Tournament rules brainstorming thread

[econ21]

Here's my proposed system for duels - I am basing it on YLCs proposal, but trying to bring back the tie to ingame traits via the concept of a "fight value" (stolen from Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings strategy battles game). Personally, I would really like to keep that link to ingame traits - I don't know about everyone else, but I really take these to heart and would like to see them play more of a role in the game. Part of the reason why Arnold chasing Jan in KotR was such a spectacle - aside from the great role-playing - was his intimidating traits.

Also, I want to keep a - small - chance of death. If it is just a drinking game or chariot race, I don't think it would matter so much. These duels are to decide matters of honour and the whole point is to show you are willing to risk your life to protect your honour.

So here is my suggestion for the rules:

Players have three duelling stats:

1. Attacks: How many six-sided dice (D6) they get to roll each combat round. This depends purely on valour (experience) with breakpoints determined by how they affect unit stats in game, specifically:
0-1 valour: 1 dice
2-3 valour: 2 dice
4-6 valour: 3 dice
7+ valour: 4 dice

Each round, the players roll their dice and play rock-paper-scissors (RPS), the winner of RPS getting +1 to all rolls but with a 6 being the highest roll you can have, even after modifiers. If there is a tie, then the player with the higher fight value wins.

2. Fight value: all players have a fight value of 50, which is then modified by +1 for each rank of a good duelling traits and by -1 for a bad duelling trait. As in Cecil and YLCs earlier work, I will make a list of each qualifying trait. I can also maintain a public list of fight values during the course of the game.

3. Hit points: all players have 8 hit points plus or minus hit point adjustments from their traits.

The winner of a round does 2D4 hit points of damage. When you have zero hits points or less you lose. Combat rounds continue until one player is at zero or one player yields.

Consequences

There will be two kinds of duel: honour duels and duels to the death. Both require mutual consent.

In both cases, the victor gains 1 fight value and the loser - if surviving - loses 1 fight value. These will be tallied by the umpire over the game and require no changing of traits.

In honour duels, a double in the damage roll for a round results in death to the loser if it takes them below -3 hits points (so a wounded fighter may want to yield after the first round).

In duels to the death, when the loser yields or reaches zero or negative hit points, the victor has a choice.

Killing the loser gains them +1 dread (change battle dread, or - if maxxed out - strategy dread)

Sparing the loser gains them +1 chivalry (change battle chivalry, or - if maxxed out - strategy chivalry).

If there is some interest in fleshing this out, I can draw up a list of modifiers for qualifying traits and retinues, and address the issue of champions.

Any thoughts? comments?

I would be happy to umpire all duels bar my own - I hope I can be trusted to honestly use random.org for the rolls - but I think the system is simple enough that someone else could easily umpire any duels in my place if required.