This is a *very* rough idea, so stick with me.

Characters have a pool of dice, we'll say 10d6 for our purposes here.
The player has a sheet of paper on the table in front of them with different areas boxed off and labeled. I'll explain this as I go. At the start, all of the dice are in a begining box we'll simply call "Dice" until I can think of a better name.

Players select a number of dice to roll from their "Dice" pool in the combat. I see stated action with Sorcerer-like GM bonus dice for good roleplaying. Such bonus dice are of a different color and are returned to the GM after this roll. Individual dice rolls are compared highest to lowest. The player with the highest die roll has won the round and the other takes the number of "victories" in damage. The losing player places that many dice in the "wounds" box. Then both players place all of the dice they have just rolled into the "Fatigue" box. If this isn't the first round of combat, the player then take the number of dice out of the "fatigue" box equal to their recovery number. However, they may not take out any of the dice they had just put in.

example: Sam and Max are fighting. Why? Because they hate each other. Stay with me here. Both start with 10d6. Sam decides to risk 4d6 on his flying elbow smash while Max spend 5d6 on his quick split groin punch. They roll:

Sam 6 2 1 1
Max 6 5 4 3 3

The sixes are ignored, so Max wins the round, causing three dice of damage to Sam. Sam puts three dice in his "Wounds" box and then one die in his "Fatigue" box. Max must now put five dice in his "Fatigue" box.

Next round, Sam goes for it with 4d6 and Max decides to hedge his bets with 2d6.

Sam 6 4 3 2
Max 4 3

So Sam wins this round and Max put his two dice in his "wounds" box. However, Sam must now put his four dice in "Fatigue" but he gets to take the one die already in there out with a Recovery of 3 (Notice that Sam can only remove the one die from last round during "recovery" even though he doesn't have enough dice from last round to get his full recovery) Max, also with a recovery of 3 gets to take three dice out of his "Fatigue" box, leaving only two in there. The current dice tally is Sam 3 and Max 6. It is not looking good for Sam.

However, a character may make a Last Ditch Effort at any time. This means a badly beaten character may roll his "wounds" instead of his normal "dice." the "Wounds" dice are rolled as normal but with some additional effect. Every wound die that rolls higher than his opponent may return to the normal dice, skipping Fatigue altogether in this case. But any unredeemed wound dice are then completely removed from play.

Later on, Sam is reduce to one die, nine wounds, while Max is still sitting pretty with four dice, two wounds, two fatigue. Sam decides it's time for a Last Ditch Effort and he rolls all nine wound dice. Max anticipated this and rolls all four of his dice.

Sam 6 5 5 4 3 2 2 1 1
Max 5 5 5 4

Sam wins the round, doing a point of danage to Max and regaining one die! All-in-all a pathetic showing since Max will get three dice from his "fatigue" next round and Sam still only has two dice and now all of his Wounds dice are gone, so there is no chance for a second second wind.

OK. It seems a little to close to SOrcerer in some ways IMO which wouldn't bother me if I wasn't reading Sorcerer a bit lately. If I read a different game, would this idea change?

Anyway, what do you think?

Jack,

I recommend checking out Donjon, which I think has pretty much nailed down the kind of mechanic you're talking about.

Best,
Ron