i thought of a complicated combat system

at the beginning of the game, each player is given a number of d6 equal to the number of players. all players are ranked arbitrarily (e.g. clockwise from the referee, alphabetically by name, etc.)

before any turns are taken, a player may choose to roll any number of d6 and bid their sum (otherwise, their bid is 0). their bid is compared to every other bid. player rankings are resorted according to who bid the highest. ties are broken by the initial ranking.

the dice which a player did not bid are retained as their stockpile.

each round, another d6 is added to every player’s stockpile, except for the lowest ranked player, who gets two.

rounds are divided into three phases. for the first phase, players take turns according to their ranking, lowest first and highest last.

each turn, a player may chose to roll any number of their stockpiled dice and declare any number of attacks. an attack is composed of a target (another player) and a d6 (which has not been used to attack).

low ranked players must reveal some of the dice they intent to use to attack. when taking your turn, for each player who has not yet taken a turn (i.e. the number of players ranked higher than you), you must reveal up to that many attacks. if you launch more attacks than that, you must only reveal the target, not the dice.

one every player has declared an attack, phase two begins.

in phase two, a player is considered “unguarded” if an attack has been declared against them, and they have not declared a counterattack.

for the following rules, if multiple players meet the same conditions, the lower ranked player takes priority over the higher ranked player.

• if an unguarded player (B) would attack another unguarded player
  3. then there is a third player (A) attacking the first (A→B). in this case, A “intercepts” B’s attack, defending C. B’s attack now targets A.
• if a player is left unguarded and they have dice in their stockpile, they must declare an counterattack.

when none of these conditions are met by any player, phase three begins

in phase three, attacks are resolved and players gain score. a player’s round score starts equal to their rankings (lowest = 1, the next player is +1 the previous)

to resolve an attack:

• if the two dice values match, the lower ranked player gets +1 score
• if the two dice values sum to 7, the lesser value wins. winner gets +2 score, loser gets ‍-​1 otherwise, the greater value wins. winner gets +1 score, loser gets ‍-​1
• if one player is unguarded, treat their dice value as equal to 0 dice used to attack are discarded

when all attacks are resolved, if a player’s round score is negative, they lose one dice. if their round score is greater than their stockpile, they gain an extra d6

if a player would lose a dice but has none, they lose the game.

so, with two players, this is kind of just rock paper scissors with extra steps

but with more than two players i dont know what the fuck happens