rowyn

This sounds like a similar design philosophy to the Street Fighter's combat system. As it was described to me, each character gets a certain number of points to buy moves, special moves, and so on Moves are characterized by speed, defensive or offensive value, and maybe a couple other things. Then the players would play cards against each other. The result was that characters ended up with certain styles, and it would often require a couple combats against one to figure out 'what his technique was'. Fast and light, Hard and Slow, Evasive, Absorbive, etc. and tune one's own attacks to compensate.

This eliminated the chance factor, and turned it into a technique and quasi customizable card game combat feature. Unfortunately, not as easily turned into something useful online.