Meta-GameWarper Design Discussion thread: Pokemon pet battle

[daremetoidareyo]

Coming this November to a Giantitp near you:


Game Warper Optimization Challenge #3: Pokemon pet battle!



This is the discussion Thread to help design this, because this project is a little too big for me to do all alone. This is not a contest thread. The current Contest is Game Warper Optimization Challenge #2: Dragonwrought Kobolds are true dragons (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?571705-Game-Warper-s-Optimization-Challenge-2-Dragonwrought-Kobolds-are-True-Dragons)


Here are the seeds of this idea: This is an E6 optimization challenge where we will be judging the stats of the animal companion, psicrystal, familiar, mount, or wild cohort, or similar pet, (although Probably not symbiont) - The character's sole purpose is to bring the pet into the arena and once there they are there, the trainer is treated as an invulnerable and incorporeal non-targetable-in-any-way entity.

You all have the same backstory: Professor Oak gave you this creature, and you are now a traveling exhibition battler of this creature, and this creature loves this entire situation. The trainer exclusively exists to elaborate and power up this pet.

JudgingThe combat prowess of the pet in this arena battle setting is what is being judged here, with considerations of elegance and build cleverness being the other judgment factors. Every entrant agrees to judge by submitting their build. Builds will be judged via a ranked choice system

Additional rules: 1 pet. No pets with pets. I'm looking at you psycrystals.
Pets may not have class levels.


WHAT I NEED HELP WITH


* ARENA:
I need help defining the arena dimensions together somehow to try to make it most fair. Some pets have move speeds up to 50, 60, or 70 per round, and I'd like them to have the opportunity to use that.

Should this just be a flat plane? Should there be evenly spaced trees and difficult terrain symmetrically distributed on it.

Then we need some control on flyers and or burrowers. So, like...Shock collars that bleed HP if the creature is not in confrontation with the opponent for 3 rounds?

Should swimmers be included? probably not, right?

* Class features
How to deal with spell/power sharing, incarnum and rage sharing, I would absolutely love the input.

Should bards and marshalls and aura exuders be allowed to affect their pet? How? How to adjudicate?

Neat ACFs that grant a companion that is superficially like a familiar or animal companion should probably be allowed to use things like the natural bond feat, correct?

*Other
What about Armor, some of the pets are totally capable of having it, so how do we address that?

What easily cheeseable aspect of the competition am I missing that will undermine the spirit of the contest: to make the biggest, baddest, 1 vs 1 PC pet?

Other suggestions, comments, and replies are welcomed.

Thanks!

[noob]

Easily cheezable and probably not wanted in this competition: familiars can gain levels if they do stuff without their master(for example their master is far away or dead) because the only thing stopping a familiar from gaining xp is the cohort rules.(so the familiar can just get 6 levels in wizard then have a familiar that does the same thing and so on then all the level 6 familiars of the chain goes to the master familiar to help him)
and familiar are not forbidden to retrain in any way so even if they do not gain additional levels a familiar could retrain his first hit dice in a wizard level and get a familiar(and repeat that as many times as you have money to do that for getting an army of wizard familiars).

[RaiKirah]

Another topic of discussion: pre-battle buff rounds? With or without the trainer?

[daremetoidareyo]

Edits incorporated in the top post.

Keep them coming.

What should the arena dimensions be?

[flappeercraft]

Another thing you should keep in mind. Are Reared animals via the Handle Animal Skill allowed?

[daremetoidareyo]

Another thing you should keep in mind. Are Reared animals via the Handle Animal Skill allowed?

I am leaning towards no. The problem is that you can rear a titanic megalosaur while all a paladin has is a smart horse.

Wild cohort puts bounds on your reared animal choices.

[flappeercraft]

I am leaning towards no. The problem is that you can rear a titanic megalosaur while all a paladin has is a smart horse.

Wild cohort puts bounds on your reared animal choices.

What about multiple "Pokemon". As in could a druid/wizard with the Wild Cohort feat have all 3 his pets participate? What about a creature that is lots of creatures in one like a swarm?

[daremetoidareyo]

What about multiple "Pokemon". As in could a druid/wizard with the Wild Cohort feat have all 3 his pets participate? What about a creature that is lots of creatures in one like a swarm?

Nope. It's too unbalancing. The action economy alone would be a problem, let alone team tactics. We aren't trying to perfectly simulate the Pokemon experience.

[RaiKirah]

Aha, well I believe that answers a question I had. Good to know!

[Menzath]

I feel it should be a multi tiered arena, in the ball park of 120x120x90.
The bottom 20ft or so would be water with a fair number of support pillars for layer 2, layer 2 should be that typical ground level with a few high rising pillars, and spaces of open portions of water, some of the spaces need to be jumped to cross, and the 3rd layer the rest of the upper 70ft would have some larger pillars going up to various heights of 10-40ft.

This would allow aquatic, climbers, and flyers to each play up to their own advantage, coupled with the shock collar to keep fights going, could be interesting. Might have to have 2-3 different maps if you include burrowers, but in D&D burrowing is only really good for getting suprise, or escaping as far as combat goes. And since it's an arena type match suprise is probably a moot point.

As for aura's and other buffs. I would discount all of them, I don't think they reflect on you being a good poke trainer, but rather on your personal abilities to boost others regardless.

As for this being an E6, it helps to limit power and sets a nice baseline, but in this challenge it may also limit variety to a larger degree, since alot of the odder pet tamer/rider/handler prc's don't allow entry till 7-8th lvl.
And that's my 2cp.

[daremetoidareyo]

I feel it should be a multi tiered arena, in the ball park of 120x120x90.
The bottom 20ft or so would be water with a fair number of support pillars for layer 2, layer 2 should be that typical ground level with a few high rising pillars, and spaces of open portions of water, some of the spaces need to be jumped to cross, and the 3rd layer the rest of the upper 70ft would have some larger pillars going up to various heights of 10-40ft.

This would allow aquatic, climbers, and flyers to each play up to their own advantage, coupled with the shock collar to keep fights going, could be interesting. Might have to have 2-3 different maps if you include burrowers, but in D&D burrowing is only really good for getting suprise, or escaping as far as combat goes. And since it's an arena type match suprise is probably a moot point.

As for aura's and other buffs. I would discount all of them, I don't think they reflect on you being a good poke trainer, but rather on your personal abilities to boost others regardless.

As for this being an E6, it helps to limit power and sets a nice baseline, but in this challenge it may also limit variety to a larger degree, since alot of the odder pet tamer/rider/handler prc's don't allow entry till 7-8th lvl.
And that's my 2cp.

Thank you menzath.

[WhamBamSam]

I would lean toward allowing at least some sharing, since it's such a staple of pet optimization, with the normal 5 ft restriction handwaived away. Maybe some standard of passivity? Like the trainer having to spend a standard action commanding each round and some restrictions on pre-buffing immediately prior to the battle?

[RaiKirah]

So, I'm having some trouble parsing this - are we planning to actually fight our Pokemon? Because that would be pretty awesome, and having both a judging winner and a tournament winner would be interesting (not to mention an interesting check to see if we predicted it right in the power category). Might have to address any legality issues prior....hmmm.

[Menzath]

After digging through a bunch of classes, it looks like PRC's that advance base class mount/companion/familiar can be entered from about lvl 3-5, and PRC's that give a new one or change it in a large way can be entered from lvl 5-7. So e6 would still be possible.
But again the overall optimization would still be small since there aren't a large amount of feats that the PC can take that would change the poké beast(except druids), it would still be heavily reliant on class levels.
E6 in this case might be to low, but anything above 10 might get to crazy.

[daremetoidareyo]

After digging through a bunch of classes, it looks like PRC's that advance base class mount/companion/familiar can be entered from about lvl 3-5, and PRC's that give a new one or change it in a large way can be entered from lvl 5-7. So e6 would still be possible.
But again the overall optimization would still be small since there aren't a large amount of feats that the PC can take that would change the poké beast(except druids), it would still be heavily reliant on class levels.
E6 in this case might be to low, but anything above 10 might get to crazy.

yeah, but urban druid animated compadres and dread necros zombotroglodytes and paladin horses and improved familiars and ashworms and vermin companions and elemental stewards and elemental companions and soulspark familiars provide more than enough worms to fill this can.

[noob]

Imps are quite powerful due to the whole "fly away and can make itself invisible" and imps are possible to obtain in E6 if you use master spellthief shenanigans(there is probably other ways to cheese your arcane caster level).
So for countering imps you need a ranged attack or flight which are rather easy to obtain with retraining feats but it might still be hard to kill one due to how they can be invisible and have dr and fast healing.

Animated object companions can have arbitrary amounts of natural attacks and flight but they suffer from initiative problems.

[Menzath]

yeah, but urban druid animated compadres and dread necros zombotroglodytes and paladin horses and improved familiars and ashworms and vermin companions and elemental stewards and elemental companions and soulspark familiars provide more than enough worms to fill this can.

Gosh, you are so right, I got caught up in prc advancement that I skipped over base classes and acf's from splat books.

In that case the only foreseeable problem is keeping combat from getting stagnant, which the cursed collar would assist with. Maybe the judge just uses a greater bestow curse? You know, for those odd creatures that may not have necks, or other standard anatomy, also would we be able to use wbl to gear said pet? Or would they only be getting base gear at best for those with the body type to use them?

Also maybe make it 2 rounds of not being engaged in combat before it does a damage tick. As for how much damage.. I'll have to test a few things to see what seems reasonable.