So, I'm not the first person to come up with this idea and I won't be the last, however it's sitting in my brain right now so now it's here.
Anyway, the standard combat in D&D and the like often boils down to "I roll to hit" until one side runs out of blood. I know there's a lot of things that you can do to change this, and incentivizing out of the box behaviors is at the heart of the OSR, but with how often violence as a solution to problems seems to come up in roleplaying games it will too often get bogged down in "I roll, you roll" etc.
I don't want to add in a whole bunch of new mechanics, codifying in rules the cool things you can do and by implication limiting what you can do to what is on your character sheet (5E already exists after all). In fact, I don't want to touch at all on the "doing cool stuff" bit of combat, this is just about a very boring slog combat being a little more interesting to run and be in.
Design Principles
The principles of this little experiment are threefold:
1) To make combat more exciting, fun, and engaging for both players and GM
Pretty straightforward, any and all rules should facilitate fun and enjoyment, it's a game after all.
2) To offer more player agency through increased player choice
A core tenet of the OSR philosophy (at least as far as I am aware of it) is of player agency and player choice. I don't think necessarily adding more mechanics facilitates this, but I want to increase the number of opportunities that the players get to make meaningful choices.
3) To reduce GM paperwork
I'm both lazy and poorly organized. Offloading as much bookkeeping to my players as possible can only be a good thing for me (plus, there's more of them they have more processing power collectively).
4) Shorter more brutal combat.
I find combat generally a bit uninteresting; however, if combat is too easy for players it will become the default option, and if it is too hard it effectively removes it as an option altogether. So, making combat more dangerous and quicker is my ideal.
Player Facing Defence Mechanic
Have players roll for defence, rather than having a static number. Again, I am not the first to think of this (it is the default in GLOG I believe), but this idea incorporates my design principles for this so in it goes.
First for the fun. Not a surprising observation, but players like rolling dice. So why not give them more of that? It gives a player a sense of accomplishment when they hit an enemy, but they don't feel as much if the enemy doesn't hit them (even though the exact same effort of equipment decisions, character build, and luck went into both), so why not have the "not getting hit" be a player facing test.
I'm not about to hang my hat on that and be done, as just changing who is doing the rolling does not a more dynamic system make. I also want to increase player agency and reduce my paperwork. To this end I want to make a list of "defence options" for the players to choose from.
1) Dodge: Jumping back out of the way. Rolling basic agility/dexterity modified by how much stuff they have. This has the added bonus of making encumbrance a more central mechanic beyond how fast you move. The Wizard will definitely want Tenser's Floating Disc prepared in order to be able to remain unencumbered and dodge out of the way.
2) Parry: A roll with a weapon to parry blows out of the way. Pretty straightforward and using whatever skill you use to attack in hand-to-hand combat. Allows for bonuses for parrying daggers and the like.
3) Armour: A roll to try and get his where your armour absorbs the damage rather than you. I had been using armour in my game as damage reduction as I always found it a bit weird that armour made you harder to hit, but this idea sort of squares the circle for me. Better/more armour increases your chance of success with this roll, but more weight is going to reduce your dodge ability.
4) Shield: A roll to deflect the attack with your shield (if you have one), sort of a halfway between armour and parry it uses skill modified by the quality/size of the shield. Makes magic shields a lot more useful without making them overpowered.
5) Utilising the Environment: Finding some way to use the space that you are in to your advantage: ducking behind a pillar, rolling under a table, claiming the high ground, etc.
Well, that's fair enough you might say, but won't people just concentrate on rolling their most advantageous defence and have done? Once again turning combat into a roll-off slug fest? But wait, there's more:
Each type of defence can only be used once per combat
There are two exceptions to this, and the first is utilising the environment: each use of a different aspect of the environment counts as a unique defence action. This incentivizes thinking outside the box in terms of non-character sheet options, more of an opportunity to think of interesting things to do.
I also want to make fighters more fighty. The point about being a fighter after all is to be able to be better at fighting than other people, but that mostly comes as an increased to hit bonus (and anyone who has done any form of combat sport knows that there is more to knowing about fighting than that). So I am thinking that fighters get multiple uses of the different defence types.
Running out of defence options then will put a limit on fights without them becoming so dangerous that they are an unfun part of the game. Plus, there are several options for defence and a fight that lasts five rounds is already quite a slog.
This will additionally lead to more character choice in terms of equipment loadout; do you take the double handed sword which does huge damage, but by doing so go without a shield? Do you go without armour and shield, but have a dodge skill that so high you can dodge the first attack of anything? Use the awesome magical cattle prod that will electrocute things, but is incapable of parrying? Knowing most players to be conservative with their PCs lives, I do expect people just to stock up on as many defence options as possible but I could be surprised.
OUT OF RANGE AND COWERING
What to do when you run out of defence? I don't want there to be no other option than keep taking hits to the face, but I also don't want to force a party split, or to make a huge deal about it if some people do want to fight to the bitter end. I want there to be a choice of non-participation in the fight short of running away.
Being out of range is pretty simple, as it is running away a little bit. Out of range depends on the enemy, but mostly it means being far enough away that they could not hit you and also you could not hit them. This will of course depend on the monster; a dragon for firey breath, guards can have crossbows, a Poisonous Froad can grab you with its tongue, etc. so being out of range is situational. Being out of range is a trade-off in that you cannot hit the enemy, unless of course you brought a ranged weapon! This is always assuming there is someone else in combat with the monster, holding it there (if the entire party is out of range then why does the monster not simply walk over to the party to hit them, and if it can't due to a chasm or other obstacle then that's no longer a fight really is it).
Assuming there is a situation where you cannot get out of range, and you have no defence left, and you can't/don't want to run away, and you don't want to just keep getting punched in the face, what do you do? Curl up into the fetal position and cry?
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Well... yeah, kinda. It is well known that players are of the Commander Quincy Taggart school of combat, however if there is a more clearly defined route to surrender they may take it. If a character is Cowering they take no further part in the combat, but are also considered a non-threat and therefore not attacked. This means no jumping up and saying "Actually, I'm not Cowering now! I stab!" and no "I'm going to sneak off during the fight" If the combat ends in the party's favour, all well and good, but if they lose then the Cowering character is considered to be taken prisoner or otherwise at the opponent's mercy. No need to railroad into being captured if its a choice players can more easily take to save their character.
Some creatures this is obviously a bad idea (hungry manticore will hungry), but even creatures that wish to eat may be full after eating the rest of the party.
MONSTERS DEAL STATIC DAMAGE
Again, not a revolutionary idea, other people have thought this up before me. This is mostly about less bookkeeping for me, and the reduction of anxiety of accidentally killing off PCs by high damage die rolls. I don't need to be resolved to let the dice fall where they may if the damage is always going to be the same.
Having static damage, as opposed to random die-based damage, allows for greater informational awareness and a greater ability to make an informed choice thus greater player agency. If a Dragon deals 10hp damage every turn on a failed defence rather than 1-10, you consider combats a lot more carefully and can better judge how long to stick it out before curling up into a terror soaked ball.
That said, variable damage can be interesting and it's not necessary to throw it out altogether. Perhaps to combine with the rolling for defence, there is a static damage ceiling for monsters and damage is taken commensurate by how much the defence was failed by. Turning it away from a binary damage/no damage and into a sliding scale that rewards better defence.
MONSTERS ATTACK EVERYONE EVERY ROUND
It has the added bonus of making enemies easier to scale depending on party size. If you're like me and have a reasonably informal drop in/drop out game, it's near nigh impossible to balance encounters in prep as combat balance varies wildly depending on party size. However, with monsters attacking everyone every round, the monster scales itself to the party size.
This also fits well with a before enemies/after enemies binary initiative without worrying too much about the tactical layout of things. It also means finding a way to deny the enemy an attack for a round is far more valuable.
BRUTE SQUADS AS MONSTERS
So rather than wondering where every individual mook is, we assume soldiers/skellingtons/skaven are swirling around jabbing where they can, throwing rocks, and otherwise making malicious nuisance of themselves. Every time they are hit, more of their number go down (represented by the hit points of the group)
The other idea I will steal from my beloved 7th Sea is that the power of the mob of goons is proportional to its health: the more health the more of them, and the more damage they do. It then follows that the less health they have the fewer of them there are and therefore the less damage they do. This is a bit more bookeeping, but I'm willing to take this one thing on the chin. Rough ballpark, for every 3 hp they have they do a damage? Maybe make it simpler, they do damage equal to their remaining HP.
As for combating a group of PCs vs a single low powered goon: do you really need to run that? I mean, can't they all just jump him? I honestly don't think it comes up enough to worry about. Have a deadly assassin, towering evil knight, or other such champion as a single monster; otherwise just fold them in as the leader of the brute squad.
I'm not sure if this will necessarily be more fun, or easier for me to track, or anything I set out to do (probably needs a playtest), however it has been a fun little design experiment and I'm looking forwards to having a chance to run with it.
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