders while trying to close to range." That's realistic, which as Patrick Crusiau says is why all soldiers have been missile troops since about the American Civil War. God made Man, Colonel Colt made men equal. If you don't want realistic in this respect I suggest that you take a look at Spirit of the Century , in which all weapons do the same damage as punches, and not enough to take someone out while closing. All that matters there is the characters' skill and the players' stock of Fate Points.

And then they is always HERO system, in which a well-designed character indeed thrashes an ill-designed one, but bricks, martial artists, energy projectors, egotists etc. are very well balanced against one another for equally skillful and unscrupulous builds.

No offense but why are so many people looking for balance? I play Castles & Crusades. It is unbalanced on purpose. The wizard who has made it into the higher levels deserves to be more powerful than the fighter, ranger or rogue/thief. I agree that there has to be a "level" of balance so as not to have a broken system, but to make every character an equal kinda defeats the realism of combat. I am just using fantasy RPG as an example.

Well, I'm not sure that many in this thread are looking for balance. Patrick and I (for instance) are merely helpfully pointing out where it may be found in answer to Vyten's question. Taking view of a larger scope, I suppose that many players of RPGs want balance for the same reason that chess-players or Go-players do. Some people get a significant, perhaps even the main, part of their enjoyment of a game out of exercising their wits. This works best when the players' wits are pitted against a fair challenge. Other players get less out of that aspect of RPGs and prefer a different reward, or a different mixture of rewards. I do myself. It's important in discussing RPGs to bear in mind the different idiosyncrasies of players' tastes. Just because I don't want balanced combat encounters in my games doesn't mean that another GM is wrong to want them.

The most balanced combat system I've played is 4E D&D. It was designed from the ground up that way (they were very clear about that being a major goal, along with the idea that the teamwork is paramount, and that "simulation" was not worth pursuing at the expense of what they considered more important elements of game play). It offered a very clear set of guidelines for the DM in handling and creating combats - in my experience, I could dial the fight from "cakewalk" to "TPK" and know that dial was pretty accurate, and it left everybody doing useful stuff every round in the fight, and gave the ranged, melee, and magical types a relative parity in effectiveness, though each had a quite varied playstyle. Now, as we all know 4E was not well-received by every person out there, and that's fine because nobody loves everything (it would get tiring!), so the merits of the game as a whole aren't really worth discussing, but as far as the question goes, definitely 4E. On the other hand, it's fantasy RPG combat with a specific goal in mind, and such balance is not necessarily appropriate to other settings, other worlds, or other systems.

The only balanced combat system is Rock Paper Scissors in my experience.

No offense but why are so many people looking for balance? I play Castles & Crusades. It is unbalanced on purpose. The wizard who has made it into the higher levels deserves to be more powerful than the fighter, ranger or rogue/thief. I agree that there has to be a "level" of balance so as not to have a broken system, but to make every character an equal kinda defeats the realism of combat. I am just using fantasy RPG as an example. I am trying to figure this out also. This isn't an MMO with PvP. As a GM, I don't want to be too bound by strict rules either, it needs to be free flowing, a bit whimsical and fun. As a player, I never thought of it as long as the GM was being fair and my character both took and dealt proper damage.