Roleplaying a "honorable" duel between orc and human

[Elder_Basilisk]

Ancient world duels from David and Goliath to the Norse sagas tend to follow a set formula whether they are to the death or have another win condition. (For that matter, chance encounters between knights leading to duels in the stories of making Arthur often follow a similar formula). You can follow that formula and help your game to feel more authentic.

The first part is the challenge. "Why do you line up for battle? Am I not a man? Are you not servants of Saul? Choose one of yourselves to come down and fight me."

Note that the challenge is issued from neutral ground and that whoever was going to fight Goliath had to leave the advantageous position on the hill to do it. So acceptance is not simply a matter of saying, "you and me fight." To accept, you had to step away from your allies into the open.

The next step is boasting, usually with some insults thrown in for good measure. "Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks? I will feed your flesh to the birds and wild animals." In systems where it is possible, I would usually have an intimidate check to demoralize the opponent at this stage.

After that, you have the fight. Some battles did not have formal rules (as with David and Goliath) but others had traditional or even written or pre-agreed rules. In D&D, one on one combat can get monotonous so a more formal duel like the Viking holmgang (depending on the era and rules you could win by forcing your foe out of the area, and you could get an advantage by running your foe out of shields) might be better than trading attack rolls till someone dies or grappling through 30 minutes of sweaty **** punching until someone finally gets choked out. (Though some early UFC fights say that might be realistic). If you have an opportunity to win through a ring out then at least you have a couple more actions you might want to consider.