Jehova's Arena (Test) (Inactive)

Game Master Jehova

Yeah, unless Bruno has a change of heart and starts nursing Kyrian back to health with camel milk, you can go ahead and level up.

Right, assuming that doesn't happen.

Also, time for a point in acrobatics so I don't forget it again P:

Edit: Oh, and what is minimum wealth for level 2? 1000 or 1500? Or something else?

Minimum budget is WBL, 1000 gp in this case.

So what's Bruno's record now?

Bruno is now 3:1. :D
I couldn't be more proud.

Has Bruno won a round without acting yet?

I think a certain little monkey is getting a big head. :P

If i weren't in the arena against said monkey, I'd be rooting for him. The little guys got style. :)

And i have my work cut out for me to beat your record, Choon. ;)

Honestly, my record is more due to lucky rolls than the build itself.

Nighty night, guys. :)

Bruno and Esmarelda have been updated. The forums tried to eat my updates a couple times, Jehova, so feel free to double check.

Let us do our Level 2 dwarf dance!

Heh, maybe Bruno won't get splatted this time. Since they both have devastating charges I think it'll always come down to initiative for those two.

You may be right. It should be exciting find out either way, though, amirite? :D

Keep in mind that if one person wins initiative, the other has time to react (hide behind pillar) during surprise round, if they want.

Yup.

Which is exactly what I'll be doing if I loose initiative. :P

So.. Rolg is a barbarian. This won't go well.

Well, that's a hell of a thing to say about a guy. :)

A barbarian is used in like, every "monks suck vs other melees" I ever read in 3.5e. There's a long legacy of monks getting their asses kicked by barbarians who are smart enough to use their best stat effectively.

BRB in 15 minutes, food time.

In all fairness, what other melee class doesn't get their ass kicked by a barbarian smart enough to use their best stat effectively?

I guess paladins might have a shot at it, but they're playing alignment darts with the barbarian.. no evil = no offense = my money's back on the barbarian again.

And yah... i do love me some monks, but in the face-bash fest that is an arena, you gotta be one hell of an optimizer to get'em to stand up most of the time.

I know my melee class got rocked hard in his first match vs this barbarian. Hopefully I'll last past the first round next time.

You guys have no idea how fun this all is to watch from an all-knowing perspective :3

Also, we may have a new combatant in soon. Darkwolf, are you aroundish?

Well, either way this round goes, poor Charan the Monkey Monk's gonna have to retire after this round.

I found out that the entire point of being a Vanara (aka, racial climb speed) is unable to be used in this arena. :(

Technically it could be useful if you also had some method of climbing smooth vertical surfaces, because of the +8 to climb, but yeah, I'm sorry :C I had meant to mention that the first time I saw your character and that he had ranks in climb.

Hey, monks aren't all bad. They can be quite good at certain things. Flurry of maneuvers, or even just plain ol' flurry of blows, can rock your world with the number of attacks. And imagine at higher levels where every single on has the potential to stun you...

As Eben said, though, it takes a redonk amount of optimization.

Pfft.. Flurry of blows is for chumps who don't multiclass.

I don't think monks are bad. I just think they are most effective as either a 2 or 4 level dip before doing something else, unless you have the patience to see them through to the point where attack rolls start beating AC so hard that you will actually hit with more than 1 or 2 of your FoB.

Honestly, why not make the pillars claimable? Just make them of rough-hewn stone. Would make things more interesting, meethinks.

I mean, if you still want to emphasize how it should be something special to climb them, make the check DC 30. Most normal people couldn't do that, even taking 20.

Indeed, climbing pillars would be great fun. And it could really lend to cinematic feels, with gladiators scaling the pillars and leaping at flying foes, or dropping from above to strike at earthbound enemies...

Even 25 would only allow a high STR characters like Eben and I to succeed on a near-20 roll, but 30 might be better as even that check might get trivial for high STR characters at high levels.

Well, at higher levels, everyone can fly. What are you doing spending a move action to climb 5 ft? :P

The decision to make the pillars sheer was because they were already going to be covered by the same invisible force-field thing that keeps people from going higher than 25 ft. up, which would make climbing already impossible. The reason behind having them covered in the force thing is to prevent anyone transmuting them, since I really wanted the possible resources within the arena to be pretty much zilch. I also did not want to need to deal with the 'how much hp do I need to deal it before it falls over' questions, so I didn't want them attackable, I really just wanted some un-interactable with cover D:

Well, that all makes sense. Very well, any climbing builds are going to be nerf'd.

Ok, I can see what you're going for there.

Still, it might be an interesting idea to have a mutable not-necessarily super balanced arena for non-VP and prize money matches.

There was this one roleplay I was in where the arena shifted to whatever the fighters wanted.

So, these two oriental ninja-monk-samurais were facing off, so they decided to have the arena compose of..

Two raised platforms, 20 ft above the ground, 15 ft by 15 ft, 60(ish) ft away from each other. Between them (all the way) and around them (for 20) ft, there were pillars, 2 ft wide each, spaced out every 5 feet, with four gaps.

Each of the gaps had an arena below, a 10 ft by 10 ft, 5 feet above the ground platform.

The floor was a sea of fire, and around them loomed four dragon headed pillars, one at each corner, with a green energy wall preventing exit.

It was a pretty epic fight. :P

If you guys are interested in climbing stuff or making crazy alternative arenas, they can both be discussed :D Since 'challenge' fights, where both parties need to agree to battle are already a planned thing, perhaps alternative battlegrounds can be part of that.

For example, two riders might choose to have a go where the arena is a simple joust. Seems like a fun idea, and if the players are responsible for making and deciding if they want an alternate arena, well, if it's a bad idea in execution, then no one will do it and the idea will be off the table.

Bruno would so joust people. :D
Especially when he gets the Unseat feat at later levels.

The problems I'm thinking could arise would have to do with introducing rules-fuzzy circumstances. Many of the questions that have come up so far have had to do with the pillars, in some way or another, and those aren't exactly complicated. Anything that's added will definitely complicate things, and in some cases they may complicate to the point where I would need to make a rules call, since I cannot find a clear official explanation on how something works. Since that sort of call in PvP almost invariably favors one player or another, I want to minimize the number of times that happens. I'd like to be GMing essentially the same way in which a rules-following robot would, so that if someone else were to take over they would make the same calls as I am, and the more strange things get added in ("I sunder the rope bridge", "I light my arrow with the lava", "I use the ice slope to increase my move speed") the less consistent things tend to be. Also, all those things sound awesome, which is another reason not having them be possible is probably better, so I don't have to shut down some super-awesome move because the rules are iffy (again, something that would be totally fine in a home game). If the super-awesome stuff arises from the interactions of class abilities and smart arena tactics, the overall ratio of awesomeness attempted to awesomeness completed will be much better.

I think I'm in favor of a static arena for "ranked" fights and customs for challenges.

That being said, some class abilities depend on certain terrain features (ranger's favored terrain, for example). I wonder if not having any influential terrain will naturally nerf some classes.

I consider the arena to fall into both the 'urban' and 'desert' categories for favored terrain, which means rangers will always get favored terrain bonuses (you know, if they pick one of those...). Desert is debatable, I suppose, but I didn't want to restrict the archetypes that can't choose urban :P

The ranger just needs to take favored terrain (arena) and they'll be golden :P

Also, I'm all for letting the pillars be moderately climbable if a player can make the DC. It does open up some interesting tactics. On the other hand, it does open up more complications, and then there'll probably be people saying half of the arena should be flooded with water too (which, don't get me wrong, might be kind of awesome actually. Some variant arenas would be pretty cool). But yeah, it might indeed open up more rules complications, which aren't very good in a PvP setting.

Also:

Darkwolf, are you aroundish?

Sort of, as the 2 hour delayed response probably shows.

I got a stat block from Edward Sobel, so I was seeing who'd be available to fight. Haven't seen an alias yet though. Has Bruno or Kyrian been in more fights so far?

A record of fights and fighters would be handy. If only we could edit posts longer than an hour ago.

For 'THE REAL ARENA', I plan to have a full information document that lists each combatant with their record so far, including links to the fights they've been in, and complete with a ranking system based on W/L ratio and how many fights someone has been in. Come to think of it, that'd be a cool thing to make for our current fighters, though the data may be a little skewed since everyone got to advance.

Kyrian has been in 3 matches. I put his current track record on his profile.

Hmm... I'm betting Con of 16, so.. Base health of 19+6, with a possible +2 health from favored class and +3 from toughness..

Anything else anyone can help with? I'm trying to calculate Rolg's health, so that if I'm winning, I can lower him to 3-0, and then wait till his rage runs out so that I can have my Monkey make a super flashy air punch from like ten feet away, wait five seconds, and then, suddenly Rolg falls over.

Awesome, thanks Dark. If others could do a similar thing I can compile info somewhere, or we can wait until actual launch.

And no I can't help with that, metagamer!

@ Charan: ROFL. Well, it's probably either 4 or 6 extra health from raging, depending on if he's got raging vitality or not, and something like 8-9 rounds of rage per day.

Edit: Give or take 2 real HP and 2 rounds of rage, based on favored class bonuses (dwarves can add to rage).

@ Eben: Sorry to theorize on your build, but the visual of that is pretty awesome.

Bruno's record is currently 3:1. I have it in his class info.
Do you want me to add links in my profile?

And Bruno isn't currently in a fight. (you wondered that earlier).