How to run a free for all arena match?

[Douche]

Next session will involve a gladiator arena battle

4 teams will be in the arena. So not free for all, so much as 4 teams free for all.

Only one team can win. The PCs have formed an alliance with another team because they worship the same god. So they will likely work together, or at least agree to save each other for last.

Killing is not disallowed, but if the combatant surrenders and you attack them then you are disqualified.

Anyway how would you guys handle this? Seems like it would have the potential to be a lot of work for the DM, with the potential of the party getting bored while NPCs battle each other.

Also, the party is level 7 with a lot of magic items. The other day 4 of them just barely defeated a CR12 archdruid with 2 CR5 minions (and who used 4th level conjure animals twice). What do you guys reckon I could put in there in terms of CR to keep it interesting?

[MaxWilson]

Anyway how would you guys handle this? Seems like it would have the potential to be a lot of work for the DM, with the potential of the party getting bored while NPCs battle each other.

Yeah, this would be my major concern.

My real answer: I'd delay running this scenario until I finish the tool I've been working on, which would make running these kinds of NPC-on-NPC battles easy and computerized instead of boring and manual: instead of watching the DM roll dice against himself for several minutes, you look at your phone or the laptop screen showing the battlemap, and watch a wizard blow up a bunch of conjured animals while an enemy fighter is shooting a ton of arrows, some of them at you. As long as players can digest the information easily, I think these kinds of free-for-alls could be a lot of fun.

But in the absence of that kind of high-communication-bandwidth tool, I wouldn't actually run this scenario in any detail. Watching the DM roll dice against himself for several minutes at a time just isn't a fun game. If I absolutely did want to run it in detail for some reason, I'd simplify the teams to the point where each time could be run in seconds, even if that means making all of the other teams Samurai archers with identical stats. I can roll a fistful of Action Surged Fighting Spirit attacks for four teams of four 8th level Samurai pretty quickly (roll four sets of 32 paired dice, count up the hits for each group), but I can't make individual decisions for 3 wizards and 4 druids and 2 warlocks and 3 samurai and 2 barbarians and 2 arcane tricksters quickly.


Also, the party is level 7 with a lot of magic items. The other day 4 of them just barely defeated a CR12 archdruid with 2 CR5 minions (and who used 4th level conjure animals twice). What do you guys reckon I could put in there in terms of CR to keep it interesting?

I think the goal of keeping it interesting is in direct opposition to the goal of keeping it simple enough to run quickly. How about this: hand-wave part of the fight by saying the teams are basically squaring off instead of free-for-alling. Let the PCs have a fight with one other team while just handwaving what happens to the other two teams fighting each other. Once the PCs win or are close to it, make a judgment call as to a plausible outcome for what state the other teams are in, and then add some treachery somewhere for drama--maybe someone on the team the PCs were kind of friendly with betrays his buddies and joins the other team and they all gang up on the PCs together, to the shocked cries of onlookers and the PCs' dismay. Adding a bit of treachery makes it a story as well as a fight.

So anyway, with that in mind, you can do something more complex than just identical teams of Samurai. Do these opponents have to be humanoid? If not, here's my ideas:

Team 1: Dragonmasters. 8th level Sharpshooter Samurai dressed in black armor with three Guard Drakes (blue, white, red), mounted on a Young Black Dragon, and with a 7th level Trickery Cleric aiding and abetting him. How does he like to fight? Sics his hounds on a target (focus fire) while his mount breathes acid and strafes from the air (taking opportunity attacks if necessary) and he pounds enemies from above. Trickery cleric casts Warding Bond on the Samurai before the fight and hops on the dragon behind him, trying to be overlooked until he can get in a sucker punch (i.e. Dodging instead of casting cantrips).

Team 2: Odin's Fury. 3 5th level Einherjaren Zealots with crazy braided beards and spiky face piercings, plus a 7th level Skald Valor Bard. They will charge a target, singing battle songs loudly in bass tones (put on some Metallica music to give the feel) and revelling in the joy of all the pain they receive and inflict. Valor Bard will inspire them, fight alongside them, and where necessary use spells like Hypnotic Pattern and Confusion to even things out when they are outnumbered.

Team 3: the previously-established team you mentioned that shares a religion with the PCs.

Trickery cleric is a prime candidate for committing the treachery, and so is someone from the same-religion team.

[Sexyshoeless]

As others have mentioned already, I would NOT run the entire combat in the same granular detail as if they were fighting the PCs.

I would recommend using more abstract mechanic to measure the wear and tear of battle. As an example, At initiative 1 for each engagement not involving the PCs, roll a d20. 10+ , one side takes 2-4d6 (or even do the average, 7 or 14) damage depending on what you want. You could even just roll a general damage dice that everyone takes if involved in combat but not with the PCs. That way you quickly can assign damage and progress the battle without getting into nitty gritty. You can include whatever terrain affecting spells you want at initiative 20 to spice up the battle, but do NOT roll individual to hits and damage.
This method allows you to track HEP for combatants so that they have some battle wear.

I'd also advice making the opposing teams as small as possible. Perhaps 1 team is just two gnome riders (a handler and a mage?) on their pet rhino/hydra/mechanical dragon, treated as a single unit with multiple attacks and a few legendary actions to represent the rider's motions. The fewer members on each team, the better. I love the barbarian troop MaxWilson mentioned for the other.