Diceless combat

For what it is worth, I have seen something similar to a "diceless" combat with still some random aspect of chance, using cards. I believe it was the Saga system. I don't want to repost all the rules as I can't remember than all in detail, but I remember the feel and the intent.

The players were given cards at the beginning of the game. The higher the "expierence" of the character the more cards in your hand. When doing actions, you added the card's value to your character value. It could be tricky cause you don't draw cards every turn (at least that I recall). This adds some element of "random" meaning, that not just the highest person wins with stats, but also less random as the players can decide when it really counts, and lay out the high ranking cards.

If you wanted a twist on it, I could also combining some elements to others and getting away from just the pure numbers. I am really going out on a limb here and not well thought out, but I could see something akin to:

-> Players having different fighting styles on their character sheet either simply by a style like finesse fighter, or brute-strength brawler, or defensive fighter with riposte, or something like that, or something very specific, like skills like jab, slash, fient, parry, riposte,etc.

-> The cards would have options listed. Say each card has three options on it with different levels on it. Players have a trait to help them like spirit or something, that they could exhaust to trade in their hand if it was really bad.

Let me try to lay it out a bit more with an example.Setting (to go with what you have, modern day conspriacy stuff). Player A is a cop, as such he has the abilities Trained Hand-to-Hand (basically trained course work, whether that is boxing gym, police academy self-defense, or the local Y karate club), where as Player B the perp has Street-fighting. Other type of skills in the game could be Self-Defense. So basically you have three categories of fighting for hand to hand in this game - Streetfighting (like bar room brawling, your local toughs, or whatever), Self-Defense (this is what your mom took when there was a string of muggings), Trained Hand-to-Hand (this what boxers, or marital artists, or police or FBI would use).

Now this system is assuming two things. One you are not using hit-points, but some kind of wound system, like wounded, serious, mortal, dead (so lets say four levels for this example). In this system like ron mentioned, it is a total outcome. So you take your skill (lets assume skills are 1 to 3). The differance is how much damage you do. The card will tell you if you hit.

A typical card would be like this for the above system:

Attack
Streetfighting - Quick Jab +1
Trained Hand-to-Hand - Solid Blow +1
Self-Defense - Turn the Attack +3

Defense
Streetingfighting - Duck and Weave +3
Trained Hand-to-Hand - Dodge +2
Self-Defense - Ziged when you should have zagged -3

There would be a bunch of these cards, say the player's expierence determined how many they could have in hand. For the purpose of this example, lets say that each player had only one card, and that it was the example above.

Player A is a decent Cop - he has Trained Hand-to-Hand +2
Player B is a small time crook - he has Streetfighting +1

Player A puts down the card, Trained Hand to Hand +1, for a total of 3, should be pretty good. Player B though puts down his card, which is really good +3 for a total of +4 so he manages to dodge the attack.

Had the situation been, Player B small time crook with knife, and Player C, and a highly trained nurse in Self-Defense (to deal with the crack heads that come in the emergency room it would play out for the same card like this)

Player B streetfighting +1
Player C sefldefense +3,
Player B plays card, quick jab with the knife for a total of +2, but Player C only has this card, so she has to play it, -3 + 3 = 0, for a differance of 2. She is seriously wounded now, and gives up to the crook.

Obviously you would need more cards, and a mechanism to allow players to lose and redraw cards.

Another different but similar option is to just have cards but have numbers on them, but also put an extra for if they have the attribute on their character sheet. I could see a whole game built around the number 4 (for the four suits in a normal deck). Where there are different character attributes such as hereo, anti-hero, villan, misguided if you played a card of the right suit you that matched your attribute or fate you would get a bonus. Or something.

I know that the above was a bit rambly, but hopefully you get the idea that diceless doesn't have to mean no random, and it could mean less random. Where there is a random element to determine a "pool" or "hand" you draw from, but it is up to the players to decide how to utilize that pool to the maximum effictivness.

I could see the above even being used for a "gmless" or "shared narrative" type of game as well.