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Hey, all.  I did some thinking, and this is how the RR combat system might look:

The three Ma Jiang suits, Bamboo, Circles, and Characters, represent respectively Attacks, Defences, and the Ten Thousand Arts.  Attacks and Defences are exclusively body techniques; Ten Thousand Arts are everything else.  Sleeve magic, needles, furniture, whatever.
The five directions correspond to the five elements: Earth:Centre, Water:North, Fire:South, Metal:East and Wood:West (If I'm not confused.)
Fa Cai and the White tile respresent, respectively, External Qigong and Internal Qigong.
The Flowers and Seasons represent really wild and crazy things.

Combat runs like this:
The players simultaneously draw tiles, as usual.  The winner has the 'advantage', and has the first opportunity to declare a technique.  Instead of taking the lowest-ranking tile in any conflict, the winer takes the tile he won with.  (Rules change alert.)

Techniques are performed by expending tiles, in this way:
A simple technique uses tiles from only one suit, and nothing else.  There may be no more than four.  For each tile, the opponent must discard the highest not-higher-ranked tile of the appropriate suit:
Defences destroy Attacks, which destroy the Ten Thousand Arts, which destroy Defences.
If they run out of tiles in that suit, they discard *low* tiles of the next suit in the ring.

Complex techniques make use of the Directions.  Any Complex Technique has two Direction tiles: the one representing the Attacker's Element, and the other representing the victim's Element.  In addition, it has whatever number of suit tiles, with one restriction: To use an additional suit, you must expend all the tiles of the previous suit.
If a Complex technique destroys all of the victim's suit tiles, he loses the use of the attacked Element.  If it does not, that Element's Alchemy (terminology change) is reduced by one anyway.
Example:
La "Sorrowful Fingers"Chi Lai notices that he has North and Centre, corresponding to his Quickness and his opponent's Conviction. and decides to use his signature Technique.  He throws down the two Directions and every Character tile he has (five of them), as well as three Circles.  It turns out this will run his opponent out of tiles totally.
He snatches a pen from a clerk as he runs over his desk, and brushes by his opponent.  In a blurry moment, he signs his name across the dismayed monk's forehead; the poor monk freezes for a moment, thrown totally off-balance.  He feels his confidence crashing down inside him.

Qigong techniques use the Green or White tile, and any number of Directions.  These shut down Direction tiles; they are narrated differently but don't work differently mechanically.  External qigong is the use of qi to do things to people; things like the Buddha's Palm in Iron Monkey are external Qigong.  Internal qigong is less obvious to describe; it uses qi on oneself.  The flying in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was internal qigong.  You'll notive that that was totally self-involved; internal qigong takes away opportunities, rather than destroying ability.

Finally, Flowers and Seasons end battles outright.  Flowers are always emotional endings; one character either decides not to fight any longer (for the time being), or is so distressed he cannot.  Seasons represent a change in environment that makes it impossible to continue the fight.

At any rate, a battle continues until either a combatant leaves, or one cannot fight any longer - all his Elements are disabled or their Alchemies reduced to zero.  This is a rule - no one is ever trapped.  It is aleays possible to leave.

At the end of a battle, either character may declare a death scene.  The character with the lowest total Alchemy, or remaining tiles, gets precedence in the case of a conflict.  (This gives characters that are no longer useful a change to move some Planets before they bow out.)

Hello Shreyas,

I'm glad to see the continuing evolution of Refreshing Rain.

I have some questions, sorry if I missed their answers in other threads about the game:  

Does one play the tiles for combat in a traditional ma jiang hand, or in some other configuration?  

How will players be able to amass the specific tiles they need to do the techniques in which their character has skills? Will they be drawing and discarding tiles as play goes on so they may sift out the tiles that pertain to their character?  I"m thinking of games like Up Front  where the discard/draw ratio bottleneck can get really you stuck with useless cards. Not having tiles that pertain to your character could detract from the fun.

Again, I find the Flower and Season scene-framing device extremely appealing.  

Thanks for sharing!

--Emily Care

Emily, thanks for the comments.
I discussed some of this in a previous thread, but I'll summarize here.

During the tile-drawing phase, players usually draw three tiles and compare the second-highest.  There are mechanisms for changing which tile you compare and how many you draw.  The winner keeps the winning tile.  So, that's how players get their tile input.

The tiles don't have to be in a traditional hand, though that might be an interesting mechanic.  I'll look into ways that that could be implemented.

The idea behind all this is that the tiles drawn will slowly fluctuate in rank - while the characters' Alchemies are still fresh and tile tile pool is full, they'll be likely to draw high-ranked tiles.  If they hold those for too long, they start getting low-ranked tiles.  But they're likely to be playing tiles against each other, which keeps the pool full.

As for irrelevant tiles, I don't believe there is a such thing.  Every character has all five directions and is theoretically a master of his style of kung fu, so there will never be a wholly unusable tile.
On the other hand, there are some combinations of Virtues that might be difficult to sensically attack - Poise destroying Quickness or Grace destroying Compassion, for example.  Hopefully, the Directions will pop up often enough that those situations won't be forced too often.

Um, Shreyas?

The mechanics sound really cool, but I'm having a hard time visualizing this and keeping all the tiles in my short term memory at once.  I sense others may be having the same difficulty.  Could you gives us an example of play?  Not something long and complex, but something along the lines of the brief Varashi-Neranja fight from the early Torchbearer discussions.  I really think that would help.

Ai ya.  I had this big long post, and then I closed the window.  Bah.

Anyway, I was going on about an example of play, at Jonathan's request.  It went something like this:

Quote from: Example of Play
Burning Lily Ming was climbing up the wall of the governor's mansion, trying to overhear the dealings that were going on inside, when a flying rock struck her foot.  She lost her footing, and was forced to give up the climb, landing at the foot of the wall.
An unknown attacker uses Ten Thousand Arts to attack Defenses.

Out of the grass emerged Pi Ma Wen of the Bamboo Broom school, a famous rival of Ming's Fearsome Blossom mnastery.  Upon seing her opponent, Ming flicked a clod of dirt in his direction with an effortless twist of the toe.  It flew by his eyes, making him squint and sneeze.
Ming attacks Wen's Poise with her Grace.  She doesn't use many tiles, so though Wen is thrown off a bit, and his Poise Alchemy decreased, he is not yet disabled.

In response Wen assumes the "Iron Monkey Twirls his Staff" stance, and the two begin to exchange blows.
The two are simply drawing tiles here, looking for opportunities to do something neat.  They accumulate tiles, until...

Suddenly Ming, seeing an opening, executes her Nine Lily Strike, tapping several pressure points on Wen's neck and arm with blinding speed.  He spasms a moment in pain, and when he regains his composure, his arm is hanging uselessly by his side.
Another complex technique: Ming attacks Conviction with Quickness.  Rember that Conviction also represents physical strength.  In this case, Ming has used a goodly number of tiles, enough to force Wen to discard all of his suit tiles.  This means that Wen simply cannot use Conviction anymore in this scene.

Wen, seeing that he is outmatched, throws a crumpled ball of silk that, momentarily, fills the air and blocks Ming's vision.  When it settles, Wen is gone.  Ming climbs up to the window again, wondering if they were heard.
As a last-ditch effort, Wen uses Internal Qigong to flee, throwing a White tile and all the Directions he was holding - two Norths.  Ming discards two of the Directions she held, and Wen declares that the scene is over.

This ties in to the Sky mechanics I've been developing.  I'll elaborate on that later.

Now, to me an integral part of Refreshing Rain combat isn't just its play, but its aftereffects.  The Sky is also controlled through tile expenditure, though in a much different way, so in a scene where a combat takes place, there are also the considerations of the Sky at the end of the scene, that colour the strategies used in combat.
So I figure, since the mechanics are so closely linked, I'd post the Sky rules, and ask if anyone sees any dangerous-seeming interactions between the two.
Additionally, I'm starting to see the Sky as a different level of conflict; it's a battle of shifting energies, played out in Heaven.

A comment: This system is a little baroque; it has developed some Gamist leanings, as I tied a reward mechanic into the relationship mechanic and the scene-framing.  I'm taking the Bagua out again and replacing the giant Sky board with a standard 19*19 Go board; I don't believe it's necessary to have a board so large to have the requisite plot interactions.  Planets, like Stars, live on the intersection of lines.

The Process:
When a scene ends, first the players move Stars to represent the changing of relationships, and then Planets to frame scenes or increase their Alchemies.
In the star-moving phase, the Astrologer (a player who's chosen to have certain Sky responsibilities) moves around the Stars until he is satisfied that they represent the current state of affairs, as we know them.
In the Planet-moving phase, the players take turns moving Planets, starting with the player who ended the scene and proceeding in order of decreasing total Alchemy, until someone triggers a scene or no one can move the Planets further.
If someone triggered a scene, that scene is played out.  If everyone is out of tiles, then the Astrologer picks a relationship to run a scene around.

Moving a Planet:
During a player's turn, he may move exactly one Planet.  He must have nonzero Alchemy in that Planet's Element to move it, but he may still move a Planet whose Element is disabled but not destroyed.
A 'movement' is a straight-line motion or a knight jump.  The base cost of a straight-line movement is its length, and that of a knight jump is two.  The Xth movement a player makes in his turn costs him X times the base cost.
Players pay for movements with tiles.  Suit tiles are worth 1, honour tiles (the Directions, Fa Cai, and White) are worth 2, and Flowers and Seasons are worth 4.

Results:
Four things can come of this:

You ended your turn by landing your Planet on another one.  This is called 'Capturing' a Planet; the Planet you landed on is lifted off the boad and replaced on a corner, or one of the five darkened points.  (The Astrologer picks an unoccupied point.)  You increase your Alchemy in the captured Planet's Element.  Your turn is over.  Alternatively, if that Element was disabled, you can enable it instead of increasing your Alchemy. (Another note: One should be able to use a Complex Technique to reenable an Element that an opponent locked, while in combat.)

You ended your turn by landing your Planet on the same space as a Star.  This triggers a scene in the Star's mind; either a dream or a flashback.  Regardless, events in that scene have game reality; they can affect peoples' tile piles and Alchemies.  This scene involves at least one of the Star's current relationships; move the Planet one space toward that, and continue moving it until it lands on an empty space.  This process does not count as movement.

You moved your Planet through one or more relationship lines.  This triggers a scene, or series of scenes, involving those relationships.  No Sky phase occurs until those scenes are played.  If this happens in addition to one of the two above outcomes, then play out their results before playing these scenes, or involve those conflicts in the dream/flashback sequence.

You didn't do any of that.  Nothing happens.

Interruption:
You can also Interrupt a scene to take a single turn as if it were the Planet-moving portion of the Sky phase.  Costs for moving a Planet during Interruption are doubled.  An Interruption can only trigger a single scene, whch is played immediately.  Time in the 'external' scene freezes while the Interrupting scene is played out, then resumes when that scene ends.