The Arena

I lied; there's one more thing on the November list. There's no Map-a-Week for November 30th, but there was an undated file linked to the Arena from last week. This is the introduction to the D&D Fight Club.

What is the D&D Fight Club, you ask? Well, apparently there's a rule about not talking about it, but I intend to break that rule quite thoroughly. From what I can see, there have been several articles on the Fight Club prior to this time, but they were not given proper dates, all being set for January 2nd, 2000. Obviously there was no 3rd edition yet except in the playtesting stage and the Countdown articles in Dragon, but these articles must have been coming out at least by August. Still, I've not discussed them yet because they are linked to the Arena map, which didn't arrive until last week. So, I'm going to include those creatures in the December writeups.

So, what is this all about, then? Well, it's a way for a DM to set up a fighting tournament with various characters and creatures. And just from the list in this article, there are some pretty wild creatures involved thanks to the way that 3rd edition basically lets any race (or intelligent monster) be any class. So, this should be interesting.

Alright, so the DM wants to set up a monthly challenge tournament for PCs to join if they want. Or, maybe they're just in town and decide to gamble on the tournament outcomes. Either way, the idea is for the DM to put together a 'ladder', ranking the competitors based on their CR. PCs that enter and have a reputation are counted as half their total levels for their ladder ranking. For example, a 5th-level rogue/3rd level fighter would have 8 total levels, and have a ladder ranking of 4. If they are incognito, their ladder ranking is 0.

So, here's a partial list of the creatures that are listed as participants in this tournament:

Half-fiend/half-ogre Rog1/Ftr4/Blackguard 5; CR 14, ladder 14.
Tiefling Mnk 7/Shadowdancer 6; CR 14, ladder 14.
Lizardfolk Ftr 3/Drd 8; CR 13, ladder 13
Goblin vampire Rog 5/Clr 5; CR 12, ladder 12
Half-dragon (black)/half-minotaur Sor 5; CR 11

As you can see, these get pretty wild. Combatants score 1 ladder point per victory in the arena; if their opponent is tougher or more experienced, they get an additional point for every 2 full ladder points their opponent had above the winner's total (prior to the fight). So, if the goblin vampire above defeats the tiefling, he'll gain 2 total points: 1 for the win, and 1 for beating an opponent with 2 more ladder points than himself. If you lose, you lose ladder points in the same manner.

Winners do gain XP for their victories, although they aren't for the full amount since this is a more controlled combat situation. Really quick fights might only get a minute XP total since the combat was so short. There can be cash prizes for winning these matches, too. But that's all up to the DM.

So, there are a couple of ideas for how to use the Arena Fight Club. First, PCs can challenge anyone on the ladder to a combat, following the result rules above. Second, there can be a full-blown tournament, where the fighters are paired off based on their rankings; The top fighter faces the bottom one; 2nd rank faces 15th rank, and so on. There is a helpful chart given to write down who is actually in each rank. Combats can then be run with successive winners being paired off until the final match determines the overall winner. Ladder ranks are gained and lost as normal, but the winner of the tournament gets an additional 2 points.

There can be stables (like in wrestling!) and backers, who sponsor stables. Fighters who show promise might be invited to join a stable, and there are perks such as luxury accommodations, training facilities, better food, etc. The backer takes care of fees in exchange for a percentage of the winnings.

There are sample NPCs given who run the show, as well as a few adventure hooks to introduce the Fight Club to the PCs if they are interested in that sort of thing. I will note that the NPCs have some classes that don't actually exist yet in the game; one is a psychic warrior, which comes from the Psionics Handbook (March 2001), and one is a planeshifter (Manual of the Planes, Sept 2001). So it's an open question as to whether this should even have been included in the 2000 articles. Still, here it is, so I'm going to just leave it at that.

And that definitively concludes our November 2000 articles. I've received my December order, and there's not much in it, so I'm going to get started on that tomorrow (I hope). Until then, have a wonderful day, and game on!