Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors in D&D/TTRPGs

[PhoenixPhyre]

I think if you want to do RPS in an RPG, it really should be at the level of moves, not the level of units/characters.

So it would look more like "defend/attack/feint" as the RPS elements.

A lot of play by post games did similar. At a basic level, each character could have ratings in each of those maneuvers (or whatever you chose). When there's an exchange between characters, each one picks a maneuver secretly and both are revealed - the winner gets an effect equivalent to their rating.

This also creates some more interest, as the big bruiser that does attack will need to be defended against (assuming defend beats attack)... but.... since they KNOW this they also would want to do some feinting on occasion to beat the obvious counter to their strong move.

At the cost of drastically slowing down action resolution. Because now everything's an opposed "check" of some type. And that's super ultra slow once you have more than just a few combatants. Because instead of being able to roll 20 attacks at once and counting successes, I have to do the whole thing individually for each pair.