Prove Thyself
So you’re the big dumb guy in your party. You’re the sort of bloke that swills ale, beats nine kinds of hell out of the monsters, and laughs at rocks. (Heh…silly rocks.) You’re also exactly the kind of meathead most likely to run into the ring so as to prove that you’re the baddest dude on the block. Unfortunately, this kind of activity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Bust up enough monsters and, after a while, even the meat-headiest amongst us will begin to recognize a pattern. “Hang on just a tick… I seem to hit harder than anything else. My armor is stronger. My aim is truer. This isn’t a proper challenge!”
The dictates of game balance mean that, for a satisfying experience (read: one you have a chance surviving consistently), you’ve got to fight opponents that are weaker than you. As soon as you’re going toe-to-toe in the mirror match or trying to duel above your weight class, one-on-one fights turn into roll-up-a-new-guy fights awfully quick. That means gladiatorial rings and similar often bring out the nerf bats, magically dealing knock-out blows rather than fatalities. For the warrior out to prove his mettle, this too lacks the savor of a proper challenge. Ignoring for a moment the fact that watching one guy roll dice against a GM is less than exciting for the rest of the table, there’s the very real problem that this trope is hard to do properly.
My advice to all the meatheads out there? Find another way to show off your studliness. Or if you really have to put on your best pair of gladiator pants, make sure that it’s only for special occasions. The conceit of the emperor sparing your life (Announcer Voice: Thumbs up? He never gives the thumbs up folks! You’re watching history on the field!) is much more interesting when it’s a special occasion rather than the de rigueur facts of the killing pits. “Oh sure. They’re just called killing pits. Haven’t had a fatality in 197 days and counting.”
I dunno. Maybe I’m just jaded from watching a few too many dull hack-fests in a few too many fictional colliseums. Do any of the rest of you guys have ideas for spicing up one-on-one combat? Let’s hear it in the comments!
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Last time we did gladiatorial combat, we took inspiration from current thinking about ancient Rome, which suggests that very few gladiatorial battles involved someone dying. Injuries yes but largely superficial ones.
In the real world, slaves were expensive. Even with an empire the size of Rome’s, these were valuable commodities. As for a slave strong enough to fight in the arena, these would have been highly prized by their owners.
It seems that most Roman gladiatorial battles were about the different weapon styles (which were deliberately visually exciting rather than battlefield effective), and it’s likely that gladiators had a degree of celebrity status which isn’t very likely if they died off the whole time.
In short, most gladiatorial combat was as real as pro wrestling.
All of this gave a very believable feel to the world and its combats, but you’re probably thinking that this may have reduced the tension for the players. Which it did, until it was pointed out that while gladiators may not have been sent to die in the arena, some groups of people certainly were, and these groups weren’t given a nice 50-50 chance of survival either.
Condemned criminals and political prisoners.
Cool setup! I could see it working in two ways: The PCs are the captured slaves who are supposed to die, or else they need to put on a good show without killing the innocent slaves. That last one in particular seems like it would make good stakes for an interesting encounter. Of course, it isn’t exactly “Mongo strongest! Mongo take on all challengers!” either.
Have you ever used Performance Combat?
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/performance-combat/
I have often wanted to. The crowd one seems closest to a typical Roman style, but they all sound fun…
And I didn’t see the next post 😛 silly me
I think the problem may be on a more basic level- IMO D&D isn’t set up for really great 1v1 arena-style fights. As someone else once said, your normal selection of daily encounters are supposed to be more like battles of attrition rather than duels between equals. And since the combat system is a simplified abstraction in most ways anyhow, that cinematic feel of a climatic battle with thrusts, blocks, parrys, dodges, trips, throws, and various sword-tricks (“I am not left-handed”) that players are picturing frequently just turns into two dudes standing still and wailing on each other until one runs out of hit-points first.
If you want to make exciting gladatorial-style combat, I think you’d have to redo the rules somewhat to make your players want to fight for money, fame, and glory, rather than survival. Maybe instead of HP, have some sort of points-system that determines a winner based on how impressive your fight is to the crowd (“are you not entertained?”) and a suitable prize for the champion. Wealth, magic spells, the finest concubines in the land, a 1-on-1 meeting with the emperor, whatever.
I happen to know such a system:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/performance-combat/
Unfortunately, I find that it’s a little too complex to use in the ways I’d really like. In other words, in the same way that robust underwater combat rules are better in aquatic campaigns than one-off fights vs. sharks, those performance rules are a bit too much for a set-piece encounter. They work much better if you’re setting up for a proper “you’re trapped in the fighting pits for the next 5 sessions” mini-arc.
Agreed, but let’s explore this on a more conceptual level- why are your players in the gladiatorial arena in the first place? There is, presumably, a whole big world out there full of monsters and humanoids and opposite-alignment clone-rivals for you to fight and loot instead. If you’re in the arena at all it must be for a specific purpose, right?
If you’ve been captured or become indebted somehow and have to fight for your life, then that’s fine, but it’s also really just more like a regular encounter then. The whole premise of your question seems to be like “what do you do about playing D&D when we don’t want to play NORMAL D&D”? So obviously the “use a different rule set” seems like the obvious answer. If possible, try to plan your sessions so they end right before the start of the games, tournament, whatever, and then give your players (and the GM) time to familiarize themselves with the rules right before your mini-arc begins. Throwing brand new rules at people right in the middle of a session wouldn’t work any better than other sudden tonal or gameplay shifts would. If you’re only want a single encounter that isn’t worth breaking out the rules for, my feeling is kind of like “why did you bother introducing all this stuff (the setting, not the rules) in the first place if we never planned to use it?”
If you don’t want to bother with all that, then don’t. Leave the gladatorialating to professional gladiators and run a regular D&D counter in the arena. The Romans brought in exotic animals to fight from time to time, so take your queue from that. Introduce the group as a “special event” and announce that they will be combating a selection of dangerous creatures plucked from the Emperors’s private menagerie. It can be an opportunity for a fight against something really non-native and unexpected if you want.
Problem solved and not a single new rule in sight.
So you’re saying “let the party fight as a party?” I can see the advantages:
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/133571/Maximum-Xcrawl-Powered-by-Pathfinder
D&D tends to reward specialization- that’s why you’ve got beefy frontline tanks, mobile strikers, archers and mages in the rear, etc etc etc. So you don’t have many jacks-of-all-trades, and even fewer entire parties where everyone is a Red Mage.
When you suddenly remove most of the standard roles and make people fight alone, it feels like you are undoing all the effort the group put into making itself a cohesive fighting unit (or just a really competent pack of violent nutters).
Plus, no matter how good the story, it’s hard to keep everyone engaged when only 1 person is taking all the actions for any significant amount of time.
It really Depends on the Set up. The others need to have something to do as well,…. Lets say they Plan to Assasinate a King.
Sir Meathead McHitsstuffalot, is in the Arena earning the Favor of the King, distracting everyone with a Big Fight. Rogue has been magically buffed into Insanity, and is waiting in Ambush to get that quick Onehit kill. Cleric and Wizard are sitting with the Crowd having their Magic Artillerys aimed at the Kings Guards, to take them out in a Moments Notice, as well as a Darkness and Silence Spell going off first.
I really doubt, that the Players will be bored while they wait for a good Opportunity to drop the Axe.
Basically, make the One on One Fight into a Distraction so the other Charackters can do something else while one dood Fights. Fighter has Brawl with some Guy, while a Crowd forms to Watch? Ideal opportunity for Rogue to Pickpocket!
I like this quite a bit as a strategy. The basic way for PCs to pull off this sort of thing is for them to cheat on behalf of their favored combatant, throwing surreptitious buffs and heals and trying to sway the crowd to their buddy’s side. Your version is even better though. Say the meathead has to keep an inept opponent alive long enough for the assassins to sneak towards the evil king’s private box. That seems like the setup for a solid encounter.
We had a one on one fight in a D&D game recently. Started as the lot of us trying to get information from a “Land God” as the DM was calling him. Turned out to be an Empyrean with fire powers. He was a loud, boisterous, fellow who loved a good party, a good drink, and a good fight. For his amusement our two rogues started sparring with one another, but he quickly got bored with them darting around one another, so my daughter’s character Lizzy hops in and smashes their heads together. Lizzy is a big, strong fighter with an 18 strength so this impresses the Land God, Sulphurus, who then wants a piece of the action. To make it fair he shrinks himself to more or less her size (still towering over her). My wizard goes over to her to wish her luck and hands her the Ring of Striking I had just pulled off a dead mob boss in our last game. She hauls back as this cocky Demigod puts his chin out and tells her to take her best shot. She expends all four charges in this ring and rolls a crit. Her punch throws him backwards out of the ring (this was kind of a sumo thing. First out of the ring loses) and into a pond, which begins steaming furiously from the heat this fire god wannabe puts out. The crowd, as they say, went wild. He got back up and got pissed, tried to do the “Now it’s my turn!” even though he’d technically lost. But she took the punch like a champ then tossed his ass out of the ring again (she was rolling really well that night). We now call her Lizzy Godcrusher, and she made a new best friend in a demigod she bested twice who has promised to come to her aid with his full might (only once!) when called upon.
Now see, that’s the way to do it! You didn’t fall back in combat as such, but abstracted a quick and easy conflict resolution that involved everyone (the rogues’ duel, the “I have a helpful item” guy, and the fighter herself). You also kept the pace up-tempo. Good show says I!
Oh yeah, our DM killed it that night. Great descriptive narrative, pretty much the whole group was involved even though it was technically a one on one fight. We even had a magic archer shooting firework arrows into the sky. It was a blast! I really liked the concept of just pushing the other opponent out of the ring too. Each blow (past that first knock out punch) was moving people around. Lizzy got shoved up against the edge of the ring, but managed to hold on there at the last. And then swiveled big man around and tossed him out with an amazing strength check. It was a tense moment, and lots of fun.
I find my favourite interpretation involved deliberately putting the one player against a far too strong opponent, letting them know I was doing it, and then forcing the party to handle something. There’s two main examples:
1) “The vault will be unguarded for as long as the fight lasts”. Suddenly your fighter has to play defensive round for round as they try to sneak into somewhere in combat time. Make sure to hit them with too many weaker foes and lots of tricky decisions about how to spent their time.
2) “You can’t beat that thing”. Make the rest of the party find a way to cheat the fight so that their guy actually has a chance. This can be really fun if the fight is to try and impress someone they need to impress.
^ Love it. The combat isn’t about the combat.
We had a game of Knivesies (I think that’s how it was spelled) in our Crimson Throne campaign. We made the boos guy laugh so he gave us what we wanted and we were on our way. Though he lost a henchman in the game when our Halfling Tinker rolled high and stabbed him to death.
In another campaign we did have an arena, and the stakes were real. It was an open invitation so killing was not permitted but accidents were possible.
In fact one of the NPC teams got mad at us for killing a member of their team. We thought it was only fair since they kept healing him back into the positive, we kept putting him back into the negatives. It just stuck better on one of the hits…
lol. I forgot about Knivesies. That was a good time down on the docks.
Your second example has me wondering though… What about a thieves’ den “cheating is encouraged” sort of setup? The spectators are expected to help out so long as they don’t go in and physically fight. That could be a fun way to keep everyone involved.
I prefer to steer the PC in a way that makes them want to make it more interesting than just “I roll to hit”. I will often use more agile or opportunistic opponents, ones that roll and tumble, trip or push the PC. Or characters that throw dirt in the eyes or create muddy terrain.
Terrain changes also help. One of my more memorable fights was in a dome with two different environmental conditions. There could be obstacles and switch-hitting going on. Or alternatively, make it clear to the PC that a creative solution would make the fight a lot easier. Make the burly fighter challenge himself in other ways. A good example of this, I think, would be the Roy-v-Thog gladiatorial fight in Order of the Stick.
I guess the tl;dr for all this is: to make it more engaging, I make the fight feel more (or sound more) cinematic.
Roy-v-Thog is an interesting example, but it’s important to remember that their fight was written for a comic rather than a game. It never had to work in terms of IRL gameplay. Allowing your PC to crush a Knowledge (engineering) check for a TKO is a neat idea, but it requires a PC that comes up with the notion and a GM that OKs it. For players that like a rigid system more than creative solutions, that can be a turnoff. As with so many good ideas, I think this one comes with the caveat of “know thy players.”
If the fights to death are overdue, then why not a fight to life? the first one to die actually win.
You are a silly person.
What? Why? Once in a Rogue Trader game my group, and i who writes, we were playing a Dark Eldar campaign. We organised gladiatorial games, and believe me, the ones who died win the jackpot. In a fantasy campaign you can have the situation where a group of undead or necromancers make games with their living subjects. The rules are easy, if you win then you die and become one of their undead soldiers, if you loose the fight then you are a worthless body and you get a common tomb, but you are not a shambling corpse. See, not every fight with a prize is one you want to win.
I suppose you can also reward the heroes hard earned victory with another combat round, and another and another. Just be careful, that can degenerate in a death by snu snu, but without the funny part.
I stand corrected. Nothing silly going on here.
Spheres of Might makes combat more theatric and interesting. Instead of a repetitive: I full attack each round until the enemies hit points reach zero, you can chain actions and attacks that complement each other. For example, you might have a character with the Lancer and Duelist spheres (who impales or disarms opponents, focusing in bleed damage) who fights someone with the Brute and Shield spheres (who can deflect attacks (both ranged and melee at the cost of their shield, and may literally throw their foes like a rag doll).
lol. I could ask for an egg salad recipe and you’d come back with, “Spheres of Power! Take the Miracle Whip sphere!”
For serious though, anything that forces players to consider options rather than falling back on a default play seems like a winner to me.
My player learn to be terrified of trying to go against anything I make one on one (I’m a big person for the “There’s always someone stronger” train of thought. Unless we’re talking about Ao. The chain kinda ends there). Also, environmental aspects. I’m getting ready to try out a gladiatorial arena I made for my players for a story arc, and I’m excited to see how it goes, with all number of different traps that whomever wins will likely have to use to their benefit.
I’ve found that the best, most memorable fights are the ones where the DM specifically pits the character against the thing he or she is most excellent at killing, except they otherwise outmatch said character in every way. Paladins face off with a demon of their CR+3. A cleric is trapped in a graveyard with a skeletal horde surrounding him and has to hold out until morning. A druid fights a corporation’s worth of invaders bent on harvesting the forest he grew up in. A rogue makes it his duty to assassinate the duke who put a bounty on him…once he infiltrates, all it takes is a knife to the heart, but getting there is the challenge, not the fighting, and getting there makes him feel like Jason Bourne, Arya Stark, Ezio Auditore, or you know, whatever your M.O. involves.
I guess most of those aren’t exactly one on one, but I read the initial question as ‘how would one make a memorable challenge without condemning the character to a coin flip.’ You should stack the deck for him, but also his opposition. You have to stack it -differently- though, so the first one to grasp their advantage and leverage it can turn the odds in his favor. Assassin vs Assassin is just a game of tag, and Druid vs Blighter is similar.
Thog had the match firmly in his hands with his superior combat stats, until Roy could utilize his superior Knowledge Engineering.
Those are excellent encounter ideas, but I’m not seeing the connection to 1 vs. 1 gladiatorial contests.
I suppose that’s part of the problem. It’s the power fantasy that seems to get us into trouble, where a single player wanting to prove how badass they are becomes an awful design challenge. You can do it once if you’re clever, but if it’s an everyday occurrence then it seems like you’re either beating up weaklings (Fighter’s preferred solution) or getting your butt whooped by actually challenging opponents.
Are you suggesting that “here’s a high-CR enemy that your build is unusually good at beating” is the workaround? I think I could buy into that….
In a general sense, yes. Unfortunately, a lot of characters don’t really have a specific enemy they’re ‘best at’ like paladins and rangers and such. What the root is, is that if you’re the DM spicing things up, mixing the combat with a puzzle is a good way to go. Have the rogue in the arena roll Perception to see a shifty brick, then throw daggers at it till it gives way and drops rocks on his enemy’s head, or something like that.
In the Planescape setting there’s an entire plane of existence that auto-resurrects anyone who dies there. That seems to me to be a good place to hold non-gimped arena matches.
Heh. I’m not sure if we’re talking about Valhalla, but that sounds an awful lot like Valhalla.
Well sort of. It’s Planescape’s version of Asgard called “Ysgard”. The funky spelling lets you know it’s cool and hip.
I recently played in a 14th-level 5e campagin built around an arena. Our party consisted of me (the wizard), two druids, a rogue, and a Polearm Master/Sentinel Eldritch Knight glaive fighter. The DM kept on throwing like CR 17 stuff at us and I kept on having the spell for it.
Hydra? Immolate.
Storm Giant? Plane Shift.
Demons? Magic Circle.
A collosal army of various undead? Prismatic Spray.
Galeb Dhur? Disintegrate.
A gang of Veterans? Chain Lightning.
Eventually, the DM got fed up, made a magic-immune monster, and sent it at us.
I stay back and buff the rest of the party. We take it apart in 3 rounds.
Standard combat is definintively not the way to go when the party has a high-level wizard.
Did you have to take several “rounds” in a row, or were these are one-encounter-per-day fights?
Warmup round of like CR 5 and then a “miniboss”
My thought is that, if you’re only dealing with 2 encounters per day, only one is challenging, and especially if you know about the nature of the opponent before you go in, a wizard with prep time is almost always going to clean house. I bet you could change up a few variables and make the conceit work a little better.
I like to spice up 1v1’s by taking it away from the stats and numbers. Yeah, they are great to tell you when something succeeds or fails, but when most or all special abilities are spent, and all it devolves into… “I hit him with my sword… rolls, 17… I hit rolls 8 damage… ok… your turn…” I just can’t allow it be that boring. I try to make every hit and every little bit of damage or cut make a difference on the following turns.
DM: “He recoils from the blow and begins to put some distance between you. With both arms, He heaves his sword over his head, aiming for a blow into your shoulder! rolls He rolls a 22 and slams his blade into you for rolls 13 damage.”
Player: “I still have 4 HP. Catching the blade with my left hand, lessening the blow, I retaliate, and swing for his open gut! rolls 8, I miss, but use the opportunity provided when he avoids the attack to roll away and adopt a defensive stance!”
In this example as the DM, I would likely rule that he takes less damage from sacrificing his hand, but if he tries to do anything with it, like pick up sand/dirt and throw it in his opponents face, he would have to roll a con save or flinch from pain, losing the action. Making stuff like grapples, disarms, and other simple actions separate from the rules for 1v1 fights, just makes the game feel way more weighty to me!
Yeah, its not by the rules, yeah it removes ‘optimal’ play, but when the ‘optimal’ play is just: I hit him and he hits me back with no change or variation, Why would you want that?
Finally, adding that seemingly rare/unique reason to allow the player to survive a “battle to the death” is just the cherry on top you need to make a really interesting dynamic between the two fighters. If the player used underhanded tactics in a duel against a noble, maybe he will resent him and his party and mess with them in future endeavors in the town. If it was the classic gladiatorial arena, have the two both talk together in the infirmary where they can discuss the fight and why they fight in the first place.
There is a lot more I would like to say on the topic, but unfortunately I picked a really bad time to reply. I Might leave a reply to this comment later today or early tomorrow if I remember to do so.
I think that Exalted is unusually good at 1 vs. 1 because of the stunting mechanism built into the rules, providing mechanical benefits for those flavorful descriptions. I think you’d dig that system.
I ran a solo game for an Abyssal once. Her daiklave had an Evocation that would do massive carnage after charging up by being in combat for a long while. The Abyssal herself was only a passable swordfighter by Celestial Exalt standards (3 Melee and a handful of the best bread-and-butter workhorse charms but no more) but had Athletics charms out the wazoo. The fight scenes were almost always amazing as she would use the terrain and movement to stall for time and then lure them into a place where the Evocation would finish the fight. Stunts and Feats of Strength would feature heavily.
Another amazing 1v1 fight I had was as a player in a World of Darkness one-shot. I was just an ordinary mortal Hunter, no supernatural powers at all. The other hunters and I had already set the vampire hideout on fire, but what was once a clear sunny day had been overtaken by a freak storm of sorcerous nature, blotting out the sun. So there I was, in the burning basement with nothing but a fireman’s suit and an axe and I find myself facing off alone against a vampire in an Oni mask and weird Japanese costuming. Naturally I assumed this was the evil sorcerer and that if we managed to slay him the storm would clear and the fiends would have no way to escape the Sun’s rays when the building collapsed. He did look very final-boss-ish, but I was cut off from the rest of the party and didn’t much fancy my chances trying to find them. So instead I just spent every round of the fight going “I spend my action on dodging” as I try my level best to at attrition and not getting cut to ribbons while he is forced to spend a willpower every turn to resist the fear effect of the fire. It was honestly one of the most fun fights I had ever been in despite the lack of any sort of tactical nuance. The DM and I were having a blast stunting up dodges and attacks, while the boss and I chatted and exchanged banter. Between running low on willpower as I steadfastly refused to die like a good mortal, and unintentionally earning his respect with my answer to his question about why I chose to come here (The DM even showed me the guy’s sheet after the game to prove that he hadn’t fiat’d it and that his code of honor had been pre-written) he finally ended up leaving me alive as he turned away and left to protect his Master that the rest of the party was fighting. It turned out that the guy wasn’t even the freaking sorcerer. He was just some weeaboo samurai bodyguard to the big bad that I had assumed was magic when he wasn’t. He was actually a miniboss guarding an optional hidden piece of loot- a copy of some eldritch book or whatever. I was a Brooklyn liquor store clerk that joined the Vatican’s hunters after seeing my friend get turned into a vampire, the DM hadn’t gotten halfway into describing the book I found when I tossed it in the fire.
Right on! This is a great example of “RP doesn’t have to stop at when your roll initiative.”
Small pedantic note: it’s generally believed that we have the thumbs-up/thumbs-down symbology reversed for Ancient Rome. Thumbs-down is thought to have meant “swords down”, ie end the fight without death. Of course, there’s also some belief that thumbs-down wasn’t even the gesture they used – either a thumb to the side or a closed fist around a thumb might have been the actual one. We have the idea of thumbs down for death from a late 19th century painting by an artist who didn’t bother to ask any scholars.
That aside, I generally try to avoid single player conflict during regular sessions (barring important roleplay encounters of course) because it takes too much time away from the rest of the party. For the meathead looking to prove himself in your example, perhaps the best method to test his skills is to prove his abilities on a foe that’s strong enough to challenge the whole party, with the assistance of the rest of the party. I suppose he could ask for some time to fight it one-on-one first, but…
Saying that reminded me of a fight from a module back in Living Greyhawk, where our party stumbled on a Rakshasa. The arrogant ranger in the group demanded the chance to go one-on-one with it. We made sure to gather up his disintegrated remains for eventual resurrection.