[3.5] D&D Hunger Games/Battle School advice

[FinnDarkblade]

I'm starting to plan a D&D Hunger Games to try to increase the system mastery and optimization level in my group.
The setup I have is that the world is ruled by a mageocracy of evil high-level wizards(Of Tippyverse levels of power). Each wizard is the absolute ruler of a nation. They hold a hunger game every year for their entertainment and the performance of the participant from their nation determines how well they treat their nation that year. The games take place in a jointly cast Genesis that the wizards can modify at will.

Does anyone have any advice on events, rules variants, etc?
What I'm thinking about so far is having people immediately level up every time they kill a participant as well as normal experience gained from overcoming challenges. That way they'll be encouraged to seek out the others instead of just hiding out.

[Elvenoutrider]

I ran a game similar to this but instead of it being a free for all, there were 12 war bands in a hazard Filled map with 8 different biomes. Each PC started with 2 random items: anything from a suit of armor to a tackle box to a cow, and one random weapon with 20 ammo if it is ranged. In between warband battles, the pcs need to stay safe from the arena hazards and roaming monsters by finding safe places to live. This could mean making camp, raiding a dungeon, or finding a town to stay in.

The pcs have a sponsor they can pay immense amounts of money for the gear they need or they can buy what they can from local venders. I had one witch doctor NPc who sold potions that were laced with drugs or poisons at incredibly low prices. They could also bribe their sponsor to convince The Lord of chaos to inconvenience other teams, they would have to roll the wheel of misfortune which could change the weather, peace bind their weapons, teleport them, or disable their casting.

If a PC In a war and dies, the party needs to find a ressurection station. This station teleports the pcs to the palace of The Lord of chaos where they need to complete his challenge to either bring their comrades back, or yank different ones from their world. If the pcs went 24 hours without finding a ressurecriom station, they lose. If they lose, their world gets annihilated and resorbed back into the primordial chaos from which they were formed.

I wound up improvising the majority of the campaign and was one of the more fun ones I had run. I knowmthismwasntmexactlymwhat you were looking for but I hope something I wrote helped

[FinnDarkblade]

Somewhat helpful. In my game though, the players will be on their own unless they make a temporary alliance. That way I can craft the encounters/challenges/puzzles to show them something specific about the way they play/the class/build they're playing.

[DMVerdandi]

Another suggestion is that Arcane magic and Psionics are completely within the realm of the magocracy.

They are allowed divine magic from very specific classes (Mainly to keep them ignorant and hopeful), and even though there are no deities to speak of, the worship of the geist of the sectors is one of the ideosyncracies of the world.

In this, you could limit the classes available to the non-magical ones, rangers, paladins, healers and adepts. Maybe take out archivists and clerics, or better yet, outlaw them, and make them "underground" classes.

I think you could really just make the actual games a small part of YOUR game, and make a fine setting out of that.

Divine magic users against the arcane and psionic aristocrats.
Doing with Ebberon books (Without their fluff mostly.), having the battle of faith and hope vs determination and control, and really magiteching the hell out of the opposition would be cool.Include DMG guns
(I would reduce their damage though. Better battles. ;o)


Perhaps winning the games allows you to go to the capital to be retrained in either an arcane or psionic class (An obvious status upgrade. I would make the arcane class the spellcaster from Unlimited Arcana, just to wring out any flavor from a sophisticated magocracy. Also its a bit more balanced than a wizard, if everyone from the capital is an arcanist or psion).


Psionics can be dropped if you wish, OR replaced as the primary form of casting in the capital. Not having requirements for powers is a big boon. If it's not a option, drop it just that fast, and replace it completely with arcane magic, OR even further, give the lower sectors NO supernatural powers, and only allow the spellcaster class to exist as the sole caster, and only in the hands of the magocracy.

Bunch of ideas, take the ones you like, and leave the rest. There are a bunch of combos.

Sector Vs Capital
Arcane/Divine
Divine/Arcane
Psionic/Divine
Psionic/Arcane
Divine/Psionic
Arcane/Psionic
Mundane/Supernatural

And racial
Human/Other
Other/Human
Other/Other

[FinnDarkblade]

I have definitely thought about barring prepared arcane casters as it would make sense in a world with a mageocracy. I decided not to because it's counterproductive to my stated goal(increase system mastery and optimization level in my group) and the setting is more of an excuse for the arena match than anything else. I'm looking for mechanics advice, not plot advice.

[Emperor Tippy]

The Heroic Domain's of Ysgard are your friend. Anyone who dies gets a free True Resurrection the next day.

This is where you run battle school and real gladiator games. Any good and competent military is running there troop training programs here.

[Ravens_cry]

Honestly, it sounds rather boring to be honest, at least to me. It's PvP, which I generally dislike, and I don't think 3.5 is all that suited for. Plus, there is little reason to form alliances, as any will have to be broken in the end, so role playing will be limited as well.

[FinnDarkblade]

Honestly, it sounds rather boring to be honest, at least to me. It's PvP, which I generally dislike, and I don't think 3.5 is all that suited for. Plus, there is little reason to form alliances, as any will have to be broken in the end, so role playing will be limited as well.

I'm pretty much fine with the group's RP skills, they don't need any improvement in my opinion. As an example of why their mechanical skills need improvement, despite what I've told them about the tiers, they remain convinced that rogues are the most powerful class in the game because I usually play them and end up being the most powerful character in a game with druids, clerics, wizards, etc. (which is why I limit myself to rogues, I don't want to overshadow everyone too much)

*addition* And I have told them about the game, explained why I was doing it, and what it would be like, and they said they were interested.


The Heroic Domain's of Ysgard are your friend. Anyone who dies gets a free True Resurrection the next day.

This is where you run battle school and real gladiator games. Any good and competent military is running there troop training programs here.

I will ask them if they'd rather just have a straight-up battle school experience. It might encourage them to try new things if the consequences of death are negligible. They might not like it though, because it removes what little room there is for RP in this game idea.

[Emperor Tippy]

I will ask them if they'd rather just have a straight-up battle school experience. It might encourage them to try new things if the consequences of death are negligible.

I think it would probably work better for your purposes to run straight up battle school.

The PC's have been selected by the government to become a strike team or whatever (or perhaps as the Hunger Games team for one of the mage's) and their sponsor has no great interest in treating them with kid gloves but a very great interest in making them as deadly as possible.

As in "Welcome to Hunger Games Training Academy, otherwise known as hell. Here is twenty square miles of real estate. Your first job is to simply survive 24 hours inside of it.".

Have Ice Assassin and Simulacrum traps to produce all kinds of enemies to send in and then just utterly punish the PC's. Pull no punches, do things like have invisible flying mages with their Enlarge Spell Fell Drain Twined Magic Missiles for 2 negative levels per turn to the whole party. Use Factotum Archer Assassin's who drop thousand damage arrows into your head from two thousand feet away.

If the players are mature enough to handle it then you can fairly rapidly improve their skills and ability to coordinate.

Have them kill a Monk only to find that his death triggers the ten fully metamagiced Fireballs directly on his corpse thanks to Craft Contingent spells. Are you within a 40 foot radius of him? Then have Evasion and make 10 Reflex saves or take several thousand points of damage.

What, that isn't fair? Well the party wizard can cast Analyze Dweomer at level 11 and the parties permanent Arcane Sight should have shown them that he was laden with magical auras that were all identical and thus worthy of divining.

If they need encouragement just tell them to be glad that I'm not running it. The campaign I'm currently running has suicide monks as the primary antagonists for the ECL 5 party, except mine are suicide monks by virtue of Epic spells. They are also totally immune to magic, have massive DR, and are quite buffed thanks to other Epic Spells. Hey the BBEG is an Epic Sorcerer God King with a brain.

[FinnDarkblade]

[stuff]

Don't take this in a weird way, but you're kind of my favorite person at the moment. They should take "win" out of the dictionary and replace it with "Tippy".

That being said, I don't know if I want to hammer them that harshly right off the bat. I don't want them to quit D&D altogether. I'd definitely like to work my towards that level though, we'll see what happens.

[Emperor Tippy]

Don't take this in a weird way, but you're kind of my favorite person at the moment. They should take "win" out of the dictionary and replace it with "Tippy".

That being said, I don't know if I want to hammer them that harshly right off the bat. I don't want them to quit D&D altogether. I'd definitely like to work my towards that level though, we'll see what happens.

Oh you do work them up. Start with weaker and less capable enemies.

I mean start with stuff like ECL 3: Survive the night in the area. Then fill it with animals of various kinds. Snakes, bears, birds, wolverines, etc. If the PC's get curious about where all the animals are coming from and investigate then they would find out that there was a low level Druid in the area who was mad at them for invading his territory and was having the animals attack them. If they just survive the night then in the after action review have it brought up.

Like "Well congratulations, you survived the night. That gets you a C grade." and then explain why they got that grade IC.

You have no problem with a high level wizard running this so remember that between Fabricate, Simulacrum, and Ice Assassin you can pretty much turn an arbitrarily large area into any environment that you want at will. Take advantage of that and throw them at everything from close quarters high intensity combat as they fight through a castle filled with hostiles to "survive in this desert for a week" situations. And usually don't tell the PC's what they are going to be facing in advance.

[FinnDarkblade]

I was planning on instituting a grading system, and I definitely like the idea of secret objectives in the scenarios. I was also planning on letting them make multiple characters and change their builds between challenges in order to help encourage them to try new things.

[Emperor Tippy]

I was planning on instituting a grading system, and I definitely like the idea of secret objectives in the scenarios. I was also planning on letting them make multiple characters and change their builds between challenges in order to help encourage them to try new things.

Level Loss + Thought Bottle allows you to change all but your very first level.

Psychic Reformation allows for all skill points and feats to be re-selected.

Embrace the Dark Chaos and Shun the Dark Chaos allows the same (although at greater cost if you just want to change to feats that you could legally take at a given point in time).

Wish from a Solar Ice Assassin lets you re choose magic items.

Then you have Mind Rape.

Combined you can fairly convincingly rebuild the PC's into pretty much anything else while not getting new characters. Incidentally this can be lots of fun to handle IC.

[FinnDarkblade]

Level Loss + Thought Bottle allows you to change all but your very first level.

That plus multiple characters will probably give them all the character versatility they might want, at least at low levels. And I was planning on Psychic Reformation for first level. Do you have to pay the higher price for it if you've been negative energyed back to first level? Once magic items really come into play though I will enjoy making their heads spin with RAW-legal armies of Ice Assassins used for RAW-legal wish farming.

[Emperor Tippy]

That plus multiple characters will probably give them all the character versatility they might want, at least at low levels. And I was planning on Psychic Reformation for first level. Do you have to pay the higher price for it if you've been negative energyed back to first level? Once magic items really come into play though I will enjoy making their heads spin with RAW-legal armies of Ice Assassins used for RAW-legal wish farming.

If you have stored your XP total into a thought bottle (you need one for every level and you have to use them in reverse order to get back to your original level) and then lost a level you are a level lower for all purposes.

Temporary level loss wouldn't do it though, only permanent.

That lets you total rebuild everything but first level for 500 XP. End with a Psychic Reformation when you are at first level and all you can't repick is basically a Sorcerer's spells known chosen at first level.

[FinnDarkblade]

Alright, I've got a working mechanical system in place for both types of game now, I just have to see if they're interested in battle school as well. Thanks for all the help Tippy.

[Emperor Tippy]

Alright, I've got a working mechanical system in place for both types of game now, I just have to see if they're interested in battle school as well. Thanks for all the help Tippy.

No problem.