Being on the other side of the world, I'll refrain from the Florida jokes. (Here it's called Queensland.)
I've heard Florida compared to Queensland before so I'm fairly certain its apropos. It is really a much more broad cornucopia of insanity though, not just redneck shenanigans. Something for everybody I suppose!
But back on topic, and prompted by a comment a little bit upthread - what does
optimisation look like in 4e Oriental Adventures? I'll start answering my question with some musings on the GM side, thinking about encounter/scenario design.
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Manbearcat's ranger/monk hybrid kensei is built to have a single-foe duelling capability.
I think the "duelist" builds fulfill an interesting (robust tactically and in terms of being an asset) role within the framework of 4e's team-centric combat engine. Effectively it is that of the "offtank". While the primary Defender is locking down the majority of the enemies on the battlefield (or the most dangerous one), the "offtank" is able to manage one (or a couple) of enemies with their above average survivability, skirmish capacities, and modicum of control. They are universally Strikers (or the Bladesinger - Striker in all but name - and Swarm Druid - capable of big melee control and surviability) so their high damage capabilities plus perhaps a little focus fire from their friends will eliminate "off-targets" quickly. The 4e classes that can fill that niche are:
Avenger
Barbarian
Bladelock (with heavy armor and the right dailies/feats)
Bladesinger
Druid (Swarm)
Monk
Ranger (must have heavy armor or melee dex build + other resources devoted to survivability)
Rogue (Duelist build)
Slayer
The Kensai would fill that same role.
But dueling in 4e has its own limits as a part of the game. I know that there are 4e players who post here who have had success with duelling/arena-style encounters, but I've never had great success in making them work, precisely because they tend not to exploit the synergy/mobility elements of 4e's combat mechanics. (Contrast, say, duelling in RM or BW which can be quite dramatic, because of the choices between attacking and active defence that have to be made, and create the requisite suspense and sense of danger.)
Little bit of an aside, but seeing as my last game featured all 3 of the above as my 3 PCs, I had to find ways for 4e to support the paradigm you're speaking of. Broadly speaking, the best way it is handled is through:
a) A variety of Hindering Terrain on the battlefield that imposes one of the following conditions (Vuln 3/5/7 (save ends), - 2 defenses (save ends), - 2 to hit (save ends), give up CA (save ends). These effects must be transparent to the players (as they would be to actors in the fiction) so their agency isn't inhibited (and thus the whole exercise rendered pointless).
b) The duelists having both skirmishing capabilities and the requisite forced movement capacity to leverage (a) above.
c) Robust stunting tools (which 4e has) for the PC builds that don't forced movement amongst their suite of resources. Ath (str) builds for strongmen. Acr (dex) builds for the nimble/speedy. Bluff (Cha) for the swashbucklers. End (Con) for toughmen. Hist (Int) for the masters of technique/form. Ins (Wis) for the masters of reading opponents. Those all work as the skill catalysts for imposing forced movement stunts on enemies (and getting damage out of the rest of the damage expression budget) during duels.
Beyond that, a good way to handle this is through fortune cards drawn at the end of each round (which dynamically change the situation such as move both participants so many squares on the battlefield) or hacking some mechanic whereby the person who has the upper hand has access to an Escalation/Momentum Die (that doesn't "death spiral" the whole thing).
However, I do agree that duelist rules with less abstract resolution mechanics are typically superior for satisfactorily resolving the trope. Or at least there needs to be rules whereby (a) dynamic, genre-coherent, duel-centered complications can occur and (b) the participants must be steeped in agency to affect the outcome of said duel (by inhabiting the OODA loop of their duelist to as large a degree as possible. I've had several fantastic duels in DW, and those mechanics are quite different from RM and BW!
But dueling in 4e has its own limits as a part of the game. I know that there are When I've looked at 4e Dark Sun, I've wondered whether there's enough there to support 30 levels of play, in the sense that 30 levels consumes a lot of story material and I don't know that DS has the requisite depth and breadth (contrast default 4e, which in my own experience has a terrific set-up for this, with the way it integrates the planes and cosmology through all the levels, but has the fictional depth to allow the growth/expansion that are demanded by paragon and then epic tier play).
I wonder if classic OA might be a bit like DS in this respect. I have run an OA game that exhibited the sort of cosmological integration combined with expansion that is found in default 4e (and over 11 years the game made it to RM 27th level), but by the end it was OA only in flavour (samurai, Celestial Bureaucracy etc) but it didn't feel very much like Hero, Tai Chi Master or a Kurosawa film. It felt a lot like my 30th level 4e game is feeling at the moment!
This is an interesting point and I suspect that your ruminations are likely accurate. 4e's genre elements are broad and deep (thus supporting 3 full tiers of play). Like Dark Sun, OA's band would seem a bit more narrow.
EDIT - fixed some stuff that I mangled in my haste.
