I don't believe  ELGainsborough thought a dice system would remove the competitive aspect of the fights. He did say that he felt if people were less competitive and focused on writing a good story that all of the problems we mentioned would go away. I think we all know the desire to win is too great for most people to pass up, which is why [b]both[/b] rule based and free-form RP arena battles suffer.

[quote=Lalliman]

Anyways, regardless of system choice, I’ve been considering the practical implications of applying dice mechanics to an arena game, and the main problem that comes to mind is: When a player tries a special maneuver to gain an advantage on their attack, e.g. leaping to attack from above, how do you rule this? You can’t let the player grant themselves a bonus arbitrarily, and you can’t make a list of roll modifiers for every possible situation. Have you considered this?
[/quote]

Just to play Devil's advocate, the point of using a dice system or anything gamey is to set up a set of rules. In chess, a knight cannot charge across the battlefield and take out swaths of foes. Instead, they move in a very awkward L shape and crush whatever's beneath them at the end of their turn. It's not realalistic, but it makes for a fun game between two players. By simply having a small list of special maneuvers that actually do work in game, we can simply deny bonuses to leaping attacks or other attempts at power playing. That, or we set up rules so that the players involved can prepare for moves like this and execute/deny them with the right setups.