Competitive Dungeon Crawls (3.5)

[Beelzebub1111]

So I'm going to be hosting a "Dungeon Crawl Tournament" at my local game store.

The idea is that we'd have teams of four players travel through a dungeon and complete an objective for 5 rounds and be awarded points, totaling up for some prize or at least a small trophy for the winning team. The game will start at first level, then each round will end with leveling up.

Now the point system is as follows
Objective: Competing the objective is worth 100 points. The objective will vary from level to level. The two I have planned are "Rescue the Damsel" and "Hunt the Wumpus" any suggestions for others would be appreciated

Speed: Time is measured in game time clock ends when you take the stairs down. each 10ft of hallway is 1 second, I will be measuring the time of non-combat actions
1st place - 100pts
2nd place - 50pts
3rd place - 25pts

Living Party Members: Every part member that makes it out of the dungeon alive is worth 25 points.

Loot: Every 100gp in loot in your possession when you take the stairs down is worth 1 point.

I also plan on finishing the tournament off with an arena style battle between all the teams, with the twist being you have no time to rest or heal between rounds, leading to a bloodied knuckle fight and keeping with the theme of resource management from the dungeon levels previous. Points would be distributed as with timing.

Any thoughts on other things I should count for point totals? Any objective ideas? Thoughts in general?

[zlefin]

reminds me of a classic story about a tourney like this at a convention.
The doors to the great dungeon were made of adamantine.
A winning team just took the doors (which were also pretty big) and left, since that much adamantine is worth a fortune.

Just be careful about placing valuables, even if it's nailed down they can dig around it to get it out.

[Beelzebub1111]

That's why I did 100 to 1 and with what you can carry out. And why there's a time component. The generator I used (which uses the Random Treasure Table for encounters) wound up with one or two good hauls, the biggest one is worth 53.7 points, so I was a little concerned but it's in the middle of the dungeon behind a Stuck Iron Portcullus, then a Stuck Stone Door, then three hobgoblin warriors and a looping dead end with a trapped and a locked door. So the time vs. payoff is pretty good.

[Endarire]

This reminds me of Tomb of Horrors, just less deadly.

[Beelzebub1111]

This reminds me of Tomb of Horrors, just less deadly.
Tomb of Horrors? How so?

[Endarire]

Tomb of Horrors was a tournament module, a competitive dungeon crawl at a convention many years ago. A group won by luring the end boss out of his room into an instant death trap. Gary Gyax had to make the call, and ruled this action legal. Not only did this group win the hardest module ever, they also beat D&D by outsmarting Gary Gygax.

[Beelzebub1111]

Okay then, I get it. Except in this case I expect at least a few of the players to survive.

Additional thought, I came up with another objective "Assemble the relic" find three parts of a statue scattered throughout the level. Perhaps a silver monkey.

Any other ideas?

[HunterOfJello]

What books are allowed?
Do you have someone who is going to go over all of the character sheets to double check them?
Are you banning anything?
Are the characters going to be preset?

The difference between a heavily optimized character and a character that isn't optimized at all at levels 1 to 5 is so massive that I'm curious what checks you will have in place in order to avoid a single TO taking over the entire circus.

[Beelzebub1111]

Core rulebooks only, 32 points, No flaws, no traits, I will be doing sheet checks, I will be providing prefabs for each base class.

[Slipperychicken]

There might be a boss-run, where each team faces all the standard bosses. Their speed and efficiency determines their score. There might be a "last hit" variant, where multiple teams fight the same boss, vying for the killing blow.

There might be a team deathmatch gladiator mode, where teams are pitted against one another in a battle to the death. Any deathmatch, of course, needs appropriate music (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ntJl0_5cD8).

There could be bonus points for:

"Clearing" a dungeon of hostiles.
Taking enemies alive. Enemies who are subdued are worth more than dead ones.
Each trap disabled? This would a number, calculated by the CR of the trap. Using disable device takes time, so speedy, innovative solutions would likely be encouraged.


Most of the dungeon areas might be randomly populated, and treasure randomly determined, just prior to the tourney via wandering monster table? That might make things more interesting if each team gets a slightly different dungeon (like if one team lucks out to find a +5 Holy weapon in their loot), though it might be more fair to keep each dungeon standardized.

I would say that characters' total possessions upon exiting the dungeon, minus their starting equipment, should determine their "loot" score. It'll encourage efficiency, so characters need to manage their use of consumables.

Treasure placed high up on ledges or hard-to-reach (or simply hard-to-find) areas? There might be treasure at the bottom of a pit trap, or sunken 100ft deep in an underground river? It's up to the contestants to figure out how/if they try to get it.

If the idea is to get treasure, then trapped containers and mimics are mandatory. Contestants will need to balance speed with paranoia if they want to loot treasure chests and survive. :smallbiggrin:

Parts of the dungeon might be an "obstacle course", with extremely high walls, large ravines, underwater segments, with traps and other hazards sprinkled across each obstacle (things like shark-filled acid lakes).


Okay then, I get it. Except in this case I expect at least a few of the players to survive.

Additional thought, I came up with another objective "Assemble the relic" find three parts of a statue scattered throughout the level. Perhaps a silver monkey.

Any other ideas?

Perhaps one of these requires a Search check to find it? Or there's an invisible easter egg worth extra points.

You might want a good ban-list, something like the Test of Spite (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=6885281&postcount=2) one.

Why not simply measure time in combat rounds? That should encourage faster teams and make tracking time less annoying. You could track OOC time separately if you want.

[Maginomicon]

I'd recommend you have policies to eliminate GM bias wherever possible. The easiest way to do this is to utilize the SRD's "Players Roll All The Dice" variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/adventuring/playersRollAllTheDice.htm). This will also allow the GM to simply reference a target number, lessening the GM's work load.

[Beelzebub1111]

I already will be measuring by combat rounds (six seconds), non-combat actions(by listed time), and by travel (1 second per 10 ft of hallway)

There are trapped doors and rooms, locked doors, stuck doors, secret doors and portculli. There is hidden treasure and monsters that poison, grow, turn invisible, or begule. I have swarms and groups and squads and solos.

I'll be the only DM so favoritism or fairness won't factor into it. I will also be posting the dungeon level in its entirity with the routes everyone took highlighted after each round.

In regards to hiding a piece of the statue, I don't want any objective to be impossible to complete due to party composition. look at it from their perspective, they'd find two pieces, explore every room looking for the third end up in last place for time AND not complete the objective, that's just frustrating and unfair.

[Maginomicon]

I'll be the only DM so favoritism or fairness won't factor into it.
Then it's even more important to use something like that variant. You don't make any rolls then, you just reference a number that everyone goes by, saving you a ton of time when going from group to group.

[Slipperychicken]

Then it's even more important to use something like that variant. You don't make any rolls then, you just reference a number that everyone goes by, saving you a ton of time when going from group to group.

Regarding rolling, I think it'll be fine as long as he has all the DCs and things laid out in advance. Otherwise, GMs tend to pull nonsense like looking only at the d20 itself to determine success instead of comparing the modified value to a DC*.

*(e.x. Randy the Rogue has a +34 to pick locks, rolls to open a DC 35 lock, the d20 comes up as a 2 [for a total value of 36, which would be a success], but the GM decides it failed because the d20 rolled low and he's "sick of players succeeding all the time").

[Maginomicon]

Regarding rolling, I think it'll be fine as long as he has all the DCs and things laid out in advance. Otherwise, GMs tend to pull nonsense like looking only at the d20 itself to determine success instead of comparing the modified value to a DC*.

*(e.x. Randy the Rogue has a +34 to pick locks, rolls to open a DC 35 lock, the d20 comes up as a 2 [for a total value of 36, which would be a success], but the GM decides it failed because the d20 rolled low and he's "sick of players succeeding all the time").
It has more to do with the target numbers players have (like AC) than the d20s the GM uses. By forcing the players to make the rolls, it offloads the time and effort for the GM. Besides, if multiple groups are being run simultaneously then it's effectively identical to the feeling of a "large combat" like the variant describes. I for one wouldn't want to wait around half an hour for my turn to roll some dice if my character is otherwise involved in the action because of my target numbers.