Greetings there !
I'm a long time french game master of Runequest (the original first edition was the very first RPG i bought after reading a review).
I apologize ahead of time if the topic was covered elsewhere. I have big expectations about the upcoming new project but i wanted to share some ideas about a precise issue that had bugged me for a long time in the combat rules of the original system.
The Attack/Parry system worked fine until the skill % reached 90-100, but then the fights dragged because parries wouldn't fail often enough unless, of course, magic allowed someone to shift the balance. I happen to have done some ancient fencing and the idea that a fight between two novices would be shorter than a fight between two master at arms didn't feel right to me. More importantly, it didn't really feel dramatic either from a movie point of view. Apart from combat, there also was the issue of comparing opposed skill successes (social interaction, perception vs stealth ...).
That's why i liked the idea of "the highest roll among identical levels of success (normal or critical) beats the lowest",
it shortens the fights between high skill fighters and also felt "intuitively right".
it adresses the issue of conflicting skill rolls (not only combat related)
Another approach was also used in the Hawkmoon RPG :
you could parry several times in a round but your parry % would drop by a cumulative 20% each time.
a Master (90%+) gained a free attack after each successful parry but each successive attack would drop his skill by 20%, cumulative too.
The consequence of that was that a fight between Masters would lead to a flurry of attacks / parries / riposts until one failed or was hit. That "felt" much more dramatic (and also more realist for the fencer in me *winks*).
I am unsure which system the designers are leaning towards but i really want to point out that the gaming tables i ran stumbled on that issue several times, either because of realism or storytelling rythm concerns.
