I like hitting things in TTRPGs. A good game for me has some hitting stuff and some good deal not hitting stuff.

But I can never find a system that balances it. Most games with satisfying hitting systems treat their characters as war gaming units with window dressing. This being all the D&Ds for example.

They may contain some abilities and skills for when not hitting stuff, but they must be purchased at the expense of hitting stuff, and to players the stakes of combat always seem higher even they they are not, so that’s where the build points go. That’s even if it’s plausible - most games have extremely weak non-combat skill systems.

That and these systems give their combat abilities far more control over the combat situation than noncombat abilities give them over the non combat situations. They’re just worse value.

I feel like we should separate these aspect of character development and work in better ways to give the players more control in non combat scenes so the GM doesn’t have to carry the whole thing… and still keep a decent hitting things system when we do it. #TTRPG