Battle Royale

[Narren]

Well, not quite. I'm getting together with my friends to do a one-night tournament style game. There are four of them, and they can make pretty much any (probably 12th level) character they want. We're debating core-only, but I'll probably allow whatever they can show me (just to keep it interesting). They're not a group of optimizers, so there's no worry of them doing anything game-breaking.

Anyways, the only things they'll know about each other is what they look like, and they'll each see the others fight one match before facing each other. I'm going to make it an 8-person bracket, and each of them will fight an NPC before moving on to the next stage. I'll make sure the NPC is a challenge, but not so tough that they probably won't win.

So, any ideas on interesting characters for them to face? I'm not too concerned about making them super-optimized (or optimized at all, for that matter) I'm just trying to come up with something they'll remember. The NPC's are mostly just there to force the PC's to show one or two of their tricks if they want to move on to the next match.

I'm also coming up with 8 "arena" areas for them to fight. Any ideas on those would be welcome as well.

[urandom]

I would recommend looking at the test of spite http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113644

The builds used there may well be overpowered for your purposes, but will at least give an idea of what pvp arena combat can look like.

[Fable Wright]

Whip out obscure classes in ways that work. Have them fight a Wu Jen Jade Phoenix Mage that uses boosts to improve the power of their metal throwing scarves. Give them a Dark Companion Hexblade/Paladin of Tyranny debuffer build, adding on whatever save-forcing mechanics that you can. Give them Bub the Battletitan-training commoner. Let them fight a Girallion Arms and/or Manticore Belt Totemist. Have them fight a Duskblade or a well-done Sorcadin with Wings of Cover. Have them fight an army of Awakened Kobold Skeletons that are systematically possessed by a necromancer in a Magic Jar. Let them fight Thri-kreen Hood builds, or a Hengeyokai Sparrow Knight that forces you to attack (and miss) it nonstop while it keeps landing small, extremely painful hits through size modifiers. Try adding Dvati whatever to one of the builds, to keep things random. Make a Voidmind War Troll, if you feel particularly evil. Basically any concept based on a gimmick that the players might not necessarily have thought of and/or looks cool.