New RPG system, needs ideas

[Dagsby]

I have made a new pen and paper RPG system, and was needing some advice on how it could be improved. Whilst making this system, I tried to go out of my way to make it realistic (so very few hits are needed to kill someone/something). Also to make it so that the very lowest skilled stand a chance to kill the very highest, however that chance is very small.
It is mainly the combat systems that I have attached to this message, as those are the things I have been testing most (have not tried my archery system yet... so unsure how it will react). At the moment it takes quite a few rolls of the D10's and D20's for a single round of combat, however I am still undecided on whether this is a bad or a good thing, as it can only take one round before someone is dead (usually around 2 to 3).
The test figures attached at the bottom of the text have not been altered much and so are probably not ballanced or useful.
Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Dags.

[Dottie]

One common mistake when trying to make a realistic system is imo to make a too detailed system. My advice is to try to simplify a few moments, for example merging the block and dodge actions, or if you don't want to do that, you should perhaps differentiate them a bit more.

If you are looking to make a realistic system I also suggest you drop the dramatic decrease in bleeding, it's quite possible to receive wounds that makes you bleed for hours in some cases.

Generally you might also ask yourself why you choose to include a certain ability. I'm not saying you have chosen poorly, only that I recommend that you spell out your police on inclusion at least for your self.

[PriestZero]

I briefly reviewed the combat system that you created and I like it very much. I think that it has potential. One observation that I want to make immediately is that it is simpler than certain other combat systems I have seen. For example, Palladium Corporation has a product calle "Ninjas and Superspies" that presents a very detailed martial arts simulation with forty-two differing martial arts styles, and it has many more dice rolls per round than yours. Another example is Rolemaster, from Iron Crown Corporation, which is the second top selling role-playing game product availible after Dungeons and Dragons. In Rolemaster, character creation is so detailed you might need four hours of real time to make a basic fighter but you can kill him off in combat with an Orc in about four minutes of real playing time. As far as realism goes, I think you have to differentiate between bleeding from edged weapons and internal bleeding if you really want to fine tune your system. However, I don't think two or three rounds of combat should generally be lethal or else you will never have player character longevity. In the real world, I have some confidence that martial artists need about ten strikes to kill an opponent with martial arts, and a throw usually counts as four strikes. If you want combat to move fast enough to be handled in just a few rounds, you could randomly roll to see how much damage the monster does to the player character before the player character kills the monster and handle every encounter with just the one modified roll. That way, you could kill many weak monsters but still be defeated by a powerful one that gives you a mortal wound before going down.

[Dagsby]

thanks alot for replying (over 2 years... i had almost forgotten about this thread ) I can really not remember what i have done with this RPG to be honest, i know that a few of us put some changes together, including toning down the "insta-kills" a bit (as, like you said character longetivaty was not all that high for people playing the mass murdering archetypes)... but unfortunatly cannot find the book that we used to write the rules in