If combat is not the main focus of a game, can the combat resolution be simple?

Is rolling a D6 with mods all you really need or since it is "Life & Death", should there be a more complex system for combat than for other things?

for a RP game, the combat  that is  there , should invoke some kind of 'worry'..and the effect it has on the campaign/story. ( winning ..losing..death//wounds  ect ect )

 The  GM/DM  should  be able to  say 'this is how  combat works"..no mental gymnastics , or  charts.. Just Rp +  dice rolls and your done.

Yes, but be wary.  Simplified combat means less varied results with the "variation" coming down purely to fluff descriptions and some Players aren't going to be as happy with that.  Make sure that how ever you're doing it, you communicate to your Players the intent and how things work in advance.

I would say it does depend on your preferences.  Combat has the greatest life or death consequences, as you said, and a great deal of uncertainty, which is why many systems have more rules governing combat than interaction, sneaking/hiding, or other non-combat things. For some, having those rules means that they have a little more control over what they do, as it's spelled out quite specifically what the consequences for their actions are. Having specific rules for weapons, armor, grappling/tripping/etc., wounds, dying, death can give some players or game masters a better handle on what is a very chaotic situation that a great many of us have never actually participated in (and hence prefer more concrete rules to govern it).

That said, you can certainly do something with a d6 sort of system if you prefer your combat slightly more abstract in the rules and more role-play focused.  Some of the systems I've played have a very basic mechanic for everything, including combat, and it still works out well.  Description is the lifeblood of any role-playing game, after all.

If your game is not very combat-focused, there is certainly an advantage of keeping the rules for combat simple (for faster resolution), and that can certainly work in your favor!

There are plenty of games were traditional "combat" isn't the main focus.

This doesn't preclude conflict, and mechanics to resolve that conflict.

However whatever conflict resolution mechanics are chosen should work to support and push whatever the game's focus is.

If a simple D6 would do that, there's nothing wrong with going that route.

The main thing is to make sure that those mechanics actually support what the group is trying to accomplish with the game.  Otherwise it might be better to find a system that has actually gone through a design and testing process which will support the group's goals rather than trying to boil something else down simply for the sake of simplicity.

I rarely get involved in games that are focused on combat situations, and even when I do, I tend to take non-traditional approaches to combat, so that the typical combat rules often require a little tweaking.  As such, I tend to prefer games that have a fairly simple combat system in the first place...if the GM is already going to have to make judgment calls on what I'm trying to do, I figure there's no sense worrying about a rules-laden combat system (it's not that I set out to find loopholes in the rules...I just get ideas and find the GM is often responding with, "Well...the rules don't really cover that...but roll this and this and we'll see if it works," or something similar.  My personal favorite system for gaming was (and is) the D6 system used by West End Games for their Star Wars RPG, to give you some idea.

That being said, you can oversimplify combat, which takes some of the tension out of it.  It needs to be a risky proposition, and even in systems which are designed to basically require a player to deliberately attempt to be killed in order for a character to die, there's still a lot of risk as far as debilitating injury, unconsciousness, extensive recovery time, etc (at least, in my experience).

As stated by numerous people earlier, it depends on the focus of the game.  If you're going for a hyper-simplified combat system, that should be communicated to the players before the game starts (and I'd go so far as to say it should be part of the game information addressed in the RTJ information thread).  But if everyone's on board with the idea, there's no reason combat needs to be complex...I don't know that I'd boil it down as far as the results of a single d6 roll, but I do appreciate the random variations that can come into a game with some dice being rolled...

I was mainly thinking of using skirmish miniature games as a rule system when rolls were needed and making Role Playing rolls with that same level of resolution.

Free Kriegsspiel style of game.
https://boardgamegeek.com/thre...iegsspiel-revolution

Do you think this requires a "higher level of abstraction" than players as single individuals?