Championship Round
Some of you guys might have missed it, but for a few months we ran a “who would win” tournament over on the Handbook of Heroes Facebook page. We pit all of our heroes against one another in single-elimination contest, asking fans to answer a simple question: Who would win in a fight? There were some weird matchups, a few upsets, and a boatload of broken hearts (Fighter actually started crying and ran offstage after Wizard took him out). If you’re curious about the full results, you can check out the brackets right here. As you might have guessed, after all the voting and all the fights, the two contenders left standing in the championship round were Succubus and Magus.
The championship round ended in a tie.
In consequence, we arrive at today’s non-confrontational conclusion.
I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I love these hypothetical combats. I’m a frequent poster over on the r/whowouldwin subreddit, picking apart the minutia of such classic fights as “Darth Vader vs. Gandalf” and “the balrog in a tugboat vs. the Titanic.” Back in school when I was an RA, I turned my floor’s bulletin board into similar vote-driven tournament of champions (the ninja turtles came out on top). Laurel and I actually met in a comic shop, but the part of Hot Girl in the Comic Shop I identify with most is nevertheless the Hulk vs. Spider-Man argument. And speaking as the kind of gamer that often wonders whether my monk could take out my buddy’s fighter in single combat, I love that our little Facebook tournament ended like it did.
You see, it’s occasionally fun to pluck your PCs out of context, plop them down on a featureless plane, and let them beat the crap out of each other. But for my money, it’s more fun to consider the hypothetical than to arrive at a definitive answer. Real characters aren’t 100% optimized murder machines, and featureless planes are scarce in most campaign worlds. In other words, there’s more to a well-developed PC than winning duels against your fellow party members. In any case, I’m just glad that Magus and Succubus share that attitude. I don’t want to live in a world without their womance.
What about the rest of your guys? Have you ever answered the siren call of 1 v 1 me bro? Have you ever enjoyed a mock battle against your buddies? Was it fun, or was it a bit of a pissing contest? Let’s hear all about your best “who would win” tales down in the comments!
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Because my father was the DM and we hosted the game at my house for most of our campaign, I was by far the most consistent player to show up, meaning I never missed a session. Therefore it was generally agreed that if I could use it, and it was an upgrade, I would get the shiny toys that we found. Being a paladin, I could use quite a few different shiny toys, and I ended up with a bunch of magical arms and armor. Now, I couldn’t cause nearly as much havoc on a group of orcs in a single round as the wizard could, but it was generally agreed I was by far the most dangerous in a 1v1 fight, especially since most of my equipment had some form of spell reflection on it. On top of that, paladins had generally good saves and lots of HP, so there was a legitimate possibility that any sort of opening salvo would bounce off of me and blow up in the caster’s face.
Not that it saved me from flubbing my saving throws against petrification -twice!- in the climactic fight for the princess.
These kinds of comparisons are only natural, but I like to look at them like chess pieces. Different pieces/builds are useful in different situations. Wizards gonna wizards, paladins gonna make theirs saves against petrification… most of the time.
Certainly. I was the party tank, the shock trooper. I punched the ogre in the face and wrestled him to the ground so that the wizard could do his job uninterrupted, and I was darn good at it. I couldn’t actually commit mass slaughter against anything that wasn’t undead, but I could hold a choke better than an adamantium door.
Psh, is that Melee Final Destination? We aren’t melee scrubs. (Longingly stares off wishing for a switch)
My only “1v1 me!” story comes from one of my first organized play games. I was playing a Stout Halfling Open Hand Monk who was essentially that guy in your martial arts class who has an anger problem and clearly wants to use what they learn to kick people’s asses in bar fights. My competition was an insufferable Munchkin; a v1 mystic/assassin rogue combo. (Fun fact, UAs specifically say “Please don’t multiclass this. If you do you’re being that guy”.) Our characters were at each other’s throat, and the GM was like “You know what, you guys can settle this if you like”. He wins initiative, crits me because Assassin, and brings me down into dangerously low HP. I then thwack him and do Stunning Strike. He fails his save and I hit him 3 more times that turn because Advantage. He spends his turn stunned. I land four strikes and stun him again. This Street Fighter combo bullshit goes on until he’s down.
I don’t think anybody learned a lesson.
I have a buddy who tells a story about some competitive dudes he met in a one-off. They were a bit passive aggressive in their rivalry though. Rather than actually fight they just go into petty one-upsmanship. I believe things finally came to a head when they both had fly spells up and were maneuvering for altitude, trying to gain height so that they could literally piss on one another.
My buddy learned a lesson at least. He didn’t go back for session 2.
So take comfort in this: your unproductive duel could have been worse.
That is the only time I’ve ever seen a stunlock outside of a fighting game. Well done.
That’s why you play Monk.
I do trip and fall into the hypothetical “who would win” rabbit hole every now and then, though thankfully I’ve never actually given in to the call.
I’ve had some PvP kinda… happen a few times, but it never escalated into a full-on fight. Thankfully.
At some point, I did have the idea of playing out some duels for the purpose of trying out Pathfinde builds. Basically just for the sake of easier visualization after the theorycrafting. It never happened though, since none of my friends were interested. And if I asked on reddit or something, I’d probably get some kind of obsessive optimizer from hell.
That said, looking at the brackets, I’m curious how the heck Inquisitor lost to Succubus. I’d think that taking down evil outsiders is right up her alley?
I was pretty surprised myself. Especially since this was a popular vote tourney, I’d have thought Inquisitor would clean house! People seem to love her.
Anywho, if you have any suggestions for why that fight went the way it did, I’d be happy to toss them on Laurel’s “suggestions for the sketch feed” pile.
I think we’re onto something here… Somehow, Succubus is one of Inquisitor’s weaknesses.
Usually, Succubi have the advantage against creatures who are attracted to them, so I guess Inquisitor is into ladies? Which would make sense considering she grew up in an all-girls school.
Although Inquisitors are naturally better at resisting charm effects and the like from their targets… Maybe there is a player trope at work here – ignoring the benefit of mechanical effects for the sake of roleplay and storytelling.
Inquisitor let go of her iron will for once, wanting to give in to Succubus’ alluring affection. In turn, Succubus naturally took advantage of that and won the battle.
I might be entering fan fic territory, so I’ll leave it there.
It probably doesn’t come across in the main comic, but suffice it to say that Magus and Inquisitor are an item over on the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy. I think it’s safe to say that Inquisitor is into ladies.
…Well. That actually makes the result depicted in this comic a little awkward.
Inquisitor: “So, babe, how did it go?”
Magus: “It went great!”
Inquisitor: “You beat that little demon-btch into paste for me?”
Magus: “Uh… Does straightening out all her knots count?”
Inquisitor: *Stern Gaze.
A Succubus IS immune to fire and poison, so that probably took Inquisitor’s two favorite tricks right off the table. (Explains how she beat Sorcerer, too.) If Inquisitor didn’t have a cold iron/Good weapon on her, that would also be a problem, though the fight was far enough along in the bracket that she should have known (and if any class always has such weapons on hand, it’s an Inquisitor). Perhaps Succubus fought while disguised as someone or something else, so her immunities/resistances were not known? With Bard being a wimp, Sorcerer’s one trick unable to damage her and with Succubus unable to use her main tricks on Necromancer’s undead, it’s quite possible that she could have been holding back for the entire tournament until Inquisitor.
…Once again, I have put WAY too much thought into this gag-a-day comic’s lore/universe.
Stop making me want to write a full comic book. I don’t have time!
I had a person try to do it to me after I called him out for nearly getting the entire party killed. Fortunately for me, I was a really dedicated team player who helped out everyone else set up their cool moves and plays, and the other guy was a 3edgy5u asshole who insulted everyone. So I never got to find out if his Sorcerer picking a fight in melee range with my Cavalier was as bad an idea as it seemed, because he was immediately smacked down by the Monk and the Barbarian, and knocked out. However, I was such a team player that I carried him home and even ensured he got his share of the reward.
Had a good laugh at “3edgy5u” once I stopped squinting at it and trying to decipher the meaning.
Your scenario is what I meant by real characters not being pure murder machines. Of course a dedicated striker could beat up my support bard. Doesn’t mean I don’t want both of them in my team. Not to mention all the intricacies of interpersonal relationships, codes of honor, and similar.
The main party I have been a player in sort of had this with our mind control/Diplomancer Sorcerer. Why was the entire party so afraid of the quiet, polite, Chaotic Good 5-foot-tall pencil-thin girl with silly hair ( https://cfensi.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/hair.png ) in a dress? Well, she was a Kitsune with the Fey Bloodline, Greater Spell Focus and 22 CHA, so her enchantment spells had a DC of about 24 + Spell Level, which made even the two PCs with 2 levels of Paladin nervous.
“I wouldn’t Dominate my friends! That’s why you should be my friend.” – Xiulan the Sorcerer, who really is a nice person, I swear.
(The PvP was not entirely hypothetical, by the way. Due to backstory reasons, Xiulan was a fugitive from her homeland, and one of our PCs was essentially a bounty hunter who had been trying to track her down before he got distracted by the ogres we were dealing with. Fortunately, he had INT 6 on a good day and was looking for a “fox lady”, so this definitely-not-a-shapeshifting-fox-person-human with a different name and hairstyle than his target didn’t set off any alarm bells.)
Is there blanket immunity to mind-affecting for PCs? I can’t recall if that’s an option outside of monster subtypes.
I always wanted to give the dedicated enchanter a go, but that narrow focus always bugged me. I don’t want to be shooting iron golems with a crossbow at 10th level, you know?
Androids get a +4 against mind-affecting (being construct-ish), but that’s all I know of.
Xiulan actually spent quite a lot of time using Create Pit and Spiked Pit in addition to her massive mental powers. I nicknamed her the Holeymancer, master of all things holey. She had Fireball, to, which is a good backup. So she was functional up until Level 9, at least, though constructs weren’t our main concern. The Impossible Bloodline does let a Sorc mindjack constructs, though I suppose golems are highly resistant to magic anyways. That can’t really be helped, though, and that’s why you have a team. Every build is going to have an encounter it is practically worthless against.
I guess I was thinking 3.5 Mind Blank:
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mindBlank.htm
I guess they got rid of that blanket immunity mess for a reason.
Funny thing about Mind Blank in 5e –
it specifically protects from “effect that would sense its emotions or read its thoughts, Divination Spells, and the Charmed condition.” Dominate person, Charm person, Geas are all imposing “Charmed”, so it does protect against them.
But magical fear or (Mass) Suggestion spell are in grey zone. They are not specifically called for, but last point goes on “The spell even foils Wish Spells and Spells or effects of similar power used to affect the target’s mind or to gain information about the target.” Magical Fear and Suggestion are lower then Wish in power level, and they do affect target’s mind.
I’ve been in two 1v1 fights, both of the “you are teleported to a different plane to duke it out, by the way none of this is canon” type.
The first one was with my very first character, a gnome conjuration wizard who are the time was 8th level. One of my friends was playing a barbarian who started out in the same party but then transported across dimensions with the ranger thanks to the Wand of Wonder and essentially split the campaign into two different stories. My friend was a 15th level barbarian and wanted to see who would win, the barbarian or wizard, so I made a 15th level version of my character to challenge. Problem was I got no new magic items, and my friend had gotten quite a few, including a Staff of Power the GM had ruled he could use, even when raging. So start off I win initiative, put down a solid forcecage (in hindsight I probably should have done a bared cage so I could cast spells and block his ranged attacks with a Windwall, but I didn’t think of that) and used the time to buff and lay some traps. When the forcecage ends I have a phantom steed with both of us greater invisible and start running around throwing spells at him. Eventually I throw up a demiplane and run into it, he chases me in, then I run back out, but up a Wall of force to block the exit, then close the Demiplane (I hadn’t been able to set up a demiplane full of explosive runes or something beforehand).
Second battle my group all made characters specifically for 1v1 combat, everyone 9th level. I was feeling munchkin-y, so I made a high elf champion fighter 4/bear totem barbarian 5 with the elven accuracy feat back when in applied to any attack with advantage. The guy was a crit-fisher, critting on a 19-20, recklessly attacking and rolling 3d20 for each advantage attack, and making 3 attacks per round while dual wielding, and crazy hard to take down while raging. Ended up winning the tournament in the featureless plane. Fun times.
Nicely done with the demiplane. That’s clever gaming right there!
I’ve certainly been in a few debates of these sorts.
However over the years the thing I’ve learned about tabletop character PC vs PC scenarios is that….. nowhere is a fair fight. Some characters actually excel on a featureless plain but would suffer defeat against many foes that would have the advantage in any more realistic scenario. So in the end, there’s really no point because there’s no way to have a fair fight.
And because what constitute a “fair” fight is actually unfair to some characters. =P
It’s almost as if the game were designed for a group of diverse playstyles working together to overcome challenges! 😛
In a DND discord I’m in, j often have my Paladin battle against other PC’s mostly just for sport, but also to figure out these sorts of things. Generally I face PC’s who far outstrip my level so victory wasn’t so much the goal as effectiveness, but it did make me realize a few things.
In a open area, obstacleless envioment, range is king. Unless you start in melee or your enemy has a greater than average speed over you, running away and plinking someone from afar is far more superior especially if they’re a melee type. Wizards and range types have the most advantage in an open field. Following up on that: mounts are great for melee types on an open field. Most conventional duel won’t allow them unless ya a boast since your mount could also double as a second combatant, but when allowed you will be glad for that extra movement.
Additionally 1v1 duels benefit types who have powerful but finite abilities over weak but consistent ones. My Paladin can burn all her spells and Smite in a single duel that she’d never do during an adventuring day where she’s expected to do like, three different instances of combat. Conversely a barbarian or champion fighter have some fairly low cost abilities that make them great for a dungeon dive, but their DPS can looks rather stale when your wizard is free to drop all his high level spells for the day at once, or for my Paladin to burn all of her smites in 3-4 turns. And of course some character just straight up aren’t meant for combat, or at least have ways where combat would become a nonissue either through magical lobotomies or far superior escape abilitiesz
To that end, I’ve never had gotten into a situation where I had to PvP someone in a life or death situation where I wasn’t the victim of a domination effect. Even when we had IC or OoC arguments, the worse it would ever get us those verbal arguements and maybe occasionally some loot skimming. Not to say I’ve never wanted to, but I could never find a situation where doing so wasn’t going to be a fight to the death. Never found a DM who wanted to run some sort of tournament arc or something.
You mean in-character training, or was this an OoC “let’s see how our builds measure up” sort of thing?
A bit of both you know? Like figuring out how to fight mystics or bear totem barbarians, though of course some people just want to scrap against each other for the challenge of it.
It wasn’t actually 1v1, but 2v2. Our Occultist and Psychic got hit with a healthy dose of Insanity, and our Oracle and Rogue were left to clean up the mess.
The struggle to subdue a mind-maiming psychic dwarf and babbling collection of elemental energies stuffed into the body of a gnome actually took significantly longer (and was a far greater struggle) than the kind-of-forgettable fight against the guy who caused their insanity. He’d been built up for four or five levels, but ended up going down pretty easily and getting overshadowed by the PvP.
As is tradition! People don’t remember Pippin’s fight against the troll chief at the battle of Morannon. They remember Gollum biting off Frodo’s finger. PVP ftw!
1v1 Dragon Ball-esque tournements are common with my group if we don’t have a enough players or anyone that feels like dm’ing. My favorite build is 17 Sunsoul Monk/3 Bear Totem Barbarian Scourge Aasimar. Rage + Cnumptive Radiance has awsome synergy; rage = bonus action, CR = action and both last for 1min. So basically spend 1 turn going super saiyan which is kinda thematic for the dragon ball universe.
In a plane that contains the Hulk, the ground, and the speiderman, web is about as useful as silly string, and mobility is equally useless because there’s nowhere to run. Spidey alone would be hard-pressed to even deal damage to Hulk. I really don’t see a way for spiderman to win that fight.
If we put them on final destination, I think spiderman would get a technical win. He can hang out under the map until Hulk runs out of steam.
If there aren’t enough players to have a full session, we go PvP tournament. Occasionally we’ve done a PvP tournament just for the fun of it. It’s always been battle royale style rather than one on one. Irlana usually wins thanks to the crit-AoO chains but there’s been times she’s gotten knocked out. One time, she got knocked out but Mick was still going and he ended up winning all by himself.
My mental image: https://secure.i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01714/pig-trophy_1714129i.jpg
That’s pretty much it.
The villianess threatens the heroine with three bads.