Continuing from the last post (Building a Combat System From the Ground Up), the next step after establishing control of range is determining the result of offense and defense. Because there are already many methods there to handle this, I won’t waste time trying to convince anyone that what I like is best; just use your favorite. The only important piece is that the degree of success has some influence on the magnitude of the effect – having only pass/fail results diminishes the importance of everything before the roll and encourages all-or-nothing decisions. Instead, I’m going discuss the idea that putting out damage shouldn’t be the only viable goal in combat.
The effects of a successful offense can go beyond simply damaging the opponent, such as the opponent being disarmed, forced to move, be restricted from moving, or even studied to gain insight into his movements and habits. Some of these (such as disarming) are options in most RPGs, but are usually subject to additional rolls to determine their success. If there are multiple opportunities for failure, players are less likely to attempt anything other than the standard option of doing damage, even when their character otherwise would. Instead, these other options should succeed so long as the initial offensive roll resulted in success.
The threshold by which a combatant succeeds should improve the intended effect. In the case of damage, extra success would add more damage, or allow damage to a specific area of the body, such as the head, a limb, or vitals. With a disarm, the degree of success could indicate whether a weapon or object held in two hands is removed, if it falls to the ground, is flung away, or the combatant is able to retain his opponent’s disarmed weapon and thus arm himself with it (or even use it immediately on that, or another, opponent). An object worn or slung over one or both shoulders might be the object of the disarm, which might require a higher threshold of success. In any event, a successful result that doesn’t meet the required threshold should have a partial effect – a two-handed weapon is held in only one hand, one strap of a backpack is slipped off, or two combatants both clutch a bag and must try to wrestle it away.
The degree of success when attempting to move an opponent can directly translate into the distance moved, or it can be progress toward a threshold required to force an opponent into something, over the railing, or off a platform. Conversely, when trying to immobilize someone, further success would not only prevent them from getting from one place to another, but also from moving their limbs, turning their head, or speaking. Forced or restricted movement causes the environment to become integrated in the combat, rather than just a backdrop, and allows characters who shy away from combat to manipulate the environment to aid their ally or hinder their enemy.
Studying an opponent’s movement and reactions for openings and weaknesses is a common occurrence with real-world fighters, but is almost never modeled in RPG combat. A successful attempt to study the opponent can result in a bonus to the combatant’s defense and/or offense against that opponent, with more degrees of success increasing the bonus, or giving some insight into which tactic he may choose to employ next. A character doesn’t even need to be the one in a fight to do this; coaches often offer valuable advice to their fighters during a bout.
Making sure there are explicit and viable non-damage-dealing options in combat can be enough to make the combat blend with the story more seamlessly. Another important consideration is to give something for characters that are less physically oriented ways to contribute to a combat. However, for characters whose specialty is combat (and players who enjoy it), there needs to be a depth to combat than just seeing who rolls better. The interaction of tactical methods discussed in the next post does just that.
Large Polyhedron Collider 
I agree with the idea that combat should include more than just damage-dealing moves. When I play with a squad (or multiplayer that gives me assist points), I prefer using crowd control tactics. Anything that makes the battlefield easier to manage is very helpful and a lot of fun.
It also reminds me of Shadow of Colossus, where you have to look for the vulnerable areas on each colossus to defeat it. For me, it would have been even better if each boss had tactical vulnerabilities (rather than just “hot spots”). Some RPGs play around with that, but they could do a lot more.( After all, those final boss battles are usually just spamming damaging shots at the boss, who is often immune to many crowd control tactics.)
I also really like the idea of partial success being an option instead of it being pure hit-or-miss, because that’s more realistic as you said. And for me, “coaching” like you mentioned would be an awesome option, since I often prefer strategy to damage-dealing. Great ideas!
Thanks, glad you liked them. I get a little bored sometimes during RPG combats (pen-and-paper or video game), which is most of what prompted to me write this series. I think most of the conventions just stem from war-gaming systems, where they may work as fine abstractions in that context, but don’t scale down to individual combat very well. Wearing down an enemy withe the best attack repeatedly is just a grind for me, which causes me to skip past a lot of otherwise very good games.