Advanced Combat Rules

 A LOT of players are going to experience Standard Combat, But the reason they take on combat is to do all the cool things they saw great Warriors do when they were growing up. And like the characters see the cool actions, the players want to 'see' the cool combat.

Awesome Advanced Attacks

As a refresher, you have an Attack score, approx. 12 for Warriors, with a Modifier, lets say 'Melee' of 4, and you're going into your first dungeon. You have no special skills, your opponent, likely a goblin, has a dodge score of 1, over a defence of 0. So you have a 15 or less. which is 60% chance to hit. After One to Three attempts you've likely hit the poor creature, and the damage you roll is enough to kill it. 

Nothing Special.

But then later, when fighting, maybe an Orc, you manage to roll a 1 in combat, and what does it give you? Well if you failed to hit, but within 6 of hitting, you roll a d6, minus from the Attack total, and now maybe you DID hit. The GM or the PLAYER makes a description of HOW that played out, to make it more interesting.. The Orc raised its shield, but in the wrong direction, pushing the blade into (roll location on d12) its shoulder, a HIT!

OR, if you already hit, realizing you did, you take the split second decision to push the blade deeper, causing a further 2 points of damage.

That's about it for a low level character.. except, you might have already noticed on some monsters sheets, their 'fumbles' and your 'fumbles' against them.

In an effort to help GMs, each creature typically has a few obvious fumbles.. goblins dropping their weapons, or just freezing in spot, panic'd, Orcs overswinging, leaving themselves open to a follow up attack. Or smashing their weapons into walls or furniture, leaving them disarmed for a round. This is the early stages of Advanced Combat.

Players, having reached certain levels of proficiency can start triggering bonuses with certain weapons. Players can assign a 'bonus' to a 1+[die value] for extra bonuses, ontop of the 1s bonus.

A Player with an Axe might nominate 'twist' causing 2 extra bleed damage, spraying themselves with blood, and giving them 'grim visage' effect to all opponents. A Players with a shortsword, nominating any 'miss by 1' as a 'feint' attack, allowing them to 'draw back' 2 initiative for a 2nd attack, where the opponent loses 1/3rd their defence as they attempted to dodge or parry the first attack.

Then the ultimate, where players start taking on known combat manuevers from famous swordsmasters, then the counter manuevers to their opponents famous moves, and in retort the counter-counter moves, especially if he is left-handed and a leaper..