(12-07-2014, 11:16 AM)Jaques Wrote: To be clear. I am not going to say that this is a -bad- idea and that it shouldn't be done.
However there are some wildly different ideas regarding: approaches/base ability/and base potential between the mages I've come across. Some effectively casting Roe sized ice prisons with a flick of the wrist to those needing to channel to cast a basic fireball. Some play around with elemental resistances/weaknesses while others do not. So finding an agreeable system to sort of bring them around to more or less a common level might be difficult.
Then there is taking the hits/moderating spells to be 'non-lethal'. While in physical combat it's very easy to tell when someone is goin' too far and going for those truly debilitating or deadly shots. Magic? Eh. Could get tricky.
You maybe could do a tournament where mages compete but don't actually fight -each other.- Some sort of aetherical gymnastics course if you will?
I was thinking about that sort of problem, and the solution that I came up with was including some sort of objective other than "KO the other guy." Maybe something more clever, like "destroy this thing they're protecting," or "knock this guy off these platforms onto the floor." One of the more developed ideas I had was somewhat reminiscent of one-on-one pro-bending with nothing but ring-knockouts. Manawards / Protection Spells would probably be a thing too, to prevent people from getting auto-fried.
As for skill-levels, that would probably be the sort of thing that would have to be balanced by a roll-system, like what the Grindstone does at the moment. There are fighters of varying talents there as well, and (as far as I can tell) the roll system they use hasn't drawn too many serious complaints.
At least not public ones, anyway.
