I am sorry if my earlier input sounded negative. To be sure, RM/Arms Law is totally usable, on the understanding that these rules apply for and against anyone within my campaign, PCs and NPCs alike. That's why we've been playing it for literally decades. (Now I feel old.)
Funny as it may sound, the only combat system that I ever liked better happens to be FASA's BattleTroops, but that system is focused on firearms and sort of breaks apart when trying to depict medieval-style hand-to-hand combat.
Back to the original topic of this thread, I think the initial question was about comparing Arms Law rules to what we feel are the underlying concepts of hand-to-hand combat. And in response to that, my feeling is that RM can be criticized for:
- randomizing things that it should not, while at the same time limiting (for lack of a better word) things that I feel are actually significantly more random;
- taking a too linear approach on what is "better" where equally valid choices actually should resemble a rock, paper, scissors approach (i.e. chain mail is good against blades, so-so against bludgeons and almost worthless against arrows {mind that was a simplified example!})
- micromanaging things in a way that lends itself to rules lawyering.
If you asked me how to create a new set of combat rules that will work with existing Character Law rules, this is how I would go about it:
1. Treat Body Development as exhaustion points, and abandon the concept of hit points. Instead of ticking off hitpoints when suffering damage, characters should have Wounds applied to them that incur penalties. The combination of two Wounds may be worse that the individual effects of those two Wounds. Make Wound healing a lot more unpredictable. An approach that I liked was HarnMaster (I think) where you rolled for your wounds each night and depending on circumstances (wound severity, constitution, overall physical condition/other wounds, food, bed, medical attention) the roll could result in the wound getting better (reducing the penalties), not better or even worse.
2. Instead of individual weapon skills, develop specific "attack styles", i.e. methods to hit an enemy. This is the maneuver you roll for during your action phase. A given weapon (i.e. sword, spear, etc.) will give a bonus to different attack styles; effectively, each and every weapon is used as if using a weapon kata under Arms Law rules. After all, mace will give better results when bashing the enemy, but a naked fist will do in a pinch.
Very successful attacks may yield a bonus for the following step:
3. If an enemy is hit, determine where you hit him. A major factor in this are the combat styles that the two combattants use. Some forms of DB (especially shields) actually only come into play at this point, but could not prevent you from being hit in the first place. Parrying with a shield, for example, actually means you deliberately allow yourself to be hit on your shield arm which has tremendous armor through the shield (smart against human-sized weapons but think twice using a shield against that troll's tree-mace!). Parrying with a weapon would include the weapon itself as a hit zone.
4. Once you know that you hit, and where you hit, you want to know how you hit. Let's say your chosen attack style was stabbing, and you hit the enemy chest. What kind of wound are you going to inflict? Attack style, weapon used, armor on hit zone and strength of attacker all go into determining the type of wound. Armor will typically change the wound type to more harmless types, or deflect an attack entirely; certain armor types will perform better against certain attack styles and not so good against others (e.g. a chain mail may make a cut become a bash, a leather jerking may make a bash into a largely harmless push - lucky you if you wore a leather jerking beneath that chain mail; a plate mail may completely deflect a weak attack from a blade).
Hit accuracy, however (OB), does not have an impact on this! There is a cardinal difference between tagging your opponent and landing a serious blow...
The advantage of this approach is that it follows the process of attacking an enemy closer than the current rules, and reflects circumstances far more than the very random results of the existing crit tables.
On the down side, it adds at least one roll to the combat sequence, per attack, so it certainly does complicate things. Worse, you will have to differ between to-hit DB, hit zone DB, and armor protection.
