I had an "eureka" moment, but I'm not sure how well it will fly with others. I was thinking about magi, and I was thinking about fighters. Magi cast spells, and once they exhaust their supply of spiritual/mental/residual world energy, they cannot cast spells anymore. Fighters fight with their weapons. Then I wondered to myself: What if there were a fight between two warriors, where every single blow was parried/dodge/shield blocked, and each skill they used failed, or was countered by a legacy? They could fight forever.

Now, I know this would never actually happen, since no CF character can actually be that defensive, much less two of them, but then I asked myself: if mages can exhaust their mana, why can't warriors exhaust their bodies by fighting? Why doesn't swinging your sword take 1 move? Why doesn't swinging a 2-handed sword take 5 moves? Why don't more skills than flurry (and others, I'm sure) require and expend more endurance? This would make constitution and moves very important, could give another strategy for beating warriors and fighters. After an epic battle, the fighters would truly be worn out, and easy pickings for hidden enemies! Forced march would be worth something in the later levels! I realize this would take a huge amount of rebalancing, and change the game in a huge way, but the idea, at least, makes sense to me.

Any input, anyone?

Cador and I talked a bunch about doing something along these lines what seems like forever ago, and overall I lean towards thinking this wouldn't be a good change. Move-sapping attacks can already be pretty devastating in the right conditions.

Yeah, sorta like Tac said. I think there's merit to the idea, but I think it would be way un-fun in the long run to deal with.

Actually, I think two rangers could quite easily be this defensive, or at the very least heal faster than they did damage. I mean sparring in general with another PC attempts to reach this ideal (fighting forever). Other than the fact that this would suck royally at low levels (as if moves don't suck enough then already) the amount of rebalancing I feel would make it prohibitively difficult. Fatigue, energy drain, iceball, entangle, hamstring, crippling strike, and so forth would change so much vs their current usage that it really would become a nightmare. Not to mention the fact that fighting someone to exhaustion and then being able to wail on them unhindered until they died presents some very abusable situations... How'd you like to be plagued to hell, energy drained, and then simple have to sit there as an merc or some PC keeps you more or less permanently stuck.

It's a realistic idea, but I don't think it's implementable in CF.