Gladiator Campaign Needs Ideas

[tribalxgecko]

I am running a Pathfinder / 3.5 (mix) game based around the PC's being slave gladiators looking to rule the arena and someday buy their freedom. However, i am finding that the down time between gladiator fights is a bit 'boring' and that the fights themselves are a little 'monotonous'. I have added some spice to matches, such at pit traps (though the opponents had little reason to move, so it did not work real well), and another with balls of electricity that targeted the opponents, so they had to either bat away the orbs with their clubs, or attack their opponent (this was a lot of fun).

Basically I am looking for some cool ideas to use in the arena to make the fights more fun and interesting. Anything that makes the players think, use skills, strategize, or otherwise do something besides melee attack back and forth.

As for the downtime, I want the players to be 'hired' out my their owner for various tasks, and while there are all sorts of mini adventures I could use, I want to keep the gladiator theme (players are all 4 barbarians, 2 monks, and 1 fighter, and 1 paladin...all 4th level). So they don't have a lot of other skills that many adventures may need. I want to keep the gladiator theme when possible.

This is essentially an ancient roman / fantasy setting. So anything with that sort of theme is great too. Like I said, I have some ideas (about a page worth), but am looking to get some other ideas, especially original and out of the box ideas to really throw the PC's off and give them something new to enjoy.

[stack]

mazes, stacked crates, anything to vary the terrain. Wild beasts, hostile to everyone, tossed in. Floor the arena and make them fight on ships. Chain them in pairs.

Later on you could give them a day in running the gladiator school, recruiting and training new blood, picking events and cities. This works sooner if you have them run a joint group of trainers/owners separate from their gladiator characters.

[Randomguy]

Flood the arena for naval combat and give the opponent ranks in swim and the profession skills required to operate ship mounted weapons.

[Theroc]

Beast matches. My first fight I did for a few parties in my own little homebrew setting (Very, very simple, the core idea is a massive arena/gladiator theme), I used Ankhegs. The first time I did this... it was a TPK... but that's because the archer decided to charge towards a hole on the other side of the arena apart from the rest of the party and got picked off quickly... and it went downhill from there. (I either misunderstood CR ratings or 3 Ankhegs are OP when compared to a Druid(who decided to leave his animal companion at home), a Wizard, a Barbarian and a ranger at level 1. I'm legitimately unsure since I am a NEWB DM.) I can garauntee using burrowing enemies, especially if you use INTELLIGENT burrowing enemies that your players will have to think, especially since you have no Wizard to force them out with some obscure spell.

[Unusual Muse]

There's lots of material centered on gladiators in the Dark Sun setting, which has been adapted to 3.5 here. (http://athas.org/products?publisher=Athas.org)

[BShammie]

Beast matches. My first fight I did for a few parties in my own little homebrew setting (Very, very simple, the core idea is a massive arena/gladiator theme), I used Ankhegs. The first time I did this... it was a TPK... but that's because the archer decided to charge towards a hole on the other side of the arena apart from the rest of the party and got picked off quickly... and it went downhill from there. (I either misunderstood CR ratings or 3 Ankhegs are OP when compared to a Druid(who decided to leave his animal companion at home), a Wizard, a Barbarian and a ranger at level 1. I'm legitimately unsure since I am a NEWB DM.) I can garauntee using burrowing enemies, especially if you use INTELLIGENT burrowing enemies that your players will have to think, especially since you have no Wizard to force them out with some obscure spell.
Well one Ankheg is a CR 3 encounter, which means it should use about 25% of a level three party's resources. Three Ankhegs are around CR 7, so your level one party was completely outmatched from the get-go.
Poor tactical decisions didn't help their chances, but you should either use weaker creatures next time or give your players higher level characters.

You should keep in mind that the CR system is not very well done, and that the designers didn't seem to have any idea what they were doing when they were assigning some of the ratings. The Adamantine Horror and that crab creature in one of the WotC articles come to mind.

Edit: Ah, here we go. Found the Monstrous Crab (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040221a). It's about halfway down the page.

[Theroc]

Well one Ankheg is a CR 3 encounter, which means it should use about 25% of a level three party's resources. Three Ankhegs are around CR 7, so your level one party was completely outmatched from the get-go.
Poor tactical decisions didn't help their chances, but you should either use weaker creatures next time or give your players higher level characters.

You should keep in mind that the CR system is very well done, and that the designers didn't seem to have any idea what they were doing when they were assigning some of the ratings. The Adamantine Horror and that crab creature in the WotC article come to mind.


The bolded portion: Was there a typo in there or are you saying the CR system is good but Wizards can't assign CR for crap? If so, that's still kindof a problem with the system if you pull from Core.

Thanks for the advice though.

[BShammie]

The bolded portion: Was there a typo in there or are you saying the CR system is good but Wizards can't assign CR for crap? If so, that's still kindof a problem with the system if you pull from Core.

Thanks for the advice though.

Woops, that was a typo, sorry.

[krai]

One thing to keep in mind with gladiator games is while there is a lot of combat there is little conflict. You're fighting but the only reason is because you have to. That can get boring, my suggestion is to have the arena be a bit corrupt. Fighters try to poison one another before fights, rich people try to stack the fights so that they can make money gambling, or the person in charge could try to force fighters who are crowd favorites to never leave. This way there is some reason that the players are invested in the fights beyond the simple fact there is a fight.