So I'm looking for an alternate game system for a campaign I plan on running. I was wondering if somebody could recommend me a system they prefer.
These are some of the ideas I had which I would like to see:
First off, I want to hew close to the idea that characters get better at skills by actually doing that skill - one becomes a better blacksmith by working at her anvil, not by stabbing kobolds until she gets to level up.
Also, I'd like combat to be dangerous at all times - I'd like somebody to be able to try to put an arrow in someone's face, or a dagger in the back, and have that actually perform as expected, instead of simply dealing some damage (this doesn't just go for called shots, either).
I'd also like to provide depth to martial combatants by acknowledging the different roles of martial arms and armaments - a dagger can slip through cracks in platemail, a man in a shortsword will have a difficult time charging a man with a halberd, and a man's chainmail is useless against a heavy iron club.
These are just examples, of course, given to evoke the general feel of what I'd like to see - kind of (if you'll excuse the reference) a Ghost Recon or Rainbow Six to Pathfinder's Battlefield or Call of Duty. If that makes sense.
The campaign I'm envisioning would probably have a slower character advancement, mechanically speaking (although that's an easy fix for any system), and might not necessarily feature magic, at least in a form useful for combat. So you needn't worry about that.
Thank you guys!
I think you may find it a little tricky to find a fantasy system that meets all that criteria.
You could check out Legend- which is basically Runequest, the pdf is really cheap. It features hit locations (with hp and armour being divided among different body parts), uses a pretty comprehensive percentile based skill system, and can be quite deadly.
Warhammer 2e is also quite gritty, and has a percentile based skill system, hit locations and cool critical hit tables that can result in things like dismemberment, lost eyes and the like.
This sounds exactly like a homebrew system I used to play when I first got into table top gaming. It was a very complex, d30-based system. I'll see if the DM still has it on the web somewhere.
EDIT: Try here