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I was thinking something like
ECL 3-5: goblin horde ECL 9-11: dragon horde For someone like Ashtin, being surrounded by small/medium dragons would be interesting (as opposed to just goblins). True about the mapper not being required. Mostly it's for showing ranged stuff and flanking. For super hide, someone like Bilgly could probably snipe for quite a long time before finally getting spotted. For max horde numbers, I was thinking of the pitlords, and it seemed reasonable to max it at # of creatures that could possibly surround the PC (which on land is 8, if you don't look into reach and ranged options).
Also, sending in auburn with nothing but summon monster spells would be a pitlording nightmare (though highly entertaining to watch).
Also, special map?
Where does the horde come from on the map? A single location generator? Randomly appear at a certain range?
In the odd event someone totally nails this, should there be a max rounds or total horde count (maybe 1000?)
Say some incorporeal ranged fighter just doesn't get hurt? How long should the battle go before we call it good? 
Also, if it is a reasonably small map with a roof, say the cavern, then there would be no issue. They could slowy emerge from the central pool. The 15' cieling makes flying impractical if the goblins have reach weapons (which any good swarm should).
Alternativley, we could do the temple. With minimal cover and easy access to everywhere, the mapper becomes less necessary. I would propose the goblins have morningstarts and longspears of each type of material for DR purposes. As backup, they would have bows. The real issue is incorporeal. Oils of magic weapon, though, don't cost too much. Alternativley, we could limit it to a lower ECL. To me, picking a uniform ECL seems to be the most fair solution, say ECL 4 or 5 since almost everybody has characters at those levels and flying, incorporeal, and greater invisibility aren't big issues at those levels.
potential monsters (for reference) up to CR1
cr3 cr4 cr5 
You could do waves. A few goblins with daggers, then goblins with bows and longspears, then goblins with a hobgoblin leader with a magic weapon, goblin shaman with a couple of spells, etc. You would only need to have a few goblins on the map at once, it would be more a war of attrition. Still a lot of work to do, though.
Thinking about it some more, I agree that making it a fixed ECL is probably the way to go. If things go well, we could do a higher ECL version later (boo, I really want to see dragon hordes).
Cavern sounds like a good locale, though I think they could swarm out of a starting box (opposite box of where PC starts). Goblins with studded leather, small shield, bow, morningstar, and long spears (of multiple materials); packing potions of magic weapon.
Doing waves every few rounds could be easier to work with than per round generation. I think the opponents should be fairly standardized, though.
The idea of 1 of each wave being a leader or shaman is pretty cool.
We all have ECL 4 characters, or you could wait a couple weeks and we'll all have ECL 5 characters. Regardless, I definetly think it should be open to both new or pre-made characters, so maybe level 5 wouldn't be bad. Anything higher and we're going to have such high HP and AC that the goblins would be a joke.
And I do like the idea of doing dragon waves at a later date for our higher level characters.
I'm leaning toward ECL5 (gives the casters a chance, at least).
I'm very pro new characters. We could advertise it for a few weeks to get some other play by posters to come in.
You could start in the middle, and they could come from the corners. More mapper work, but harder to flee.
Goblins are not supposed to be terribly smart or organised, but they don't all need to be L1 warriors with daggers. I'm pretty sure they're crafty enough to use different weapons and there must be one or two distinguished individuals with some class levels (e.g. Bilgly, though maybe the number of variant barb/variant ranger/psywars is a bit lower). Maybe each round just features a randomly generated leader, like a shaman, archer, or decent warrior? Someone like the Hunter might do well if he takes the leader out each wave, but at least he would be threatened (also this should probably be for a slightly lower ECL). Goblin casters even with a single magic missile each could certain wear the guy down.
How about every 10th round, 8 regular goblins, 1 sergeant, and 1 shaman appear in the starting box? goblin warrior 5 hp move 30 ft feat: alertness studded leather (10 lb) light shield, wood (2.5 lb) silver and cold iron morningstar (3 lb each) silver and cold iron longspear (4.5 lb each) short bow (1 lb) 20 cold iron arrows (1.5 lb) 20 silver arrows (1.5 lb) potion magic weapon (cl2) goblin sergeant (fighter 1) goblin shaman (adept 2)
rough tactics Show on arrival goblins appear in formation holding cold iron long spears (except shaman, who is holding scroll)  if a goblin sergeant is already present, it will inform the new arivals of the situation via yelling. other goblins will not do this. if range is greater than 100, switch to arrows; move and shoot. if within 100 ft, double move. if reach melee is possilble, move in and attack. if regular melee is possible, drop spear and get shield and morning star ready. then move in and attack. sergeants will prefer reach/bow combat. shamans will bless. if they have CLW, use it on self or sergants only. They will try to go melee after casting. If a situation presents itself for burning hands (will only hit max 1 other goblin), they will drop the weapon and cast on the defensive from scroll. 
I love this idea. This is brilliant. (I think this wins "contest idea thread")
My only concern is the amount of pitlord-power it would take to run this
As far as I can tell, the only PC race of concern at ECL 5 is pixie (free greater invis). I suppose the shaman could also have a scroll of see invis. All DR types are accounted for.
As for pitlords, I think we can hack it. I'll throw down and pitlord for this. Might do something akin to 'state of emergency' for the kick off week. I'm thinking we should do a test run or two, to see what this type of fight really looks like.
Would it count as part of a 3FC? And would there be any character rewards for it? If you are playing until overcome by goblins, you will never "win" as such (though I guess you are competing against others by goblin count or whatever).
Like all of the other tournaments/contests we've done, this would be for a "reputation" tag - so no in-arena benefit or penalty other than a +1 to your leadership score if you happen to have the leadership tag.
Really the benefit here is lording it over everyone else that you beat us all  Here's what I'm thinking: In terms of a tournament, I'd suggest having people "register" for the event with one character and halve the field each time through with progressively difficult hordes. ECL5 is a fine place to start: Assuming 8 participants: Round 1 - 8 participants - Horde'o'goblins (majority just warriors, with occasional adepts/sergeants) Round 2 - 4 participants - Horde'o'bugbears (majority just normal, with occasional clerics/psywarriors) Round 3 - 2 participants - Horde'o'dragons (majority just CR<5, with occasional CR6, 7, 8) And just take the highest scoring from each round. Ties can both proceed to the next round. Winner can add the character to the roster (if he isn't already there) for free and 10 credits. 2nd place gets 2 credits.
It would seem to be so. Are there 8 of us though?
Telin, Vath, Yitzi, Eluria, Myself, Fred, Bob, Dgallity..... Dang, when did we grow so much?
Right - as I suggested before - have a scoring method, that way someone who avoids for 200 rounds (and kills nothing) might still lose to someone who engages and kills 50).
@Uknits - I was just picking a number out of the air. The last tournament we did (Ironman tournament with a bunch of ECL10 characters) allowed 2 characters per player with the caveat that only one character could get to the finals (so that it would be 2 players in the finals). I'm not saying we should allow that here since we could find this is a bear to pitlord. And really - I think we should plan for 4 rounds "just in case" - as I would advertise the heck out of this to try to drum up more players. Then we'd be able "handle" up to 16 contestants - which is a good number.
I think adding bugbears and dragons would be a bit heafty. Im leaning toward just goblins, with only one go, andjust compare the results.
Unlimited goblins? Or use time taken as a tie-breaker if someone survives? If this was a "fight-until-you-die" you could always use bugbears after round X. Of course, you could use Goblin Wizards and things instead. Maybe some Blues.
Yay! I'm not posting from a phone! (as an aside, being able to post from a phone is awesome)
So here's what I'm thinking: ECL 5 to enter. PCs must register in advance. PC fights against one wave of goblins. There are unlimited goblins. Winner is the PC with the most total kills. In the event of a tie, the PC with the the shortest fight durration wins. There will be a gold, silver, and bronze winner. All winners get PC activated for free, and a status tag in the roster. gold prize: 10 credits silver prize: 5 credits bronze prize: 2 credits I think this is a bit easier, pitlord-wise. Doing the Tiered/rounds approach with multiple hordes is cool, but would take a lot of resources, and potentially last a long time. Also, planning multiple hordes (especially more powerful monsters), so that they are approachable without being overwhelming, would be tricky.
Surely they are meant to be overwhelming...?
 RE the shortest duration, though - if I kill 5 goblins in 5 rounds, then survive another 10, do I lose to someone who killed 5 goblins in 10 rounds then died right away? It should probably be something more like time per goblin or something. It might be easier just to run a tie-breaker if necessary.
Yeah, but going from 30 goblin kills to 2 dragon kills is kind of anti-climactic.
Perhaps, in a tie we can just allow 2 winners? 2 golds and a bronze, or some such. Tie-breaker would also work; may be preferable.
tournament rules Show each player can register 1 PC for the contest (maybe 2, pending discussion). The PC will be of ECL 5. New PCs can be created for the contest and registered without credit cost. Fights will be held in separate thread style, though the PC is encouraged to sumbit multiple rounds of tactics at a time. winners will be the player with the top kill count. in the event of the tie, there will be an additional tie breaker battle for each of the involved PCs. It will be identical to the first battle. Any goblin below 0 hp is considered 'killed' for the purposes of scoring. How they were reduced below 0 hp does not matter. Goblins that are somehow rendered unable to act are not counted as killed unless the effect is permanent, or has a duration of 24 hours or longer. general notes Show goblins will take melee weapons from dead goblins if need be, but will not take arrows, scrolls, or potions. goblins do not start with any knowledge of their opponent. newly arriving goblins also have no knowledge, unless informed by a sergeant. platoon formations: tight, loose, or wide; circle, column, or chevron. any goblin with no means of melee attack who sees a sleeping or fascinated goblin will try to wake it up. Goblins roll initiative as a platoon, using the sergeants init bonus, when they arrive in the arena. if a goblin's weapon is disarmed or sundered, they will draw another weapon. in the event they don't have other weapons, they will 5 ft step or withdraw and get another melee weapon from a dead goblin. if a goblin is grappled, it will attempt to use the escape artist skill to leave the grapple unless specifically ordered to continue by a sergeant. if nauseated, a goblin will withdraw until it can resume attacks. A prone goblin will get up, even if it provokes AoO. Goblins will not use the aid other action. goblins will not stabalize dying goblins. Goblins will ignore any other status ailments. note: goblins may also need a slashing weapon general strategy Show first platoon will switch to bows and move and fire each round until they can get into melee. if the first platoon cannot find the opponent, they will spread out and search, cycling through each starting box (50% chance of clockwise or counterclockwise). once in melee, goblins will take 5 ft steps each round in an attempt to surround the opponent. all following platoons will circle around the perimeter of the fight to get to a side they can enter melee from. if all sides are equally blocked off, they will move to the closest side of the melee. archer goblins will fire into melee and grapples indescriminantly. warriors block Show warrior (warrior 1) - DMG standard plus equipment 5 hp move 30 ft feat: alertness studded leather (10 lb) light shield, wood (2.5 lb) silver and cold iron morningstar (3 lb each) silver and cold iron longspear (4.5 lb each) short bow (1 lb) 20 cold iron arrows (1.5 lb) 20 silver arrows (1.5 lb) potion magic weapon (cl2) tactics Show warriors will start holding cold iron longspear. unless otherwise directed by sergeants, they will use the following tactics. if the opponent is greater than 100 ft away, or if melee is impossible at any range, switch out spear for bow. move and fire each round. if the opponent is between 40 and 100 feet and melee is possible, double move toward them. if the opponent is within 40 ft move in and start melee. if bow is drawn, drop it and draw melee weapon and maybe shield. if there is a spot, switch to morning star + shield and engage. if there is a reach spot, switch to longspear and engage. if no melee spots are possible, continue with bow. if a warrior ends up climbing a rock or statue, it will remain there until it cannot attack. then it will jump down and look for another way to attack if there is no method to attack the opponent, then warriors will attack an ally of the opponent. if there is no method to attack at all, warriors will get as close as possible to the melee and wait. if the opponent cannot be found, warriors will move and actively listen each round. shaman (adept 2) block Show 9 hp move 30 ft feat: combat casting toad familiar no armor just morningstars (no bow or longspear) spells: bless, CLW scroll: burning hands x1, see invisible x1 tactics Show shaman will start holding scroll. shaman have bless and CLW prepared as spells. first round, cast bless on it's platoon. Then move and draw morning star. after that, shaman will attempt to get into melee. if damaged below half hp, a shaman will cast CLW on itself by casting on the defensive. if requested, a shaman will cast CLW on a sergeant, usually after a withdraw or 5 ft step. if a shaman finds a situation where it can cast burning hands on the PC, and hit at most 1 other goblin, it will 5 ft step, drop the morning star, and cast burning hands from scroll. After that, pick up morning star and resume melee. shaman will not pick up a weapon off the ground if it would provoke AoO. In that case, step or withdraw and pick up another goblins weapon off the ground (spear or morningstar, whatever is closer). if a shaman sees that a goblin was struck, but no goblins on the field can see the opponent, it will cast see invis from scroll. sergeant (fighter 1) block Show 10 hp tactics Show sergeants will start holding cold iron guisarme. sergeants follow the same tactics as warriors with the following exceptions. sergeants will try to get into a reach melee position with guisarme. sergeants will only enter melee with flail if there are no warriors or shaman to fill those attack positions. sergeants communicate with other sergeants each round by yelling in goblinese. If they have determined anything important (location, DR, etc.) about the opponent, they will communicate it. sergeants will move their platoon to a flanking position and then rush into melee. sergeants give orders to their platoon each round by yelling in goblinese. The platoon always follows the orders. If a sergeant tries to give orders to goblins in another platoon, there is a 50% chance the goblins will obey. sergeants may give any of the following orders, once per round: - formation: platoon move into the specified formation around the sergeant. - move with me: platoon moves slower so that they match the sergeants speed. - move to location: the platoon moves as a group to a specific area of the map, with or without the sergeant. - spread out: platoon moves so that each member is 15 ft appart (2 map squares between each) - scatter: platoon moves to maximize the space between each member. - regroup: platoon moves into formation around the sergeant. They will leave melee by withdraw if need be. - oil weapons: all goblins draw and apply magic weapon oil to a melee weapon (morningstar if it's in hand, longspear otherwise). They do this regardless of provoking AoO. They self direct their actions to prefer use of the oiled weapon for the rest of the fight. - charge: all goblins move to melee (charge if possible), dropping bows if they have them drawn - search: goblins spread out (as above) and spend all actions each round on an active spot and listen check. if they are moving, they alternate spot and listen checks. - tackle: the platoon tries to grapple the opponent en masse. - sunder: the platoon tries to sunder the opponents held item en masse. sergeant may direct the platoon as a group, but not direct individual goblins to take different actions. if the platoon cannot enter melee, the sergeant will direct the platoon to attack the opponent's allies. if the platoon cannot melee at all, the sergeant will move the platoon to a location advantageous to ranged attacks. if no attacks are possible, the sergeant will move the platoon to as close to the melee as possible, keeping the platoon togetehr. if an opponent endures 5 rounds of melee without being hit, the sergeant will asssume magic oil is needed. if an opponent endures 5 rounds of magic oil melee without being hit, the sergeant will order a tackle. if all sergeants are killed, the counters reset (ie, there was no one to convey previous fight information). However, if a sergeant enters the field and sees a grapple in progress, it will assume that magic oil has failed and tackle was ordred. if a sergeant sees a dorje or wand in use, it will order a sunder. if a sergeant sees a scroll or powerstone used twice, it will order a sunder. if the opponent cannot be found, the sergeant will order the platoon to spread out and the search while moving (as above). formation will usually be a wide circle. if the opponent outmaneuvers the platoon, multiple sergeants will coordinate platoon movement to box in the opponent. Platoons will continue arrow fire and movement until enough goblin platoons arive to box in the opponent. if the sergeant sees a goblin attack another goblin, it will assume an enchantment spell and order the platoon to kill the enchanted goblin. This does not apply to friendly fire hits (attacking into grapple, burning hands hits). Any goblin that is not currently engaged in melee with the oppoenent will try to kill the enchanted goblin. if a sergeant has no goblins left in it's platoon, it will follow the tactics of a warrior. Given all that, I would like to volunteer to pitlord 1-2 trial runs of this type of fight, for debugging purposes; one against a caster and one against a striker.
I love this idea, seriously. This can be so fun.
I worry a little that the monsters are a bit too easy/squishy as-is. I like the idea of Character vs Horde, but realistically the monsters are probably going to need 20s, and be facing things like DR something, and healing / vigoring; the way these monsters are, this could go dozens to hundreds of rounds with potentially 10+ mobs to keep track of each round... I may be overestimating our ECL5 character optimization, but just looking at, say, Qwuibbik - he could be on a Yeth hound (with flight and skeletal DR, the ability to heal it with spontaneous spells or even a wand of inflict), having his own healing (wand of CLW) and pumped up AC, potentially w/ DR, and, say, a self-crafted wand of burning hands CL5 to mow down fields of goblins with, coupled with regular ol' high AC and bow... That fight, in my head, could go on for hours. I agree with a test run, and this is totally your idea and I really really want to see it work - but I do think maybe graded difficulty, or continually harder groups of monsters, or, say, starting with bugbears, or even at least orcs, something may be a little better... While the Character vs Mob is awesome, I also don't think it should drag on forever - it would be just as interesting if everyone made it 3-4 waves instead of 30, right?
I agree with most of your points. I'm feeling kind of stuck on goblins right now, but even those could be advanceced, elite, or classed and increase the difficulty.
I've been avoiding gradual increases to difficulty just because of the pitlord maintenance issues. (if you have 40 creatures on the field and each one has it's own weapons and buffs....). Maybe there could be some kind of global difficulty increase: on round 10, all goblins get bless, on round 20, all goblins get entropic shield, on round 30, all goblins get haste. Thanks for bringing up flying skeletons. I'm trying to make sure all the bases are covered, weapon/DR-wise..
On the character creation - you can use allowed UA material with no credit cost; you may have up to 10 credits-worth of custom items (nothing truly custom, but a couple things in different slots for instance) for free as well.
On the goblin equipment - I'd say just make them vaporize on death. Also - in the event of friendly fire among the goblins (burning hands, firing into a grapple and accidentally killing one), those kills don't count towards the total kills for the player. Okay - so I guess the next question is do we want these as separate thread fights or as tactics fights? I think I'm inclined to say they have to be one way or the other since separate thread fights tend to be more forgiving to the player.
The issue I see is that I think this lends itself to turtling tactics. Against many weak creatures, bumping up your AC a bit can be really beneficial, whereas there's less need to do massive damage. Someone who charges a goblin and takes off 30 health only gets a -2 AC vs all the others as thanks, whereas using full Combat Expertise etc. would be far more profitable.
Of course, that's kind of the nature of the challenge - you are fighting multiple weaker creatures. It might be best to have the goblins come in waves, to prevent them from being overwhelming. Maybe just have a few at once, starting at L1 warriors and then getting a bit tougher. This would make it less solo vs horde and just solo vs many (probably more balanced, though). A problem I see is that if it's a fight to the death, with unlimited goblins, a wand of CLW is going to be far more useful than pretty much anything else, since the goblins' best tactic is probably to wear you down by attrition. A warrior who doesn't heal will get hit now and then and so there will be an average number of goblins he can take. Someone with a wand will be able to keep going until that wand runs out, which will be >50 rounds. Again, it's kind of the nature of the challenge, but it might be worth trying to jig it so it's less of an issue. I can't really see how, though - anything which stops you from abusing CLW could be really bad generally (disabling for example could just mean game over - perhaps some short-duration dazes or something?) and just banning it seems off since it is a viable tactic.
Also what about someone like Krekkun? As Eluria says, flight is something of an issue (low ceiling vs reach weapon goblins with Jump ranks?); maybe we just give all the shamen Produce Flames and Magic Missile?
For the map, it's cavern, so reach weapons cover flight. For wandsNscrolls, tsctics are to sunder them.
Tactics for inability to hit are to resort to grappl, though it's tied to srrgeant otders.
just to be clear everything that I spit out so far as a draft. I'm willing to scrap parts of it if need be.
How much tougher should the goblins be? Should shaman haveburning hands?
I think it's hard to offer specifics (ie, burning hands), only bc I still have some reservations about the mobs themselves - it's not that hard to create characters that will conceivably last for dozens of waves (with high AC, healing, DR types, etc); I really do love the contest idea (and think this clearly has generated the most interest from that brainstorming thread!) but wonder about the Player vs. Multiple instead of Player vs Horde -- an ECL5 vs a group of ECL3s may be just as revealing, faster to end, and easier to pitlord.
Part of this is also that some of the goal is to generate new characters- and I can envision lycanthropes, reach-combat reflexes/trippers, high AC/healing, AoE damage dealers springing up for this horde contest, and then having little play/success/fun at traditional CoCo PvP once added. However, as the focus has been on the goblin horde, which is admittedly a nice D&D archetype and seems reasonable, I'd argue for as much varied offense as possible for the group - so yeah, would like a scroll of burning hands, or produce flame, or something that's also likely to dish out some damage. I know it sounds even more overwhelming to the pitlord to have the monsters change with each wave, but I also think it would be interesting to have it as "goblins x2 waves, bugbears x2 waves, ogres x2 waves, dragons x2 waves" as a way to force it to end, and show a spectrum of abilities... and, yes, mappering/pitlording would be nigh impossible. But 50 waves of goblins needing a 20 to hit vs some maxed out combat expertising guy poking out between 2 shields is not exciting to pitlord or watch either.
what about adding a class level to each wave of goblins. that would keep the theme.
also do the weaker monsters flee when stronger ones arrive?
Better idea. How about you have to hold a postion? Say, once a certain number of goblins are on the map, you lose automatically due to being overwhelmed. This forces you to have offensive capabilties and not just survive forever since you have to keep their numbers down. This also counters all forms of flying and avoidiance.
That's an option, or conversely you could run it whereby the goblins only come in small groups and each group comes after the last is all gone (or down to one goblin perhaps, to stop people stalling whilst relatively unthreatened to heal, etc - the delay penalty could also be that the next wave comes).
5 or so goblins would still need some work but would be manageable to run. The groups could then get more and more powerful. It's not player vs horde, but with e.g. 3 L1 goblin warriors, one odd-ball like a goblin rogue, and one tough one like a shaman/sergeant, even if you were immune to the L1 dudes, the "boss" of each wave would like be ECL 2-3. An ECL 3 + allies vs an ECL 5 should favour the ECL 5 but it's not necessarily unthreatening. At higher waves you could just up the ante a bit. Actually, something like Produce Flames or Magic Missile is pretty hard to defend against (sure fire resistance but it bypasses a lot of the resistances which would be effective against the goblins). If each wave is sepearate, you can afford to roll a random wand for the shaman or roll shaman vs sergeant vs psion/wizard/archer/etc each time, since you won't get confused about who's holding what.
The key here is simplicity, though. The threat should be being overwhelmed by numbers, not by power. Also, keeping track of changes in goblins makes it harder for everybody involved. I think the key is to keep it goblin slaying, not goblin evading.
True, but numbers alone will not necessarily overwhelm everyone. Keeping track of 100 goblins is going to be way harder than keeping track of whether you have a shaman or a sergeant on the field.
Which is why I recomend a swarm limit. Once there are, say, 15 goblins on the field, you are considered overwhelmed and lose to massive numbers.
Well, yeah, that would work. It would make it much more of a speed thing, though - more like "how fast can you kill goblins?" rather than just "how many can you kill?" as per say. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it changes the face of the game a bit.
So, issues currently on the table:
progressive difficulty: should it get more difficult, and how fast wider variaty of attackers, attack types: max horde capacity: should there be one end of fight condition: death or when 'overwhelmed' horde tactics in odd situations: are they accounted for combating PC turtle tactics: wands and sky high AC
some thoughts:
I think progressive difficulty is interesting, but not necessary. The way I see it, if the horde is generating monsters faster than they can be killed, then there will be a steadily increasing amount of archer goblins. Even with needing a 20 to hit, 40 goblin archers will eventually take down a PC (statistically each 20 goblin archers do 3.5 damage per round). Since there is a low ceiling in the cavern, I think the goblins will eventually be able to corner/surround even the yeth hound riding types. Maneuverability from a mount will give an edge, but this can be countered by tactics (kill mounts ASAP, etc.). Another option would be to prohibit allies. Turtling poses a problem, but it can also be dealt with tactically. If the magic Cleric with combat expertise and levitate has a consistant AC of 30 plus entropic shield, having the goblins grapple (6 goblins can enter the grapple if memory serves) will resolve it fairly quickly. Combined with the low ceiling, this seems sufficient to me. Perhaps the goblins could have nets for this kind of thing. Note that none of this is compatible with a horde member cap, or a 'players on the field' cap. If those rules were in place, then progressive difficulty would be required. For progessive difficulty, I think it better to stick to theme and improve the goblins instead of bringing in different monster types. Goblins with progressively more fighter levels and better weapons would eventually win out. For variaty of opponents, I'd introduce a caveat to the above: maybe include one ogre per 10 goblins. It's close enough to theme, and resolves some of the issues above. Another progressive difficulty option I mentioned earlier would be to throw spells on the goblins. Such a system would look like: on round 10, all goblins present and arriving after that would be effected by entropic shield; on round 15, Haste; on 20 greater magic weapon for +2; on 25, displacement. This would achieve the goal of increasing the difficulty without undue burden. Almost by definition, characters optimized for this fight will not be optimized for 1 on 1 combat. I don't think it's possible to account for that, other than to award prizes other than character activation (as has been suggested). In the end, I appeal to theme. If the idea is to battle a horde and compare kill counts, then the battlefield rules should reflect that. It may make pitlording difficult, but I think we would be willing to put in that investment for a few weeks.
I see your point about turtling. Especially if we enact aid, divine favour, etc... as the fight goes on.
As for the Hunter, I guess we're just lucky he started ECL 6. Consider how devastating biofeedback would be, though. 3 DR against everything?
totally forgot about biofeedback. Maybe counter with offensive prescience tattoos? Wouldn't negate it, but would counter most of it.
Al'Tiar for nontraditional caster if you want it.
Honestly, he is about as badly set up for it as they come, but he is good baseline for how a one on one based character would do. community.wizards.com/coco/wiki/Uknits/A..
With animate dead, you have to place the onyx on each corpse. That takes at least a step and an action. Maybe you could make that char. And we can see how it plays.
Scraw offers as much as kusari, so I think kusari csn sit out.
Another thought, changing goblin start box regulsrly to avoid apearing in an area effect.
Scrataw leveled up after winning her fight - so that makes it a little more complicated. Stats if we use her:
HP24, AC 24/20/16 (+1 dodge) Fort +10/Ref +12/Will +7 Attacks: 2 Talons +10 melee, 1d4+1; Bite +6 melee, 1d4 2pps per fight, Inertial Armor and Offensive Prescience
Eluria - you are right about giving credits to pitlords for this. Hopefully after a playtest, we'll have a better idea of how it will turn out in terms of time investment. It would likely be at least 2 credits, but I don't want to go too high with it either.
In terms of playtest though - since it looks like Vath and Eluria are on the same page - why don't the two of you try it out and see how it turns out.
Would the 1/3 rule be waived for this, though? If you are fighting unlimited goblins, that's like fighting more than a 3FC potentially anyway, so the 1/3 rule seems kind of arbitrary. Of course, it would mean long-duration buffs like Mage Armour are more favourable, I suppose.
Also, the wiki history can be used to get ECL5 sheetsof most characters
Eluria: maybe an older version of Kol or Malyuk would be interesting to playtest?
Yeah I thought Malyuk-type would do well; I am all for experimenting, and a playtest makes sense, but I don't know that we need to load up on multiple playtests before even trying one - do you want to just do separate thread me run the mobs you run kusari-gama, so we get a sense for it, or do you have a hankering to run the mobs? If you want to run the horde, I can whip up a dretch fighter that would not take long to make, but would be more designed for this (as opposed to malyuk) -- but let me know what your preference is, and we can get at least one practice run gonig -- it may be that when we start, some issues are immediately apparent.
I think the horde should have random starting box, changed each time a new wave comes, and while first round should not be in the same box as player, after the first wave each subsequent wave should be able to start in any box (including the players) to prevent hide/wand of fireballs/kill all or somesuch. And practice rounds should all be frozen; tourney itself could even be frozen -- if someone makes it through 20 waves of goblins using 5k wealth, they're n ot going to be in great shape to start a 3FC I also think Shaman shouldn't have CLW scroll - that just adds "hard for pitlord to remember/keep track of, doesn't make that much of a diff" Edit: Test Dretch Available Here (not at all optimal for this, just has basically high ac, cleave, and combat reflexes; mostly testing "high ac and bag of tricks of goblin doom" with this guy)
What I was thinking was to have one melee playtest and one caster playtest; should give a good idea of of how the thing will look.
What do you think of this idea: I'll pitlord the horde vs. your dretch, and you can pitlord the horde vs. some cleric I make. I'll get a revised tourney rules plus tactics posted tomorrow and we can get the test runs moving on Friday-ish. EDIT: on second thought, how about you pitlord the fight against the dretch, and I pitlord the fight against the cleric. I think I can wrangle the 'summons + animate dead' fight.
I quite like the idea of the player starting in the middle and the goblins coming from all the corners at once. Maybe on the Moat map. However, it's probably more hassle like that.
One issue I see is that items are going to be an even bigger deal here. A full caster will burn through their Fireballs and Stinking Clouds quickly, but a Full BAB 4/Sorcerer 1 could carry a Wand of Fireball and be far more effective at spellcasting, yet still have high HP and the BAB to use weapons. I think you would suffer a CL check for that, but a Wand of Sleep or Colour Spray could work just fine. Sure the DC is low but these guys have low saves. Hit the ground, then finish them off with your sword or javelins or whatever. At ECL 5 you have 13,500gp, right? I'm sure you'll spend a lot on general equipment etc. but in theory you could buy 18 wands with that. You're never going to run out of charges, even if they manage to sunder a few times. I think item use is an important part of the game, but will a single caster dip be almost necessary? A Full BAB 5 should be better really than someone with a random dip, but in this situation I worry they'll do disproportionately worse. I expect the playtests will reveal much, though.
I think we'll see a lot from playtests.
I agree caster levels will likely be optimal and see heavy play - my concern is someone with 4 wands of CLW standing behind a Tan Bag of Tricks animal (which can solo the horde, I would think) and just keeping it up, that sort of thing. But you're right, someone with wand so of color spray / burning hands can go for a long time (wand of Fireball I think will likely be too expensive, although with crafting feats I guess someone could get one or even 2 in there, maybe) I'm curious to see the playtest round, and will play unbiased - but currently my thinking is still "I would favor somewhat harder mobs, or graded difficulty" I do like the player starting in the middle of the cavern and horde spawns from random square though. I thought we were going to do cavern map, but I could be wrong I am ok w/ starting test runs this week and letting them ride and seeing how long it takes -- maybe with tactics, or with "a few rounds of tactics, pause." I don't mind whichever fight I end up running - but I agree one test run should include CLW-equipped guy.
Honestly, a couple burning hands will destroy the hordes. 3,750 for a 5d4 burning hands will almost guarentee one shots, and with flying for good positioning, you would destroy the horde. Maybe make the cleric have the fire domain, also, since burning hands is such a cheap area effect spell.
Magic/Fire Domain Aasimar Cleric with scroll of Alter Self -> Mephit, buff with Entropic Shield, kill with Burning Hands and Produce Flames/Magic Missile.
Then again, if the goblins scatter and spread out, you might have issues hitting them all with Burning Hands.
What about things with duration of concentration? Summon swarm+invisbility?
I had thought about Summon Swarm as an efficient way of dealing with the goblins. Invisibility would make it far more effective but firstly that would be a pretty neat tactic anyway (hmm...) and secondly it's not foolproof since they only need to hit you once for you to have a chance of losing it. That means you probably need some Move Silently too, and the goblins would probably start running around looking for you after a bit. The swarm would probably die eventually too, if the goblins have ways of countering various resistances.
Blast, forgot the clw wand. Just a sec on that.
As for deflect arrows, if the AC is so high that only 1 in 20 goblins hits, then deflect arrows pushes that to 1 in 40. Entropic shield on top of that pushes it to 1 in 50. The other feat option would be craft scroll and wonderous (double equipment, basically). Tempting, but the archery is an issue here. EDIT: 25gp of expendables space left, and ~400gp left to work with. EDIT2: grabbed a custom tumble +2 item. all gold spent.
I'm loving the chaotic awesomeness. Banned school of lame is nice, too.
Here's my update to the presented material. I hope it covers most concerns. Entry and Play: each player can register 1 PC for the contest (maybe 2, pending discussion). The PC will be of ECL 5. New PCs can be created for the contest and registered without credit cost. 3 fight cycle rules are not in effect. Players may use all their spells, powers, and abilities in the fight. The fights are considered 'frozen'. All equipment used in the fight will be restored to the PC. No XP or GP is gained for the PC from the fight. Fights will be held in separate thread style, though the PC is encouraged to submit multiple rounds of tactics at a time. Scoring: winners will be the player with the top kill count. in the event of the tie for kill count, there will be an additional tie breaker battle for each of the involved PCs. It will be identical to the first battle. Any goblin reduced to less than 0 hp by the PC is considered 'killed' for the purposes of scoring. Goblin's killed by other goblins are not considered kills for scoring. In the event that the PC and the goblins both contributed to a kill, it is only counted as a kill if the PC struck the blow which reduced the hp below 0. Goblins that flee are not counted as kills. Goblins that are somehow rendered unable to act are not counted as killed unless the effect is permanent, or has a duration of 24 hours or longer. Rewards are still under discussion (probably credits and free character activation). Setup: The battle will occur in the Cavern map (15 ft ceiling). Lighting is normal; provided by phosphorescent fungus. PCs hampered by bright light will be uneffected by the lighting. A group of 10 goblins appears every 10 rounds. Goblins appear at the begining of the round, but do not act until their initiative. They are flat footed until their initiative. A platoons of arriving goblins rolls once for initiative, and all goblins in the platoon use that roll. Goblins do not start with any knowledge of their opponent. Goblins communicate what they learn to new arrivals by yelling in Goblinese as a free action. All corpses disappear from the field when the next wave of goblins arrives. Each platoon of goblins arrives in a randomly selected starting box. The first wave does not appear in the same box as the opponent, but following waves can.  horde goblin Show goblin warrior (MM standard plus the following equipment [medium encumberance]) studded leather (10 lb) light shield, wood (2.5 lb) silver and cold iron morningstars (3 lb each) silver and cold iron longspears (4.5 lb each) silver and cold iron sickles (1 lb each) short bow (1 lb) 40 cold iron arrows (1.5 lb) 40 silver arrows (1.5 lb) 2 nets (3 lbs) alchemist fire x5 (1 lb each) acid flask x5 (1 lb each) scaling difficulty Show Scaling difficulty: A wave of goblins appears every 10 rounds (round 0, round 10, round 20, etc.) The first wave of goblins appears as normal. Every time a new wave appears, all goblins (present and arriving) are bestowed a magical bonus. The bonuses do not stack. Weapon enhancement bonuses attack to all attack and damage rolls the goblin makes, no matter which attack is used. This is considered magic for DR purposes. Perception bonuses are to spot, listen, and search. Goblins that are already wounded only gain 5 temp hp in addition to any they already have. Energy resistance is of the radiant type (all energy types). The bonuses continue to increase every 10 rounds for as long as the fight continues. In the event a PC takes control of a goblin, it loses these benefits.
horde tactics Show Basic Tactics on arrival goblins appear in formation holding bows. if the platoon cannot find the opponent, they will spread out and search, cycling through each starting box (50% chance of clockwise or counterclockwise). Goblins will move and actively listen/spot each round. if range is greater than 100, move and shoot arrows. if within 100 ft, double move into melee. if reach melee is possilble, draw spear while moving in and attack. if regular melee is possible, get shield and morning star ready. then move in and attack. Goblins will charge if there is an opportunity. once in melee, goblins will take 5 ft steps each round in an attempt to surround the opponent. newly arriving platoons will circle around the perimeter of the fight to get to a side they can enter melee from. if all sides are equally blocked off, they will move to the closest side of the melee. archer goblins will fire into melee and grapples indescriminantly. if there is no method to attack the opponent in melee, then goblins will attack an ally of the opponent. if there is no method to attack at all (e.g., out of arrows and no allies), goblins will get as close as possible to the melee and wait. if the opponent is mounted, the goblins will attempt to kill the mount. if an opponents ally is killing goblins faster than the opponent, goblins will kill that ally. if a goblin sees a dorje or wand in use, it will sunder. if a goblin sees a scroll or powerstone used, it will sunder. Goblins with a chance of attacking, no matter how remote, remain on the field. Goblins without any hope of attacking (e.g., all weapons sundered and fighting a flying foe), will flee. They disappear from the field when the next wave of Goblins arrives. They are not counted as kills. if a goblin ends up climbing a rock or statue, it will remain there until it cannot attack. then it will jump down and look for another way to attack if the opponent outmaneuvers the platoon, platoons will coordinate movement to box in the opponent. Platoons will continue arrow fire and movement until enough goblin platoons arive to box in the opponent. if a goblin attacks another goblin, it will assume an enchantment spell and treat the offending goblin as an ally of the opponent. This does not apply to friendly fire hits (attacking into grapple, splash weapons). if a goblin's weapon is disarmed or sundered, they will draw another weapon. in the event they don't have other weapons, they will 5 ft step or withdraw and get another melee weapon from a dead goblin. if nauseated, a goblin will withdraw until it can resume attacks. A prone goblin will get up, even if it provokes AoO. Goblins will not use the aid other action unless they cannot attack normaly on their turn. goblins will not stabalize dying goblins. Any goblin with no means of melee attack who sees a sleeping or fascinated goblin will try to wake it up. Otherwise, they are ignored. Goblins will ignore any other status ailments. Special tactics I'll make a thread for the Dretch to get started in a playtest.
That looks pretty cool.
On thing I would think about is how much work having a plethora of equipment and scaling bonuses will be vs having different types of goblins. The scaling bonuses is probably a lot easier since once they are switch on, they don't go away. However, I feel that giving them a few spells might adress more potential abuses than just equipment. Just food for thought. One suggestion I can think of is to have a "boss round" every so many rounds where you fight e.g. a shaman solo, or maybe in pairs or something. It's not what I would have gone for, but it would be relatively easy to run rather than having 5-10 goblins plus a shaman (maybe one or two plus a shaman) whilst still letting you have large numbers of goblins in other rounds. However, this would have to be run in a round-by-round sort of way, where you wait until all goblins are killed before moving on to the next round.
10 goblins per wave, correct? I can't seem to find that number readily
I vote they do get energy resistance after 10 waves, maybe radiant 5, radiant 10
I am going to continue playtest, and will post on both threads when back (still portable device posting). And, again, I love this concept...
But look how easy it was for Hubul (who again is not really optimized; basically has cleave and high ac and pet. Throw a wand of CLW there and it'd be a little uglier.) to clear a group... each group will need 20s, and will hurt him; he'll go down, no doubt, and maybe quickly. But Shadrach won't - they need 2 20s per round, and she can heal. Realistically, that will continue until alter self and/or force screen runs out, and with the wand of burning hands she'll burn through multiple levels (and she's not 100% focused, either; there's no reason she couldn't have more scrolls of alter self, or 2 wands of CLW and burning hands, etc). This is going to basically require a ton of rolls and rounds, mostly burning through buffs. I want to continue the playtest, but the more I look at it the more I'm in favor of a graded difficulty challenge (10 goblins, 8 orcs, 6 bugbears, 4 ogres, 2 hillgiants, 1 dragon, something like that. Would need much broader skillset than "turtle, heal, weak AoE" and would see a real spectrum of entries, too)
Agreed. I think things need to start at a higher difficulty as well. Also, the waves need to be faster. Also, not back to home computer yet.
My opinion is that the scaling difficulty will catch up to you. Elemental resistance and better accuracy plus the temp hitpoints will be major in a couple waves.
What the heck happened to my weekend?
How's the testing going? I haven't even been able to check the playtest threads yet. I guess one question is: Is this going to be interesting enough to want to run as an actual competition? Or is this going to be too painful if the character has enough defensive capabilities? I promise, I will try to catch up. I have a few fights to run first though...
Weekend was busy. First wave went as expected. Should have time to wrap u Hubul tonight.
The day got away from me, so it will be another day before i can get more motion on the fight.
So, I've only really glanced over the playtests, but I've been thinking about this a bit and it seems as though given that the goblins aren't hitting very often anyway, the best thing to do is to bump up your AC really high (going from 5 hits in 20 to 1 hit in 20 is a much greater return for your Force Screen) and have some way to heal. Biofeedback is obviously good but with some craft you can easily afford Adamantine medium armour, so -2 damage per hit. That's not a lot of damage per round, so you can afford to attack and only heal or use something like Vigour every so often.
Meanwhile, the quantity of goblins means that you either need AoO or a very reliable single-target attack; using single-targetting spells is generally not good, except maybe something cheap like Magic Missile or something which gives multiple uses like Produce Flame. It also means that spells or powers you use will likely be buffs, since with a couple of 3rd-levels and a bunch of lesser ones, you're just going to run out too quickly if you're relying on them and not, say, a wand. Now, that's kind of the nature of one character vs many weaker ones, but it seems that the setup encourages high-defence with some AoO (like a buff-based wizard with Burning Hands) or just very high defence, which I don't imagine is fun to run. I suppose some sort of cap or power reduction for wand-type items might be a possibility. Maybe wands/dorjes cost the same but only provide 25 charges, for example. I also think having fewer, slightly tougher goblins might be better. I quite like the idea we had of having a shaman or seargent with each group since a high-defence player could feasibly take out that individual then deal with the rest in peace, but would at least have to have some form of more moderate offense to do so. It just comes back to how difficult it is to run.
I just think it's shaping up to a lot of rolls and not that much action, but honestly the second wave is so much harder than the first it's not even comparable - I'm fine waiting for 3-4 waves to judge things, but it seems like the issue of Shadrach, for instance, will be "goblins all need 2x20s in one round to hit, and CLW wand can outpace that damage" but soon there will be a lot lot lot more goblins, and that may actually happen.
Sorry for not checkinh in. life has been hrctic. Might be another fay before I van check in again.
There is lots of room for innovation in my mind. I actually have 4 different ideas for the contest, you just have to think non-caster.
Well... I'm not saying I don't have a few ideas. It just seems like non-caster with a caster dip for item use is going to be one of the strongest options whilst a lot of options (traditional caster, ranged fighter, etc) simply won't work well at all. I'll await more feedback from the playtests, though.
By the way, would I be right in assuming that the normal skill packages won't apply here? Things like Scout and Assassinate could be pretty useful (not to mention Intimidate).
Attack and Defense packages only happen in normal 1v1 fights, and not even in 1 vs monster fights.
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