Arena Match Help

[Sloshman997]

So I'm setting up an arena match style oneshot campaign for my normal group of DnD'ers. The idea is everyone roles a level 20 gestalt character in a time limit and then random players are drawn to fight in an arena. The players wlll spawn in a random section of the island/arena. The island is small sized about 2000 ft. diameter and each pie of the island has a random environment. The characters will start with stats of 18,16,16,14,14,14 and can assign them anywhere they wish, they will also start with probably 2 million gold.

I'm looking for tips on what to ban/forbid to encourage creativity and discourage blatant "I win" buttons. The goal is for people to make super powerful characters via the gold, free LA, gestalt builds and great stats. I'm just trying to stop completely broken things.

No Wish, Miracle, Limited Wish
No Instant Death Affects
No spell/power/item/ability that grants you invisibility.
No Compentency Items Higher than +10
No Mysthic Thuerge and the other PrC's like it.
No Pre-"Campaign" Roleplaying. I.E. before the arena battle I was polymorphed into a Firbolg.
Races with LA of up to +5.
No contingency Spells.
No Item Familiar.
No Pun-Pun.
No Omnificer.

[Karnith]

What books are you allowing for this? It sounds like all of them (since you're disallowing Omnificer and Pun-Pun, which are pretty book-intensive), but an idea of what we have to work with would be good.

You would probably be interested in looking at the old Test of Spite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=113644) banlist; a lot of the changes were fixes, but the bans ought to give you a good idea of things to look out for.

Even in core alone, you should probably look carefully at Gate, Shapechange, Polymorph, Polymorph any Object, Time Stop, Astral Projection (depending on how characters start the duels), (abuses of) Explosive Runes, Planar Binding and its derivatives, Simulacrum, Leadership, spell-like abilities (though banning the replication of things with expensive material components or XP components ought to suffice), and Red Wizard. If you want more strategies to be viable, you should probably also consider fixing/banning spells and effects that grant immunities, like Mind Blank and Freedom of Movement.

Also, can I ask why you've banned invisibility effects?

[Acanous]

how long is this time limit?

[Sloshman997]

@Karnith I banned invisibility because I have a feeling If I don't everyone is just going to get an item of Greater Invisibility and I have a feeling knowing that everyone is going to get an item of See Invisibility.

@Acanous 2 hours. I'm confident in the group of players character creation abilities and the time limit is also there to keep them from scouring every page of every book and making them take the essentials first.

[Karnith]

I think that now it's also appropriate to ask what optimization level your group will be operating at, and what kind of builds you're expecting. If you're worried about Invisibility centralizing your players' character designs, then there are a lot more things than what I listed above that you'll need to worry about.

[Sloshman997]

Mid-range probably. Invisibility is just such a simple one, players are free to draw from any book but I have a feeling they will stick to only a few they know better.

I planned on keeping the Incantrix in but I think im going to ban Persistent spell.

[Eldariel]

@Karnith I banned invisibility because I have a feeling If I don't everyone is just going to get an item of Greater Invisibility and I have a feeling knowing that everyone is going to get an item of See Invisibility.

They're all gonna (or should) have True Seeing on this level anyways. Not to mention, Spot, Listen, various other spells (Glitterdust, Faerie Fire, etc.), and all special senses defeat Invisibility. If a character truly can't deal with it, perhaps he didn't deserve to live.

Contingencies are available to everybody through Craft Contingent Spell (basically items; up to HD) so I think they should be allowed; they certainly make it much more tactical (as long as they're not stupid Celerity contingencies; just remove that spell line).

All day buffs should be allowed on at the start simply 'cause it really doesn't make sense for them to ever be off; anything with duration of over 24 hours (or anything the caster can make last 24 hours; say 3 castings of Extended Shapechange with Caster Level 24). I'd also personally allow purchased castings of spells before the tournament; would give non-casters access to Polymorph Any Object for example. YMMV of course.


Things like "No Pun-Pun" and "No Omniscifier" show something of a lack of understanding of the mechanics behind those things. More appropriately, Pazuzu is already banned by "no pre-campaign roleplay" and shouldn't be allowed in any case. Just remove Manipulate Form or disallow Sarrukhs entirely and you gut the core of the system. Then just ban loops (there's a few; easier to just put a blanket ban on anything infinitely loopable rather than going through all the billions of loops).

I also don't see why instant death attacks were to be forbidden. There are plenty of defenses available and it's generally more reliable to attack for so much damage that the target has no chance of surviving anyways (not to mention, trivially doable). Really, high level D&D combat is built on the interaction of the various attacks and the appropriate defenses; this cuts most of the attacks away leaving only a handful of things to defend against which makes combat much simpler, not optimal for arena settings