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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Polydamas" data-source="post: 5054437" data-attributes="member: 388">The memorable rpg duels I've been party to have been jedi/sith lightsaber fights (always cinematic, and our campaign's jedi would always fight alone against sith because their code demanded it), a duel between wizards that were brothers that finally decided to settle their affairs once and for all, our fighter challenging a barbarian's tribe leader to allow passage through their territory and my starfighter pilot finally closing with a long time enemy in a duel in an asteroid belt where neither party could escape easily.I think the previous posters are correct, and generally you can get duels set up by cultural norms or specific circumstances.  Culture: a warrior code, recognized way of settling disputes, advancing the ranksI would introduce this aspect early on so your players know that duels are part of your world and carry certain pressures with them. Something else to introduce is that perhaps not all duels are to the death, some might allow for yielding.Situational: Isolation, surrounded, only one character has a weapon that can affect the other party (or knows the right style to defeat the other person), only one person can enter the environment and survive, only one character has the right skills for the environment (in a sci-fi setting, the pilot will the be one to fight another pilot in vehicle combat)Think of your favorite movie duel, it probably has:emotional reason for the duel and/or a more practical reason to fight (invading the fortress/saving the princess/activating the device and the other party stands in the way)cool terrain/environment for the battlenew things happening/complications intruding during the fight/environment changesI'd suggest using minimal changes to the rules so your players can focus on the fight.Using 3.5 as an example, I might start a duel in the middle of storming a castle, when the pc sees his long term nemesis and they close to fight while the rest of the party is spread out and swept away to different parts of the castle by the tides of battle.  Said environment would be filled with neat stuff, like gates to drop and tables to leap on, doors to hide behind etc. To make sure that fight moves around, I might add the rule that the person who did more damage (or had more successful strikes, to not penalize disarms and the like) that round gets to move the fight ten feet in whatever direction they chose (including adjusting their relative positions) and in a "tie" round they would randomly move. I'd also throw in a complication every 3 or 4 rounds, like a barrel rolls past calling for reflex saves, two random npcs run up, etc. This would make for a pretty memorable fight, I think.</blockquote>

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