PvP 4E

[hong]

(This has come up a few times before.) During our last session on Saturday, the topic came up of running 4E in skirmish or GvG mode, where everyone makes a party of 4 or 5 characters, and pits them against each other.

What changes to the rules would be necessary to handle this kind of thing?

Off the top of my head, striker damage is high enough that you can easily kill a PC in a couple of hits with dailies. So extra hp and/or healing would be a must, if you don't want things to devolve to whoever hits first. How about:

- Everyone gets an initial "buffer" of temp hp equal to their normal starting hp. You have to wear this down first, which means everyone has a fair chance of surviving the first round.

- Abilities like healing word, inspiring word etc can be used as many times as desired, but only once per round.

My guess is that the prime strategy would be to take down the medic. That's probably unavoidable, but to lessen the importance of the medic, how about:

- Second wind can also be used as many times as desired, but only once per round.

[hong]

Oh, another issue: how to differentiate between encounter and daily powers, when you're dealing with one fight only.

[Reynard]

We'll be doing this at our annual mini-con in April. What we've done is make 2 prebuilt teams of 4 characters, each one with a Striker, Defender, Leader and Controller including all of the races and classes from the PHB. They'll go head to head for a team victory (we have a big old arena combat for 3.5 as well, but that turns into man-v-man after one team is eliminated).

We're going to run it by the book just to see how it goes -- ultimately, it is a test to see how the RAW works in PvP to know exactly what kind of rules tweaks might be needed when we convert the arena combat to 4E for next year's event.

[Jim DelRosso]

Oh, another issue: how to differentiate between encounter and daily powers, when you're dealing with one fight only.

Make it best two out of three (or three out of five, if you've the time), with all matches happening on the same day? Dailies will still get used, which doesn't strike me as a problem, but there's less incentive to nova.

The only weird thing would be death and death saves, but that might be something worth fudging.

[hong]

Death shouldn't be a problem for repeated fights; just say that anyone who dies gets raised afterwards as per the ritual, with the associated death penalty.

[mhensley]

It sounds like you should just play the mini's game.

[Scarik]

Change nothing.

Have the rounds be best of 3 and dailies don't carry over, but if it goes to three then it counts as a milestone.

Make each character roll initiative separately as well, the ability to nova and kill someone before they can act will be limited by this randomness and also make sure the players have interesting terrain and can set-up in such a way to keep their Leader and Controller out of direct death range.

It should be easy enough to keep a fighter in front and thus deny melee on the squishies right off and it will be almost impossible to kill a fighter in round one. Drop him to zero hp, maybe, but give the Defenders +surge items and he'll spring back nearly unharmed with a single Word.

[Saz]

I've played pvp's. Its tons of fun. Only thing to keep in mind at lower levels is limiting action points. Once you hit paragon though you can allow them,

[Jim DelRosso]

Death shouldn't be a problem for repeated fights; just say that anyone who dies gets raised afterwards as per the ritual, with the associated death penalty.

Ooo, good call.

[hong]

It sounds like you should just play the mini's game.
The minis game isn't PvP or PvE. It's EvE, which makes for a good space MMO (from what I've heard) but a bit of a red-headed stepchild otherwise.