So, I'm going to be moving here in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to try and recruit some people from my regular games to help. As part of the incentive to help, I was planning to run a PvP arena style one-shot in addition to the standard pizza and beer reward. I figure, to make it interesting, I might throw in a possible in game reward for the winner or the top 3 or something as well. Those are things that I can figure out on my own.
I'm here to get some ideas for the tournament itself. I've been thinking a bit and I've got some baseline ideas that I'll layout below. From you guys, I'd love some feedback on my ideas as well as anything that you would add or subtract.
In general, I'm looking to make a tournament with randomized starting positions, hazards, treasures, etc. I would also like the arena to be more interesting than the standard gladiatorial coliseum. Here are the ideas that I've had so far.
1. Arena consists of several large rooms. Possibly each elementally themed or something. The number of rooms and their size will vary depending on how many combatants we have.
2. Each room is laid out on a numbered grid. Starting positions and treasure chests will be randomly determined at the beginning of the tournament. Contents of chests will be randomly determined using the treasure tables. Details like which table to roll on are still up in the air.
3. The rooms themselves will have to have cover and terrain to keep them from being just empty spaces. There will also likely be a ceiling at like 50 feet to prevent flight from dominating the strategies.
4. Traps and hazards will appear randomly at the top of the initiative round. Similar to lair actions. The locations of these hazards will be randomly decided on the grid.
5. Players will create characters of 12th level. This makes them fairly strong, but also limits the usage of crazy powerful spells and class features. Each character will be given a set amount of gold to buy equipment as well as a certain number of magic items. Again, these details are up in the air.
6. All the random effects mentioned above will be determined by tables. So I'll put together a trap table, a treasure table, etc. When placing these things, it will all be left to the dice. For example, if a room is a 10x10 grid, the location would be determined by rolling 2d10 (one for each side). Then the trap/treasure would be determined by a roll on the respective table. Same thing for starting positions.
As I said, this is all a work in progress. And I know that 5e isn't geared toward PvP, but I'd still like to try my hand at it. I appreciate all constructive feedback.
You could have different arenas for battle and each arena has a different theme. Each battle, the players rolls a d4 and the combined result is the arena. So it could be like:
2: Thunder Dome - Each round 3d4 strikes of lightning hit from the sky, equal to the call lightning spell.
3: Chaos Dome - Each round a player rolls on the wild magic table and that effect takes place.
4, 5, 6, 7, 8....
You could also do a d2 or d3 just in case you can't come up with that many ideas lol
Good call on the standardized ability score. That was definitely in my mind.
@Squigs
I like the different themes idea. I'm thinking more of a battle royale than rounds. I don't think that many players would do well watching each other go through the bracket. But the idea could be used for different areas of the arena. Chaos dome sounds awesome too.
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So, I'm going to be moving here in the next couple of weeks. I'm going to try and recruit some people from my regular games to help. As part of the incentive to help, I was planning to run a PvP arena style one-shot in addition to the standard pizza and beer reward. I figure, to make it interesting, I might throw in a possible in game reward for the winner or the top 3 or something as well. Those are things that I can figure out on my own.
I'm here to get some ideas for the tournament itself. I've been thinking a bit and I've got some baseline ideas that I'll layout below. From you guys, I'd love some feedback on my ideas as well as anything that you would add or subtract.
In general, I'm looking to make a tournament with randomized starting positions, hazards, treasures, etc. I would also like the arena to be more interesting than the standard gladiatorial coliseum. Here are the ideas that I've had so far.
1. Arena consists of several large rooms. Possibly each elementally themed or something. The number of rooms and their size will vary depending on how many combatants we have.
2. Each room is laid out on a numbered grid. Starting positions and treasure chests will be randomly determined at the beginning of the tournament. Contents of chests will be randomly determined using the treasure tables. Details like which table to roll on are still up in the air.
3. The rooms themselves will have to have cover and terrain to keep them from being just empty spaces. There will also likely be a ceiling at like 50 feet to prevent flight from dominating the strategies.
4. Traps and hazards will appear randomly at the top of the initiative round. Similar to lair actions. The locations of these hazards will be randomly decided on the grid.
5. Players will create characters of 12th level. This makes them fairly strong, but also limits the usage of crazy powerful spells and class features. Each character will be given a set amount of gold to buy equipment as well as a certain number of magic items. Again, these details are up in the air.
6. All the random effects mentioned above will be determined by tables. So I'll put together a trap table, a treasure table, etc. When placing these things, it will all be left to the dice. For example, if a room is a 10x10 grid, the location would be determined by rolling 2d10 (one for each side). Then the trap/treasure would be determined by a roll on the respective table. Same thing for starting positions.
As I said, this is all a work in progress. And I know that 5e isn't geared toward PvP, but I'd still like to try my hand at it. I appreciate all constructive feedback.
Make the players use either the standard array or the point buy to generate their characters.
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You could have different arenas for battle and each arena has a different theme. Each battle, the players rolls a d4 and the combined result is the arena. So it could be like:
You could also do a d2 or d3 just in case you can't come up with that many ideas lol
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@Tim
Good call on the standardized ability score. That was definitely in my mind.
@Squigs
I like the different themes idea. I'm thinking more of a battle royale than rounds. I don't think that many players would do well watching each other go through the bracket. But the idea could be used for different areas of the arena. Chaos dome sounds awesome too.