Combat in Single-Player Campaigns

[weby]

Conan is a extremely cinematic setting, it may seem gritty but that is in the descriptions, not in "the rules of the world".

Basically you can have a very cinematic game and explain things like "flesh wounds" as "The enemy cut your arm and you feel week for a moment from the pain but your willpower overcomes the pain quickly and you fight on with blood dripping from your arm" or whatever.

For me at least when reading Conan, i definitely got the idea that Conan had "plot protection". That is presented in Gurps with things like luck and buying success.

As for the single player combat:
-A combatant should find a way to not be flanked- be it terrain, mobility, npc allies or whatever.
-the single combatant should definitely have luck
-they should have abilities like weapon master to allow for multiple parries and such or high enough dodge to make it a viable defense.
-They should have some emergency. best likely to be limited, way to recover from bad things. so things like flesh wounds might well work as the character point burn definitely limits it.