Best RPG system for «Midnight»

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[Kraken_rpgworld]

For me «Midnight» is «Games of patriots in Spy-Guerrilla style»(c) (MetalGearSold forever!)
What problems the system focused on opposition of army of minions and «evil zoldatens» against the guerrilla and heroes should solve?

If heroes could win open fight with armies of Dark Overlord, he never would win.(с)

The system should create not conditions of systematic clearing of land from minions, and conditions of systematic clearing of land from you  (с)

-The system should encourage dissymetric tactics and knowledge gather.
-The system should stimulate a victory at the expense of factors of unexpectedness, sudden concentration of forces.
-The fighting system should allow to win the strong enemy small forces at right tactics.
-The system should punish for disorder panic and impreparation, must have fear\morale points.
-The system of combat should be very lethal, but give the second chance.
-The system should stimulate imperceptible moving, preliminary data gathering, contacts to the population.
-The system should address to problems of illnesses, weight of transitions, provisions search

In the sum it becomes visible that DND approaches for the decision of these a problem a little.
What system you could advise?
PS: sorry for very bad english

[Harrowed]

Sorry, I can't place those specific requests with any game system that I can think of.

[Dain]

Well, if you try to be as realistic as possible, then Rolemaster and alike are the one you should focus on.
I'm sure you'll find a rule for every single point you can have in mind.

In my opinion, H.A.R.P from I.C.E is my favorite. It's a compromise between realistism and still fun. Fights are deadly and a lucky arrow can kill anyone. With hero/fate  points, you still have a second chance in case this happens to you

samwiseseven did a wonderful job with that. Have a look
http://www.ironcrown.com/ICEforums/index.php?board=133.0

[Doomed Hero]

West End Games' D6 system covers most of those. It's the system the original Star Wars RPG used, and is epic in feel and fast paced and fun to play. It can also be made to be quite lethal, but the Hero Points mechanic can keep a character from dying in many cases.

Riddle of Steel is also an extremely good system, best used in very small groups (2 or 3 players at most). It has the most dynamic combat system and character advancement system I've ever seen. It's dark and gritty,and is a very good fit for Midnight.

[Judd]

I'd have to go with Burning Wheel.  It has many of the features you list above and has the coolest Elves, Dwarves and Orcs that I have seen in any RPG.

http://www.burningwheel.org/

I ran a campaign with Riddle of Steel for quite a while and liked it quite a bit.  That is also a good, if brutal, fit.  TRoS does not leave a whole lot of room for mistakes.  One error and you are dead.

BW is a bit more forgiving.

[Doomed Hero]

Burning wheel is a very good fit. I agree. My one issue with it that the character burner is very hard to make midnight-compatable. Potential GM's have to be familiar enough with the system and setting to basically write their own lifepath charts. The lives of characters in Midnight tend to be vastly different than the ones in the very middle-earth-like setting of Burning Wheel.

That being said, if anyone does take the time to make up those charts, I really want to see them.

[Judd]

I don't think the characters are all that different, just a few General Skill points spent in Stealth, Falsehood and so on to show a different way of life but I don't think Midnight needs entirely new lifepaths.

Good luck in your search.

[Satyr]

Unisystem by Eden Games is a very good match for Midnight. It is a very easy to homebrew stuff for it, which makes it easy to convert the setting to the system.  And since one of the games, All Flesh Must Be Eaten deals with all things about zombies and undead creatures, which is not a minor part of Midnight.
I prepared a little thingy in this regard.

[Doomed Hero]

I don't think the characters are all that different, just a few General Skill points spent in Stealth, Falsehood and so on to show a different way of life but I don't think Midnight needs entirely new lifepaths.

Hmm. I think we have different ideas of what the lives of most elves and dwarves in midnight are like. Or maybe I just need to look at the character burner again.

[dkknight777]

Pathfinder RPG: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG

& here's why, since the bulk of Midnight material was for 3.5: http://sob.apotheon.org/?p=461

[Doomed Hero]

Pathfinder RPG: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG

yep, that's what we use.

As the game progresses, I notice more and more that the system still stresses past level 6 or 7, especially with a large group. Pathfinder works well, but if I were able to start again, I'd probably use one of the others mentioned earlier. D6 maybe.

[amertes]

Doomed Hero,
I'm curious, what about the game using Pathfinder after 7th level "stresses".  Is it that the pcs become too powerful at that level?  Complicated to run?  I own Pathfinder but I haven't played it yet.

[Doomed Hero]

Pathfinder has the same inherent issues that 3.5 had. A lot has been mechanically balanced and the more complicated and clunky mechanics have been smoothed out nicely, but there are some flaws inherent in the d20 system itself that you have just accept and deal with if that's the system you are going to use to tell your story. (that doesn't mean it's a bad system, i use it and enjoy it. i'm just aware of it's quirks.)

It's a level based game, which means it has inherent "tiers" built in. The power level is predictable, which is nice for being able to scale encounters and whatnot, but it also means that the style of play changes drastically at every odd level (and one or two even ones. The breakdown is basically along Spell Level lines. Every time characters get acces to the next level of magic, the whole game changes. (Especially 5th. That's the most obvious example). It also happens to a lesser degree every time a melee character gets another attack per round.

What this means for midnight is that the "sweet spot" where the story is the most fun to tell in the nature it's intended (desperation, fear, scrounging for resources, ect.) is between level 3 and level 7. Beyond that, the characters have access to too many tricks and hit too hard. An eighth level party should be able to mask thier movements well enough to fool all but the most impressive trackers, dish out hundreds of points of damage a round (enough to kill damn near anything in one round, especially if they get the drop on it) and then retreat so fast that half of the enemy won't have even gotten a chance to act yet. (don't anybody give me any lines about scaling up the encounters or catching the party off guard, or any other crap. I'm only using this as an example of power level, not any reflection on how I run a game. My players post here. Ask them if I have a hard time with challenging a group).

After 7 the game bogs down. Multi-weapon fighters have about 4 attacks per round, and have to make frickin' flow charts to keep track of their bonuses and attack modes. Casters have access to 4th level spells, which are the beginnings of truly powerful spell effects (enervate springs to mind), and the number of buffs that can be afforded and layered starts getting out of hand. The game slows down because players are having to keep track of more information. Rogues are tossing fireball damage with every hit, and with multiple attacks, that starts slowing things down just from the math. The encounter sizes go up, because now the bad guys have minions and lots of hit points. The GM's turns start taking forever. Keeping track of it all becomes a logistical nightmare. The higher the characters raise in level the worse it gets.

If you want to use D20/Pathfinder to tell a midnight story, I highly recommend using this variant (I probably would have if I'd known about it at the time I started my campaign.)

http://www.myth-weavers.com/wiki/index.php/Epic_6

It's pretty easy to balance with Midnight. There's a few tweaks that have to be made to Heroic Paths, but if you just pick the benchmark abilities, give them out sooner and ignore the filler, it works pretty well. Some of the higher level enemies need reworking, but that's actually easier than trying to apply templates or whatnot to high level critters. It's fewer numbers, so it's quick. You just have to wrap your head around the fact that the levels mean different things now. Instead of being level 25+, the night kings are now somewhere around level 10. Instead of having 600 hit points, that giant dragon has about 150.

Hope this helps.

[amertes]

Thanks for the response!

Has anyone played a high level Midnight campaign, say past 10th level?  What did you do to keep it challenging?

[babayaya]

Hy, jsut passing by........

I mastered a high level campain, very high in fact, since my players achieved over 15h lvl, and the most accurate finished 22 after 108 playing session (5 years).

You have so much to put in the hand of these heroes...
Even without any enemy!
just think at the 15th level group going into baden's bluff, they absolutely have to be silent, invisible, even for the resistance!!! no one can be met, or the pc must absolutely lessen their capacity to avoid baden's bluff population the persecution off hiding high resistance heads....
travelling in to open air too..... tehy can be felt by astiraxes or high lvl legates...
Or even can have been observed by a shadow lord for some time..
and then he uses them to counter another one...
etc...........

this have been a fabulous cheat and trick game...

but as always in midnight, all of them, exept 3 (out of 9) died...
I nearly transformed one of them in the 5th shadow lord, the one who's missing (regarding the portfolio of izrador)... the shadow. but the other ones killed hm before the transformation was completed... (they were 8 to try... only 3 returned with an average 3/5 lvl loss....).