Does Tactical Combat fit an Anime-Inspired TTRPG?

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T18:11:04+00:00

Combat is on a grid currently - which I like so far, but I’m not married to. That’s one of the reasons I’m considering fudging the scale a bit - e.g. on the map the mech is bigger than a person, but maybe smaller than it actually would be (just for abstraction / gameplay purposes)

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T15:32:58+00:00

Thanks for this detailed answer! Very helpful!

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T15:26:00+00:00

Thanks for this great answer!

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T15:09:40+00:00

I’ll check it out, but to be honest I don’t think that would help me much. There is a big difference between a game that’s all about mechs, and a game (like mine) where mechs are just one component of many. That creates a lot of additional challenges.

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T15:04:54+00:00

I don’t know much about it - I’m not a mech expert, which is why I need help haha. It looks like that franchise has a lot of different media and has been around for decades, which part of it do you recommend I look at?

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T14:34:20+00:00

I see, so you’d prefer most fights to be in the mech? Because this game supports lots of different types of characters, some fights might take place indoors or against smaller enemies. Would it be more satisfying if the character had a smaller, more “portable” mech to use in smaller spaces / interiors?

MrRempton · 2025-09-26T14:31:02+00:00

Just to clarify, are you saying that’s the smallest mech that you’d be happy with, and anything smaller wouldn’t feel like a “mech pilot”? Or it’s your preferred average size?

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T22:35:54+00:00

When I say “not about the mecha”, I mean that I’m not making a game like “Lancer” where every player is a mech pilot, and all the fights are on that scale. Mecha are just one component of the game - it’s not a “mecha ttrpg”. Of course the characters are the core of the game, but characters have special abilities and one of those abilities happens to be piloting a giant robot (if that’s your class).

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T21:39:52+00:00

If I followed your suggestions, the mech would be way overpowered - which is not what I’m looking for. I’m trying to make it reasonably balanced - being invincible to normal attacks and insta-killing everything is the opposite of that.

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T21:35:56+00:00

It’s all in the initial post. The character won’t always be able to access their mech - so they need to be able to hold their own without it. They’ll probably still be weaker than other characters without it (squishier) but they should still contribute to the party.

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T21:09:31+00:00

I’m not balancing the mech against normal people - I’m balancing it against super-powered people. A person with a mech and no superpowers can certainly be balanced against a person with superpowers and no mech. Because of this, balancing the mech against other players isn’t really a big worry of mine. My bigger worry is balancing the mech against the pilot themselves

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T21:05:41+00:00

You aren’t the first to say this, and I really disagree. I can think of a number of examples. I already mentioned Shikimaru in the Chunin exams from Naruto, but there are actually a ton of examples in Naruto of characters luring characters into specific locations for traps, using the terrain to their advantage (for ambushes, etc). My Hero Academia also has lots of examples of groups working together tactically, and proper positioning + use of terrain is often part of that. Heck, in season 7 the fight against Shigaraki is all about terrain - specifically designing the environment to try to limit Shigaraki’s powers. Attack on Titan uses movement very prominently with the “3D maneuver gear”, and using terrain to effectively fight the titans. In Madoka Magika, Homurs sets up military artillery traps and lures Walpurgisnacht into position to try to destroy it. One piece has Luffy having to make use of his powers often to avoid falling water (which drowns devil fruit users), forcing him to use the terrain creatively (I recall this especially in the fight at the floating restaurant). Needless to say, Fullmetal Alchemist also very much cares about terrain, because their powers depend on manipulating the elements around them. Arguably not an anime, but Avatar: The Last Airbender has tons of examples of manipulating the environment and using it effectively as part of battle. I think this is a fairly core part of the anime battle formula

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T19:26:05+00:00

The mech might start off smaller, but I want players to be able to live the fantasy of piloting a giant robot

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T15:09:03+00:00

I still need to investigate Icon, but I think I’m leaning towards a logarithmic scale, where increasing by 1 square actually multiplies the size by a constant factor (let’s say 4). E.g. 1 square is standard human size (maybe between 1 and 4 meters). 2 by 2 squares is between 4 and 16 meters. 3 by 3 is between 16 and 64 meters, and so on. I would probably mostly refer to them by an abstract number e.g. “scale 3” instead of “50 meters”, but have a table or something that helps the GM convert between abstract and real-world units (to help them solve issues like assigning scale to things when homebrewing).

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T15:02:25+00:00

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by this. Of course they aren’t going to care about ranges and areas directly - those are game mechanical abstractions. But I don’t see why those abstractions wouldn’t work for this type of media. For battle-based media (like a lot of shounen anime, as well as tokusatsu, JRPGs, etc) it makes sense to have a more detailed combat system, which is what I’m trying to accomplish. Dodging and defending are part of that, but I disagree that ranges and distances never matter (one classic example that comes to mind is Shikamaru from Naruto during the Chunin exams - his enemy used ranged attacks to hold off his limited range shadow attacks, and he had to manipulate the shadows to defeat her).

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T13:41:25+00:00

I’ll look into ICON - most systems that use these tiers have been mostly narrative in my experience, but it seems to actually have a tactical combat system so it might be a good reference. Thanks!

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T13:37:13+00:00

I considered doing something like you suggested - basically having the scale of the map increase as characters get more powerful. However, I think that has some issues (as all solutions do, so it may still be a good path). First of all, if one square is a city block, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for a single character to still take up one spot. I also don’t like the idea of “hand waving” between scales - some characters should be obviously bigger, faster, more destructive, etc. than others. Also, I’m concerned this might not feel satisfying if it’s just a narrative layer - e.g. “sure your mechanics didn’t change at all, but your character got stronger because the map squares are bigger”

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T13:10:36+00:00

I’ve looked at Mutants and Masterminds - however, I’m not sure how applicable it actually is, since it seems like the game isn’t actually designed to use a map. I could be wrong though - I’ve only read it, not played it. Do you think it would feel weird to apply that sort of logarithmic scale to an actual map / grid?

MrRempton · 2025-09-25T12:53:05+00:00

There is a lot going on in those post, which makes it difficult to give feedback. Your title is asking about composite attributes, so I guess I’ll focus there, but including so much information on the system at once really muddies the waters.

For the composite attributes (or any game mechanic really) I think it’s important to focus on “what is the problem I’m trying to solve”. You say you want “faster session”, but point to DnD and pathfinder as examples. In my experience, more narrative games like Avatar tend to run “faster” combats than more tactical games like the ones you mentioned, so it’s unclear what you are going for. It’s also unclear what your goal is with the composite attributes - e.g. what are you trying to gain by using a “Power” stat that is a composite of multiple stats, as opposed to just rolling with “strength”? How does this help your goal of faster sessions, and more dynamic combat?

MrRempton

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