Extreme Tournament

[ImSAMazing]

Me and a friend have an idea: we make 12 PCs(each class) at lvl 20. Asmodeus himself wanted to see some blood, so he organised a tournament: a group of 4 warriors need to fight extremely strong creatures for a big jackpot: 5 legendary items for each warrior, and 200.000 GP for each warrior to. To qualify, you need to fight other warriors who want to take part of the tournament.

The 12 PCs we made need to fight each other, so only 3 PCs survive. 1 PC(his class isnt sure yet, we look at what the party will need) had a "golden ticket". He did something for Asmodeus, so he automatically can take part of the tournament. Can you guys give us inspiration for monsters in the tournament?

The base ability scores for the party are: 20 in the important ability score, 18 in the 2nd and 3rd score, and every other score 12. They also all get 1 epic boon/1 extra ability score improvement and 2 feats. They don't get ASI from their classes, but they do get the other features a LvL 20 PC should have when he has that class. They also get some good magic items, like +2 weapons.

Can you guys please give me some idea's for the different rounds of the tournament? The last round will be against a homebrewed God. Every 2 rounds the party gets a long rest, every 1 round a short rest. Every round has a max CR for 1 monster. Round 1 has a Max of CR 19, round 2 of CR20, etc. Example: for round one, a balor and some imps would be allowed.

Please help!

[ImSAMazing]

Round 1 shouldn't be impossible, but round 5 almost should! It is the last normal round, round 6 is a special one we already thought of! So only 5 rounds need to be thought of. Also, the Max CR doesn't need to be passed.

[ImSAMazing]

Please feedback?

[Kajorma]

Please feedback?

Okay, I'm not great with 5e, and I don't have ECL things figured yet, but just in concept...

Say Round 1 is that Balor or something, and the party has the idea of big badums.

The round following a long rest should be a swarm of lower level creatures. You have 12 PCs? You'd want at least 50 monsters. That way everyone in the group is getting surrounded. WAG, I'd say that these creatures would be CR10 or so.

Another idea to work with is something that is changing up the expectations of how to play. Say your bad guy comes out with boots of spiderclimb (or similar), and starts off with a reverse gravity spell. Your casters would be fine, but melee types would have to deal with being on the ceiling and trying to get down. If you go this way, I'd put a lot of interesting things reachable on the ceiling, to allow your players to think up creative ways to accomplish their goals. I also favor loose wording like "all manner of debris is scattered around on the ceiling" so that if a player (for some unknown reason) asks "Can I find a ladle?" you can always say yes.

Loss of control is a good thing to play with too. Have a round with something large, with many tentacles, that can grapple PCs. Being restrained and/or swallowed adds a level of excitement to an encounter.

And definitely do think about the order of your encounters. People always seem to approach battles thinking about the last battle they were in. If they are getting used to an encounter of Type A, definitely throw them a curve and toss in a Type Z.

[Ardantis]

Setting is key. Other planes can give you both CR appropriate monsters as well as interesting effects.

For example, the plane of fire vs. elder elementals with a constant damaging effect which necessitates a quick fight or death.

[Inevitability]

We're talking level 20 here. That's not 'fight monster X in room Y to get treasure Z', it is more than that.


How about a battle with variable gravity? Gravity switches around at the end of every few rounds, causing falling damage unless you happen to be adjacent to the 'wall' when it becomes the 'floor'. For extra fun, make the room something else than a cube, or add floating platforms.

Maybe the combatants are thrown into a vortex of chaos in limbo, where random things happen every round. (damage of random types, status effects, random monsters, teleportation, randomly appearing walls of semisolid material...)

Or maybe the fight takes place in a gargantuan creature's stomach? Having to avoid being thrown into stomach acid by peristaltic movement while trying to hit the monster as much as possible would be pretty interesting. As the fight progresses, maybe the party is forcibly moved through it's body?

Alternatively, what about fighting while randomly moving from plane to plane? One moment you are surrounded by baffled humans as you fight in a peaceful village's square, the next moment you are desparately trying to avoid getting crushed by one of Mechanus' titanic gears, and a few seconds later you are more concerned with holding off a pack of demons than with slaying your opponent.

[ImSAMazing]

We're talking level 20 here. That's not 'fight monster X in room Y to get treasure Z', it is more than that.


How about a battle with variable gravity? Gravity switches around at the end of every few rounds, causing falling damage unless you happen to be adjacent to the 'wall' when it becomes the 'floor'. For extra fun, make the room something else than a cube, or add floating platforms.

Maybe the combatants are thrown into a vortex of chaos in limbo, where random things happen every round. (damage of random types, status effects, random monsters, teleportation, randomly appearing walls of semisolid material...)

Or maybe the fight takes place in a gargantuan creature's stomach? Having to avoid being thrown into stomach acid by peristaltic movement while trying to hit the monster as much as possible would be pretty interesting. As the fight progresses, maybe the party is forcibly moved through it's body?

Alternatively, what about fighting while randomly moving from plane to plane? One moment you are surrounded by baffled humans as you fight in a peaceful village's square, the next moment you are desparately trying to avoid getting crushed by one of Mechanus' titanic gears, and a few seconds later you are more concerned with holding off a pack of demons than with slaying your opponent.

Great idea's!

[meltodowno]

Round 5 - 1001 kobolds. And they're angry. Oh boy are they angry.

:smallbiggrin:

[-Jynx-]

Round 6 an Aboleth in its layer with a bunch of it's buddies.

Round 7 they are in a room with a moose. A infinitely large white room with just a moose. After a few seconds a giant timer appears in the sky with a countdown of 5 minutes. Watch as the PCs frantically do everything they can think of (expending their precious resources) until the timer hits 0:00 then the door opens up. Whether the moose lives or dies is irrelevant. Patience is not a PCs virtue.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Round 7 they are in a room with a moose. A infinitely large white room with just a moose. After a few seconds a giant timer appears in the sky with a countdown of 5 minutes. Watch as the PCs frantically do everything they can think of (expending their precious resources) until the timer hits 0:00 then the door opens up. Whether the moose lives or dies is irrelevant. Patience is not a PCs virtue.

A room... with a MOOSE! This is the best thing, ever.

I can't really improve on that, but I'll try and come up with something... A beholder in favourable terrain (vertical shafts where it can pick and choose lines of sight) seems like it would be tricky, especially if there were antimagic effects to reduce flight options for the PCs. Or even a bunch of flying monsters working for the beholder.

How about an anti-party made of characters with 20 class levels? You could make some real nasty customers that way.

Or... A huge mob of low-CR beasties that lulls the challenger into a false sense of security before they realise that half of them are shapeshifters (one is an ancient dragon!) even when the trick is revealed, they can't possibly stop every kobold at once, so some of the shifters will still be able to outmanoeuvre them.

[ImSAMazing]

Today we had the qualifications, and the druid, the wizard, the barbarian and the fighter survived and qualified for the tournament. We had 3 rounds,

Round 1:
A balor with 3 hell hounds with a buffed long sword which does extra thunder damage. After the balor a Yochlol spawned, which got easily defeated by the party. Then a Goristro spawned. I buffed him: for each attack that hitted him, a Manes spawned in front of him so each attack dealt 9 damage less. If the attack didn't do 9 or more damage, the Manes automatically disappeared. That was the end of round 1.

Round 2:
A pyramid was in the middle of the arena. The barbarian destroyed the door, but then the party learned that the pyramid wasn't a pyramid, just an illusion with a real door. In the middle of the arena was a table with a skull on it. When the druid, the monk and the wizard approached the skull, when they were 40 ft before it, a death knight spawned. He got destroyed by the party, but he gave him a warning: don't attack the skull. After 20 rounds, the monk finally attacked the skull, and the wizard and the druid helped him. The skull turned out to be a demilich which dropped the wizard and the druid to 0 HP. The wizard throwed a 20 on his death save, he came back alive and power word killed the demilich. End of this round.

Round 3:
An ancient black dragon was in the middle of the arena. The party attacked the dragon, and right before he died the dragon spawned in 6 hell hounds who almost killed the wizard(all of them hitted and some criticals...). Out of the stomache of the dragon a Gyrosphinx spawned, which killed the Druid. End of round 3.

Now, Dire_Stirge is taking over the rounds, because of his great idea's. Ill keep you guys in touch! Great idea's btw.