Heroquest alternate combat system

Posted by Cyphertest on Jun 07, 2010; 8:59pm
URL: http://the-lost-and-the-damned.71.s1.nabble.com/Heroquest-alternate-combat-system-tp5151089.html

Hey all,

Been lurking for a while and decided to run an idea by ya that I've been toying with.
Since stumbling across the now out of print Riddle of Steel rpg (http://www.driftwoodpublishing.com/whatis/)
I've fallen in love with it's quick start rules and in particular it's combat/dueling mechanics.
If you're unfamiliar with it, the whole melee combat system is built around the use of a dice pool that the player can choosed to split amongst offensive and defensive rolls each round.

I've been wondering how easily it would be to adapt such a system to HQ and its skull dice, with something like an opposed weapon skill roll when attacking another character/monster (ala Advanced HQ).

For example: a player faces down an orc, the player has a total combat pool of 6 dice, the ork has 4 dice.  It's the players turn so he attacks the moster using 4 dice (leaving his combat pool with 2 dice remaining), the orc decides to defend with 3 dice (leaving him with 1 die in his combat pool).

When it comes time for the ork to attack, he'll only have 1 die to use, while the player will have 2 dice to defend with. Once the players turn comes back around his combat pool refreshes.

Just a rough idea so far.  What does everyone think?