I'm going to run a heavily re-skinned version of the Jewel of Yavin in my campaign, however given the seedier space-station setting they'll be in a race doesn't make a ton of sense. I'd like to reskin it into a shockboxing tournament, and give the brawny PC something he can shine in at the same time. I think a lot of the encounter still applies, with them being loaned some gloves they can modify, able to sabotage/poison other contenders, etc. The real issue I have is the match itself. Seems odd to just have him roll a crapload of brawl checks over and over ad nauseum (though I suppose that's essentially what the race does), is there anything I can do to keep things interesting during the matches, as far as the mechanics of them winning? Some ideas I've had that I could use help fleshing out:

* Friends can watch other matches while he is backstage waiting, informing him over comlink of potential injuries to other contestants who advance - what else could they relay?

* There has to be something unique about each round, or at least about most rounds. Maybe the fight supervisors make things interesting, throwing hazards into the ring? What might those look like?

* What sorts of custom advantage/threat/triumph/despair might be used? Some ideas: Triumph causes the crowd to gasp as you knock your opponent out with a loud CRACK. Add boost during the next fight. Despair: You are hit, hard. Take a critical injury, subtracting 20 from the result

I'll keep mulling it over, but wanted to put it out here as this community has been super helpful to me in the past for idea generation of this sort.

Hang on, I will edit this.

Alright, I made a post about an idea I implemented in my game for an arena battle, but hell if I can find it now.

So, here's the easy version.

Roll initiative for the round. Have a handful of rounds where everyone has tougher challenges incrementally each round.

The fighter fights, sure. Give him the spotlight. Got a slicer? Have them hack the security and turn the traps against the fighter's opponents. Got a smooth operator? They rally the audience to cheer for the fighter and net boosts or setbacks accordingly. Or they go and try to persuade rich observers to lend aid I the form of stimpacks being tossed into the arena for him.

Hang on, I will edit this.

Alright, I made a post about an idea I implemented in my game for an arena battle, but hell if I can find it now.

So, here's the easy version.

Roll initiative for the round. Have a handful of rounds where everyone has tougher challenges incrementally each round.

The fighter fights, sure. Give him the spotlight. Got a slicer? Have them hack the security and turn the traps against the fighter's opponents. Got a smooth operator? They rally the audience to cheer for the fighter and net boosts or setbacks accordingly. Or they go and try to persuade rich observers to lend aid I the form of stimpacks being tossed into the arena for him.

If you find your post, I'd love to see it. Sounds like some excellent stuff to throw in.

IIRC, this kind of stuff is also covered in one of the scenarios laid out in the fan-made supplement for “Spark of Rebellion”. See my .sig below.

Use opposed brawl checks to attack, to illustrate that more skilled opponents are harder to land punches on.

Threat could be used to cause the attacker to tire, and gain strain.

Advantage could be used to have the attacker gain adrenaline and recover strain, or make the opponent tire.

Given the feirce nature of the sport, deal wounds with punches (It is also logical, given that a Wookiee would last longer than most people in the ring. However, Wookiees have low strain thresholds, generally.)

Triumph leads to crit, despair could mean the attacker's defenses are weakened.

You could use Resilience check(s) to represent a series of matches. They could roll their resilience check to see how exhausted the PC is after x number of fights, then use the Brawl checks to represent the final matches.

Anytime I think of an arena type thing I always think back to KOTOR and Gerlon Two FIngers.

Here's a video on youtube. If you've not seen it before don't let the outdated game graphics distract you, focus on the way its all setup.

If you are familiar with this duel ring then I hope the video brings you some inspiration.

Good feedback. I'll be writing this up tonight or tomorrow, and will post the results here (or wherever would be a more useful repository for that sort of thing?). Thanks!

Combination of Resilience and Opposed Brawl checks for fighting

I did something like this in my campaign.

Something cool we did: instead of the attacks being normal attack, all attacks were opposed rolls. Whoever wins gets a hit, 3 hits to win. Triumphs and Despair cause crits and game effects like usual. Crits don't heal between matches.

My players did things like:

Damage weapons the night before.

Get opponents drunk the night before.

(One of my players kept slipping one guy drinks during the night so he was still drunk the next day. She later swapped his water out for vodka between matches and was so drunk he had to be taken out in a stretcher.)

Demoralize the opponents with heckling.

My force sensitive used his powers when he could.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2u5oepsrgta0xq5/Chaos%20Clash.pdf?dl=0

I'm still not done yet, I need to add an interesting choice of weapons that doesn't get too mechanically complicated (they have enough to worry about in this adventure), and an interesting choice of weapon upgrades they can make if they spend the time. I also need to stat out the corporate fighter and decide on a final weapon choice for him. May make some more edits but it is coming together. As you can see I attempted to keep the beats of JoY intact as much as I could, pulling bits wholesale when it would be inconvenient to flip between OP and the book, and referencing sections entirely by page number for bits I saw no need to change at all, such as the personalities of the corporate team.

If anyone has ideas for making the weapon choice of the PCs interesting, I'm all ears. Also, what does everyone here think? Yea or nay on armor during this fight?

To-Dos: Make weapon choice/upgrades more interesting, write flavorful intro to the arena when they come out for their first fight

Additional details: it takes place here: https://a-cure-for-injustice.obsidianportal.com/wikis/xizor-transportation-sports-complex

P.S. I apologize for the crap quality at which the web to PDF tool I'm using converts my OP page. I promise it looks better when I'm using it

I did something like this in my campaign.

Something cool we did: instead of the attacks being normal attack, all attacks were opposed rolls. Whoever wins gets a hit, 3 hits to win. Triumphs and Despair cause crits and game effects like usual. Crits don't heal between matches.

My players did things like:

Damage weapons the night before.

Get opponents drunk the night before.

(One of my players kept slipping one guy drinks during the night so he was still drunk the next day. She later swapped his water out for vodka between matches and was so drunk he had to be taken out in a stretcher.)

Demoralize the opponents with heckling.

My force sensitive used his powers when he could.

I heavily borrowed from this, as you can see. I wanted the PCs to be able to press their luck a bit if they didn't happen to win after three rounds (partially because I don't want to have to bull them into the gala, I'd rather them win the epic fight and come out pretty criticalled up). My method will require a little extra book-keeping on my part, I intend to print out helper sheets for myself.

I did something like this in my campaign.

Something cool we did: instead of the attacks being normal attack, all attacks were opposed rolls. Whoever wins gets a hit, 3 hits to win. Triumphs and Despair cause crits and game effects like usual. Crits don't heal between matches.

My players did things like:

Damage weapons the night before.

Get opponents drunk the night before.

(One of my players kept slipping one guy drinks during the night so he was still drunk the next day. She later swapped his water out for vodka between matches and was so drunk he had to be taken out in a stretcher.)

Demoralize the opponents with heckling.

My force sensitive used his powers when he could.

I heavily borrowed from this, as you can see. I wanted the PCs to be able to press their luck a bit if they didn't happen to win after three rounds (partially because I don't want to have to bull them into the gala, I'd rather them win the epic fight and come out pretty criticalled up). My method will require a little extra book-keeping on my part, I intend to print out helper sheets for myself.

Glad I could help!

To make the book keeping easier I gave my players a choice of locations to go to the night before the tournament. They split up to cover each. But for each player I had them roll checks to see how many things they would even have time to attempt the night before. They went after the tougher opponents the night before because they knew that they could beat the weak ones.

Also they didn't have to win, but they had to beat Jabba the Hutt's team. They ended up winning anyways but this gave the a goal besides winning and would give them a sense of satisfaction if they didn't win the whole thing.