Time. Why you punish me?
I think we should just make duels use normal skirmish time/rounds. Screw this skirmish time, grapple time, duel time, mass battle time. So, we are having a grappling duel in a heroic opportunity during a mass battle . Do we time dilate into the infra-red or ultra-violet?

A duel happen in a time of seconds... a skirmish can last minutes, a battle last hours...

Re: Time. Why you punish me?
I can see the point in this. However I totally don't like the idea. Not having normal rounds in duels stops a whole bunch of abuse by certain abilities.

Personally, I think a more standardized round should be made just for easing a GM and a player into the system.

Something like 60 Rounds = 10 turns = 1 hour? Or less rigid?

It is Round 3 of a skirmish and Kakita Hideo on initiative 35 and Mirumoto Ichizo on 20 get into a duel and Bayushi Arashii (25) wants to attack the Kakita when he enters the duel while Hoshi Noritada (28) wants to grapple Daidoji Kojima (15). What happens? On what initiative does the duel start? How long does the duel last? Does it start on the Kakita's Turn and then resolve on the Mirumoto's Turn? Can anyone outside the duel interfere? Does the grapple take place in normal combat rounds? Does the Bayushi get frozen in place while this two events happen in zero time?

I'd like to add, that if the duel takes place in normal time (as in one set of focuses is 1 round) there should be rules for distractions from the ongoing ruckus around you.

I myself used times from D&D. 1 round = 6 seconds. A duel round = 1 second. A battle round = 1 hour.

After the strike, assuming both are alive, it falls into normal combat anyways. Would it be appropriate to put them outside of normal initiative? I would say, the duel starts on the initiative of the challenged duelist. 1st duelist challenges and is waiting for a response. 2nd duelist accepts and the duel starts. So in your example your initiative ticker says: Kakita Hideo (35) Hoshi Noritada (28) Bayushi Arashii (25) Mirumoto Ichizo (20) Daidoji Kojima (15) Round 3: On initiative 35 Kakita Hideo acts and uses his action to assume a dueling stance and shout a challenge at Mirumoto Ichizo On initiative 28 Hoshi Noritada acts now and tries to grapple the Daidoji, probably hitting and starting a Contested Strength roll from grappling. On Initiative 25 Bayushi Arashii, wants to attack Kakita Hideo, but has clearly heard the challenge issued, so he can just attack and be a horribly dishonorable punk. He can also delay his action to wait for the Mirumoto's response. If the Mirumoto accepts, he continues delaying until the duel is over and if the Kakita is alive, the Bayushi will strike. Or if the Mirumoto rejects the challenge, he comes out of delay and strikes. On Initiative 20 Mirumoto Ichizo accepts the challenge, and takes his stance. The duel begins. Bayushi Arashi hears this and waits for the duel to end. ****** That should handle the duel start I would suggest avoiding putting duel rounds into smaller increments of rounds because then there comes conflicting initiatives with other combatants. Also, do not put a "second" count on a duel round, put an initiative count on it. Outside of combat, the actual time taken up by a duel is irrelevant. If we used your Duel round = 1 second rule, how much time is each initiative tick? The entire combat round is 6 seconds, so do you divide up the initiative? What if the initiative goes up? Do you re assess? That's too much math. If you want to say Duel round = 1 initiative tick. That could make sense, but it comes with a different problem. What if the Bayushi was Initiative 19 and was total dishonorable scum? Then on Init 19, he wants to attack the Kakita who is in a duel. Does the Kakita get to focus first, or does the Bayushi get to cut him down? This does matter. If the Bayushi misses, obviously, the Kakita can still focus, and probably with a penalty from the distraction. You also have to deal with the "duel exit" part. Are duel participants considered to have exited normal initiative and need to re-roll initiative when they come back in? I think that makes sense.

Why not put the duel turn on this situation. each focus for each player count as a turn, so after each personality focus on turn occur. So Duel would be equal half of the combat turns