Any interest in this idea?

[Rake]

Quick survey: would anyone be interested in a monster-on-monster 'versus' thread? I was thinking I'd set up maybe a round-robin-type tournament featuring some D&D critters of identical CR facing off against one another. I tried something like this on the WotC boards once, and it was pretty well recieved.

The line-ups were posted ahead of time, and everyone bet and posted predictions on which monsters would win their matches, etc. I'd use invisible castle for the die-roller and post a few rounds of the combat per day (or more if I'm bored and have time). It's a good rules excercise for me and fun to watch.

Would any significant number of people be interested in such a thread? I'd rather not start it if it'd just flop. Plus, I count on readers to help catch mistakes, critique the matches and strategies, and so on. It's just more interesting with a crowd. Gimmie feedback!

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

It sounds like good fun.

Deciding on a fair arena and terrain is a problem though.

[Rake]

I was pretty much thinking a flat, featureless expanse, with monsters starting 30 ft. apart. I'm open to suggestion, though.

[NEO|Phyte]

We've done this once or twice on IRC, first time, I won as a 5-headed hydra, second time wasn't anything worth commenting on, due to lack of an interesting fight.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

It is difficult to say generally. Some creatures benefit greatly from their natural terrain while it matters very little to others (particularly creatures with flight).

Likewise, creatures with ranged attacks and flight or high mobility against earthbound and/or slow creatures might be a no contest as well.

[Felius]

Problematic as many monsters are only a decent challenge in their natural environment. To use a easy example, and not even going out of the animal type, let's say a shark or dire shark. It might be a challenging encounter for a relatively low level party at the sea, but at land, well, a level 1 commoner is more dangerous then it.

So either we only use monsters of the same environment, or do 3 matchs, one for either monster home, then a neutral place.

[Chronos]

To use perhaps a more meaningful example than a literal fish out of water, a level 1 commoner with a sling can defeat a beholder (no offense to present company), if the fight is on an infinite featureless plain. The beholder's eye rays are all fairly short range, and it's also rather slow-moving, so the commoner could just keep retreating out of range, scrounging rocks for ammunition, and hoping for natural 20s until he eventually wore the eye down. If, on the other hand, the fight takes place in a cramped tunnel system, with a lot of vertical shafts and hidden shortcuts (the beholder's native environment), the beholder is quite formidable, and can very plausibly TPK a supposedly equivalent-level party.

[Talya]

As "mundane" as they are now, I'll be very disappointed if a dragon doesn't place well. I love dragons.

[Lord Lorac Silvanos]

[INSULTS about commoners]

I can assure you that running for his dear life was the best he could hope to accomplish in that scenario.

But I will give you that proper terrain does make things a lot easier.

[Shas aia Toriia]

I'm forced to agree with the above people, terrain can matter greatly. Also, can the distance between monsters change? And what about giving certain monster's an advantage from time to time.

[Rake]

It is difficult to say generally. Some creatures benefit greatly from their natural terrain while it matters very little to others (particularly creatures with flight).

Likewise, creatures with ranged attacks and flight or high mobility against earthbound and/or slow creatures might be a no contest as well.

Yeah, certian monsters (like shadows) are instant-wins. Last time, I kept it as fair as possible, and the 'tourney' wasn't a smear.

It seems like interest is high, so I'll put together the roster real soon.

[Chronos]

I can assure you that running for his dear life was the best he could hope to accomplish in that scenario.

The superiority of beholders comes not from their performance in that particular scenario. The superiority of beholders comes from them being smart enough to not get into that scenario in the first place.

Although, on thinking about it, I suppose that the beholder could fly up high enough that the distance modifier guarantees that he could hide successfully, fly far off in a random direction, come back down to the surface, and use his Disintegrate ray to tunnel back under the original battlefield. Which would still take a really, really long time.

[Prometheus]

There was a Balor vs. Pitfiend thread a several months ago that was quite interesting in its projections.
I think the matches would only be fair if they were close CRs, and it would be hard to get many classic monsters together.

I've always thought this was an interesting concept. I've run a puzzle whether the characters have to pick monsters of equivalent encounter level against my monsters in an isolated combat. If they lost, they had to finish the monster off, when they won, they could proceed.