Hey all! The city my players are visiting has a coliseum and a week long festival and tournament coming up in 2 in game days.
I have the contests, prizes, and rules all planned out already.
What I can't find is how to determine the outcome of matches not involving the PCs. I've seen DMs roll one or a few dice to determine the results of something without having to play the whole thing out. What is this roll and the parameters? What should I roll to see what the results are for NPC based events?
Also, one player flabbergasted me by deciding he wants to participate in every single 1v1 match throughout the week, which averages out to about 3 a day. I'm not spending session time running a dozen individual matches for one player obviously, so what can the player and I roll to determine if he succeeds or loses? My loose idea is the first battle have a roll-off, the second battle he gets a small penalty, and if he does a third battle in the day he gets a bigger penalty to his roll for the exhaustion. Thoughts? Help!
For matches that don't involve the PCs, I wouldn't even resolve them unless the players are interested or there's something going on behind the scenes. If there's something going on behind the scenes, I'll either rule by fiat what the results are, or I'll give a single luck roll to the plotters (or to each group of plotters, if more than one) to determine how well their plot goes. If the PCs are interested, I'll just roll a die -- high roll team A wins, low roll team B wins (possibly modified if the teams are intended to be unequal).
For the one player who wants to partake in the 1v1, it might depend upon what class he is, but he could incur a level of exhaustion at the end of the day.
I would either take care of NPC matches in advance, during the week between games so you have the results ready when you need them, OR if you don't care that much about getting mechanically accurate results, you can determine the victors based on what you think would make best narrative sense. Like, if the players befriended an NPC combatant, have them get absolutely wrecked in their match, the players visit the NPC in the hospital, discovers they're up against the guy/gal who did this to their friend in the next round, bang! Emotional investment. Or, if you can't think of a situation where one npc winning would be better than another? Just flip a coin.
As for your prolific PC, maybe take an evening between sessions for a one-on-one game where you just go though combats with them. It doesn't even necessarily have to be in person/on video (however you play normally), you could run some combats via text throughout the week if that's all you have time for. If you don't have time for that, maybe just talk to the player and be like hey, is it OK if we handwave a few of the matches and just run combat for the big ones so as not to monopolize on the session? I'm sure the two of you can find a creative and satisfying solution that saves time without sacrificing the player's investment in the tournament.
Rather than blow by blow for super-gladiator, there are pit fighting rules in Xanathar's which, if you have access to it, I. think can be used as a guidelines for someone fighting in a tourney. Instead of GP rewards, assign a "ranking".and then have him fight a suitable ranked opponent.
Or as the DM it's your prerogative to not allow the would be high frequency fighter design the rules of the tournament because it's your tournament not the fighter's and you, as the player of the tournament organizers, get to decide when and who the PC fights.
Which gets to the bigger thing for the DM: resolving the tournament. Just script it and land the Fighter into whatever final bout you want them in. Having a whole tournament go on which you, the DM, have to mechanically resolve is sorta like having the PCs with a commando mission during a war, and you playing a whole war game alongside their mission to resolve the larger conflict, in front of the PCs. Decide the overall narrative arcs of the tournament, have them role play with some figures that matter to the larger plot, getting them invested in the tourney's events; but spend more time having the players do things than you the DM using some sort of mechanic to determine the outcome of events not directly involving players. If you want an aspect of randomness, create a. few adversarial "champions" and just have the final bout be a random draw from your deck of NPCs, saying that one is how the tournament. shook out.
Depending on how much time you actually have for this...have you considered giving the NPC stat blocks to your players and having them run the fights, so if player A really wants to be in every fight then you can have the other players take turns running the opponents but give each round of the tournament a time limit such as 6 rounds so that it shouldn;t get to bogged down or take too much time.
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Hey all! The city my players are visiting has a coliseum and a week long festival and tournament coming up in 2 in game days.
I have the contests, prizes, and rules all planned out already.
What I can't find is how to determine the outcome of matches not involving the PCs. I've seen DMs roll one or a few dice to determine the results of something without having to play the whole thing out. What is this roll and the parameters? What should I roll to see what the results are for NPC based events?
Also, one player flabbergasted me by deciding he wants to participate in every single 1v1 match throughout the week, which averages out to about 3 a day. I'm not spending session time running a dozen individual matches for one player obviously, so what can the player and I roll to determine if he succeeds or loses? My loose idea is the first battle have a roll-off, the second battle he gets a small penalty, and if he does a third battle in the day he gets a bigger penalty to his roll for the exhaustion. Thoughts? Help!
For matches that don't involve the PCs, I wouldn't even resolve them unless the players are interested or there's something going on behind the scenes. If there's something going on behind the scenes, I'll either rule by fiat what the results are, or I'll give a single luck roll to the plotters (or to each group of plotters, if more than one) to determine how well their plot goes. If the PCs are interested, I'll just roll a die -- high roll team A wins, low roll team B wins (possibly modified if the teams are intended to be unequal).
For the one player who wants to partake in the 1v1, it might depend upon what class he is, but he could incur a level of exhaustion at the end of the day.
I would either take care of NPC matches in advance, during the week between games so you have the results ready when you need them, OR if you don't care that much about getting mechanically accurate results, you can determine the victors based on what you think would make best narrative sense. Like, if the players befriended an NPC combatant, have them get absolutely wrecked in their match, the players visit the NPC in the hospital, discovers they're up against the guy/gal who did this to their friend in the next round, bang! Emotional investment. Or, if you can't think of a situation where one npc winning would be better than another? Just flip a coin.
As for your prolific PC, maybe take an evening between sessions for a one-on-one game where you just go though combats with them. It doesn't even necessarily have to be in person/on video (however you play normally), you could run some combats via text throughout the week if that's all you have time for. If you don't have time for that, maybe just talk to the player and be like hey, is it OK if we handwave a few of the matches and just run combat for the big ones so as not to monopolize on the session? I'm sure the two of you can find a creative and satisfying solution that saves time without sacrificing the player's investment in the tournament.
Rather than blow by blow for super-gladiator, there are pit fighting rules in Xanathar's which, if you have access to it, I. think can be used as a guidelines for someone fighting in a tourney. Instead of GP rewards, assign a "ranking".and then have him fight a suitable ranked opponent.
Or as the DM it's your prerogative to not allow the would be high frequency fighter design the rules of the tournament because it's your tournament not the fighter's and you, as the player of the tournament organizers, get to decide when and who the PC fights.
Which gets to the bigger thing for the DM: resolving the tournament. Just script it and land the Fighter into whatever final bout you want them in. Having a whole tournament go on which you, the DM, have to mechanically resolve is sorta like having the PCs with a commando mission during a war, and you playing a whole war game alongside their mission to resolve the larger conflict, in front of the PCs. Decide the overall narrative arcs of the tournament, have them role play with some figures that matter to the larger plot, getting them invested in the tourney's events; but spend more time having the players do things than you the DM using some sort of mechanic to determine the outcome of events not directly involving players. If you want an aspect of randomness, create a. few adversarial "champions" and just have the final bout be a random draw from your deck of NPCs, saying that one is how the tournament. shook out.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Depending on how much time you actually have for this...have you considered giving the NPC stat blocks to your players and having them run the fights, so if player A really wants to be in every fight then you can have the other players take turns running the opponents but give each round of the tournament a time limit such as 6 rounds so that it shouldn;t get to bogged down or take too much time.
Thank you guys for your responses so far! There's some real nuggets of inspiration in each reply!