I have no idea what cabal or class this might fit with, but it seemed cool at the time.

First, consider classic forceduel. Caller and target are transported to some magical place where they fight to the death. Sounds great. Except classes received it whose main problem is keeping people in combat. Paladin and Invoker come to mind. It could be argued that truly honorable combat takes place between equals, not between an over-geared, over-prepped power class and some poor shmoe who happened to type "quaff return" a split second too late.

So equal the playing field. Both are transported to the same magical place, only in my version the caller becomes a mirror immage of his target for the duration of the fight. That includes race, class, stats, skill%s, worn gear, inventory, affects, cabal powers, etc. The only difference I'd suggest is that if the caller and target share a common skill/spell/song/commune then the caller keeps his skill% instead of inheriting the target's.

End result: the caller can't rely on class imbalance, preps, or gear to ensure victory. He has to win by skill and skill alone, since he and his prey are basically identical.

If the caller dies then all mimicked possessions disappear and his corpse contains whatever he carried before combat began.

This then gives the Caller the ability to test all classes strenghts and weaknesses at hero level, without the gruel of ranking that class to hero. The caller instead just force duals all the classes he has questions/interests in and then procedes to learn the Cabal Powers, quest skills, and general fighting ability of ever thing in the game. Too unbalanced if you ask me.

Well, not without considerable cost. First they'd have to hero their character and role-play well enough to get the honorable combat skill. Then they'd have to duel and probably die to most people in the game. One combat session might not be sufficient to test out what they want to test out, so chalk up multiple deaths.

In retrospect, the worst thing about it would be the ability to discover things about other characters. Their skill%s. Legacies. Etc. It could always be designed so the caller gets "stripped down" versions of "score", "prac", "skills", etc., but then that would put him at an even more severe disadvantage since he wouldn't know whether he could rely on certain skills.

ok, invoker forceduels me...

Firstly, I am not in the "invoker" frame of mind, because I've played 10 characters since my last invoker.

Secondly, I don't know which paths the invoker took. I might end up trying to iceneedle him when he didn't take cold path.

Thirdly, I don't know what items he has. There's no way I can effectively take stock of the stuff in my inventory and on my body, let alone that in my containers without him getting several extra spells off on me.

Fourthly, if it is an ap, say, he could wield a staff to start the forceduel, then flee and switch to axes. You probably won't realise you are using a bad weapon until too late.

I think the victim would lose 95%, maybe more.

He has to win by skill and skill alone, since he and his prey are basically identical.

Except that one participant has hundreds of hours of experience playing that character to hero (and has a plan for the combat worked out), and the other typed 'quaff return' a split second too late.

I won't even get into the technical snags.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

No no no. You've got it reversed.

The CALLER assumes the form of the TARGET.

Say I'm Dakizar and I want to punk some rager. I'll have to do it AS THAT RAGER, instead of as Dakizar.

I can see a lot of people forcedueling liches, because,

they can afford to blow through the phylacteries. The lich can't, because he'll need them later one.

Not that that should be too big a problem though.