Charan's comment gets a good deal of laughter from the crowd, and his knee impacting Rolg's stomach gets a good deal of the dwarf's breath out, as well as cracking a rib.
:: Round 4 ::
Geez… time to try something else, I guess.
The dwarf responds by dropping his hammer, drawing the mammoth axe on his back, and exploding to twice his size before taking a big-ass swipe at his wily opponent.
Arbiter:
HP: 20 - 7 damage + 1 fast healing = 14/26; Raging kicks that up to 18/30.
This is the first round of rage burned; along with the first round of Enlarge.
"But, I can't be hurt by a warrior of this level, while I had difficulty hurting you consistently. You've only made this battle shorter for me to win."
Wow, good timing to roll a 17, which should just barely hit now that you've enlarged for another -2 to armor class, if I've predicted your build right.
Aaaaand there it is; i figured that's what I was up against.
:: Round 5 ::
Rolg drops back down to his normal size adjacent to the monkey and adopts a defensive, tired stance.
"Ok, ape, vi har spilt spillet nok. Du må gi meg et minutt."
dwarven:
"Okay, monkey, we've played your game enough. You'll have to give me a minute."[/b]
Arbiter:
Dropping rage and adding Fast Healing, HP is now 8/26.
Dropping rage makes him fatigued for this round and the next (the relevant bit being the -2 to Dexterity)
Combining that with full defense action makes his AC 21.
Just so you have a heads up, Rolg will be going full defensive long enough to Fast Healing his way to 22 HP (which will take 14 rounds).
A natural twenty automatically hits vs. AC, but as far as I know has no bearing on special defensive moves such as Deflect Arrows, Ray Shield, or Crane Wing.
"Hmm.." The monkey monk looked contemplative for a moment, putting a hand on his chin. "I know I just went into serious mode and was intending to keep that up for the rest of the battle to show respect to how good a fighter you are."
Then he splayed his hands out in confusion. "But, this has been bothering me the entire match. I mean, seriously? What are you, a xenophobic oracle cursed only to speak in funny languages? SPEAK IN COMMON. It's the language of lots of people from diverse cultures meeting, such as this arena. That's why it's called common!"
He called up to the crowd, cupping his hands around his mouth to magnify his voice, "CAN ANYONE TRANSLATE FOR HIM?"
With a final shrug and "Eh, whatever, I'll find out afterward. I'll use the prize money to buy a Bearded Midget to Common dictionary."
Do we want to actually play it out? Or give some guidelines and have Arbiter do a massive adjudication post? Or simply both shake our heads and walk away and take the Draw?
Rolg won't quit or take actions he knows are losing actions. He'd rather take the Draw, lose crowd favor, or see who passes out due to hunger/dehydration before taking said losing actions.
:: Round 7 ::
Arbiter:
For this round: Full defensive (no longer fatigued)
10/26 hp; AC 22
I just intend to Total Defense until my hp maxes back out... that'll be in 16 more rounds, unless you can Nat 20 a few shots in... in which case it will take longer.
If we're proceeding forward in the same way, another 7 rounds, please. And - as always - if you go any round (or rounds) without fighting defensively in some manner, please let me know. It would influence Rolg's decisions.
Oof… that's ominous. I'll act as if I didn't know your Star-Destroyer-takes-pawn move is coming. :)
: Puts away "the end is nigh" sandwich board :
Which brings us to Round 31 for Rolg…
Rolg shows a dramatic level of tactical flexibility… switching from huddling in a fully defensive fashion to leveling a pair of clumsy, defensive punches at his opponent.
Arbiter:
Swift: switch to Judgment of Protection
Full attack using both spiked-gauntlet fists in two-weapon fighting style (defensively).
Charan doesn't even use his hands, watching the first swing wide and a slight graceful dodge against the second.
He defensively strikes a blow I won't bother rolling..
Then runs behind a pillar.
"Oh gods of the arena, or whatever higher power does all the funky force covered pillars. Neither of us can kill each other very easily. He can't beat me without attacking twice in succession, which he cannot do if I don't let him. I can't hurt him very easily. I might have a chance of getting 5 successive lucky blows in the next couple of days, but that will be freaking boring for all of us. So, this battle will probably come down to exhaustion. Which will take days for us, again with the boring problem."
"Seeing it comes down to a battle of constitution in the end, why don't you just spawn some magical liquor in the middle of the arena, we have a drinking contest, the first one to drop is the one who would have dropped of exhaustion first. Deal?"
And this, is my secret technique. Let's just make it one Con check for the win.
Statistically, I think I would win eventually (if we actually rolled out the next 16 hours), as you have 0% of damaging me per round, and I have like a .00001%-ish chance of killing you (via 4-5 consecutive-ish 20s over 5-6 rounds) But gosh, I don't want to bother with rolling all of a couple thousand times.
Well, the problem with that is that this isn't a game of probabilities and statistics. And it's not fully true to say Rolg's chance is 0, because Fast Healing means he can switch to two-weapon fighting to give himself a chance (however small) at dealing damage. And Charan doesn't have the luxury of Fast Healing... at least not that I've seen yet.
And if it did actually last until dehydration rules come into play, suddenly i like Rolg's chances even better.
But in my opinion, all that is moot because none of that is any fun. :)
Point. We are once more to the point of being unable to damage each other. Given my stealth, it would be quite easy to get a little bit of a lead on you, and then never be attacked again.
Okay, I'm back. I'll be honest, characters being unable to kill one another was not something I was concerned about! That said, I'm glad this came up so that we can have a plan for stuff like this in the future. The problem is basically caused by each player being unwilling to sacrifice defense for offense, and unable to hit their opponent while keeping up their defense. Since the audience doesn't want to wait around for those 5 consecutive hits, we're going to need to do something. I'm not sure this has been explicitly stated so far, but if both combatants decide to call the match a draw, it is negated as though it never happened, with no VP or GP awarded. We could also add a 'leave it to chance' option, where if both parties agree, the match is left up to a coin-flip by the Arbiter (which probably looks like Bolt Of Ultimate Divine Power roulette to the audience).
Alright, well as soon as both players agree on either a draw or a 50-50 chance of winning/losing (I think this is a better idea than an opposed roll modified by actual stats), the fight will be over, probably to the disappointment of the crowd :P
Alright then, we have our first draw, and you gentlemen should head over to the Discussion tab for your drinking contest. I need to figure out what a draw looks like in-game... I have no idea how you two would manage to agree to a drinking contest, since you don't speak the same languages. The fight still definitely happened, there is just no reward.
