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Eldariel
2009-10-16, 02:56 AM
I've got a little problem with various competition events and such in D&D. I've DMed one game where players participated in various events at a carnival and now got to play in one. It was dull. Horribly dull. And everything was completely beyond players' control. Hopefully this thread will work as a resource to make this a bit more interesting.

What's The Problem?
Well, I'm sure every DM has been in a situation where the players end up/happen upon a competition/tournament/whatever of some kind and either need to participate or want to participate or just in general, end up in the fray.

This is all fine and good; it's great variation from the usual adventuring. However, then you start thinking about the classic events. And you notice that practically all of them, except for fighting tournament & tests of magical mettle, basically come down to 1d20+bonuses a few times.

Archery? 1d20+your ranged attack bonuses, see who gets the best results.
Various Singing/Whatever Competitions? 1d20+Perform: Singing/Whatever
Walking on a Rope/Balancing? 1d20+Balance Bonuses
Cooking? 1d20+Profession: Cooking
Wrestling? Few Grapple-checks. Though "Unarmed Combat" starts to get a bit more interesting due to the more elaborate combat options, particularly with ToB in the mix.
Obstacle course? 1d20+Appropriate Skill Modifier at each obstacle.


Now, this is obviously because of the vast abstractions in D&D system regarding non-combat activities. Hell, feeding yourself in the wilds is a Survival-check, not "I'm off to hunt now" mini adventure.

However, all that is terribly uninteresting. Boring, even. "Ok, roll fewd20 and see what happens." Player influence? Zero. Zilch. Nada. Player isn't playing. He just rolls few dice and sees what happens.

Maybe higher level PCs have some reroll abilities or some such that might give an inkling of influence over the results, but overall, especially on lower levels and on the NPCs' part, it's 1d20+Static Number.


What Are We Gonna Do About It?
The purpose of this thread is quite simple: Figure out how to play out the various competitions and events you can think of in a way that's interesting to the players and functional within the rules for the competition at hands.

This is literally for any kinds of competitions; if you feel wrestling could benefit of some auxillary rules that don't exist in ordinary combat, go ahead and suggest. The point of all this is just to generate a bunch of interesting subgames that are more than just "roll 1d20+X" or "roll 1d20+X a bunch of times".

In effect, the idea is to succeed in which Skill Challenges failed. They tried to make this interesting. They forgot that "roll a die a dozen times" is unlike to be any more interesting than "roll a die once" if the player influence on the die rolls is still 0.


Solutions
Once someone figures out how to make some kind of competition interesting, I'm linking the various workings in this section.

This thread is as much for discussion on how to make things work as it is for the actual solutions so it might get muddled eventually; I feel links in OP will make it 100% more readable.

BreathingMeat
2009-10-16, 03:35 AM
I can't see a way around there being a bunch of opposed d20 + bonus rolls for a number of the events as you mentioned (it would be unfair on your skill-based PCs to not include events for them just because d20 + bonus is a boring way of resolving things), but there might be ways of making the role-playing around it a bit more interesting...

How about letting the players bet on the outcomes of the events? It might be fun to have antagonistic PCs betting on each other to lose at their events, or to allow the PCs to make a little money on the side. Maybe the betting isn't completely legal, and they have to do some sneaking around to place their bets?

How about having the opponents do some cheating? Maybe some spot or spellcraft checks, or clues in what you say, might allow them to notice the cheats and deal with them?

Maybe the cooking competition could have a prize for most exotic ingredient - so PCs might be encouraged to go hunting / gathering for interesting tidbits.

Eldariel
2009-10-16, 03:38 AM
Here's one I've been trying to figure out interesting mechanics for lately.

Archery
Now, by default this is really one of the dullest possible sports to play in D&D. Which is quite obvious. All that happens in a bow shot is effectively abstracted into 1d20 in D&D.

The aiming, the stringing, the concentration, it's all factored into that. To make it interesting in any way, we have to deabstract things a bit; give players a bit more control over shooting their bow. Here's what I've thought of:
- I think archery competitions should involve stock bows from the competition, to stop the bow itself from being the prime part of the competition. Give everyone a Longbow without Str modifiers so everyone is on the same line. Alternatively, one could give everyone a Bow of Winterymoon so their Str plays into this, but that merely involves another static modifier in the archery, rather than increases player participation.

It also plays poorly with the fixes I'm going to suggest and stretches verisimilitude a bit thin (who the hell tosses tens of thousands of gold into magical Longbows to be used in a competition?)
- Magic should be forbidden. Sure, magic increases the players' ability to influence the archery a bit, but it also totally bones the honest Fighters and Rangers who are actually good at archery, but don't know True Strike. Of course, magic shouldn't be forbidden as in "you can't use it", just "it's punishable to use it".

This enables cheating for crafty people, but the people in charge of enforcing the rules should be pretty adept at detecting magic use to make it hard.
- First, archery is a sport of Concentration. I feel playing that up might be a good starting point. I feel, giving the player the option each round to concentrate and get +2 to hit for each round of concentration sounds good. This also requires a time limit. Shot must be taken within 30 seconds (that is, 5 rounds). This enables 4 rounds of concentration.

If your concentration is broken though, you lose one round worth of concentration "built up". Thus, it's always a decision as to whether to concentrate for 1 more round or to take the shot and trust the modifiers you've built up. I feel the Concentration-skill doesn't really serve the purpose I want here (mostly 'cause only casters max it thus making it horribly skewed for the people supposedly good in Archery); instead, I suggest modeling this as a Wisdom-check to avoid losing focus with increasing DC for each turn. State that it always fails on natural 1, keeping it exciting for even very high-leveled characters.
- Archery is a sport of marksmanship, of course. There are different sizes of targets on the target area. I feel, making them all targets of different ACs would probably be the best. But my basic idea is thus:
* There are...say 4 different spheres with bullseye in the middle. ACs could be...10 (Medium), 11 (Small), 12 (Tiny), 14 (Fine) & 18 (Diminuitive) for example (range can be used to make them all harder).
* If you aim at a harder target and miss, you can still hit a target you weren't aiming, but at "one category less"-principle. So if you aim the bullseye (AC 18) and roll a 14, you'd hit the AC 12 target.

This means realistic estimation of your own abilities helps and introduces another level of tactic into the whole deal (and yes, if you run 12 or less while trying 13 or higher, you miss entirely).
- In archery, you obviously have to decide how hard to shoot. I think introducing the "Power Shot"-mechanic could be interesting. That is, reduce To Hit for Damage. Why would anyone use it, you might ask? Well, we can use a tough targets.

That is, e.g. state that any arrow dealing less than 5 damage won't stick to the target and counts as 0 points. So Power Shot would allow you to more reliably make the arrow stick once it hits, but hitting would be harder. One could also state that the arrow's kinetic energy dissipates, the further it shoots and thus, the further the target is, the more "energy" you need to actually reach the target (mechanically, you need more damage to make the arrow stick; this is an alternative idea where the "damage threshold" starts at 1, but as you get to targets further away, you need to deal more damage per each increase).


Suggested Archery Rules:
- Everyone uses basic Longbow
- No magic allowed
- Concentrating on the shot by making a Wisdom-check of DC 10 + 2 per turns Concentrated gives +2 cumulative bonus per turn concentrated on the shot. Failed check loses one turn's bonus (so if you succeed twice and fail once, you have one bonus, +2, left). Autofails on 1.
- Five categories of targets with ACs 10, 11, 12, 14 & 18 (or DM's decision). Aiming a tougher target but rolling high enough for an easier one leads to hitting to one category worse hit than normal.
- Each archer may Power Shot (-1 To Hit, +1 Damage). It takes at least 5 damage to make the arrow stick to the target. Alternatively, make the damage required depend on range.


Other than that, normal archery: Competitors take turns taking their shots at targets progressively further away, either shoot X shots, take possible tied contestants to a "single elimination" where the target is moved a bit further each shot and as soon as there's a score difference, the one with higher score wins.

Alternatively, just every contestant rolls X shots (suggest DM tables NPC shots before competition to save time) at targets at varying ranges and the one with the best outcome wins.

Kaiyanwang
2009-10-16, 03:39 AM
Can I suggest a collateral "interest increaser?"

If the PCs are, say, prisoner of a tyrant/dragon/gehenna general/whatever that force them to challenge NPC or other PC with gread reward and/or horrible destiny for the loser, I think that rolling a mere graplle check could be quite involving.

Said this, I think that the "boredom" could come from the description the DM does of the action. After all, seeing how the skill system works, a PC ability to jump and the likeis about their skill. If you want to improve the effect of the PLAYER decision, reintroduce the good old +2/-2 (or more) circumstance bonus.

This could be done even for perform checks. The chance of obtaina +2 (+4? +6) or the fear of a malus could push the Bard player to invent actual pieces of poetry! If your players are found on cooking, this can be applied even to this other form of art.

At least in my experience, I've seen interesting things inventing "duel" rules for my fighter-type PCs. When they are in a settlement with valorous warriors, they challenge each other to see who's the real badass (just because the culture of many races consider this normal).

These are the rules:
- No magic items
- Masterwork armor at choice
-Masterwork ranged weapon OR set of throwing
-1 Masterwork two hand OR S&B OR TWF
- A backup object like a tower or a second weapon set

Setted distance (generally 36 meteres), terrain vary, generally plain. Blows are "simulated", you inflict "honor wounds" equals to the target HPs.

When you finish honor, you lose.

I had a very intersting fight between the PC charger fighter and a polearm CR NPC I built, one time. They had to decide when apporach and cover, between sunder, if stand up and when when tripped.. not bad.

Ranged wepons - you can make player choose matter allowing several shoots, but limited arrows - the target are different (so, they grant different score) and they have to decide if dare or not.

I think you can do similar things for every challenge, barring maybe running. I think that if you want to make it interesing, you have to built a trail with crossroads, maybe the "runners have to decide if is better go there and climb, or there and swim. Something on the long road.

BreathingMeat
2009-10-16, 03:50 AM
Hey, I got one ... how about

Tightrope Walking

Your contestant gets a prize she wants if she makes it across the tightrope, succeeding in a few easy balance checks, but the other PCs get a prize they want if they can make her fall off by chucking wet sponges at her from a suitable range. Each time the throwers score a hit the tightrope-walker has to make another balance check to stay on the rope. You'd have to make the throws pretty difficult to make it fair on the tightrope walker, but a bit of maths would sort that out. Of course, you might prefer to play this game PvNPC if that's the type of game your party prefers.

Sliver
2009-10-16, 04:42 AM
- In archery, you obviously have to decide how hard to shoot. I think introducing the "Power Shot"-mechanic could be interesting. That is, reduce To Hit for Damage. Why would anyone use it, you might ask? Well, we can use a tough targets.

That is, e.g. state that any arrow dealing less than 5 damage won't stick to the target and counts as 0 points. So Power Shot would allow you to more reliably make the arrow stick once it hits, but hitting would be harder. One could also state that the arrow's kinetic energy dissipates, the further it shoots and thus, the further the target is, the more "energy" you need to actually reach the target (mechanically, you need more damage to make the arrow stick; this is an alternative idea where the "damage threshold" starts at 1, but as you get to targets further away, you need to deal more damage per each increase).

There is already a penalty for shooting farther then the first range increase, so with forcing the player to deal more damage is forcing him to get double penalty. As in D&D you don't deal less damage to targets far away, I don't think that one much needed, as I think that the range increasement penlaties are already counting for both the harder to hit and the need to use more str so the damage is the same.

A few problems here rise though (not only archery).. This thing is made for more normal people, levels from 1 (amature) to 4 (expert). Higher level characters will always make the shot (or skill check), because they just maxed it and have high modifiers, while at lower levels, luck is far more important then the modifier. A commoner has a solid chance to win a cooking competition against anything but a focused cook. That +4 difference between them should count for a lot more.

a 3d6 will be far more avarage and the skill of the character will be far more likely to be important then with a 1d20.

Eldariel
2009-10-16, 04:59 AM
Can I suggest a collateral "interest increaser?"

If the PCs are, say, prisoner of a tyrant/dragon/gehenna general/whatever that force them to challenge NPC or other PC with gread reward and/or horrible destiny for the loser, I think that rolling a mere graplle check could be quite involving.

Said this, I think that the "boredom" could come from the description the DM does of the action. After all, seeing how the skill system works, a PC ability to jump and the likeis about their skill. If you want to improve the effect of the PLAYER decision, reintroduce the good old +2/-2 (or more) circumstance bonus.

This could be done even for perform checks. The chance of obtaina +2 (+4? +6) or the fear of a malus could push the Bard player to invent actual pieces of poetry! If your players are found on cooking, this can be applied even to this other form of art.

At least in my experience, I've seen interesting things inventing "duel" rules for my fighter-type PCs. When they are in a settlement with valorous warriors, they challenge each other to see who's the real badass (just because the culture of many races consider this normal).

These are the rules:
- No magic items
- Masterwork armor at choice
-Masterwork ranged weapon OR set of throwing
-1 Masterwork two hand OR S&B OR TWF
- A backup object like a tower or a second weapon set

Setted distance (generally 36 meteres), terrain vary, generally plain. Blows are "simulated", you inflict "honor wounds" equals to the target HPs.

When you finish honor, you lose.

I had a very intersting fight between the PC charger fighter and a polearm CR NPC I built, one time. They had to decide when apporach and cover, between sunder, if stand up and when when tripped.. not bad.

Ranged wepons - you can make player choose matter allowing several shoots, but limited arrows - the target are different (so, they grant different score) and they have to decide if dare or not.

I think you can do similar things for every challenge, barring maybe running. I think that if you want to make it interesing, you have to built a trail with crossroads, maybe the "runners have to decide if is better go there and climb, or there and swim. Something on the long road.

Interest increases work...sometimes. Sometimes they make no sense though; what I'm trying to do here is to make up some rules that make every competition the players participate in memorable and interesting.

Sprint Running is something I'm having difficulties with. Long-distance running has a lot going on for it by default; you roll Initiative to see who gets the best start and Dex-check (see chasing rules) to see who is "acting fastest" at each point and then you decide how hard to run at each point and at which point to start the real push and start forcing Con-checks from yourself, risking fatigue and so on. But sprinting is harder to come up with interesting decisions for.

And yeah, circumstance variants certainly help a lot. Having PCs describe what they're singing and how can have an impact depending on their choices in relation to the audience and what they value. You can focus on different aspects of the song, giving up in others again gaining various bonuses and penalties depending on your decisions. I think most ability checks really involve things you could do.

I suppose the real purpose of this thread is to catalogue the kinds of things you could be taking into account.

Duel should be relatively easy and offers a lot of options. Maybe worth writing out some alternatives too?


Hey, I got one ... how about

Tightrope Walking

Your contestant gets a prize she wants if she makes it across the tightrope, succeeding in a few easy balance checks, but the other PCs get a prize they want if they can make her fall off by chucking wet sponges at her from a suitable range. Each time the throwers score a hit the tightrope-walker has to make another balance check to stay on the rope. You'd have to make the throws pretty difficult to make it fair on the tightrope walker, but a bit of maths would sort that out. Of course, you might prefer to play this game PvNPC if that's the type of game your party prefers.

Hmm, I feel this one is more a different kind of competition rather than just making the competition interesting. Not that it's bad, per say, but I'd feel it more beneficial if you could come up with more factors that could influence the process of tightrope walking itself...like, toss them a balancing stick and have them describe how they're using it and have some near-miss rolls cause the rope to wobble and so on.


There is already a penalty for shooting farther then the first range increase, so with forcing the player to deal more damage is forcing him to get double penalty. As in D&D you don't deal less damage to targets far away, I don't think that one much needed, as I think that the range increasement penlaties are already counting for both the harder to hit and the need to use more str so the damage is the same.

Yeah, I know. It's an interesting trade-off though; do you have good enough To Hit to risk worse roll on it for a more secure Hit. As you get 0 points if the arrow doesn't stick, it's often a good call to just eat up the penalty, but if you need a bullseye to stay in the competition, it just might be a better idea to instead hope for a good damage roll and take no penalties on the To Hit.

Overall, I feel it's an interesting way to play the odds, and if it got harder by range, it would enable it to eventually be relevant even for focused archers, when only the two best guys are left.


A few problems here rise though (not only archery).. This thing is made for more normal people, levels from 1 (amature) to 4 (expert). Higher level characters will always make the shot (or skill check), because they just maxed it and have high modifiers, while at lower levels, luck is far more important then the modifier. A commoner has a solid chance to win a cooking competition against anything but a focused cook. That +4 difference between them should count for a lot more.

a 3d6 will be far more avarage and the skill of the character will be far more likely to be important then with a 1d20.

Well, it's not that likely. But yeah, this is a problem of the system and outside the scope of this thread to fix. That said, making all the competitions involve multiple checks does minimize the chance of the Commoner winning in something he has no qualifications for.

Cieyrin
2009-10-16, 12:43 PM
Have you read or played a game of Goatball out of Races of Stone? That's good fun! It's a combination of jumping from post to post, making the balance check to actually land and not fall off, resisting bull rushes from the opposing team trying to knock you off and trying to get close enough to the opposing team's goal to throw the goatball in.

Considering this is generally played by Goliaths, it plays to most of their strengths but it's still pretty fun in general.

SethFahad
2010-01-05, 02:46 AM
What about Drinking Contest? How do you engage in one? Under what rules and what check or/and saves?

AslanCross
2010-01-05, 08:09 AM
What about Drinking Contest? How do you engage in one? Under what rules and what check or/and saves?

Arms & Equipment Guide says drinking alcohol calls for Fort saves; each check that is made within an hour increases the DC.

Each failed save penalizes one's Wisdom and Dex. When Dex runs out, the character collapses immobile but awake; when Wis runs out, he passes out.

For a drinking game, you could have multiple beverages with different DCs and each player randomly picks one. That way, even though they're die rolls, you can't be sure how steep the DC is. You could have it continue until someone passes out first, or until one person is left sober.

Tehnar
2010-01-05, 08:13 AM
I was thinking about a similar subject (namely opposed tests that can't be resolved by a single roll), and this is a rough draft of things. It was heavily influenced by the Shadowrun system of extended tests: in fact I am calling this a Extended d20 test). It is also similar to the crafting rules.

Basically as a DM you have to figure out 3 numbers:

A) the DC of a single test
B) the number of sucesses needed to complete the extended test
C) the time interval it takes to make a single test

The mechanic is this: You make a single test against a DC. If you beat the DC you gain 1 sucess, if you beat the DC by 5 or more you get 2 sucesses, by 10 or more you gain 3, etc. You repeat the single test until you have gathered enough sucesses to meet the target number B.

For speed competitions you can either note the number of sucesses someone made in a fixed period of time: or the time taken to complete a number of sucesses.

For tests that are directly opposed by two or more participants make single tests, but not against a fixed DC, but against each others result. However, here if both results are within 5 points of each other, the single test is considered a tie, and no side gains a sucesses. However if one side beats the other by 10 or more they get 2 sucesses, by 15 or more they gain 3, etc.

Examples:

A log sawing contest. The winner is the first to saw through a log. The DM decides this is a profession(woodcutter or logger) skill test, however the participants use STR instead of WIS as a modifier. He decides that the DC of a single test is 15, the number of sucesses needed is 20, and the interval is one round.

Bill the barbarian has 16 STR, but no skill in cutting logs (for a total modifier of +3), while his competition Joe the Logger has 12 STR, 6 ranks, and skill focus in woodcutting (for a total modifier of +10).

The competition starts and both participants make a single test. Bill rolls a 10 and gets 0 sucesses; while Joe rolls a 16, for a total of 26 and gains 3 sucesses. After 1 round Bill has 0/20 needed sucesses, while Joe is at 3/20.


A rope pulling contest. Since this is a opposed test, the DM doesn't need to set a DC of a single test. So he decides that the first side to get 5 sucesses wins, that the time interval is 30 seconds, and that the test includes a opposed STR checks.

After Joe soundly beat Bill in the last example he decides to give a rematch to Bill in the form of a rope pulling contest. Here only STR modifiers apply.

The contest starts and bill rolls a 7 (for a total of 10) while Joe rolls a 12 (total 13). Since they are within 5 points of each other, neither gain any sucesses. On the next interval, Bill decides it is too much for his honor to take if he loses to Joe, so he decides to rage. Bill rolls a 18 (total 23 now that he is raging) while Joe rolls a 3 (total 4). Bill beat Joes result by 19 so he gains 3 sucesses from that. Only 2 more to go for Bill. However since he can rage for only 7 rounds, he doesn't get to apply this bonus on the next single test, instead he is fatigued and gains a -2 penalty.


As I said this is a rough draft so things to work out:
- the increment determining the number of sucesses. It is currently at 5, but can be lower or higher
- a penalty for not meeting the DC

Orran
2010-01-05, 08:31 AM
An interesting sport for dnd? Basketball.

The goal is to get the ball into the hoop (ranged attack, with penalties for range, ball's range increment is 5ftxstr modifier, -2 to hit) to do this you must dribble (prevents double moves, charges, tumbling, and other special movement) or pass (ranged touch attack to pass, reflex to catch) the ball past enemy players. The enemies can attempt to stop you by stealing (disarm attempt, provokes without IUS) intercepting (readied action to oppose opponents pass with own reflex) or if they're feeling sneaky, tripping (trip attack, + bluff, with bnonuses for beating opponent by 5 or more.)

Add in some rules for feinting, dunking, the ball bouncing when dropped, and gripping the ball 2 handed. Then away, simple but enjoyable game. For extra fun make npc league teams with their feats in improved unarmed strike and improved disarm, class levels in things with good bab and reflex saves, or interesting abilities. Then whoop the PC's butts at a sport they were completely unoptmized for with npc's several levels below them. May have to make the field an antimagic zone, or just against the rules, whichever.

hamishspence
2010-01-05, 08:40 AM
Complete Warrior has rules for making archery games more interesting.

And rules for jousting.

Though for team sports, Goatball seems to be the only one covered in detail.

Xuincherguixe
2010-01-05, 10:07 AM
I recently played through Assassin's Creed 2, where there was something like this. A bit different since, you know, video game and all. But there is some relevance.

One of the events you need to win is a race.

But this is Assassin's Creed with the whole parkour thing. You don't run in a straight line. You use buildings for footing and leap across rooftops.

You could have a completely INSANE foot race. Obstacles everywhere. Buildings and sculptures all over the place. And traps. And some of the opponents are magic users.


The other possibility is an evil carnival. Events are similar but more horrible. Only really works if everyone has a dark sense of humor though.

Zeta Kai
2010-01-05, 11:33 AM
Well, one of my first projects that I posted to the forums was D20 Baseball (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39392). It's complete, & reasonably playable, but high-level characters can pretty much own the game. It's best for players that are all around the same ECL.

Radar
2010-01-05, 12:51 PM
For cooking, singing and such, there could be a simple modification: let the contestants decide, how difficult task they want to perform (set the DC) and then they either succeed or fail. Person, who succeeds on the highest check, wins. Even the greates singer won't impress anyone, if he would sing "Happy Birthsday". This way players can decide, how much they want to risk during the competition.
One might add very small bonuses for performing exceedingly well (no more, then +1 for every +5 over the DC) and some heavy penalties for going below the DC (for example -3 per every point below DC). Players should be able, to do skill checks to determine, what other contestants are doing during the competition (easier as the time limit comes to an end). This might force them to reconcider their initial choices, but for example quickened cooking might add to the difficulty due to time constrains.

Weightlifting and such would coincidentially work the same way as the real thing under those rules.

Gamerlord
2010-01-05, 01:35 PM
The Complete warrior has some interesting sports, like summoners chess.

Crow
2010-01-05, 02:06 PM
I had my players playing a football-like game just the other day. Here were the basics of "Pig Ball";

Take the ball to your opponent's "end zone".
You may run the ball, or pass it.
Game begins with a tip-off, and play does not stop until a score occurs.

1. Tip-off. One player is selected from each team for tip-off. The ref tosses the ball into the air. The two players make an opposed jump check, with the winner coming down with the ball.

2. Running to the end-zone. The player with the ball tries to get to the opponent's endzone any way he can. Opposing players attempt to stop him, by grabbing him and taking him to the ground. Tackler and ball carrier make an opposed grapple check (ball carrier may substitute this check with Escape Artist). If the tackler wins, the ball-carrier is brought down. If ball carrier wins, he shakes the tackle. By making a successful jump check (dc 10), the tackler can get a +2 bonus to his grapple attempt. However, failure means he misses the ball carrier and is prone.

3. Fighting for the ball. Once on the ground, tackler and ball carrier fight for the ball. Players make an opposed grapple check, with the winner coming away with the ball. All players who join the dogpile may attempt to make this check. The winner of this grapple check comes away with the ball and may pass the ball or attempt to run with it as normal.

4. Passing the ball. The ball has a range increment of 20ft. Players may pass the ball to any player they want. The thrower makes a ranged attack roll (dc10) to throw the ball to their teamate. If this throw succeeds, the receiver catches the ball. On a failure, the throw is off target. Every two points by which the check fails results in the throw being off by 5 feet in a random direction. Any player within 10 feet of the throw's destination may attempt to catch the ball, sometimes resulting in an interception. Defenders attempting to intercept the ball must make a jump check (dc <the thrower's ranged atteck roll>). Success means they intercept the ball. If the ball is off-target and is thrown to a defender, he automatically makes the catch.

5. Teams play until one team has made 3 scores.

Zeta Kai
2010-01-05, 02:24 PM
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, I also made Blitzball (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=4479935#post4479935) from Final Fantasy X, which is basically an underwater football. It has fairly complex rules for a D20 game, but should be a fun, & it has a strong flavor (unlike roll-&-compare games).

valadil
2010-01-05, 02:25 PM
How about an obstacle course? It should probably include a few branches and dead ends. Let the players figure out the skill check they use for each obstacle. Come up with interesting penalties for failed checks.

Depending on where the PC's morality lies, you can make cheating a part of the sport. An archery contest is boring. Replacing the best archer's arrows with some weighing 10% more isn't (although you should probably use semi random weights so he can't just compensate for them).

Even if you do stick with simple skill challenges, setting goals can make things interesting. If each PC needs a prize to pass, it won't make sense to enter both fighters in the melee. One of them will have to do the tree climbing, but that's what the rogue wanted. The rogue could do the tightrope walk, but his mentor is doing that, so he probably can't win it, etc. The challenge in this case is aligning characters to skills so that everyone has a good chance to succeed, rather than simply rolling high at your best skill. The trick of course is for the GM to pick the right skills.

Dimers
2010-01-05, 10:08 PM
Some contests might be based on performing a task well, but judged by the reaction of an audience. A version of this is the morale modifiers for gladiatorial contests described in CW, but that's all just during the fight; you could create a separate system for both hidden and obvious reactions.

Asheram
2010-01-10, 12:24 PM
.... I'd really love to see a bloodbowl match in D&D

SethFahad
2010-01-11, 02:47 AM
Ragby or American Football?
Alot of ranged touch attacks, bullrushes grapples and overruns.
Alot of AoOs, therefore get dodge and mobility. (and freedom of movement:smallwink:)

Psionic Dog
2010-01-11, 08:50 PM
I actually just drafted up rules for D20 Ice Hockey (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137609) where AoO are an important part of the game.


As for obstacle courses and races, things would probably get interesting fast if the competition was legally (or unofficially) allowed to interfere with each other. Plus, if the race was epic in length the event itself might be an entire campaign arc (say, first team to carry an a minor artifact continuously generating an anti-magic sphere across the continent wins 500,000 gp)

Physics_Rook
2010-01-11, 10:07 PM
One of the best in-games games I’ve ever seen run was a game of hide & seek. Fair warning, this is a large post.

I was rolling up a new character at the time, and my friend and the DM were going through some solo stuff while I was at the table.

My friend was off on a sort of semi-informal picnic thing with the extended family of one of his NPC friends. They were out at one of the families larger farms, and a couple of games were suggested, but being the guest, my friend was given the choice of what to play, and he eventually decided on hide & seek.

The general agreed upon rules were, you have to physically touch the person for them to count as being caught, no using magic, no using magic items, and no violence.

Now of interesting note, is the fact that nearly all the members of the family bore a close resemblance to a family family, as in the mafia. Needless to say, while they were paid lip-service to in the beginning, at the end none of these rules were followed.

In addition, there were always the tense moments when the some members of the family didn’t “go quietly” after being found (remember he still had to touch for it to count). Since all the people he was going after had a very wide variety of skill sets to draw from, the end result of trying to catch each person was always different and interesting.

To boot, his character was a cleric that had the standard action teleport reserve feet, some very high spot and listen checks, and a base pace that’s more than double standard (something like an 80ft base speed). While he managed to find about half the people on his first run, he still had to make some creative use of his abilities to actually run them down.

And there’s the fact that rather then being a straight d20+bonus kind of game, each family member actually tried to hide themselves from sight in some fashion. I remember there were a couple that could breathe underwater indefinitely, and as such just hid there until he found them. Others would actually try to break line of sight (so his high spot checks wouldn’t work), and he’d actually have to search around the farm for them.

With many family member breaking LoS, and an entire farm to search, he really couldn’t rely on either his spot or search checks to find them, and it made for some very cool role-playing on his part.

Plus, since the whole was kinda supposed to be an icebreaker for him meeting the entire family, there were some tense moments when he was wondering if he was about to sign his death sentence by bending a rule like the rest of the family was, or finding someone he wasn’t supposed to find (like an unspoken rule that you’re never supposed to catch the head of the family). Plus since some the most dangerous family members had a tendency to hide in places far out of earshot of others, my friend was nervous about whether he should go after them either (after all, they’d win the game if they weren’t caught).

This entire setup resulted in one of the coolest sessions I’d ever seen, and even though I didn’t participate at all, it was still a heck of a lot of fun to witness. The usually spot 'n search method was trumped through some creative use of the environment.

I hope this gives you ideas in which direction to run.:smallsmile: