Auction/Bidding Mechanics in PBP RPG

[mcr]

So I've been digging into some board games recently and I'm wondering whether the Auction/Bidding mechanic might work well for a PBP game here. I haven't totally nailed down all of the even the most basic mechanics, but the premise would be something like:

1) All Players share/use a set of finite resources (Stones?).
2) All players start with an available pool of pre-defined Actions
2) All Actions cost a certain number of resources with scaling costs and effects to purchase
3) Players bid on Actions using those resources. The winner subtracts his bid and the bidding resume with a different action.

This works best in character creation, but I'm sure there's a way to make it work in action resolution?

[roxolid]

The problem remains where you can basically blow your entire stash in one go and flop about like a fish on the bank for rounds afterwards until you recover enough stones to do anything.

The best characters will use the most stones and the weaker ones more or less make up the numbers. There is a bidding mechanic in DC heroes where basically the one who has the biggest stash of HP will outgun the lesser total, but then dice still need to be rolled.

I've tried multiplying abilities by energy stones then adding actions and buying dice marvel heroic style with stones and adding to your ability with modifies stepping up dice. That's adding the random element which I fear is the big problem with MURPG (which I've played since it came out). There is *something* in the system and I'd love to say 'this is the magic formula that unlocks diceless roleplaying' but so far it eludes me.