Battle System for upcoming RP, Accepting suggestions too. Options

[Nicsp]

So, as some of you may know, i'm currently working in a simple action-based RP which will, hopefully, attract new people here to these subforums. Now there's a problem, because of the nature of this RP, there will, no doubt, be many battles. And since the point of this RP is to attract new members, not only the usual text battling way could be a bit of a disadvantage for new RPers but also would require a certain distancing from the author to it's character since, as we all know, no one likes losing.

I have discussed what battle system should be used with Sparrowsmith via PM for a while and we came up with two options to choose from, one being very simple but requiring the need of one or more admins of the RP to be frequently present to handle the battles and the other one a lot more simple but also very complex. Needless to say, we are also accepting suggestions, if any of you have any.

"Rock, paper, scissors" system by Nicsp.

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Instead of making up their own weapons, the GM will make a list of avaible weapons and assign to these weapons ten points through three different "stats", that data will only be avaible to the GM and to the player who owns the weapons, and then when two people fight, we have them choose what stat they want to use to battle the opponent, the stat is then PMed to the GM who will then reply to both people saying which is the winner. Each of these stats "beats" each other (Think rock, paper, scissors.), and when that happens, the "winning" stat gets a 2x value bonus over the other one.

So...By example...

Bob has...A shield.
Block: 5
Charge: 4
Strike: 1

John has...A chainsaw sword.
Block: 3
Charge: 3
Strike: 4

Block>Charge>Strike>Block

Bob uses block and John uses Strike.
Bob: 5
John: 4

But since Strike>Block then...

Bob: 5
John: 8

John wins.

Now on another occasion:

Both John and Bob use charge.

Bob: 4
John: 3

Since charge=charge then Bob wins.

After the result has been calculated by the GM and sent back to both of the RPers involved in the battle, it will be up to the RPers to now RP the battle as they see fit, keeping in mind which of the two has to win.

Tactical Stance system by Sparrowsmith

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An RP fight needs to go on as long as is necessary for entertainments sake, but as short as is possible for story development. One idea would be 'stances'.
In each post you can either change your 'stance' or attack, but not both. The three stances are offensive, defensive, and moving. If you're defensive, you can't be hit or hit, if you're offensive, then you can hit and be hit. Moving is for any REAL movement (of course you can move while attacking or defending) moving is for positioning that would take time (such as an archer getting to a good distance for firing).
This would still be difficult to do, but would create a real sense of a battle field...

So, these are the two options we have at the moment. Opinions and suggestions?

[Moonpearl]

Just stumbling over the topic and didn't take time to read everything. I was just thinking, you might want to add a mechanic which makes it so, that the longer you stay in the same stance, the more powerful it becomes. This would give the winner an advantage, but on the other hand make his moves more and more predictable, and thus easier to counter. Let me take an example, sticking to the Rock-Paper-Scissors standard:

A plays Rock, B plays Scissors => A wins and gains 1 point. If A wins again using Rock, he will gain 2 points instead. So the obvious move for B is to play Paper. But, knowing that B will probably play Paper, A might want to give up his advantage at Rock and play Scissors instead.

Then again, it does not sound very exciting with a mere Rock-Paper-Scissors system because there are two few options. Now let us consider a 5-options Rock-Paper-Scissors (infamously known as Rock-Paper-Scissors-Lizard-Spock), of which rules I state below:

• Rock beats Scissors and Lizard
• Paper beats Rock and Spock
• Scissors beat Paper and Lizard
• Lizard beats Paper and Spock
• Spock beats Scissors and Rock

Just as the standard Rock-Paper-Scissors, it is a perfectly balanced game, in which each move beats 2 other ones and is beaten by 2 other ones. Let us try the ascending mechanic with it:

A plays Rock, B plays Scissors => A wins and gains 1 point. Since A has an advantage at using Rock again, B will consider using either Paper or Spock. Now for A, the obvious choice is to play Lizard instead of Rock, since it beats both Paper and Spock. Knowing that, B might want to take a chance at a move which beats Lizard, instead of Rock. Then again, if A DOES play Rock, they're in for some serious trouble. It all goes down to a game of guessing where each player knows what the other knows and have to take a decision based on how deep they think their opponent will read.

The idea is still rough as such, but more generally, seeing a fight as a whole process rather than as a sequence of unconnected actions might help the system grow more interesting.