This is tangentially related to my latest suggestion, so feel free to yell at me if you think this doesn't deserve its own thread.
Anyways, there are basically two different reasons for dueling:
When someone's insulted you, and you have to show how honorable you are by risking life and limb in a duel
and
When that one guy just HAS to die.
Supposedly, surrender duels should be used in the first instance, while death duels should be used in the second. However, this presents an issue; you can't die in surrender duels, so any risk involved is either nonexistant or negligible. This basically makes them worthless as a method for proving a character's bravery.
I propose this modification: surrender duels have a higher chance of wounding either participant, and the loser has a small (as in, <1%) chance of dying during the duel. These would be used in circumstances where the duel was being used to prove one's honor, and not as a method to attack another noble.
The message for a death in a surrender duel would be something like "x faces y in a battle to surrender. After an exchange of blows, y takes a sword to the heart, and dies instantly. All witnesses, seconds and even his opponent mourn the accident."
Death duels would have the same odds as now, but each participant will get a checkbox next to their stance choice: "strike down wounded opponent". Basically, should someone select this option, their opponent will ALWAYS die if they lose. The killer would lose some honor, and a message would be sent to the realm saying: "x faces y in a duel to the death. After a few blows, y falls to the ground, wounded. As the seconds cry out, X walks over, and finishes the job."
This would make surrender duels actually mean something, would allow people to make some moral choices for their opponents, and should overall lead to some interesting roleplay with the second option. Considering how training matches basically take over the niche of the "for-fun swordfight", I don't see the necessity in having surrender duels be basically the same thing with a higher chance of wounds.
