Next week I will be starting a short campaign. The campaign will be a battle arena style campaign with a subplot and story and out of area things to do as well
In the begining I want my players characters to really struggle. They are facing off against extremely powerful adversaries and I want them to have to burn through their resources in order to survive.
About half way through, I plan on giving them magic items and each a free feat. This feat and these magic items will basically be what they were missing, and for a while will finding the battles easier to win.
I want this to create a false sense of security though, so when they face bad guy at the end they are all cocky and sure they are going to win, only to find that the bad guy is much more powerful than they realised and they are literally forced to "earn" their victory against them.
Not quite sure how to pull this off though without being obnoxious.
Any suggestions
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
The party could struggle in the first part going up against a team that is cheating, outside help from a bard that is tipping things into their favor by cheering them on and heckling the players making them flub their actions. Unless caught he will keep doing it. The cheaters could also have equipment like mizzium armor to avoid critical hits and use dirty tactics like throwing sand into their eyes but hide it from the crowd if that is against the arena's rules or looked down on. Make
After words they could have your standard fights and feel like champs as they breeze through.
Afterwords you could have them go up against some ridiculously powerful enemies or make your own character sheets to fight an opposing team. Turn the pole arm master/sentinel/tunnel fighters on them combined with the dual wielding crossbow fighter rogue with sharpshooter/crossbow expert, and for good measure a abjuration wizard to cut down their damage output even further.
For something simpler for the final fight there are always the ridiculous monsters to throw at them like Beholders, Worms, dragons and such depending on their level. Something they could feasibly win against, it would just take some tactics or lucky dice to go against.
Fellow DMs
Next week I will be starting a short campaign. The campaign will be a battle arena style campaign with a subplot and story and out of area things to do as well
In the begining I want my players characters to really struggle. They are facing off against extremely powerful adversaries and I want them to have to burn through their resources in order to survive.
About half way through, I plan on giving them magic items and each a free feat. This feat and these magic items will basically be what they were missing, and for a while will finding the battles easier to win.
I want this to create a false sense of security though, so when they face bad guy at the end they are all cocky and sure they are going to win, only to find that the bad guy is much more powerful than they realised and they are literally forced to "earn" their victory against them.
Not quite sure how to pull this off though without being obnoxious.
Any suggestions
A caffeinated nerd who has played TTRPGs or a number of years and is very much a fantasy adventure geek.
The party could struggle in the first part going up against a team that is cheating, outside help from a bard that is tipping things into their favor by cheering them on and heckling the players making them flub their actions. Unless caught he will keep doing it. The cheaters could also have equipment like mizzium armor to avoid critical hits and use dirty tactics like throwing sand into their eyes but hide it from the crowd if that is against the arena's rules or looked down on. Make
After words they could have your standard fights and feel like champs as they breeze through.
Afterwords you could have them go up against some ridiculously powerful enemies or make your own character sheets to fight an opposing team. Turn the pole arm master/sentinel/tunnel fighters on them combined with the dual wielding crossbow fighter rogue with sharpshooter/crossbow expert, and for good measure a abjuration wizard to cut down their damage output even further.
For something simpler for the final fight there are always the ridiculous monsters to throw at them like Beholders, Worms, dragons and such depending on their level. Something they could feasibly win against, it would just take some tactics or lucky dice to go against.
for the final boss do something like Tucker's kobolds.