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Danny0706
2014-06-07, 01:31 PM
Our regular DM is taking a vacation for about 3-4 weeks and I offered to take over for the duration and do some sort of side quest/module. They wanted to make characters so this won't be related to our ongoing campaign in any way.
I wanted to make some sort of Adventurer's Tournament that the players are invited to that has themed challenges similar to Harry Potter's Triwizard Cup, Hunger Games, and TES: Oblivion's arena. I obviously don't want these to be bland, simple combat challenges but i'm having trouble coming up with great ideas. One example would be having the players enter the "arena" and finding that it is now old, broken ruins. It would be night and foggy and they would be tasked with killing two rogues who are sneaking around and setting traps, etc. Any ideas would be great (especially for some sort of subplot).
Side notes: running 3.5. 4 players. Levels ~6
tl;dr Help me make some challenges for an arena/tourney

Slipperychicken
2014-06-07, 07:46 PM
Competitive dungeon crawling? Contestants all enter the same huge dungeon (with standardized starting equipment. Taking non-regulation items into the competition area results in immediate disqualification) at different points of entry, and are scored by the value of items retrieved (the value of starting equipment is subtracted from this total, encouraging teams to enter with very little equipment). Defeating or killing other contestants is permitted (dead contestants are resurrected as per the tournament rules), but this does not itself add to points, although items stolen or looted from another team are fair game. There might even be "bonus" items which are exceptionally tough to acquire or remove from the dungeon (such as a football-sized golden egg guarded by a massive over-CR'd dragon on the dungeon's bottom floor), but getting them provides a significant increase to your team's score. The dungeon is, needless to say, filled with monsters, puzzles, deadly traps, and other insane hazards. Extradimensional storage spaces may be disallowed.

There could be various types of combats:
Melee: All contestants are set up in an open field, with ranged attacks, spells, and flight forbidden. Free-for-all, every creature for himself, and the last one standing wins. Total chaos ensues, It would probably be a pain to make all those attack rolls, though most of it could probably be hand-waved. A War Hulk would probably be the "boss": one of the last left standing, for the PCs to face once most of the others have been defeated.
Duel: A more conventional 1v1 tournament.
Magic: Set up like a wizard's duel, with the objective to incapacitate the opponent. Striking the opponent physically is not permitted, unless it's done with touch spell.
First Blood: 1v1, and the first combatant to deal hit point damage to his opponent wins.
Team Deathmatch: Team versus team.
Wrestling: 1v1, first one to maintain a pin for five rounds wins.

You could also have drinking contests, arm-wrestling, competitive pickpocketing, eating contests (basically Con checks), foot-races, and so on.

To get some laughs out of your players, you could also have fireball, shin-kicking, and pillow-fighting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za05Qbm4QDI) events.

Ailowynn
2014-06-08, 01:15 PM
A big ol' fight could be cool, especially with objectives like capture the flag. It would also be pretty neat to have the arena itself be a dungeon; you could add in traps, monsters, and magic of all sorts.