What I've seen previous judges do is copy/paste the very first post in the thread as a new one (Competition of the Finest Brews IX, for this next iteration) and change any information that needs it! Set the new timeline for submissions and voting. Replace the old themes with your new themes and descriptions for them. Empty the Contestants queue, replacing old themes with the new ones determined in the previous step!
Also, what do people actually think of my inspirational submission? For some unknown reason, noone gave any feedback to it that I could have used to improve it further...
Mechanically and Organizationally, it's fantastic! It was a lot to read though, having as many stat blocks as you did. I understand why though; it was clearly intended for a top level party (all 20th level I imagine). That said, even with all 20th level characters, unless the players are mostly min-maxers, I can't see a world where they have the resources to complete the encounter(s). Not only are there two CR30 enemies, but they have a combined 15 legendary resistance and incredibly high saving throw bonuses, rendering them all but immune to effects that require STs. I'm not sure if it was your intent to make a fight that is unwinnable under normal circumstances, but you certainly did!
As for a recommendation on how to improve it, I would suggest a feature that penalizes the boss creature (eye and Galdera) as the party kills more souls/extremities, maybe by adding disadvantage on saves against certain types of effects or a straight penalty to rolls of a certain type.
For the 2nd phase you need to taie into account that there are essentially four creatures sharing one pool of legendary resistances, and the three extremities do not have as great of a saving throw bonus, so you could burn through multiple resistances with one well-placed spell.
I also doubt a level 20 party can do both fights back-to-back, but I intended them to actually be able to recover resources between fights or that a new, fresh party takes onto the 2nd stage.
Regarding the negative effects, that is a great idea; and I actually have suggested some negative effects at the end for when it is run as an Epic on two tables at once, but they make sense to have even in a regular run of this encounter :-)
Also, since it was suggested that winners collaborate when it comes to choosing categories, how do we handle it this time? Considering we basicially have two winners, it would be a good opportunity to introduce this new concept I think.
What I've seen previous judges do is copy/paste the very first post in the thread as a new one (Competition of the Finest Brews IX, for this next iteration) and change any information that needs it! Set the new timeline for submissions and voting. Replace the old themes with your new themes and descriptions for them. Empty the Contestants queue, replacing old themes with the new ones determined in the previous step!
I think that's mostly it.
Pretty much. Historically, submissions are open for a month, voting occurs the week after submissions close.
What I've seen previous judges do is copy/paste the very first post in the thread as a new one (Competition of the Finest Brews IX, for this next iteration) and change any information that needs it! Set the new timeline for submissions and voting. Replace the old themes with your new themes and descriptions for them. Empty the Contestants queue, replacing old themes with the new ones determined in the previous step!
I think that's mostly it.
Pretty much. Historically, submissions are open for a month, voting occurs the week after submissions close.
And what about setting up the he poll? I’ve never created a survey like that before.
Also, since it was suggested that winners collaborate when it comes to choosing categories, how do we handle it this time? Considering we basicially have two winners, it would be a good opportunity to introduce this new concept I think.
What I've seen previous judges do is copy/paste the very first post in the thread as a new one (Competition of the Finest Brews IX, for this next iteration) and change any information that needs it! Set the new timeline for submissions and voting. Replace the old themes with your new themes and descriptions for them. Empty the Contestants queue, replacing old themes with the new ones determined in the previous step!
I think that's mostly it.
Pretty much. Historically, submissions are open for a month, voting occurs the week after submissions close.
And what about setting up the he poll? I’ve never created a survey like that before.
I (and I am sure any of the other previous judges) would be happy to help you with setting up a Google Doc voting form if you want, although you dont need to think about making it until the day of voting.
Also, be sure to adjust any of the rules you think need clarified or modified. Then, when the new competition is all set up, put a comment to this thread so we all know that you started the new one and it isnt lost to the bowels of pages 2+ of the Homebrew and Houserules threads
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
Alright, I'm the judge so I have to be decisive. As I've already said, both Sposta and Semako are the winners, but the RAW will have Sposta be the next judge. I think it would be a nice gesture, however, for the rules moving forward to award the judgeship to a contestant who wins more than one category, then by the highest average score on the winning entry if nobody wins more than one. One other note, being judge means that you can't participate (at least in the way I've interpreted it), so it's not as glamorous as you'd think.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I like all of those except for rule 2. I dont want to be excluding too many people from participating beyond the judge. Besides, the judge doesnt do much besides organize the thing and track the votes. Picking the categories is one of the fun things the judge actually gets to do, imo. On the other hand, if we let the other victors choose themes for their categories, then we should not exclude the judge from participate in those categories, just the one he/she picked the theme for.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews!Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I like all of those except for rule 2. I dont want to be excluding too many people from participating beyond the judge. Besides, the judge doesnt do much besides organize the thing and track the votes. Picking the categories is one of the fun things the judge actually gets to do, imo. On the other hand, if we let the other victors choose themes for their categories, then we should not exclude the judge from participate in those categories, just the one he/she picked the theme for.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I dislike 1 & 2. I don’t think winning in multiple categories is the way to do it because it practically force people to enter all three categories to have a shot of winning. That’s unfair to people who don’t have the time or the experience to crank out multiple entries, and it’s especially unfair to those who aren’t interested in more than 1 category. Winning in 2 categories already gives that person 2 chances to win the whole contest, double the chance of whoever wins the third category. They shouldn’t combine too. I think it should remain with the entry that had the highest score.
I think only the judge should be excluded from entering.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I dislike 1 & 2. I don’t think winning in multiple categories is the way to do it because it practically force people to enter all three categories to have a shot of winning. That’s unfair to people who don’t have the time or the experience to crank out multiple entries, and it’s especially unfair to those who aren’t interested in more than 1 category. Winning in 2 categories already gives that person 2 chances to win the whole contest, double the chance of whoever wins the third category. They shouldn’t combine too. I think it should remain with the entry that had the highest score.
I think only the judge should be excluded from entcategoryg
Disagree. It would "force" all those with a desire to win to spend the effort to create good homebrew in at least two categories - homebrew that is better (as: gets better votes) than submissions by other users.
Just take this competition as an example, compare your subclass to both my GM option and my inspirational option. If one of them deserves the overall win more, then it is my two submissions - I spent weeks working on them, and did not just write plain text, I took the time to create and format a 14-page GMBinder document.
In addition, winning by a higher margin can also be the result of just having weaker competition in the respective category or of suffering less troll votes.
That is why I am very clearly for clarfying the rules in such a way that if an author has more category wins than another, they are the overall winner and therefore next judge.
It also seems like a clear majority wants the rules to be that way.
I think the problem is clear rules were never laid out in the beginning. The thread for the first iteration has since been deleted, but if I remember correctly, there were no clear rules given for who wins. However, three different contestants won each different category, and in the post declaring the winner the text was "There is a three-way tie, so whoever has the highest average wins". The same happened in the second competition.
However, we don't have to conform to what we did in the past. I mean, I see both points of view. But on the other hand, if we're reconsidering the way we decide who wins, why have the winner be the judge of the competition at all? We can collectively as a group decide the themes for the next competition, as well as regulate rules and whatnot. We'd just have to have somebody volunteer to do the work of creating the thread and polls.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I dislike 1 & 2. I don’t think winning in multiple categories is the way to do it because it practically force people to enter all three categories to have a shot of winning. That’s unfair to people who don’t have the time or the experience to crank out multiple entries, and it’s especially unfair to those who aren’t interested in more than 1 category. Winning in 2 categories already gives that person 2 chances to win the whole contest, double the chance of whoever wins the third category. They shouldn’t combine too. I think it should remain with the entry that had the highest score.
I think only the judge should be excluded from entering.
It doesn't "force" people to create more content. It rewards those who put more work into making content. If you only wish to create one entry, that's absolutely fine. But it makes sense for the winner to be the one that put the most work, effort, and thought into their submission(s). If we take the highest average, then what it rewards is creating less content, which both means that we have less homebrew created overall, and the winner to be the one who, likely, created less content.
But then again, why have an overall winner? In the Olympics do we declare someone an overall winner if they got more gold medals? no, each category has a separate winner and it's left at that. Alternatively, we could have the judge decide the rules regarding that aspect of their competition. I mean, already the judge is mostly just the one who can't participate and has to do work to keep the competition going, so maybe giving them more leeway and the competition is good so they can do something?
We can just continue debating forever without reaching conclusion. How about we take a vote between any ideas people propose and just continue that way for now?
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I dislike 1 & 2. I don’t think winning in multiple categories is the way to do it because it practically force people to enter all three categories to have a shot of winning. That’s unfair to people who don’t have the time or the experience to crank out multiple entries, and it’s especially unfair to those who aren’t interested in more than 1 category. Winning in 2 categories already gives that person 2 chances to win the whole contest, double the chance of whoever wins the third category. They shouldn’t combine too. I think it should remain with the entry that had the highest score.
I think only the judge should be excluded from entering.
It doesn't "force" people to create more content. It rewards those who put more work into making content. If you only wish to create one entry, that's absolutely fine. But it makes sense for the winner to be the one that put the most work, effort, and thought into their submission(s). If we take the highest average, then what it rewards is creating less content, which both means that we have less homebrew created overall, and the winner to be the one who, likely, created less content.
But then again, why have an overall winner? In the Olympics do we declare someone an overall winner if they got more gold medals? no, each category has a separate winner and it's left at that. Alternatively, we could have the judge decide the rules regarding that aspect of their competition. I mean, already the judge is mostly just the one who can't participate and has to do work to keep the competition going, so maybe giving them more leeway and the competition is good so they can do something?
Who’s to say who put more “work” into their homebrew creation(s), Semako or me? I spent the entire submission period designing, playtesting, and refining my one submission. I probably spent close to 150 hours on that subclass. I’m not saying Semako didn’t work at least as hard as I did, far from it. What I am saying is that more of submissions doesn’t necessarily mean more work.
And my proposition does reward submissions into multiple categories because each one increases one’s chance of having the top entry. Semako had 100% more opportunity to win than I had because he won two categories to my one. Now, multiple entries didn’t pay off this time, but the chances that whoever wins multiple categories will also win highest score most of the time.
I do like your proposal that each judge is responsible for structuring the rules each for their own competition. That’s probably the most fair way to do it.
So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
The contestant with two or more winning submissions becomes judge of the next contest. If no contestant wins in more than one category, the contestant with the highest average score on their submission becomes judge.
A contestant who wins in a category will choose the theme for that category in the next contest, but will be ineligible to participate in that category for the next contest.
Judges will not be eligible to participate in the contest they are judging, but will be allowed to vote.
Thoughts?
I dislike 1 & 2. I don’t think winning in multiple categories is the way to do it because it practically force people to enter all three categories to have a shot of winning. That’s unfair to people who don’t have the time or the experience to crank out multiple entries, and it’s especially unfair to those who aren’t interested in more than 1 category. Winning in 2 categories already gives that person 2 chances to win the whole contest, double the chance of whoever wins the third category. They shouldn’t combine too. I think it should remain with the entry that had the highest score.
I think only the judge should be excluded from entering.
It doesn't "force" people to create more content. It rewards those who put more work into making content. If you only wish to create one entry, that's absolutely fine. But it makes sense for the winner to be the one that put the most work, effort, and thought into their submission(s). If we take the highest average, then what it rewards is creating less content, which both means that we have less homebrew created overall, and the winner to be the one who, likely, created less content.
But then again, why have an overall winner? In the Olympics do we declare someone an overall winner if they got more gold medals? no, each category has a separate winner and it's left at that. Alternatively, we could have the judge decide the rules regarding that aspect of their competition. I mean, already the judge is mostly just the one who can't participate and has to do work to keep the competition going, so maybe giving them more leeway and the competition is good so they can do something?
Who’s to say who put more “work” into their homebrew creation(s), Semako or me? I spent the entire submission period designing, playtesting, and refining my one submission. I probably spent close to 150 hours on that subclass. I’m not saying Semako didn’t work at least as hard as I did, far from it. What I am saying is that more of submissions doesn’t necessarily mean more work.
And my proposition does reward submissions into multiple categories because each one increases one’s chance of having the top entry. Semako had 100% more opportunity to win than I had because he won two categories to my one. Now, multiple entries didn’t pay off this time, but the chances that whoever wins multiple categories will also win highest score most of the time.
I do like your proposal that each judge is responsible for structuring the rules each for their own competition. That’s probably the most fair way to do it.
No, sorry. What I would take away from these rules is that I should NOT waste my time designing more entries, but rather trying to refine the one entry I am focusing on for the category that works the best for me and that gets good feedback in the contest thread. And I am pretty sure that is not what we want, we want to animate people to create more homebrew, to spend time and effort for high-quality content.
Also, regarding the effort, I am not a native English speaker, which makes it doubly difficult for me to write English homebrew stuff.
Edit: I think we should have uniform rules rather than having each judge make up rules individually.
What I've seen previous judges do is copy/paste the very first post in the thread as a new one (Competition of the Finest Brews IX, for this next iteration) and change any information that needs it!
Set the new timeline for submissions and voting.
Replace the old themes with your new themes and descriptions for them.
Empty the Contestants queue, replacing old themes with the new ones determined in the previous step!
I think that's mostly it.
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My best brews: Berserker (Fire Emblem - barbarian subclass) | Swordmaster (Fire Emblem - fighter subclass) | Deserter (background) | Flame Atronach (Skyrim - monster)
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For the 2nd phase you need to taie into account that there are essentially four creatures sharing one pool of legendary resistances, and the three extremities do not have as great of a saving throw bonus, so you could burn through multiple resistances with one well-placed spell.
I also doubt a level 20 party can do both fights back-to-back, but I intended them to actually be able to recover resources between fights or that a new, fresh party takes onto the 2nd stage.
Regarding the negative effects, that is a great idea; and I actually have suggested some negative effects at the end for when it is run as an Epic on two tables at once, but they make sense to have even in a regular run of this encounter :-)
Also, since it was suggested that winners collaborate when it comes to choosing categories, how do we handle it this time? Considering we basicially have two winners, it would be a good opportunity to introduce this new concept I think.
Pretty much. Historically, submissions are open for a month, voting occurs the week after submissions close.
Good job, everyone, and I can't wait to see what CotFB IX holds for us!
Paladin main who spends most of his D&D time worldbuilding or DMing, not Paladin-ing.
And what about setting up the he poll? I’ve never created a survey like that before.
PM me and we’ll figure it out.
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I (and I am sure any of the other previous judges) would be happy to help you with setting up a Google Doc voting form if you want, although you dont need to think about making it until the day of voting.
Also, be sure to adjust any of the rules you think need clarified or modified. Then, when the new competition is all set up, put a comment to this thread so we all know that you started the new one and it isnt lost to the bowels of pages 2+ of the Homebrew and Houserules threads
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I can give you a hand with that. Google forms is very easy to use. It also automatically generates a spreadsheet of the results.
whew...i dodged a bullet. I hope i never win lol
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So just to recap our discussion on the rules moving forward, do we have some sort of consensus on the following:
Thoughts?
I like all of those except for rule 2. I dont want to be excluding too many people from participating beyond the judge. Besides, the judge doesnt do much besides organize the thing and track the votes. Picking the categories is one of the fun things the judge actually gets to do, imo. On the other hand, if we let the other victors choose themes for their categories, then we should not exclude the judge from participate in those categories, just the one he/she picked the theme for.
Three-time Judge of the Competition of the Finest Brews! Come join us in making fun, unique homebrew and voting for your favorite entries!
I don't hate either idea.
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Alright, no consensus. I'll leave it at that. lol
Disagree. It would "force" all those with a desire to win to spend the effort to create good homebrew in at least two categories - homebrew that is better (as: gets better votes) than submissions by other users.
Just take this competition as an example, compare your subclass to both my GM option and my inspirational option. If one of them deserves the overall win more, then it is my two submissions - I spent weeks working on them, and did not just write plain text, I took the time to create and format a 14-page GMBinder document.
In addition, winning by a higher margin can also be the result of just having weaker competition in the respective category or of suffering less troll votes.
That is why I am very clearly for clarfying the rules in such a way that if an author has more category wins than another, they are the overall winner and therefore next judge.
It also seems like a clear majority wants the rules to be that way.
I think the problem is clear rules were never laid out in the beginning. The thread for the first iteration has since been deleted, but if I remember correctly, there were no clear rules given for who wins. However, three different contestants won each different category, and in the post declaring the winner the text was "There is a three-way tie, so whoever has the highest average wins". The same happened in the second competition.
However, we don't have to conform to what we did in the past. I mean, I see both points of view. But on the other hand, if we're reconsidering the way we decide who wins, why have the winner be the judge of the competition at all? We can collectively as a group decide the themes for the next competition, as well as regulate rules and whatnot. We'd just have to have somebody volunteer to do the work of creating the thread and polls.
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
It doesn't "force" people to create more content. It rewards those who put more work into making content. If you only wish to create one entry, that's absolutely fine. But it makes sense for the winner to be the one that put the most work, effort, and thought into their submission(s). If we take the highest average, then what it rewards is creating less content, which both means that we have less homebrew created overall, and the winner to be the one who, likely, created less content.
But then again, why have an overall winner? In the Olympics do we declare someone an overall winner if they got more gold medals? no, each category has a separate winner and it's left at that. Alternatively, we could have the judge decide the rules regarding that aspect of their competition. I mean, already the judge is mostly just the one who can't participate and has to do work to keep the competition going, so maybe giving them more leeway and the competition is good so they can do something?
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
We can just continue debating forever without reaching conclusion. How about we take a vote between any ideas people propose and just continue that way for now?
I am an average mathematics enjoyer.
>Extended Signature<
Who’s to say who put more “work” into their homebrew creation(s), Semako or me? I spent the entire submission period designing, playtesting, and refining my one submission. I probably spent close to 150 hours on that subclass. I’m not saying Semako didn’t work at least as hard as I did, far from it. What I am saying is that more of submissions doesn’t necessarily mean more work.
And my proposition does reward submissions into multiple categories because each one increases one’s chance of having the top entry. Semako had 100% more opportunity to win than I had because he won two categories to my one. Now, multiple entries didn’t pay off this time, but the chances that whoever wins multiple categories will also win highest score most of the time.
I do like your proposal that each judge is responsible for structuring the rules each for their own competition. That’s probably the most fair way to do it.
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No, sorry. What I would take away from these rules is that I should NOT waste my time designing more entries, but rather trying to refine the one entry I am focusing on for the category that works the best for me and that gets good feedback in the contest thread. And I am pretty sure that is not what we want, we want to animate people to create more homebrew, to spend time and effort for high-quality content.
Also, regarding the effort, I am not a native English speaker, which makes it doubly difficult for me to write English homebrew stuff.
Edit: I think we should have uniform rules rather than having each judge make up rules individually.