Ok it's time again for "Krazzman's can't believe he has to" post.

I shudder at the mere mention of it's name... DSA - Das Schwarze Auge.

It's a german system that works on points and has a pretty messed up fluff...
Afair you start with a few Generating Points. I think we started with ~100.

From this you buy yourself a set of Attributes and your Social "Standing".
Depending on your choice of attributes you can buy one out of a set of classes. There are good ones like Knight or Soldier or such things but also classes like "medi-evil callboy", wench or Teacher.
Furthermore you can choose a "Race" and a Homeland. Depending on Race and Homeland you get Disadvantages/Advantages directly.
You can also get disadvantages and advantages for GP to a certain degree.

I for example played a Pathfinder from the north and so I had Fear of the Dead and Curious. In some castle I was curious what was stored in some boxes (failed my Curiousity Check (Rolled a 11 against the DC of 10) and had to save against Fear of the dead failing that again with a fumble (nat 20) and running around screaming like a little girl).

After you have chosen disadvantages and your class you get skill points. From Race Homeland and Class you already have some ranks in certain stuff and your starting gear. Skills are categorized into segments from (i think) A through H and you can bring them to a maximum of 20 (if I don't miss something).
There are some professional skills like woodworking/sewing and there are others like sneaking, hiding etc.
Instead of an attack with melee value you have weapon categories.
Now it get's a bit blurry as I can't seem to recollect it correctly but You have a certaing attack and Parry value. In combat you can afaik either attack twice or Attack and parry or double parry or dodge.

Now comes the advancing point. If you used for example your skiing skill and rolled a nat 1 (critical success) for the next 1 skill point it's rank is reduced by one category. B becomes A or the otherway round... basically it gets cheaper. Skills and such raise in cost as you push them. The next point of a skill might cost over 1000 Exp. while in about 7 sessions we had ~2500 Exp earned... and we did some pretty epic stuff...

Furthermore you can buy advantages afterwards. Not all but some. For example you fought through throwing daggers for the last 6 sessions and you have earned enough exp to get the feat that you can throw more daggers in the same time. Or you can get an advantage that let's you navigate better in swamps/deserts and such.

The magic system.... I don't know but from the stories I heard it can be exploited. For example the party had about 20 soldiers under their command. And they all were equipped with tridents and pants. That was it. They were trained to hold their breath while fighting and swimming. The party sent them into combat with full-plated enemies and on a command made a Dome of Water.

Another time they killed a large group of horsebacked knights with 2 trees a wool-spin and the road the knights were taking.
They spanned the wool across the path and between two trees. They casted a spell on the wool so it wouldn't break and! would not move for the duration of this spell. Then they taunted them so they gave chase to them and after the wool decapitated the knights the party calmed the horses and then looted everything.