The whole campaign would just be in a planar Arena that attracts spectators of all kinds, a Demi-plane created by some Wizard who finds Heroes and kidnaps or entices them, turns them into gladiators who must fight for their lives in a giant magic Arena that the wizard controls with his power over the whole plane, and thousands of people come to see the Heroes perform.
I call it Dungeon Dome!
What I really need input on, is with is coming up with a way to make how entertaining the crowd grant them points(or something else) that can be turned in for magic items, mounts or vehicles. At this point I think I might make it similar to Skill Challenges where a sucess grants the player a reward token, no failures, no XP and does not take away from combat:
Prime Skills (moderate DCs): Acrobatics, Diplomacy, Endurance and Intimidate
I don't want this to take up the characters time because I don't want to have to factor it in to the level of the encounter, so I'm thinking there should opportunities for them to make the checks as free actions, such as whenever the following happens
scoring a critical hit
coming back from being bloodied
applying a 'save ends' effect
bloody an enemy
using an action point
droping an enemy to 0
if another player makes a check on your turn
(if you guys can think some others that would be awsome)
only one check per turn, a check's DC is lowered by 5 for every check granted beyond the first during that turn.
Should I determine how the tokens are used to get Items first then figure out how many points they should be able to earn on average, or wait until I have all ways to get points, determine the average amount of tokens the players will have at the end of an encounter and then figure out how much the tokens are worth?
Utilizing some special feature of the arena (such as periodic flame traps) to cause damage to your enemy.
Spending a standard action to do nothing but gloat and show off (provides a +2 bonus to the entertainment skill check).
With all of these various triggers for entertainment points, the typical PC will accumulate quite a few of them. Probably around 5 or 6 at paragon level, even without trying. I'd include a possibility of failure (with one failure reducing the number of tokens gained by one), not only to represent the crowd turning against them but to prevent PC's from powering through encounters. I'd also recommend that PC's be allowed to use one of those checks to remove an entertainment token from the enemy-mocking their opponents as they knock them to the ground etc. This increases the strategic value of tokens immensely.
As for what tokens can do, I'd say that a "value" of 200 gp per token at heroic, 1,000 gp per token at paragon, and 5,000 gp per token at epic is probably fair. This allows characters that do alright (gaining 5 or 6 tokens) to get (at heroic tier) the equivalent of 1 level five item. At paragon tier they can get the equivalent of one level ten item, and at epic it allows him to get the equivalent of one 15th level item.
If you wanted to do some extra work you could work out gold equivalencies for other advantages, like choosing the positioning of the caged beasts that are going to be present in the next round, or making your opponent start out with his hands tied behind his back (restrained). This would represent the power that popular gladiators have-after all it's in the "ringmasters" interest that the most popular gladiators survive.
One could easily have a full-fledged campaign with nothing but the coliseum as the environment-social encounters with novice gladiators and adoring fans, combat in the coliseum proper, intrigue against corrupt officials attempting to rig fights, puzzles in intricate settings that have been placed in the arena. The goal of the campaign could be to earn one's freedom, become the ringmaster of the coliseum, lead a Spartacusesque uprising, or merely to survive or escape. Then again, just having a game where you bash some heads in can be fun too.
Hope it goes well
One could easily have a full-fledged campaign with nothing but the coliseum as the environment-social encounters with novice gladiators and adoring fans, combat in the coliseum proper, intrigue against corrupt officials attempting to rig fights, puzzles in intricate settings that have been placed in the arena. The goal of the campaign could be to earn one's freedom, become the ringmaster of the coliseum, lead a Spartacusesque uprising, or merely to survive or escape.
I fully endorse this approach. I played a short campaign once much like that, where the entire (high-level) party had been kidnapped by the owners of a gladiatorial arena to serve as fighters in their games. The whole point was figuring out ways around the many things that prevented us from just plane-shifting out. It's very different from most D&D campaigns, and a lot of fun.
One could easily have a full-fledged campaign with nothing but the coliseum as the environment-social encounters with novice gladiators and adoring fans, combat in the coliseum proper, intrigue against corrupt officials attempting to rig fights, puzzles in intricate settings that have been placed in the arena. The goal of the campaign could be to earn one's freedom, become the ringmaster of the coliseum, lead a Spartacusesque uprising, or merely to survive or escape. Then again, just having a game where you bash some heads in can be fun too.
I 100% agree, but I already have a Star Wars campaign that takes up my time, we just all wish we could play 4E more because it's new and exciting. In fact we may even take turns running and building the encounters so we all get to play and have breaks when we need them.
Knocking an opponent prone, stunning them, or dazing them.
Utilizing some special feature of the arena (such as periodic flame traps) to cause damage to your enemy.
Spending a standard action to do nothing but gloat and show off (provides a +2 bonus to the entertainment skill check).
those are great, I really like the using traps and such against your enemy one. I wanted to put in a 'spend a standard action to showboat' but was not sure how to make it worth while but also players won't go overboard. I think dazing isn't quite as impressive as the others, hard to see that winning over a crowd.
another concern is that I want to make sure all the classes get about the same amount of chances to win tokens and I'm not sure if what I have so far covers em all evenly.
Should I make it so a failure takes away a token? crowds can turn on people, maybe if they're so far under the DC or if they nat 1 it?
1. Get the crowd psyched up and then just use that to help them out, not wanting to risk alienating the crowd.
2. Constantly showboat and hope that your successes make up for any failures you might accumulate.
I'd also recommend that you allow characters to "trade in" entertainment points for temporary bonuses in the midst of a fight, representing characters feeding off the energy of the crowd.
2 tokens: a +1 bonus to attack rolls for a round
2 tokens: Roll a saving throw as a free action
2 tokens: Get a +2 bonus to skill checks until the end of your next turn
4 tokens: a +2 bonus to all attack rolls, saves and skill checks for the round
8 tokens: Regain HP as if you spent a healing surge
Something like that.
P.S: Check out my taint rules and comment on them in some way and I'll give you a cookie filled with awesome.
So when a player does something clever like knock the enemy to the ground they can take it step further by striking a pose, making a joke, or scratching the first letter of their name on em.