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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 854851" data-attributes="member: 63">I'm a big fan of duelist culture.  Despite its inherent absurdity, I love watching episodes of anime like Rurouni Kenshin, where during a duel, people standing on the sidelines comment like:*Bad guy, wearing strange striped black-and-white clothes, taunts Kenshin, then punches at him.*Kenshin's buddy says:  "How did he managed to get a punch past Kenshin's guard?  He must have some sort of strange power in his arms."Kenshin thinks: It seemed as if his arms stretched while he was attacking me, as if by magic.  His reach is longer than it should be.*Kenshin recovers from the blow, backing up since the battle pauses after each attack.  Slowly, Kenshin ponders, then switches his stance so that his blade is fully straight in front of him.*Kenshin's buddy says:  "What's Kenshin doing?  That stance is normally only used in a charge?"*The bad guy taunts Kenshin again, then goes for another punch.  The action slows, and we see Kenshin staring down the length of his blade.  At the last moment, he dodges to the side, avoiding the punch.  Then he slashes at the bad guy, wounding him but not killing.*Kenshin says:  "Those stripes on your arm are an optical illusion, and they make it harder to tell exactly where your arm is.  But I was able to use my blade as a measure of your position.  I watched your shadow on my blade, not your body, and I was able to dodge your attack."*Bad guy runs away* I think stuff like that's kinda cool.  The characters are actually knowledgable and quick-thinking in how to combat their opponents' various styles, and I think that in a game it would add a lot of flavor if players and characters could recognize different fighting styles, and either be caught off guard by unusual moves, or use their knowledge to overcome their foes more easily.Earlier in the year, I posted a thread about spell dueling, since one of my PCs in my current game is a trained spell duelist.  I ended up creating an entire spell-dueling subculture within my game, based loosely on the different styles of decks I see in Magic: the Gathering, so that over the course of the campaign, the PC has encountered a few different duels.  Some were practice, some were for prestige, and one, coming up soon, is going to be to the death.  I think it's added a unique feel to the game, since the mages now each have distinctive styles.  Michael's PC . . . well heck, Michael himself, is particularly skilled at outthinking opposing spellcasters, so it has encouraged the other PCs to focus on fighting the non-magic-using bad guys, so now I have this paradigm where the bad guy mage shows up with his minions, and the minions fight the melee fighter PCs while the mages on either side try to control the battleground and focus on each other.Part of what has added to the duelist 'feel' is that I've played up counterspelling.  Most mages beyond 5th level have the Reactive Counterspell feat, and Michael has maxed out his Spellcraft skill so he can try to figure out enemy spells.  I'll occasionally pull out a new spell that he doesn't recognize, and it gives him fits for a while, which is what I was hoping for.  Also, I let mages make Bluff-Sense Motive opposed checks to try to hide what spell they're casting from Spellcraft checks, or to fake a spell so that an overeager counterspeller wastes a Dispel Magic.  Finally, only one mage so far has used fireballs (she's an NPC with the party), and her fireballs actually tend to get rebounded or messed up in such a way that they hurt the party about a third of the time.  So the spell duels are more about cunning than firepower.Now, what I want to come up with are some nice ideas for how to incorporate a duelist mentality for other characters.  I won't do it in this campaign (except maybe once or twice on a lark), but I think it'd be nice to have on file in case the situation comes up.  Sure, warriors can whack at each other with swords, but when was the last time one of your games had a duel that sounded anything like that match between The Dread Pirate Roberts and Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride?  Likewise, I was wondering what a duel between thieves would be like, or between druids.In Tournaments, Fairs, & Taverns, I had rules for dueling to make one-on-one fights more reactive and reliant on tactics instead of just rolling, and I included a few variants that were posted in the old <a href="http://enworld.cyberstreet.com/news/modules/Downloads/store_folder/General_Resources/EN.doc" target="_blank">ENWorld's Fair thread</a>.  However, those were mostly rules.  I want some more ideas to make dueling more roleplaying-related, and not rely so much on rules.  Any thoughts?  Rules are, of course, welcome, but I don't want this to get moved over to House Rules, since that's not the focus of the thread.</blockquote>

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